Musical Chairs On The Way To Taipei

Upon closer examination of our train tickets we discovered we would in fact be sitting next to each other, for half the trip. At Fengyuan the Kraut swapped from her window seat to the aisle seat in front of us. It then turned out that I should have moved (I did offer) as the person taking the seat had the aisle seat. So I moved to the window seat. At the next stop, Miaoli, I had to move from that window seat to the window seat one row back and on the other side.

To put it into diagram form, it looked like this:

From Kaohsiung 11:12

seat seat aisle seat seat

Kraut Kiwi aisle seat seat

From Fengyuan 13:55

seat Kraut aisle seat seat

Kiwi seat aisle seat seat

Then, from Miaoli 14:23

seat Kraut aisle seat seat

seat seat aisle seat seat

seat seat aisle seat Kiwi

Does that make sense? We were lucky, there were a lot of people standing in the aisle. This made it difficult for boarding and disembarking passengers to board and disembark. It also made getting to the toilet more difficult than is optimal.

Still, a good part of the ride was scenic. As we headed north out of Kaohsiung we could see the rice paddies were taking on a nice golden colour as it started flowering. In a couple of places the harvest had begun. We passed by some villages and through some towns and cities. The further north we went, the more curtains got drawn to keep out the sun, so we only had views to the right. Soon the view became more and more urban as we approached Taipei.

We only made 17 stops in the almost 5 hour journey. This was another Limited Express, and having ridden the local train I have to admit that is a fair description, relatively speaking. We had a stewardess (for want of a better word) who periodically pushed her trolley of snacks and drinks the length of the train, and another one who came through with another trolley collecting rubbish. Their jobs got increasingly difficult as more and more people stood in the aisle. Most of those standing would stand for one or two stations then their seat would become available.

All in all it was quite a pleasant journey. We had more legroom than in economy class on a plane and the air conditioning was just right. Of course, after 5 hours of air conditioned comfort, getting out into the Taipei heat and humidity was not going to be so pleasant. However, as it turned out, Taipei was pleasantly cool.

I wanted to put up a map of our journey, but Google Maps will only give me the High Speed Train route, apparently that is the “best” option to use when taking the train. I found this map, which shows all the rail lines. We used the blue line which goes through Fengyuan (where we first changed seats). If you right click on the map and open it in a new tab you can then enlarge it.