Taiwan2014之梅雨的季节-奇异果快捷旅店,成功店(Taichung Kiwi Express Hotel,Chenggong)

 Our hosts booked us a hotel in Taichung so to let us enjoy and eat to our hearts in Taichung night market. Having booked the last minute, I was told that many of the hotels are fully booked, hence it is with much difficulty that she managed to secure a room here for us. Many thanks for the effort made 姗姗姐.

There are 2 branches of Kiwi Express Hotel in Taichung (Zhong Zheng & Cheng Gong) and we are staying the Cheng Gong Road branch. The concept of the hotel is pretty similar to City Inn where we stayed during the last trip, it can be considered a no frills hotel.

The room that we are allcoated has a super big bed,even bigger than a king sized bed. Pillow and bed is comfortable although the blanket is a bit thin. This is a room with no window and not that we mind since there are no sceneries outside to speak off.

Super big bed

 There is a writing table beside the bed and a hanger and fridge besides it. A tv and luggage rack is right infront of the bed. The room is pretty squeezy if we were to bring our luggage along but since we only have our overnight bag, it is ok.

Everything here is kept to a bare minimum but the room is comfortable on its own. Wifi signal is also strong and its free. I am not sure whether this is a new add on but during the last few stays in Taiwan's hotel, they don't provide free wifi. This time however both of the hotels we stayed did. But then again, we stayed in different hotels this time round. Oh and their shampoo and shower gel is Dove. Muhaha, so happy can cause I forgot to pack them to Taichung.

Hangers for your clothes

 Breakfast is in the basement. We came down at 9am and man, the trays were all empty leaving us with little choice. Top up was not prompt either and we gotta eat slowly and wait for the staff to top up the food.

Serving table

On top of the long wait, the breakie served here were not nice and usually I would not discount hotel's breakie even at Wonstar but this is really bad. The bacon taste like it's steam instead of fried or grilled, it's all soggy and soft. The macaroni is tasteless though it looks like there are herbs thrown in during cooking. The scrambled egg is soggy and again tasteless that I dunno I am drinking or eating it. Oh, I managed to grab last 2 pieces of ham and again its tastless.

It's like either there are no seasoning in the kitchen or the chef had a cold this morning cause everything served was tasteless. We gave up after 1 round and retreat back to our room and thinking of where to get food.

Placed your breakie vouchers here

My portion

Sitting area

I am not every sure about the price of this hotel since my hosts refuse to let us return them the cost but if you asked me, this will not be my 1st choice if I were to come to Taichung again. I would choose City Inn over it anytime given it is also a no frills hotel.

These are the following reasons :

1). Location

Kiwi Express is located in the middle of many buildings that look the same to us. I am not sure about the locals but we find the buildings all the same and the road names were confusing as it is not at every intersection they specific the road name. We went on a night tour in Taichung city on the 1st night while trying to walk back to the hotel from Yizhong Night market.

Many a times, we only realised we were on the wrong road after walking 2 intersections when we finally saw a road name. City Inn on the other hand is literally right beside Taichung station. If you are travelling here with luggage, that would be a more convenient location since you need not have to walk so far to locate the hotel. We tried taking a cab when we were lost near Taichung station but the driver was as lost as us, luckily I brought along the hotel namecard and it had a simple map on it.

2). Room design

I didnt managed to go on other floors but the one we stayed(6th) was a simple 1. White walls, wooden colour door. On the other hand, City Inn offers a much more lively design on their coridoor and room when we stayed that. Not that it matters too much anyway. The room amenities over in City Inn is also much more high tech and advance as compared to Kiwi Express. The switches there were all sensor while Kiwi Express is using the old school kind of flip switch.

But 1 thing that Kiwi Express won is the room size, it is a bit bigger that as compared to City Inn.

3). Breakfast

This is especially important since we don't usually start eating street food till noon and I dunno where the heck to look for breakfast joints near our hotels and thus always gotta rely on the hotel's breakie. To us, it doesn't matter if you served the same food over and over again (like Wonstar) but your food must at least taste decent. The breakfast over at City Inn Hotel beats the 1 in Kiwi Express hands down. No fight. Not only they have a much wider spread and changed the menu everyday I was there (3days), they top up fast enough and most importantly their chef cook decently. Really, we had a very fulfilling breakie while in City Inn which I cannot say the same for Kiwi Express.

4). Pricing

While at City Inn, we booked the Elite room which is suppose to be a better grade than the normal rooms and thus paid a bit extra. However if you compared the pricing of the normal rooms in both hotel, the difference is about SGD10bucks give and take. If budget is not that tight, City Inn would be a better choice given that Taichung Station is right beside it and you can save on the cab fees. But then again, it is provided you will be starting your journey by taking TRA.