Taiwan was named the best place to live for expats. Here's what 7 expats said about living abroad on the tiny East Asian island during the pandemic.

• Taiwan was ranked the best place for expats to live in a recent survey from Internations.
• Insider spoke to seven expats in Taiwan about what it's been like living there, both before and during the pandemic.
• Expats love the affordable healthcare and "underrated" local activities like eating at night markets and hiking through gorges.

Maria José Cubero had never set foot in Asia before she moved to Taiwan in 2016.

Her husband got a job at a Taiwanese airline after having trouble finding work in their home country of Costa Rica, and she and her six-year-old son followed him to the tiny East Asian island to start a new life.

"I came here with the lowest expectations," Cubero, a journalist and marketing specialist, told Insider. "So living here surprised me very much."

Cubero, 39, settled down in the northern city of Taoyuan with her husband and now two sons.

"One thing I like a lot about living here is security, because unfortunately my country is not very secure now. You cannot walk in the street [in Costa Rica] because maybe you might be robbed," she said. "Here it's very safe. You can be at the park with no problems at all."

She's not alone in singing the praises of expat life in Taiwan.

Taiwan, an island of 23.5 million people that's slightly larger than the state of Maryland, was named expats' favorite place to live for the third year in a row in a recent survey of 12,420 expats by InterNations, a Munich-based expat network. Expats ranked Taiwan higher than anywhere else when it comes to quality of life, working abroad, and friendliness.

As of April 2021, roughly 753,000 foreign workers live in Taiwan, according to Ministry of Labor statistics. Nearly 40,000 of those are workers who would typically be considered expats. About 22% come from Japan, 10% from the US, and the rest from a range of countries including Malaysia, the UK, and Korea.

Insider spoke to seven expats about life in Taiwan, both before and during the pandemic. Here's what they said.

A comfortable lifestyle with plenty of perks

Taiwan is an autonomous democratic island that views itself as an independent state, but China considers it a renegade province that's part of the country's territory.

Many expats who've set up camp on the island live a cushy lifestyle thanks to the benefits provided by their companies.

The average annual salary in Taiwan is roughly $30,000, but many expats make much more than that. Steve Burson, CEO of relocation company Relo Network Asia, told Insider that most of their clients earn between $120,000 and $240,000 a year. And many of them get their biggest living expense - housing - paid for by their companies.

"They live at the top of our rich people's lifestyle," Amy Liu, a relocation specialist at Relo Network Asia, told Insider. "They live in the top buildings here in Taiwan."

Most companies also cover other major relocation costs like tax equalization - which means they raise their employees' salaries enough so they're effectively paid at the same tax rate as in their home country - and kids' schooling, Burson added.

Free housing is no small thing, particularly in the capital of Taipei, where most expats live. The average monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment in Taipei's expat neighborhoods reached $3,656 last year, according to a report from consultancy firm ECA International.

Bert Van Dijk, a 47-year-old from the Netherlands, moved to Taiwan with his wife and two kids in 2017 on a two-year assignment with his company, ASML, which makes semiconductor chips used in smartphones and computers. They've ended up staying for nearly four years.

Van Dijk and his family live in a suburb of Hsinchu City in a house paid for by his company. The company also pays for the schooling of the now-teenagers at the Hsinchu International School, where a year's tuition and fees for two high-schoolers is upwards of $40,000.

Even those who didn't move to Taiwan with a swanky company relocation package say the lifestyle is more than comfortable.

Tuni Nguyen, a 28-year-old from Germany who moved to Taiwan in 2019, said she loves living in Taipei.

"As a young person or someone to start up a business, Taiwan is ideal because the cost of living is very affordable and the standard you get is still high," Nguyen, who cofounded digital marketing agency ARN.gency with funding from a local startup accelerator, told Insider.

She and her roommate split the $1,000 rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the center of Taipei. "It's so convenient to order food at all times and there's always a 7-Eleven close by if you need anything," Nguyen said. In Copenhagen, where she lived before Taipei, she paid $300 more in monthly rent for a much smaller room.

Brian Cragun, a 32-year-old actor and English teacher from the US who's lived in Taiwan for almost 12 years, said he and his boyfriend pay about $720 per month to live in a three-bedroom, two-bedroom apartment with two balconies in central Taipei.

"We got lucky because we've rented this place for about seven or eight years, so we've had long-term contracts," Cragun said.

Beyond housing, public transport is reliable and affordable (a Taipei metro ticket costs between about $0.75 and $2). And if you avoid pricey Western restaurants, you can get a delicious and affordable local meal for around $5, several expats said.

A renowned healthcare system: $400 to have a baby

One of the best perks of living in Taiwan is the high-quality healthcare that comes at a fraction of the price of countries like the US, expats say.

Taiwan has a single-payer national healthcare system that's known for its accessibility, short waiting times, and low costs. In the Internations expat survey, 96% of participants rated the quality of Taiwan's medical care positively.

"Healthcare here is really good," Liu, the relocation specialist, told Insider. "A lot of comments I hear are like, 'Wow, my son had a fall on his skateboard and we took him to the emergency room and we're probably in deep trouble. And then for stitches, for X-rays, for everything, it took like three hours and it was only 1,000 NT.' So that's like $30."

A visit to the doctor in Taiwan typically costs no more than about $18 including medications, Liu said.

Anne Marie Nolan, an American who moved to Taiwan with her husband in 2015, said she paid about $400 for the birth of her daughter in 2018, which included a Caesarean section and a five-day hospital stay.

In the US, a country known for having some of the world's highest medical expenses, the average cost of having a baby is $10,808, and that can rise to more than $30,000 when factoring in pre- and post-pregnancy care and complications.

Still, Taiwan spends only about 6.4% of its GDP on healthcare, as compared to nearly 18% in the US.

An Asian travel hub with untapped treasures close to home

Before the pandemic, many expats used Taiwan as a jumping-off point for regional travel. The island is a 2.5-hour flight to Seoul, two hours and 20 minutes to Manila, and an hour and 35 minutes to Okinawa.

In the six years he's lived in Taiwan, Cragun said he's traveled to Thailand multiple times and has found tickets for between $60 and $150 on budget airlines.

Though Taiwan's borders have been largely closed for over a year, several expats said they've spent the time getting to know Taiwan better.

Michaela Farrell, a 30-year-old from the UK who moved to Taiwan two-and-a-half years ago for her husband's job, said they traveled to Hong Kong and Singapore before COVID-19. After the pandemic hit, their only option was to explore Taiwan itself, which she describes as "underrated."

"There's so much to do here on such a tiny island," she said. "It's surrounded by mountains. They have beaches in the south and lots of other big cities along the west coast. And then on the east side, there's a little more mountainous kind of terrain."

Taiwan is also known for its vibrant night markets with cheap and delicious street food, its 15,000 temples, and its extensive cycling networks.

And then, of course, there are the people. Almost every expat Insider spoke to gushed about the good nature of the Taiwanese people. In the Internations survey, Taiwan ranked first in the "friendliness" subcategory.

"Taiwanese people are super friendly and super willing to try and help out foreigners," Cragun said.

Culture clashes in the workplace

Many of the expats who move to Taiwan work for major global companies like Nike, Danish wind energy company Ørsted, and Corning, an American tech company that makes LCD displays and other products, according to Liu of Relo Network Asia.

But some expats said they've found navigating certain cultural differences in Taiwan to be a challenge.

Farrell from the UK said the language barrier has been an issue even though both she and her husband take lessons in Mandarin Chinese, Taiwan's most widely spoken language.

"If you're just going to the supermarket it's not so bad, but if you're trying to go to a train station or if you need to do admin or documents in immigration - or you travel outside of the city - it can be difficult," Farrell said.

Nolan, the 32-year-old American who's had two daughters in Taiwan, said she and her husband experienced culture shock for the first time after they had their first daughter in 2018 while living in Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan.

"My daughter is very blonde with blue eyes and we struggled a lot with how differently people saw her," Nolan said. "People would follow us taking pictures of her or just not give her a lot of personal space."

Ayush Bagla, a 31-year-old entrepreneur who moved to Taiwan five years ago from Bangalore, India, said he doesn't see Taiwan as welcoming to foreign business owners.

"I had issues the first two years I tried to join an accelerator program," said Bagla, who's the founder and CEO of dental products company Ackuretta Technologies. "They're like, 'You need to show that you have a Taiwanese cofounder with you.' I'm like, 'What? Why do I need to show that? We're a legally registered business here.'"

Bagla said he found the requirement unfair considering about 80% of his employees are Taiwanese.

Liu from Relo Network Asia said communication has always been a challenge for expats when they come to Taiwan because the Taiwanese respect a hierarchy in the workplace.

"People still follow that very highly here in Taiwan, to respect the hierarchy in the meetings," Liu said. "So getting opinions and getting people to share their thoughts is not so easy initially."

But once you build a trusting relationship with a Taiwanese person, it becomes much easier to communicate, she said.

A safe haven during the pandemic, but now an uncertain outlook

In early 2020, Nolan and her family were visiting her parents in the US when they started hearing news about a new virus spreading in China.

"So many people told us, 'Don't go back, don't go back over there,'" Nolan said. "We came back, and then it kind of exploded around the world and it just didn't touch Taiwan. It was so surreal."

But until a few weeks ago, pandemic life in Taiwan wasn't too different from pre-pandemic life. People had to wear masks in many indoor places. But there were no lockdowns or stringent restrictions. Schools were open and people went out to restaurants and bars and went to work.

Nguyen said that she was still going out like usual until recently.

"I went to festivals. I celebrated New Years on a rooftop with hundreds of people," she said. "I went to bars. I went to restaurants. It was like COVID didn't exist."

Until May, Taiwan had reported only 1,128 coronavirus cases and 12 deaths. The island had gone months without any local cases. But now, the virus is spreading in the community again after an outbreak among several airline pilots who had been staying at a hotel near Taoyuan Airport.

Taiwan is reporting an average of 562 new cases per day, according to The New York Times. On Wednesday, it reported a record 11 COVID-19 deaths. This week, Taiwan ramped up restrictions, limiting restaurants to takeout only, requiring masks outside, and asking people to stay home whenever possible. Taiwan is struggling with a backlog of testing and only about 1% of the population is vaccinated, according to Reuters.

Nyugen and Cubero both said they got their first doses of the vaccine in April through a since-discontinued program in which people could pay about $20 for their own vaccines.

But even as COVID-19 cases in Taiwan rise and vaccination rates remain low, most of the expats Insider spoke to didn't express any pressing desire to leave the island they've made their home. Van Dijk said he and his family are moving back to the Netherlands later this year, but the decision was unrelated to the pandemic and comes after they'd already doubled the length of their expected stay in Taiwan.

Others are coming to terms with finding themselves in a situation that's vastly different from what their home countries are currently experiencing.

"It's so surreal that we spent the last year in a relatively normal situation," Nolan said. "And it's just weird now things are happening more than a year after the rest of the world has had to deal with it."