Day 1 En Route (2005-04-16)
It was our first time flying Eva Air and the service and food was good. They have the most user-friendly console for the personal TV screen and KL and I both were able to watch a movie and half of another which we had been waiting for them to come on video, so the three hours and ten minutes flight to Taipei seemed to go very quickly.
We landed at CKS International Airport around 10:35 pm. The
airport is clean and modern. After immigration and customs which
took no time at all, we followed the sign and headed straight to the
Airport Bus Passenger Waiting Room. We double-checked that Airbus
company (
)
does stop at our hotel and bought our tickets ($3 for an
adult). We missed the 11 o'clock bus by five minutes and had to
wait for the next one which departed on time at 11:20 pm.
There was only a handful of passengers and the trip took 40 minutes
from the airport (50 minutes from Terminal 2) in light traffic.
The driver does not speak English and he announces the name of each
stop in Mandarin. Since I speak Mandarin, it's no problem for us
at all. If you don't speak the language, I suggest you write down
the name of your hotel in Chinese and show it to the driver before the
bus takes off.
When we finally checked into Sheraton, it was already 12:10 am.
The reason I picked this hotel is because it's one of a few hotels
where there is an airport bus stop right in front of it (I don't want
to be dragging our luggage across the streets looking for our hotel in
the middle of the night). There is also a MRT (Mass Rapid
Transport) station and several bus stops just a few meters from the
hotel, making it convenient for us to go to places. (Doing my
homework prior to the trip pays)
The hotel has been undergoing a major restoration over a year ago
and is near completion. There is no sign of any outward
construction or renovation anymore. The lobby is clean and
spacious, the staff is very friendly and helpful. Since we are a
member of the Sheraton group hotels, we got a nice room on the 12th
floor and not too far from the lifts.
Our room is large and the bed is absolutely enormous. It can
sleep two more of us easily! There is also a welcome "basket" which
looks more like a welcome dish to me, with an apple and a grapefruit on
it. But the hotel does replenish the fruit everyday, so if you add
up the ten pieces of fruit we could have gotten from our 5-night stay,
you could say the hotel gave us a basket of fruit!
We were dead tired but too excited to fall asleep because the next day's a busy day for us.
Back to top
