October 23,

It was a transit-transition day. I awoke at 0633. Jeff said he’d woke up at 0610. He saw we got confirmation of a reservation for a huge future booking. Yeah!! We got up and about, sorting stuff. Then we had our Javas and breakfast of Nutella oatmeal with trail mix and last of our yogurt. We finished packing and watched some YouTube, as packing doesn’t take us long.

Jeff texted our host of our 1100 departure time. The host met us at the elevator and wished us well. Jeff e-hailed us an Uber taxi since it was spitting a bit of rain. We got in, arrived at the Main Station – High Speed Train drop off by 1120 and found the way to the high speed train (HST). We sat as we awaited time to go to the platform. At 1133, we went down to the track to catch our train. It pulled up at 1143. We boarded and it took off on time at 1146!!! Very efficient! It is definitely high speed -it hit 284 kph or 176 mph. It is very dreary and cloudy outside the window.

We raced through town after town with small irrigated lots of farm land – mostly for rice; and lots of tunnels through mountains. Jeff looked up and found out Taiwan is more densely populated than South Korea, but the distinction… it’s not a large country. We made the scheduled few stops along the way. People came on, people got off; a snack cart came through. Just normal stuff that happens on trains – except no one checked our tickets. We had scanned them and went through a turnstile to get into the track area. I guess that is sufficient for Taiwan HST. We “alighted” (as the announcement said) the HST at 1313, again right on time.

     Welcome to Chiayi, Taiwan!!

By 1308, we were on a bus to the other train station because it is close to our place. But… we got on the bus going the opposite way we needed to go. So we got off at the next stop to go back. As we waited for the bus, we saw the weirdest way to trim the foliage in the road’s median. A guy sitting in the back of a moving flatbed truck with a weed wacker!! Anyway, our bus came and we boarded it going back to the HST- and on to the regular train station. We arrived at the station and then walked a short distance to our accommodation P-Hotel. We checked in by 1445, and went to the second floor for our room. It is very basic – not even two chairs, and smaller than our last room, which was an AirBNB. One nice thing here – it’s not a wet bath 👍🏻.

We dropped off our bags and went back out in search of food. Jeff found a hamburger place, Jimmy’s Burger, which sounded fine to both of us. I had a Truffle Beef patty with custard (like a tzatziki sauce) and scrambled egg; Jeff had Teriyaki Beef and scrambled egg. Both were excellent! Mine was actually a hamburger patty!! I also had a coke and Jeff had a Lemon Tea. We paid 383 TWD or $9.81.

After we finished, we walked over to check out the bus station, where we will come tomorrow morning bright and early. Now we walked back to our hotel by way of a grocery store for a few snack stuff for later.