by Phillipp1205

After my first massively failed attempt at experience Taiwanese nightlife I spent the next day trying to navigate to a local mall. Having successfully arrived there by taking a bus I soon discovered malls overseas are kinda the same as back home.

Unless you’re looking for something specific or you’re twelve years old, they are pretty boring places to visit.

Upon trying to get home I realised that this wasn’t just a simple matter of catching a bus from the opposite side of the street I arrived. After spending ten minutes trying to ask one of the parking attendants where to catch a return bus from, a taxi driver came over to ‘help’ and eventually I caved and just caught a taxi back.

This particular driver spoke a bit of English and after some chit chat asked if I’d had any Taiwanese girlfriends. I told him I’d only been in Taiwan for a few days and his response was that I could have had a different girlfriend each night.

Starting to feel a bit uncomfortable at this point (seriously the open directness in conversation here can be flooring at times), I told him that I didn’t speak any Chinese and that girls for the most part here, like everyone else, stared but that’s usually as far as it went.

Inevitably we wound up talking about my previously failed night out and his response was quick and suitably to the point;

‘Get correct address, go out, try again tonight!”

I’m pretty sure it was in that instant I went from being ready to throw in the towel to giving Taiwan’s nightlife another shot. Having a complete stranger tell you to suck it up is pretty good motivation.

From what I can gather the Pig Pen in Taichung has a bit of a seedy reputation with both the locals here and the foreign community.

During my time here in Taiwan I’ve visited the Pig Pen twice now and had somewhat different experiences.

Firstly the website presence for the Pig Pen ‘pub’ seems to be either massively outdated or a bit misleading. But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my time there.

The website for the Pig Pen bills itself as a ‘traditional British Pub’. Now short of visiting various Elephant and Wheelbarrow’s back in Australia and admittedly never having been to Britain, I’m still pretty sure the current incarnation of the Pig Pen is anything but.

I’m not sure if at some point it was a traditional British pub, whether it went through a management change or if at one point there was more then one Pig Pen in Taichung. Whatever the story is don’t go there expecting a British pub experience with some fish and chips and lagers on the side.

The Pig Pen I went to sees you walk into a ground floor lobby where you’re charged a $500 TWD ($<20 AUD) entrance fee similar to nightclubs back home. This I guess is to discourage you venue hopping, although personally I haven’t had a reason to leave the place as both times there’s been a lot of people there.

Upon paying the entrance fee you walk up a staircase to the first floor and up against the back wall in the centre is a bar and to the left is a large dance area. Around the sides of the dance area is standing room and some tables.

There’s a nice area behind the DJ’s opposite the bar to stand and watch the dancefloor. Note that the table area on the toilet side is reserved. When I first visited Pig Pen I tried to sit at one of the empty tables and it took a whole 5 seconds for one of the bar staff to tap me on the shoulder and show me the ‘VIP’ sign on the table.

Clearly I’m just not VIP material here.

On my second visit one of the girls I was talking to showed me the upstairs bit which I think is where the ‘traditional British pub’ area might have been. It looked a lot less discoey then the downstairs area and had a lot more relaxed seating room.

For whatever reason though this area (the entire floor) is sealed off and closed. The girl that was showing me around said that it was due to lack of business.

What you’re left with is essentially a disco nightclub venue. So long as you’re fine with that then you should have a pretty good time. The drinks were pretty cheap, $500 TWD entry gets you two ‘free’ Heinekens and from there they are $120TWD ($3-4 AUD) for 2 standard sized bottles.

They do serve cocktails and a bunch of other drinks but I was happy with the price of the Heinekens and stuck with them.

On my first visit there was probably about a 50/50 split between both genders and then 50/50 again within the male being of either foreigner or Taiwanese nationality. Towards the end of the night however I did notice a stack more mostly older (30-40 years old) guys came out of nowhere.

I was later told that a ship was in Taichung or something and the influx of guys was from the Taichung port. Towards the end of the night the amount of guys on the prowl trying to pick up was kind of annoying.

Someone would be talking to you, you’d blink and then there’d be some random guy trying to talk to her.

My second night in Pig Pen a few weeks later was a much more Taiwanese affair. Throughout the night I saw just one other foreign guy. Again I’ve only been there twice so I’m not sure if this is normal but it was certainly a much better atmosphere all round.

I’ve found the focus of Pig Pen to be dancing. It’s not really a place where you go to down a few and have a relaxing conversation. Forget pub, the Pig Pen is definitely more like a night club.

On both visits I was by myself and went with the intention of experiencing the nightlife of another country. I have been told ‘you only go to Pig Pen for one reason’ but I think it depends what you want out of the night.

My idea of a good night out isn’t running around a venue trying to convince every local Taiwanese girl to come back to your apartment. Having said that on my first visit I was there just fifteen minutes and had barely finished my first bottle of Heineken when someone tapped me on the arm;

‘Hey, my friend thinks your hot, come talk to us.’

‘uh.. k.’

One week in Taiwan and having become somewhat accustomed to being stared at but never approached by anyone this was kinda weird for me.

This happened again on my second visit. After arriving at around 10:45pm and spending about a half hour watching the antics of some guys on the dance floor (I was later told it was one of the regular’s birthdays), again came the tap on the shoulder;

‘Hey my friend likes your smile, come dance with us!’

I’m not sure if I have some sort of invisible shiny new person wrapping on or something, but my experience at the Pig Pen seems to differ from some of the online experiences I’ve read.

Both times I’ve been to the Pig Pen I’ve spent most of the night in the respective company of a group of Taiwanese girls who initially approached me.

Sure the place is dark and smoke filled but what nightclub isn’t? If you’re prepared to give the dancefloor a go, don’t mind the entrance fee, cheap beer and the possibility that a bunch of white guys will show up and try to hit on anything with legs go for it.

The Pig Pen certainly delivers.

I’m by no means about to become a weekly regular but for my first nightlife experience in Taiwan, so far so good. A girl drove me past ‘The Londoner’ pub on her scooter the other day and from what we could see there was a whole 5 people in the place…

I think thus far my own nightlife experience here in Taiwan could have been a lot worse then what the Pig Pen had to offer.