I lived in this apartment for three months and it was a great experience. The apartment is located in an alley off Shida Road, which is just down the street from Shifan University and right in the thick of the Shida Night Market. The Shida Night Market is not as robust as it used to be, a lot of food vendors have left and most of the shops sell clothes, but it gets pretty lively and crowded on the weekends and there are a couple of decent restaurants/street stalls for you to try out. But in terms of food and shopping variety, it definitely doesn't have the selection as other Taipei night markets. The location is great since it's within walking distance to three MRT stations (Taipower Building ~5 mins walk away, Guting ~10 mins walk away, Dongmen ~15-20 mins walk away which is right next to Yongkang Street with all the famous restaurants). There's a 7-11 half a block down from the apartment.

As for the apartment itself, it's small but well-equipped. Philips provided a lot of household items and the kitchen has everything you needed if you want to cook. The bathroom has a typical Asian shower configuration, basically a showerhead attached to the sink. The bed is lofted above the kitchen and the bathroom and the mattress was a full. There's a cabinet with plenty of storage space, a small desk, and some shelves to store your books and things on. There's a tiny washing machine that has a "drying" function, but in actuality it didn't really dry clothes that well (mostly just had an intense spin cycle to get the water off) and I had to air dry my laundry. The washing machine was actually the biggest pain of the entire apartment, close to the end of my stay it started spewing water so I stopped using it and ended up having to haul my clothes to the laundromat. Philips didn't do a good job explaining how to use it and I had to read the instructional manual, which was in Chinese. I can read Chinese fine so I figured it out, but it'd be kind of stressful for someone who doesn't know the language.

Philips was friendly and there were no issues. He was pretty hands off during my stay there (which I appreciated) but always responded quickly to my questions. If you speak Mandarin or Taiwanese, the front desk guy (Mr. Yang) is super friendly and really helpful, I ended up asking him a lot of questions and engaging with him more than Philips. That's not really Philips' fault, just for sake of convenience it was easier to go downstairs and ask Mr. Yang some basic questions (about the building and area, nothing related to the apartment itself) and get some conversation in.

Overall it was a good stay. If you want to live like a local, you can get the whole experience here. Thanks!