#12daysintaiwan - Kaohsiung! (Day 1 - 2)

11:22 PM jiayg 0 Comments

Find that hashtag on my Instagram to look at my photos (on the go) in Taiwan!

I've been dragging this post for quite a bit so I thought why not I start updating bit by bit. Well as all of you would have known, it's not my first time there (despite telling myself I'll not step in there for at least next 3 years every time I come back from Taiwan). It's in fact my fourth trip and every time I experience something different and I learn something new. Or rather, it's always a different experience. So I shall share whatever I can because I know quite a few of my friends are planning to go Taiwan soon. And if you aren't planning, you should! Because we can speak Mandarin and that's our forte! ;)

I shall touch on Day 1/ Night 1 first which is Taoyuan > Kaohsiung

This time round I took on the 12-day trip with my old pal, Jasminetay (/fish). I must say it's definitely a good experience on day 1 when we were supposed to check-in at 12.35pm max, and this woman went "pulau ubin" for lunch and only came at 12.50pm! Poor me had to wait till she finished her lunch "appointment" at somewhere-she-didnt-want-me-to-know-for-fear-of-stalking.

It was my first experience with Scoot and it wasn't too bad. The flight was bound for Korea and stopover at Taipei, so I guess that's why we had a emergency-exit-seat, which wasn't a bad thing for the leg-room, BUT it was so near the restroom we had to bear 4.5hours with the stench! Much as the flight attendants "sanitised" the area every 30minutes, the smell was really bad!

Touched down at about 6.30pm and we got my SIM card at the airport (I got the 10-day plan for unlimited data and I-forgot-how-many-minutes-worth-of-calls for NT800 which's about SGD38 - so reasonable!) I got myself the 臺灣大哥大 telecom service. The 3G and connection's quite strong! And then we got ourselves on the bus towards our first destination/stopover for the night at Kaohsiung.

Took a bus (U-bus; NT30) from Taoyuan International Airport to Taoyuan High Speed Rail (HSR) Station.
Duration: ~20minutes

Once we reached there, we went to get our tickets for the HSR towards Kaohsiung. (Note! We didn't get the tickets beforehand online, which you could if you're afraid you'll not get any tickets. But basically, the train frequency's about 1 every 30minutes so it isn't too bad! You could also choose to get online beforehand if you're afraid you won't be able to understand how the timetable works as they're in chinese. I can't remember if there was any english on the timetable)

Anyway, we chose to get the "free seating" tickets (自由座) as it's slightly cheaper since no seats are assigned to you means you got to see your luck and technically, though we couldn't get any seats when we boarded, we managed to land ourselves with a seat each at the next station about 15 minutes later. The free seating tickets also mean you can board the next train if you can't get any seats.

Cost of tickets: about SGD55 as it was a Friday and I think it'll be about SGD40 on normal days.
Duration to reach Kaohsiung (Zuoying HSR Station): 2hours.

Fish embarrassed herself when we bought bento dinner on board the train and while she opened the bento, the water droplets that condensed on the cover (it was microwaved beforehand. How nice of 7-11!) landed on an uncle's face! Best thing, she didn't know and the uncle gave me a glare. But then again, Taiwanese are still nice overall so I said sorry and he looked appeased hahaha..

The bento's goooood!

Alighted and we took the MTR to Kaohsiung main station which we stayed at Life Hotel. SGD50 a night and it was quite okay though fish didn't really like it. It was a convenient location for us as it was a walking distance to Liuhe Night Market (六合夜市) and near the Kaohsiung bus station where we intended to take a coach to Kenting the next morning.

Settled our light dinner/supper at the night market (walked from 11pm-1am) and that settles our first night!

Don't try this. A waste of calories...hahaha

Juicy chicken thigh that was as big as my face! My face's considered really big in the first place!

The morning was spent at a nice family-owned breakfast place near our hotel where we had Soyabean milk, carrot cake and their egg-pancake thing (豆漿，蘿蔔糕，蛋餅). Honestly I don't think anything could go wrong when you go into any random breakfast stores. (Of course don't land youself in dubious looking one lah...) Afterwhich we walked to Liuhe night market's nearest MTR as I wanted to show fish the famous and nice interior of Farmosa MTR (美麗島捷運)! They have really nicely-designed tinted glass panels!