Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Taiwan Trip - Day 2 - Taking High Speed Rail to Kaoshiung

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Woke up to a beautiful morning and we had breakfast in the cafe at our hotel.
We bought the breakfast vouchers from the hotel at NT100 in exchange for breakfast costing NT120, if we ordered any above that, we need to pay the difference. We had coffee too but they waive the charges for the coffee. Very good service and the food is very good.

The cafe is Royal Host which have few branches all over Taipei.

As we had bought our high speed rail tickets the previous night, we can take our time to eat our breakfast.

After breakfast, we used the free internet service to send emails to our family and check out of our hotel and then we headed to Taipei Main Station or Taipei Railway Station to take the High Speed Rail to Kaoshiung.


As long as it is not some holidays, there is no problem getting tickets on the day itself. We choose 11.30 am for the train departure time, cause we worried we might overslept hahaha.

There's a lot of ticketing machines to get the high speed rail tickets but as we are not familar, we choose to buy our tickets from the customer service personnel over the counters. They can speak English too.

The high speed rail to Kaoshiung costs us N1490 each (S$62) which comes with reserved seats. This is the express train which stops only at Banciao, Song Shan, Taichung and Zuoying (Kaoshiung) and takes only 90 mins. Some trains stop at more stations and could take about 2 hours to reach Kaoshiung.

You can take other trains to kaoshiung too at cheaper cost but longer rides. You can get the information from seat61 blog.


Just look at the screen for your train no., departure time, your car (or carriage) number and platform number and slot in the ticket at the correct gate barrier. Normally they let you board about 20 mins before the train depart. Do be punctual, the train is very punctual in leaving the station.



Dont worry, the screen comes in English too. Just looked out for the train number, the time and the platform number.


Inside the train, they have personnel selling food and drinks but you can bring your own food and drinks in too.



The train captain is in the middle of the train.

This is not our first time to Kaoshiung, our purpose of going Kaoshiung is also to experience the high speed rail. If we will to go with package tour, they only let you experience one station (i.e. 5 mins) of ride on the high speed rail.

Finally after 90 mins, we arrived at Zuoying Station, Kaoshiung. Very smooth and pleasant ride.


Lots of signs in English too to direct us to the MRT station. Our hotel is located at Kaoshiung MRT Station, so we just take the escalator down to Zuoying MRT Station and take the MRT to Kaoshiung which is about 15 to 20 minutes ride depending on the waiting time.






1 comment:

Pinay Travel Junkie said...

I love the train ride! That cabin looks really clean and comfy.