It has been almost three years since I last
went to Taiwan. It was during the fall season in October when the weather was
cooling and not hot even in the afternoon, as temperature was around 20°C.
This time round it was the summer season and the weather was hot and humid, and I started to perspire the moment I stepped out of the hotel everyday. No joke! But nonetheless, it was a fun trip!
Scooting to Taiwan!
Bought my ticket to Taiwan last month
during the Scoot Morning Glory Tuesday Sale. It was a midnight flight from 12:45am
to 5:20am. Not really able to sleep on the plane and was mad tired when I arrived.
Our first stop was to Taichung! The easiest and fastest way to go to Taichung from Taoyuan Airport is to take the Taiwan High Speed Railway (HSR). Once you exit from the arrival hall, take the escalator down to buy the shuttle bus ticket to Taoyuan HSR from the Ubus counter at NTD 30 per ticket. After that, they will direct you to the bus stop just outside where you can board Ubus 705 to Taoyuan HSR.
The frequency is high and the journey is about 30 mins! You can buy the HSR ticket from the counter at NTD 590 with allocated seat. The price difference for the unallocated seat is just NTD20. You can check out the train timing here.
Train is coming!
It was still early and the train was quite empty. If you're craving for some food/drinks after the few hours flight, you can either get some drinks from the vending machine in the train or wait for the push-cart.
Finally after 40 mins, we arrived at Taichung!
We booked La Vida Hotel for our stay in Taichung. It is near the Fengjia Night Market (逢甲夜市). There is a free THSR bus 160 which we took from the Taichung HSR station. It's currently free (as at June 2015) for everyone. If you are a HSR passenger, you'll just have to show your HSR ticket to the bus driver.
If not, you can just tap in and out with your easy card (just like our Singapore's EZ-Link, more info on it below!), and it will not deduct any money when you tap out later. From what we understood from the staff in 7-11 stall where we purchased the card, bus services are free if you travel within 10km in Taichung (updated: July 16), but you'll still need to tap in and out of the bus.
I would recommend getting an Easy Card (悠遊卡 in Chinese) during your stay in Taiwan. It costs NTD 100 (non-refundable) per card and you can easily get it from any of the 7-11 stores! You can use the Easy card at a lot of places too (eg. boat tickets etc) and its cheaper if you ride the MRT with Easy card than buying the single trip token. The card looks like this and you can use it for almost the whole of Taiwan!
Bus 160 route and timing below. To get to Fengjia Night Market, you'll have to alight at the Fengjia University.
Its actually quite a comfortable bus where you can put your luggage in the luggage compartment. There will be an announcement at each stop so you do not need to worry about missing your stop.
Alighted at Fengjia University bus stop (outside McDonald's) and we had McD breakfast before making our way to the hotel.
Walking around Taichung is actually very challenging, especially with luggages as there are so many motorcycles and cars that are parked along the road and you'll have to walk between the moving vehicles and those parked vehicles.
As we arrived at La Vida Hotel too early, we were unable to check in (standard check in at 3pm). Hence we left our luggages at the reception and had a quick wash up in the toilet before proceeding to our first planned location.
This is the lobby area. It's awesome especially after so many hours of travelling! You can use their computer and internet for free and have some drinks and snacks here.
Our first destination for the day.
Caihongjuan Village 彩虹眷村
Address: No. 56 Chun'an Road, Nantun District, Taichung, Taiwan
According to Google map, it will take 1hr 30mins to reach by bus. We got a cab from La Vida Hotel which took 20 mins or less for about NTD 210.
This is a military dependents village and the area were hand painted by an old man.
When we were there, there was an iron man singing and dancing and taking photos with the tourists. He's pretty entertaining and did a good job in livening up the place.
You can easily spend an hour here just to take photos and enjoying the colourfully painted place.
Next stop was the 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan.
Address: No. 46, Zhongzheng Rd., Kengkou Vil., Wufeng Dist., Taichung City 41364, Taiwan
Entrance fee: NTD 50
The museum is actually on located on the site of a school where the 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck the center of Taiwan on 21 September 1999. Heard from the taxi driver that the earthquake happened during midnight and hence no students were in the school.
There are 2 theatres there where you can go. One is the 3D theatre and another is the earthquake experience theatre. We didn't get to go to the earthquake experience theatre as there were limited seats and the tickets were given out quickly (eg. 1pm to 2pm+ tickets were given out at 12pm+).
Decided to have lunch at their only cafe in the museum as the last meal we had was our McD breakfast. We had some pork rice set but we had difficulty reading the menu as it is all in traditional chinese. So we just ordered whatever was recommended by the friendly staff there. It is surprisingly good and the drinks are really refreshing after walking under the sun for so long!
After our lunch, we took a cab back to La Vida Hotel to wash up and had some rest. The room is spacious and there is even a tv in the shower room!
After an hour or so of rest, headed out to Fengjia Night Market! It is just a 5 minutes walk from our hotel. Not many photos of Fengjia as we were hungry and busy tasting all the free samples being given out and buying our food.
Here is a view of the night market from Fengjia University.
After buying all the food that we wanted to try, we even packed back 2nd portion to the hotel as supper. Here is a pic of the ham potato cheese and fried mushroom (must try!). Yummy!
That's all for today!