Travel to Taipei
Flying to Taipei
Airlines serving Taipei include Air China, EVA Air, Emirates, KLM, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines and Vietnam Airlines. China Airlines and EVA Air operate direct flights from the USA.
Flight times
From London - 15 hours (including stopover); New York - 16 hours; Los Angeles - 12 hours; Toronto - 20 hours (including stopover); Sydney - 9 hours 20 minutes.
Travel by road
Taiwan has a higher car ownership per head than any country in the world, so the freeways are often congested. Visitors need an International Driving Permit to drive a car in Taiwan. However, it's recommended to rent a car with a driver instead, due to the country's road conditions and the sometimes chaotic habits of other drivers.
Routes
Two freeways run north to south. There are two major freeways into Taipei: Freeway 1 or the Chung-Shan freeway and Freeway 3 or the north-south freeway, known locally as the second freeway. Both go more or less north/south. From Freeway 1, take the Chung-Ching South Road and pass Chien-Kuo South Road to Chung-Hsio East Road to get into the city. From Freeway 3, take the Mu-Chia Road, pass Hsin-Hai Road and Fu-Hsing South Road to Chung-Hsio East Road.
Coaches
Privately run intercity buses arrive and depart from Taipei Bus Terminal, Chengde Road. Bus are comfortable and typically feature wide reclining seats and individual game and video monitors. The government-run buses are blue and white. All intercity buses are known as kèyùn. The main operators are Kuo-Kuang Bus Corp, UBus, Free Go Bus and Aloha Bus.
Time to city
From Kaohsiung - 4 hours; Taichung - 2 hours; Yilan - 45 minutes.
Travel by Rail
Services
The main city station is Taipei railway station, 3 Beiping W Road, Jhongjheng District.
Operators
The Taiwan High Speed Rail link (tel: +886 2 4066 3000; www.thsrc.com.tw) runs north-south from Taipei to Kaoshiung. The link has made it possible to travel in comfort from one end of Taiwan to the other in less than three hours at speeds of up to 300kph (186mph).
Electrified train services run along the west coast and diesel trains along the east coast. Services are slow, but frequent, and less expensive than flying (tel: +886 2 2381 5226; www.railway.gov.tw).
