Transportation in Taipei: The awesome High Speed Rail
Yoohoo! Finally my friend and I decided to embark on a trip outside Taipei. Not that far yet, but we are going to the middle of Taiwan. Somewhere near Taichung (台中). So, we decided to give the famous High Speed Rail (HSR) a try. ^^
The HSR station in Taipei is located at Taipei Main Station (台北車站/ Táiběi chē zhàn). You can reach Taipei Main Station by taking MRT. You can follow the sign on Taipei Main Station (they are everywhere) to reach the HSR Taipei Station.
You can book the ticket online if you have the identification number, but, since it's so troublesome for foreigner like me and my friend, we decided to buy tickets on the day itself from the ticket vending machine.
Okay, the bummer part about taking HSR is the ticket price. One way ticket from Taipei to Taichung costs you 675NTD. O_O! But considering that you will reach Taichung within one hour, I suppose you really pay for what you get. If you want to opt for a cheaper way to reach Taichung, you can take either the normal train or bus but it will take around 2 hours to reach Taichung.
There are two type of tickets that you can buy, standard or non-reserved seats. We bought the non-reserved seats ticket since it's cheaper and we guess there would be not many people who travelled to Taichung on a weekday morning. =P
Since we bought the non-reserved seats, the ticket indicates that we can only go to the free-seating-car number 10 - 12. If you are wondering where the cars are located, you can see the map below. The HSR has toilets, area for wheelchair, area to put luggage and an area to make a phone-call.
If you are confused on the which train to take, you can always check with the security guard or ticketing officer. Basically there are two directions which are shown on the schedule board, Southbound and Northbound. Taipei is located at the North of Taiwan, so to make it easier, just remember that the train going from Taipei to Kaohsiung direction is called Southbound while the other direction is called Northbound. You can see the HSR map of Taiwan below (could
Whenever the train nearly/ has reached a destination, they will make an announcement in both Mandarin and English (actually they will announce in Taiwanese too). The seats are so comfortable, you will wish the journey last longer because you don't want to get up from the seats. =P
Before we knew it, we have reached our destination, Taichung. Awesome, eh? Do give the HSR a try when you have the chance to visit Taiwan. =)
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