Day 5 – Taiwan’s Bullet Train

Today’s Programme
Morning	THSR Exhibition
Afternoon	- National Museum of Natural Science - Study of Global Chinese Language and Culture Center
Evening	Taichung Shopping Areas
Hotel	Crown Hotel, TaiChung

I was very happy to leave TaoYuan because I started feeling bored as we couldn't go out of the place. We got on the bus that headed to Tai Chung via Taiwan Tiao Lu (“TiaoLu”= Expressway) in order to visit the exhibition of Taiwan High Speed Railway Project (THSR) which is Chinese-named as Kao Su Tiao Lu. It’s the bullet train project that will run from TaiPei (the northern city of Taiwan) to KaoHsiung, the southern city of Taiwan. The service wasn’t available when I visited. They planned to start the service on the 31st October 2006 (They want to celebrate my birthday hehe). The Taiwanese are all exited with the THSR because they will be able to spend only short period of time to travel from Taipei to KaoHsiung. This is because Taipei is the capital city that is very crowded while KaoHsiung is the industrial city which is full of factories and doesn’t have much relax area. When people in KaoHsiung want to have vacation, they will go to Taipei. Also, businesspeople need to visit KaoHsiung very often to look after their business. If this project is done, they will need only 90 minutes to travel instead of 4-5 hours with the cost of NTD800. The exhibition hall was nice. From there, we could see real trainstation that looks very elegant.

Before getting in, the officer gave us stickers to stick on our cloth so that they know we have paid. They have the model of the train in actual size. I got in and tried the seat. It looked like inside of the airplane. I’ve heard that there will be Train-hostesses for all service in the train. To construct the railway, they hired experts to design the railway because there are often earthquakes in Taiwan. They have to place circular knots at all corners of the lowest concrete plates of the railway so that it is flexible enough to bear the earthquakes

The Fact of Taiwan High Speed Rail Model : 700T (T for Taiwan) Color : White with black-orange shaded (It’s counted as special colors for the Taiwanese) Train Producer : Japan Operation Speed : 180 - 300 Km/Hr Available Seats/Car : 189 seats Number of Carriages : 88 cars Number of Stations : 12 Color of First Class Seat : Purple Color of Standard Seat : Green Fare : N/A for First Class, NTD1,200 for Standard Seat Construction Period : 4 years

Leaving the exhibition, we passed by a graveyard which was full of people that were giving their respects to their ancestors. It was crowded because it’s the last day of Ching Ming period (Tomb Sweeping Day)

We passed MiaoLi, MianBao (our Fu Dao Yuan)’s hometown before midday. She told us that MiaoLi’s Strawberry is the best. (but it was not strawberry season when we were there)

They dropped us at San Yi, the oasis of expressway. There were lots of MuXiao (wooden products) there. They were beautiful but nobody bought it because we also have it in Thailand. There was a big shop there that sells everything including the puppets that look exactly the same as in the movie we watched the night before. I wanted a mobile hanger that is the plastic sign with Chinese surname, but my surname is out of stock :-(

We spent only short time from San Yi to Tai Chung. They brought us to the National Museum of Natural Science before going to the hotel. It was extremely big museum. There was a massive octopus, model of mammoth skeleton, dinosaurs, and lots of Chinese treasures.

We didn’t have enough time to see everything. The museum speaker spent long time explaining things because she didn’t know that we had only short time there. The toilet there was very clean. :-D

After spending time at the museum, they took us to a small (but high) building. We went to something like training school that is located on a floor of the building. They let us surf the internet to visit Education&culture pages of OCAC’s website. Nobody really gave an interest to OCAC site. They only got online on Messengers and chatted. Fu Dao Yuans were a bit upset (I guess). So, they cut the connection off. Lots of people didn’t have even a chance to sign out.

Done with the internet, they took us to Yi Chung jian ('Jian' means a drive), a famous shopping street in Taichung. We were suggested to have Ji Pan, the famous food there. They also gave us NTD100 each to buy dinner on our own.

I looked for Ji Pan but I found that it’s fried chicken! I didn’t have it ‘cos I had enough fried food. I had fried meat almost every meal when I was in Taiwan T_T

NTD100 was enough to buy food + milk tea with black pearl (I had money left too hehe.) When I was having dinner, the Taiwanese TV talked about Taksin (Thai’s P.M.) refusing to be Prime Minister. It looked like he was about to cry. I didn’t understand what they were talking in the news but I saw him and our King. Taksin looked very pitiful (of course, the good liar is also good at acting)

At appointing time, we headed back to the bus to go to the “Mei Chun” hotel (Its English name is Crown Hotel) which had a temple inside. This temple is very famous because it is the only temple in the city that survived the Japanese’s bomb when the Japanese attacked Taiwan.

There, I stayed with the same set of roommates—P’Yui, Min, and Nat. P’Arm, our group leader, told me that that hotel was like hell when he first joined this program a couple of years ago, but for me, this hotel is like heaven ‘cos we just left the hell that morning. This hotel is pretty old but it’s great. The only bad thing is that there’s only an elevator in the building we stayed (the back one). We spent hours carrying our luggage upstairs. (It’s totally too heavy to use stairs). During the time we were there, we had to use the stairs because it took long time to wait for the elevator. At the front building, the restaurant is on the seventh floor, but there are only two elevators. We had to wait for the elevators for a long time every meal too.