We woke up early in the morning today to prepare for a day trip to Sun Moon Lake (日月潭）-SML. Its a 2hrs drive away by coach and we are gonna take 南头客运 from 干城站（Gan Cheng station) there.
干城 is located in 1 of the street from main exit of Taichung station. As we are not taking train, there is no way we can get to the front exit from rear exit as you will need to produce a valid ticket to get into the station.
Thus, we did a bit of recce and realised there is an underpass that leads to the front station. Its in a small alley to the left of our hotel, just before the games arcade.
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| Underpass to station front |
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| Taichung station- 台中站前 |
We finally got to see Taichung station front, hehe keep exiting from the station rear and didnt came to to the front. This station is built in 1905 and has been influenced by Japanese architecture, it emits a special old school feeling as we stood in front of the station, admiring it.
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| GuoGuang bus terminal |
To the right of Taichung station is Guoguang bus terminal （国光客运站). This is not to be confused with Nantou bus terminal which is further down. Here, you can board coaches bound for other cities like Taipei, Miaoli, Tainan. I didnt really check out what they have to offer and we moved on quickly.
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| Monday morning in Taichung |
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| Temple |
My dear google map states that Nantou bus terminal is 400m and 2min walk away from Taichung station. But when I checked with receptionist of my hotel, they told me its at least 15min away, thus advising us to take a cab.
I was quite stubborn, 15min walk is not gonna kills us and further more I would love to see abit of Taichung city life. The kind receptionist had given us instructions to keep walking on the right side of the street of Taichung station and we did so when we exit from the underpass.
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| Live chickens! Had been a long time since I last these. |
We passed thru wat seems to be a wet market street. Its only 8+am and some of the stalls are not open yet. There is not much of a crowd too. Got excited over seeing a wet market here and slowed down our pace here.
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| Wet market in Taichung |
We came to a cross junction at the end of the wet market and spotted some shop houses diagonally across and decided to go check out whether the bus terminal is located there as there are some buses parked infront of the shops too.
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| Little piglets roaming around |
Was so happie when we spotted Nantou bus located in 1 of the shops. You might missed it if you are not careful. The shop itself is sparsely funished with 1 ticketing counter in front, 2 rows of seats inside. Lucky for us, we were looking at the various sign board and spotted theirs.
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| Bus to SML |
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| Route of the bus |
There are 3 packages availble to SML. NTD330, NTD660 and NTD 990. We chose the NTD990 package as wanna spend a whole day there to visit the attractions. It includes return tickets to & fro SML, unlimited ferry ride, 2way SML cable car, tickets to Formosa Aboriginal Culture Village，1 way bus ride to 向山 and round the lake 1 day bus tour.
The 2 other options would are either without tickets to the cultural village or just the tickets to&fro SML only. It is cheaper to get this package and thus we brought, I was only praying that weather would be good for us to enjoy our trip.
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| Coupons on the ticket |
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| Bus to SML |
The coach Nantou Bus is using is pretty new and kept clean, which makes the trip more comfortable. There are also scheduled departure timing of the buses to&fro SML so you can planned your trip better knowing the timing of departures.
南头客运 website - SML bus schedules
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| Interior |
We took the 9am coach and is scheduled to reach SML at 11am. Along the way, the coach make stops at Taichung station, Taichung High speed rail station and 1 other train station that I cannot recall the name.
I am not sure whether to purchase the tickets should you want board from these stops though.
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| Back to Taichung train station |
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| On the freeway towards SML |
1 interesting thing is, the coach will make a schedule stop at a university located on a mountain. Funnie to haf a university here as it is pretty inconvenient but the students seems to be used to it. Half of the passengers got off here.
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| Univeristy in the mountains |
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| Reaching SML |
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| Add caption |
We slept all the way till we reached SML after the university stop and was only awake when driver makes the announcement of reaching. Hehe Its a gloomy day today and I hope the rain will stay away till we finished our day trip here.
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