While we were in Taiwan, my family took advantage of the Taiwan High Speed Rail quite a bit. On January 23rd, we took it down to Yunlin county from Taipei—a journey I've made over a dozen times in the past either by traditional rail road, bus, or car. These methods usually took around 5 hours (and sometimes twice that when hitting really bad traffic).
The high speed rail took a mere 1.5 hours to get us to Chia-yi, followed by a 30 minute car ride to our destination. Not only was it fast, but it was comfortable, fairly clean, and fun. They had a food and snack cart that came through from which I bought a katsu-don (pork cutlet with egg and rice) meal for 120 NT, or about $3.60! It was pretty good and a great deal (of course one of my aunts thought it was "robbing the bank" to charge so much). One nice little "feature" they had was a pull-down screen to shade from the sun, similar to airplanes but made of nicer materials:
The experience reminded me of how fun traveling by train can be. You get to get a sense of the towns and countrysides you pass through in far greater detail than from a plane, and without the hassles of getting to airports (which are usually not as close to the heart of major cities) and passing through security checkpoints. And, at least with the THSR, the trains were punctual. Here's a little video I recorded while on the train:
The only downside of the THSR is it reminded me of how underwhelming rail travel in the U.S. is.
