For my two week winter vacation, I got a little ambitious and decided to visit three countries.  It took a lot of planning, a dose of frustration, and it was all worth it because I had a fantastic trip.  I went to Taiwan (I’ve been there before) and got to visit Vietnam and Laos for the first time.  I started my trip by taking a train to Hualien.

When I arrived in Taiwan from Korea, first I had to take a bus to Taipei from the airport.  I took a train from Taipei main station to Hualien.  It was trains, planes, and automobiles that day.

I ordered my train ticket online.  All I had to do was go up to the counter at Taipei station and show the ticket officer my online receipt and she printed out the ticket for me.  Taipei station is huge but everything I saw was marked in Chinese characters and English.

Hello kitty! Of course, she is holding a cup of bubble tea

I took the Taroko express, the quickest way to get to Hualien from Taipei by train.  Not all of the trains are decked out in Hello Kitty cuteness, but this one was.  It took about two hours to get to Hualien.  The train was clean, had nice bathrooms, plenty of chair space, and the station announcements were in Mandarin and English.

Why did I choose to go to Hualien out of all the towns and cities in Taiwan?  I’ll explain in the next post.

Hualien is a beautiful place