• Understand
• Get in
• Get around
• See
• Do
• Buy
• Eat
• Drink
• Sleep
• Get out

Downtown Chiayi

Chiayi (嘉義), also spelled Jiayi, is the main city of Chiayi County, southern Taiwan.

[edit] Understand

Chiayi is best known as the access point of the scenic mountain area of Alishan. The city itself has little to recommend: it's a cluster of unremarkable lowrise houses crammed tightly together, with uneven pavements and, especially in summer, the smell of sewage wafting up through the cracks.

[edit] Get in

HSR Chiayi (Taibao) station is on the high-speed line between Taipei (1:30 hours, $1080) and Kaohsiung. The HSR station is over 15 km out of town, but linked to the city by the Chiayi BRT system.

Chiayi is also served by mainline TRA trains and the scenic narrow-gauge Alishan Forest Railway to Alishan, which both leave from the same station, but have separate ticketing counters. Long-distance buses leave from the terminal immediately outside the station, but local buses (notably those to nearby hot spring town Guanzihling) use the Zhongshan Rd bus terminal a few hundred meters down the street.

[edit] Get around

The Chiayi Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) [1] system has three lines, with the main line linking the HSR and TRA railway stations. The trip between the two takes around 30 minutes ($42, exact change), but note that the BRT stop is on the rear side of the TRA station, so you need to take the pedestrian bridge to cross to the other side. Buses have announcements in English, but signage is only in Chinese.

Taxis are plentiful, especially around the train stations, but as usual in Taiwan no English is spoken.

[edit] See

Chiayi Park and Botanical Gardens are a lovely way to spend the afternoon. The Botanical Gardens provide pleasant trails that weave you through a large variety of plants and trees native to the area. Ponds hold koi, turtles, and frogs. You can even see hints of a traditional cemetery through the trees in some places. Chiayi park is well-maintained and serves as a center of activity for local adults and children.

[edit] Do

[edit] Buy

Zhongshan Road (中山路) is Chiayi's main shopping street. It stretches from the train station to a memorial to Sun Yat-Sen (aka Zhongshan) popular known as the Fountain (噴水) -- although the water is usually turned off.

One specialty chain store that's located on Zhongshang Road is the "Guang Nan" (光南), which caters in small electronics and other media-related goods. Catch a good deal on cables and computer accessories here, along with VCDs of Taiwan dramas/Japanese anime/American films (subtitled in traditional Chinese).

[edit] Eat

It's turkey! It's rice! It's... turkey rice!

Chiayi is famous in tourist guides for turkey rice (鶏肉飯), a popular dish of turkey strips and a savory sauce ladled on the rice. Most people call it "chicken rice" but it's really turkey meat. Go figure. At any rate, it's available in practically every eatery town, at prices starting from $20.

[edit] Drink

Chiayi has countless tea stalls and quite a few KTV lounges, but virtually no bars in the Western sense.

• <drink name="Cha-no-Michi" alt="茶の道" address="Zhongshan Rd 505-1" directions="" phone="" email="" fax="" url="" hours="" price="$15-40">Pleasant little modern tea shop right next to the Zhongshan Rd bus terminal, offering up a vast range of strange Taiwanese drinks like milk tea with pudding chunks (布丁奶茶) as well as more traditional fruit juices.</drink>

[edit] Sleep

There are a large number of mostly identical motels just outside the TRA Chiayi station.

[edit] Get out

• Alishan — one of Taiwan's best known scenic mountain areas
• Guanziling — muddy hot spring resort

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