Taipei

We are currently traveling in Taiwan with my wife for 2 weeks, visiting Taipei, Taichung, and Sun Moon Lake.

Flight

We flew LAX-TPE in China Airlines CI7 J on their 777. The cabin is beautiful and food is very nice. I felt that the AA 789 had softer seats, and their snack bar was minimal (it was the only beautifully decorated snack bar however), but overall it was a smooth ride. After dinner, I slept 4 hours, stayed up for 1 hour, and slept another 4 hours before they started serving breakfast. 

I’m starting to develop a routine when boarding these cabins. Bring a shoulder bag inside the backpack, and once inside, bring out the shoulder bag and use it as my extended pocket during the flight. Stash all the unnecessary stuff into the overhead cabin – safety card, menu card, headset, amenity kit, and my shoes. Then load the trays with my bluetooth headset, laptop, ipad, phone stand, bluetooth keyboard, mouse, USB cables. Then before breakfast, swap out the items and load my shoulder bag with the passport and entry card. On this flight however I barely used the laptop and ipad though, so i’ll be doing more trial-and-error testing.

I prepared our airport transportation with information gathered through Gemini AI. I was out of immigration and customs by 5:35am, and we wanted to take the 1960 Airport Bus which was leaving at 6:00 am and 6:50 am. Turns out that the information was all wrong. Gemini told me to go to the B2 Seven Eleven store or the B2 MRT Vending Machine to get the EasyCard, and alternatively the Seven Eleven on Floor 5. Turns out that there was no Seven Eleven in B2; MRT Vending Machines didn’t seem to sell EasyCards (although I didn’t stay around to double check this – this was the impression the interface of vending machines gave me). Floor 5 is not directly reachable from B2, apparently it’s a limited corner of the airport. 

We missed the 6am bus and ended up taking the taxi, but I didn’t realize that it would cost $45 and in retrospect we might have been better off resting at the airport and wait for the 6:50am bus.

Costs

• Flights:
  • $270 + 138k Air France miles: China Airlines LAX-TPE J
  • $100 + 150k Alaska miles: Starlux TPE-LAX J
• Lodging:
  • $460 Taipei 2n Humble House Hilton Hotel
  • 45k Wyndham points: Sun Moon Lake 3n Wyndham Hotel
  • 36k Hyatt points: Taipei 3n Episode Daan Hotel
  • $160 Taichung 1n Millennium Hotel
  • $800 Taipei 3n Grand Hyatt Hotel
• Hotel Credits:
  • $300 Citi Strata Hotel Credit
  • $150 Delta Business Gold Hotel Credit
  • $600 Amex Business Platinum FHR Credit
• Fees
  • $40 Cancellation Fee for one TPE-LAX seat
  • $500 Credit Card Annual Fees
• Intercity Transit
  • $90: Taipei-Taichung Train (Business class listed as $240).
  • $20 Taichung-Sun Moon Lake Shuttle Bus.
  • $20 Taxi to Wyndham Sun Moon Lake
• Ground Transportation
  • $200 LAX Taxi
  • $150 Taipei Taxi + Bus
• Daily Costs
  • $500 Food
  • $200 General Expenses

Overview

• $3,000 Total out-of-pocket expenses
• 380k points spent, covering $12,000 in costs

Originally, this was a trip planned for three – Christine, my mother-in-law, and me. Because of this, we kept the itinerary extra chill than usual. 

Christine’s mother started having serious back pain over the past few weeks, and decided a week before our trip that she couldn’t join us. We had planned our trip knowing that her health is frail. We switched around reservations and were able to cancel reservations or reuse the nonrefundable ones for us to stay. We also shifted some hotels around to maximize savings and added a 1-night Taichung leg to the trip.