For the first time, I embarked on a one week long vacation to Taiwan. My departure flight was located in KLIA2, thus decided to try the KLIA transit for the first time. Tsk tsk tsk, it was bad, real bad. The whole journey should only take 35mins from Bandar Tasik Selatan to KLIA2, but it took the train 1 hour and 20mins due to 'technical issue'. What a start for my holiday! Lucky I was not rushing to catch a plane or something. I would die with an heart attack if I were.
After meeting up with my college friend ZC, who was my travel companion to Taiwan, we headed into the departure hall and off we went! The flight took 4 hours plus, and we arrived at Taoyuan International Airport. ZC tried to purchase a telco SIM card in the airport but unfortunately most of them are out of stock and were closing down due to end of working hour and the next day was Mid Autumn Festival.
So we wandered around the airport, trying to find some food to satisfy our famished stomach. Midnight, every shop was closed in the airport, except for 7-Eleven. To our surprise, the 7-Eleven in Taiwan is better equipped and has more choices of food compared to our homeland. We found something like 'lok lok' here, which is a hybrid of steamboat.
The airport provides handphone charging stands, some people just leave their phones charging here while they wandered off to somewhere. So you can imagine the level of safety of this country. I was a long night, where we decided to give it a try to overnight in an airport. I barely manage to catch some sleep, worrying passer-bys might steal our stuff (yeah, we are 'trained' to be cautious in our own country).
Soon, it was 6am and the ticketing counter for bus is open. Oh oh, did I mention that our itinerary was to travel to Taichung as our first destination? We took a bus number 705 to Taoyuan High Speed Rail (HSR) Station, to try out how fast the HSR can travel. P.S. Almost all of Taoyuan HSR Station's employees were good looking and polite!
My oh my, I was on the verge of falling asleep once after we boarded the HSR, but we reached Taichung HSR Station in just half an hour! We did some research and found that normal cars will need 2 hours to travel the same path! Albeit the ticket was a little expensive, but it saved us a lot of time! Then, we need to board a bus from the HSR station to Shueishe Pier in Sun Moon Lake.
A cool breeze blew on our face once we got down from the bus. The temperature here is lower compared to Taoyuan. There were mist covering the hills and on the lake, limiting visibility. To get to our accommodation, we have to take a boat from Shueishe Pier to Ita Shao Pier, which is located at the opposite of the lake...
We stayed at Dream House B&B, operated by a mid-aged male owner who also stay in the B&B itself. Our room was a little unexpected, largely because of the see-through bathroom wall! Thankfully there was a curtain to cover the glass area, or else we will be able to glance each other while bathing!
Next - Taiwan Day 2 - Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village
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