Friday, October 30, 2015

Taiwan Trip 2015 - Day 1- Taking the High Speed Rail Train from Taipei to Tainan

From the plane, I could see Taiwan but we could not land cause of heavy traffic at the airport, we need fly in circle in the sky for extra 30 minutes before landing. It was a good thing that I did not booked my High Speed Rail Train Tickets in advance otherwise I could have missed my train. But if I had booked online I could have discounts on my train tickets but if I missed my train, I could end up losing money too.

After clearing immigration and collected our luggages, we exited the hall and turn right to the bus station.

At the bus station, there's different bus companies selling tickets to different parts of Taiwan. As I wanted to take the high speed rail train to Tainan, I need to purchase a shuttle bus ticket to Taoyuan High Speed Rail Train Station as there's no HSR Station in the airport itself. The ticket costs NT30 per person. It was only about 15 minutes ride from the airport to Taoyuan HSR Station.

After purchasing the tickets, we proceed to Row 1 to board UBUS 705 to Taoyuan HSR Station.

We just put our luggages in the middle part of the bus.

After about 15 mintues, we finally arrived Taoyuan HSR Station and we quickly queue to purchase reserved seat tickets to Tainan, we also collected our tickets for our return trip from Tainan to Taipei, we booked online and had some discounts. It is easy to book online. You can refer to my old post on how to book online.

There's a little window on the train exterior to indicate the Train Number so there's no reason to board the wrong train.

Large luggages could be stored at each end of the cabin but sometimes they were full so we need to put it on the overhead rack or under our feet for bigger luggages but we were lucky we always managed to store our large luggages at the designated location.

After about 1 hour and 20mintures journey, we finally arrived Tainan and we just looked out for the directions to the taxi stand. The fare from Tainan HSR Station to our hotel (Cambridge Hotel Tainan) in Minzhu Road Section 2 Tainan, was NT460 but the cab driver was crazy , he thought he was a F1 driver, he was speeding so fast that I was worried about our safety. Luckily, we managed to arrive our hotel safely, phew. The journey was about 30 minutes. There's another way to save money, board the free shuttle bus at Tainan HSR Station to Tainan Railway Station and hitch a cab from there to the hotel which is much cheaper.

Short video on the high speed rail train.

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