Looking back through my previous adventures, I now realize that rushing through Chiayi and the train station is more the rule than the exception.
On our return trip this time, though, we made certain that wasn’t going to happen.
The train arrives Chiayi station at 5:00PM, the high speed train leaves at 7:36 PM. Even given that it might take us 30-40 minutes to catch the bus and travel the distance, we had plenty of time.
So we had to make a decision: Eat near the train station (my vote would have gone to MOS, and I would have had a good chance of winning) or catch the bus and eat at the High Speed Rail (HSR) station – which is only MOS.
We decided to eat at the HSR station and went to the bus stop immediately. The bus was pulling up as we arrived. The weather we perfect, the traffic not bad and we arrived at the station at 5:20.
The trains run every hour, so my father-in-law went to see if we could exchange our tickets for an earlier train. I went to the restroom.
5:24.
Irene,standing with her father, asks me, “Do you want to take the 5:36 train?â€
I say, “We still have 10 minutes to get food at MOS to go?â€
“Yesâ€
“OK, let’s do it.â€
5:26
Irene heads to MOS, the line is long, she starts explaining that we don’t have time. The gates close at 5:34, and we don’t have the tickets yet.
Dammit, no food again!
5:30
Back at the ticket counter, my father-in-law is still exchanging the tickets. They pull out one of those ridiculously complicated official Chinese-language forms (lots of boxes) and hand it to him to fill out.
What the hell were they thinking? Why would they even offer to exchange the tickets for someone to train that leaves before you have time to fill out their stupid paperwork!?
5:32
Irene and I have tickets in hand, her father is still doing paperwork. We run for the platform without him. Wrangling the kids is tough enough. We could only hope that he made it, but if he didn’t there’s be a train in an hour and he’d have good cause the chew out the ticket agent for that entire length of time.
5:34
Gates closed, but everybody made it.
Train arrives on time. I’m not taking pictures, but getting video instead.
Interesting little side story. Back in 2001 when were we in Taiwan, I used to have a Sony Hi8 camcorder, which I purchased immediately prior to my first trip to Taiwan in 1998. (To say that Taiwan seems to drive my camera purchased would be an understatement.)
I really liked that camcorder (and still have it), on a trip around the island it began to behave badly. You’d click the record button, and it would “beep†accordingly to tell you that it was recording and stop instantly. You had to be extra diligent to make sure the record light was always on. I lost many a good shot because of it.
The digital age was upon us and I used that chance, and camera discounts in Taipei, to replace it with my current (also Sony) Mini-DV camcorder.
The “new†camcorder started exhibiting exactly the same problem at the HSR platform this day. I completely missed the train arriving. I was hungry and therefore not in the best of moods to begin with, but that clinched it for the day.
5:36
Train departs on time for uneventful trip back to Taipei. One problem, apparently my father-in-law didn’t do enough paperwork because they failed to refund his 7:36PM tickets. He was engaged in long conversations with a train staff member during the journey and then had to stay at the station to do more when we arrived.
7:00
Taipei – we headed to MOS Burger (my insistence), then home.