In Taitung
Taitung is a city known for its stunning surroundings. It's the hub for transportation to the north, west and islands. Many visitors experience Taitung as a less chaotic city than the other big cities.
The city has much to offer to all types of visitors. It's well connected to a train station, there's a domestic airport and it has a harbour. There's also a lot of various restaurants, coffeeshop and places for activities.
How to travel to Taitung
The easiest was to travel to Taitung is by train. If you travel from the west like Kaohsiung or via the north (Taipei/Hualien), then the train is not only the easiest, but also most efficient way to travel to Taitung.
How to plan your route?
First you need to plan your route with a route planner. You could use Google Maps or Rome2Rio to see your trip. On these websites you can see where the closest main train station is for your departure.
(For example, you can take a train to Taitung in Kaohsiung from Zuoying station. )
From my experience, you don't really need to buy your train tickets in advance in Taiwan. You can just go to the station and buy your ticket there and they will assign you a seat. It's really simple. Make sure you check the train schedule on Google Maps for example, if you click the station, you can see the departures and route. Once you've bought your ticket, walk through the scan gates, find on the digital sign your train (and check if the train number is correct, sometimes multiple trains depart really closely apart from another). Then read the platform from the digital sign and walk (5 minutes) in advance to the platform. On your ticket, there will be a train part number written on it. Walk to the designated boarding area and before entering the right train part, check the number of the train (on a digital sign, next to the doors). Once you entered the train, you can find your seat.
How to use busses in Taiwan
Busses can be a bit complicated in Taiwan if you don't know how it works. There is one really easy way to figure out about the bus schedule and one more accurate way.
Google Maps gives you the easiest route to your destination. You just fill in your departure location and destination and it will show you exactly where to go and which bus to take. Although easy, it might not always be accurate, especially with data about how late the bus will be at which stop (not so good live data).
Bus+ is the app to use for busses in Taiwan. Although only (mostly) in Mandarin, it's great for getting live data about the bus. You don't speak Mandarin? That's no problem! Google Maps will be just fine or you can follow these simple steps:
Open Google Maps and fill in your data (location where you wanna go). This will show you at the transportation tab (see picture below), which bus number you need to take.
Open Bus+ and fill in your bus number in the top search bar, make sure the location is set to your search area (this is already the standard setting).
Once filled in the bus number, look at the bus options. In picture 3, you can see that there's three options with bus line '9117', the first one for both ways and 'A' and 'B' just mean which side you're going to (to the end point or from the end to the start point). If you don't know which direction it is, click the option with no 'A' or 'B' to see both directions.
On picture 4, you will see the entire bus route and where it's going to. Select out of the two which (end) direction you're going to. If you are not sure, you can search for the end direction in Google Maps and check which way the end point is. On Google Maps it will show you too, which station to take the bus and to leave the bus. You can now check here in the Bus+ app when the bus comes (live data).
What to do in the city
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