TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

Transportation system in Taiwan is really convenient: city buses, taxi, trains, high-speed trains, long-distance buses, MRT...

easy card

In Taichung the city bus is reaaaaally convenient; there are a lot of buses every minute or every 5 to a maximum of 10 minutes and they run until late (I think until 23/23.30 and than there are night buses every one hour) but the best thing is that they are free within 10 km! This means that I always go to the university for free, and when I go to the city center or to the airport I spend around 2 to 5 dollars (about 10 cents). We don't have to buy any ticket for the bus because we pay with the easy card: this is a must have in Taiwan because with this card you usually pay buses and MRT in Taipei and other cities (and sometimes you can also pay the taxi) and you can buys things in convenience stores so it is really useful! But when you use it in the bus be careful: there is a machine close to the bus driver, you have to scan the card when you get on the bus and do it again when you get off, so the machine "knows" how many km you've run and see if you have to pay or not. If you forget to scan it, you will be charged the entire run of the bus (which is 20 dollars, around 50 cents).
Long-distance buses are really convenient too. There are a lot of different companies: HoShin, Ubus (which is basically the Taiwanese "flixbus"), Kingbus, Aloha and they all provide a toilet and phone chargers on board. They are comfortable and always ON TIME! Price is usually between 150 and 250/260 NTD (4 to 7 euros).
Also taxis are affordable here: when we go to clubs we always go by taxi and it is really cheap. For example, for a 20 minutes ride in a group of 4/5 people we usually spend around 50 to 120 NTD dollars each (3/4 euros each), and there are a lot of taxis everywhere! In Taichung there is also Uber so sometimes we use it when there are no taxis available.
I can't speak a lot about high-speed trains and MRT because I didn't take them so much.. I just took the high speed train Taichung-Kaohsiung once to go to Kenting (a seaside place in the south, really nice and with amazing beaches) which was really comfortable, big and clean; and MRT is also really clean and not crowded comparing to Europe (you pay with the easy card and depending on where you have to go you will be charged from 16 to around 50 NTD).