During the long Lunar New Year holiday last month, thousands of people
had a chance to try out the new bullet train service in Taiwan, and
for local people and expats alike, the high-speed rail experience
seems to have garnered high marks across the island. English-language
blogs and websites are full of personal reports and photographs of the
new train line, a recent Google check of the Internet shows.

According to Yuji Sasaki, 43, a Japanese national visiting Taiwan
during the holiday period, the high-speed rail in Taiwan is
“comfortable, convenient and clean.” Sasaki said that he enjoyed his
train trip from Taoyuan to the Kaohsiung area, noting that he found
the Hsinchu Station to be the most architecturally eye-pleasing among
all the stations on the bullet train line.

“The service was friendly and warm, from the ticket clerks to the
station staff to the on-board employees,” Sasaki said, comparing the
Taiwan high-speed line favorably with the Japanese Shinkansen in his
home country. “I was just curious about two things: why were the
Tainan and Taibao stations designed and built in more or less exactly
the same architectural styles, it gave me a feeling of deja vu, and
why do the orange tickets for the train not state that they were
issued by the Taiwan High Speed Rail company? I couldn’t find a logo
or a brand name on the ticket at all, and as a train ticket collector,
this disappointed me. I hope they fix it in the future.”

For Alex Reed, 35, a Canadian English teacher in Kaohsiung, the new bullet
train experience is worth the price. “I loved the trip north from
Kaohsiung up to Panchiao,” he said in a recent email. “But for me, the
best part, was the route from Taichung down to Chiayi, as the train
zooms down a long curving chute as it descends from the Bagua Mountain
range in northern Changhua County down to the flat plains of Yunlin
County. It’s like riding a roller coaster during that descent, and
fun. I could also see the red arched Beikang Tourist Bridge from the
windows of the train as we passed through the Yunlin-Chiayi border,
and as we crossed into Yunlin County from Changhua County, I could see
the long, red-colored Shiloh Bridge, too. From the elevated tracks of
the bullet train, the views of Taiwan are indeed beautiful.”

Celia Bertin, 55, a French writer from Paris who was visiting Taiwan
with her American husband during the Lunar New Year, also gave the
high-speed train high marks,
noting: “Taiwan should be proud of its new bullet train. It’s just as
nice as our train in France, and the bullet train in Japan, too. Just
from the standpoint of a tourist, I loved riding the new train here in
Taiwan. It made my short stay in Taiwan into a real adventure.”

Bertin said that the “Kiss and Ride” parking signs she spotted at some
of the high-speed rail stations were “cute and romantic”, adding that
she had never seen such signs before in France. “Kiss and ride is such
a good idea,” she said. “It turns Taiwan into a very romantic place,
in my eyes.”

Nice pics here:

http://taiwanfeed.com/node/3074

This morning, Taiwan became a member of the growing list of countries that offer high speed rail service:
Taiwan’s long-delayed high-speed rail system debuted Friday, its 12-car caravan of sleek orange and white coaches gliding out of a suburban …