11 May 2023
I am sleeping on a plane for 5 nights
Keelung to Taichung on mainly the HSR
Hotel photo lovers rejoice. I took 4 photos of the hotel.
The reason, the entire very large hotel is themed like the inside of an airliner. The windows on the outside are shaped like plane windows, and as you shall see, my bed and room furniture is made to look like I am on a plane. Although somehow, I got no window, even though my room is enormous.
Getting here involved 3 trains. First a fancy slow train from Keelung to Nangang (35 minutes), which is the High speed train terminus station in Taipei. Then the high speed business class train from Nangang to Taichung (1 hour 15 minutes) which is halfway down the west coast of Taiwan. Then the Taichung above ground subway MRT line to Taichung city hall station, past the fatal crane smashing into train accident from yesterday, line already reopened (20 minutes). Then a 30 minute walk to my hotel rather than try and get on the bus with my bag. And after all of that, still too early to check in.
So now I am in Taiwan's recently moved into second place largest city of Taichung, renowned for being the city with nothing for tourists to do, in a country renowned for having nothing for tourists to do. I have been here before, years ago, but stayed in a very different part of the city, in those days, there was no subway MRT either.
This is standard class on the slow TRA train, looks the same as first class, but 4 seats instead of 3.
Here are the very familiar to me, and quite old high speed trains, waiting to start their journey at Nangang. There were 4 in the station in total.
The inside of the business class carriage, looking a bit tired.
But I did get a snack, lots of nice tiny cookies.
Arriving in Taichung, on what is surely the most boring day of all photos, here is the view from the high speed rail station, which is far outside of the actual city.
The HSR station is very modern with many nice restaurants. I remembered that from when I visited here briefly on my previous Taiwan trip before transferring to a bus to go up into the mountains to Puli.
My hotel is attached to a Sogo department store, and over the road is another department store. They are linked by this under road walkway, full of political protest messages. There was a section dedicated to Hong Kong protests.
Now for FOUR hotel room pictures. My big boy plane themed bed.
Plane themed furniture. THE ROOM HAS CARPET! (capitals to prevent my mother from phoning me to tell me that the room has carpet).
And now the huge bathroom, just like on a plane? A bath.
And an enormous shower. I will be here for 5 nights, so I am glad the room seems good.