Taiwan 2017 - Day 1 (Part 2) - Rent and Drive to Miaoli!

Keykey had a hard time figuring out the transportation means to Miaoli. He had booked rooms at Maison de Chine Hotel Miaoli which is at Zhunan part of Miaoli. Initially, he had thought of High Speed Rail and then taxi but it does not really solve the downstream problem of travelling around Miaoli where a lot of sights do not have easy access to. Next, he thought of chartering a taxi for the 4 days but there may be a lot of scheduling issues as Baby key feeding time is not so fixed and he may need to head back to hotel at times to rest.

In the end, Keykey decided that we should just rent a car and drive around. This will provide us with a lot of convenience and at the same time, offered a new experience. This is not without challenges though.

• Firstly, most of the rental vehicle website are in Chinese. Though the booking process is fairly easy, the terms and conditions are hard to read in Chinese (eg. some companies charge extra for returning the car at a different location from pickup. Known as甲租乙還)
• Then there is the challenge on integrating the pick up and drop off into the itinerary. For instance, most companies do not have the vehicle at the airport and there is a need to figure out how to get to the rental company.
• There is also the need to get over the fact that the Taiwan is Left Hand Drive, different from Singapore which is Right Hand Drive. 
• The vehicle must also be right sized. Keykey is travelling with 4 adults, 1 baby (who requires baby seat) and 4 pieces of luggage. Keykey thought of getting a Toyota Wish as it is quite affordable but worried that there may not be enough space. 

As this is the first time that Keykey will be renting a car at Taiwan, he decided to choose from the major companies and narrowed the following companies:

• Avis - They have a booth at Airport and vehicle can be collected from there. 
• Easyrent aka Hotai Rental aka 和運租車 - Very popular company and they appeared to be affiliated to Toyota. All vehicles are Toyota and there are many good reviews only. Key point is they don't charge for 甲租乙還.
• Car-plus 
• Pony Rent

In the end, Keykey booked Easyrent as it provides pickup to the company office to collect the car, no charge for 甲租乙還 and the return location is conveniently at Taipei Main station, fitting into out itinerary. 

Big key booked through the weblink provided earlier and communicated with them through email. No payment is required for booking. Interesting, when Big Key tried to book more than 1 month in advance, there is no Wish available for the Taoyuan Airport branch but when he tried again nearing the date, there are Wish available. 

After Big Key told the rental car counter of his booking with Hotai, the counter guy gave Hotai a call and the Hotai guy said that he will be down in 10 mins. Keykey then led everyone out to the pickup area where the Hotai guy arrived soon. He then drove everyone in a van to the Hotai office at Dayuan area which is around 10mins away

       

The office to do the paperwork. The paperwork took a while around 30mins (took a while to understand where to return the car at TPE main station. More on this on day 4). They accept, visa, mastercard, jcb, amex and cash. Got a baby seat together with the Wish. The baby seat is quite dirty and Keykey used muslin cloths to lay the seat for Baby key to sit.  In total, we book for a total of 3 days, 3 hours. The salesman gave us a bit of discount and rounded it off to 9k nt. 

The car that we rented. It was quite well maintained. 

The last row was put down to fit all the luggages. Take note that the GPS (Garmin) is in chinese, a bit outdated (2015 version). The rental company shared that we can use it by typing in Chinese or the contact number of the place we want to go. However, we didn't try. The GPS was simply used for highlighting to us where all the speed cameras are. hahaa. Lady Key's dad brought along a Phone holder and it was used to hold Big Key's phone and Google Map (tethered to the earlier Simcard) was used throughout the journey. It was very reliable and sufficient for the drives. 

To note, the rental for the car excludes the payment for the usage of the freeways (aka erp like prices). This will be paid when you return the car. They will pull out the total cost for it. The company said a ball park will be around 1k to 1.5k nt. However, our 3 days of drive only cost us 220nt. 

Big Key drove all the way to our hotel at Miaoli. It took around an hour and the freeway was well maintained and good to drive on. Interestingly, motorcycles are not allowed on the freeway. Big Key said to ensure you are on the right side of the road, just remember as the driver, you must be closest to the mid of the road and indeed, he didn't go wrong!