Public Transit in Taipei - Taipei, Taiwan
On this trip to Taipei, Taiwan we got to try a few forms of public transport. I'll try to give my opinion based on what I learnt.
Easy Card
Easy card is also called Yoyo Card (悠遊卡). We bought ours at the station at Taoyuan Airport. The card itself costs TWD 100 (USD 3.35) to purchase. To use it, you need to top it up with whatever amount. At the end of your trip, you could get the refund of whatever sum not used back. But you won't get the TWD 100 spent purchasing the card.
This Easy Card made it easy to take public transit from Express Train from Taoyuan Airport, buses, and subways.
At the end of our trip once we completed our train ride to Taoyuan Airport, we returned our Easy Cards to the counter and received the balance minus TWD 100/card and we received our cards as well. Those cards I believe could be used on our next visit which we already planned to do. 😁
This is the link to another blog about Easy Card :
Taoyuan Airport is about 40km (24.85 miles) away from Taipei. You could take a bus, regular train, express train or taxi from the airport. Taxi being the most expensive option.
See the sign for the first and last train from Taoyuan airport. Give or take 1 hour to clear immigration and collect baggage, if you arrive between 6 am and 10 pm, train is still the best option. There is a train every 15 minutes for both regular and express train. It's pretty easy to distinguish between those two trains as it was clearly printed on the train.
Once you collect your baggage and walk out to arrival hall, just follow sign for airport MRT. Make sure to have some cash on hand to purchase tickets. You could buy the tickets or Easy Card at the counter or buy the tickets using one of the machines.
I came across this good article while researching my trip : https://www.taiwanobsessed.com/taoyuan-airport-to-taipei/
Bus
We liked taking bus in Taipei. They are pretty regular, clean and while we take it, we could sight see at the same time.
Google maps is our friend navigating transit system in Taipei. It's pretty accurate most of the times. 😁 The bus stops are quite a lot too where our hotel was so most of the times we didn't have to walk too far.
Google maps is our friend navigating transit system in Taipei. It's pretty accurate most of the times. 😁 The bus stops are quite a lot too where our hotel was so most of the times we didn't have to walk too far.
We noticed some bus stops actually had signs showing arriving bus so if we have a few options we could decide accordingly.
The bus here is pretty easy to take. Wave your arm and it would stop unlike some buses in Penang which seem to always rush and sometimes miss the bus stop completely. 😂
Grab
Grab in Taipei is pretty affordable just like in Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia. On our last trip we only used Grab once. It was the morning of our last day in Taiwan. It's been raining since we woke up. We needed to get to Taipei Main Station which is not too far away but it's raining.
Our Grab ride cost TWD 140 (USD 4.69) and it saved us from getting rained on.
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