Last week, I shared some useful tips that I picked up during our trip to Taiwan for first time travellers and this week I am sharing our journey from Taoyuan Airport to Park Taipei Hotel. Later in the week, I will share with you the places of interests and their famous night markets in detail!
Making our way from Singapore to Taiwan was a fairly smooth flight without turbulence, except our inflight neighbour decided to snore through the entire journey! The flight took just under five hours and it didn’t take long to check out of the airport. Besides filling in the landing card, we both had our fingerprints taken at security.
Once we made our way out, we waited at their resting area to surf free internet while waiting for their information counter to open. We wanted to open our iTaiwan account before we found our way to the hotel. Of course, if you are running out of time, you could go to any of their 10 Tourist Service Centres to open an iTaiwan account and get your password. The airport counter opens from 7am onwards. If you prefer to have unlimited Wi-Fi, then it’s worth getting their local mobile data cards to surf. There are a few mobile network company’s booths around the airport for you to get a card.
Then we walked over to the airport bus station and bought a bus ticket to the Taoyuan train station for NT$30 from counter 2 UBus. The bus ride took around 30 minutes. It was my first time landing in a foreign Chinese country and I must admit that I felt extremely uncomfortable reading the Chinese characters as it had been a long time since I had to read Chinese characters!
After we reached Taoyuan train station, it was another battle to navigate all the Chinese words on the board! Luckily, I was able to speak mandarin and understand their dialect – hokkien! So I bought the ticket without much problem! The train station is very big and clean. The signs are very clear and it was easy to navigate our way. The superfast train didn’t take long to reach Taipei main station!
Finding our way to the exit to take their Metro was quite a battle! The platform areas are very small and at peak hours, there are a lot of travellers. Luckily, we only had a small luggage bag between us!
The concourse area in Taipei main station is really big and there are a lot of exits and entrances to the underground malls and bus station etc. We were like headless chickens trying to find our way to their Metro station! After reaching the Metro station, it was another battle to get to our hotel, but luckily I had printed an English Metro map that helped a lot during this trip!
The whole journey took us around 2 hours which is excellent for time management! I am so pleased that we were able to reach the location so quickly while trying to navigate everything in Chinese! I love their Metro train which is cheap and easy to get to!
Both of my sisters had been to Taiwan many times and they recommended the Park Taipei Hotel. It is a 4 star hotel, located at Da’an station. We really enjoyed the fact that Metro exit 6 is right outside the hotel! What a great location! We had the double room which also comes with complimentary bottled water, coffee/tea, disposable slippers and toiletries (they will replace the complimentary items every day, so do use them). We didn’t opt for the breakfast as we knew that we were going off to try their local brekkie instead. The room is big and clean. It comes with a smart Japanese toilet but I didn’t dare use it! The last time I used those toilets in Japan, I was not very comfortable having water sprayed at my bum! We enjoyed our one week stay there! I would highly recommend them!
They are very helpful too. My uncle asked me to buy him a dried fruit (Ficus pumila var. awkeotsang) which can be made into jelly. I had no clue what this was! The hotel staff were very kind to Google it for me, told me which shops to get it from and printed me the map. I had previously tried asking while shopping but no one in the general high street knew where to get them. So without the hotel’s help, I wouldn’t have been able to buy this.
爱玉子
The hotel also recommended us a place to go for brekkie to try the local foods. It was a 10 minute walk to the shop and we had a delicious Taiwanese breakfast (葱油饼 and soya bean drink)! I did struggle to read the Chinese characters on their wall so I ended up buying what everyone was ordering! I paid around NT$114 for two dishes and two drinks which was very cheap! They were very delicious and I would recommend them.
That is it for our journey and I will share with you the places of interest soon! Ciao!
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