Flight arrives 10:30 pm. Just looking for a place to crash doe the night. 2 adults and 2 kids. Seen a bunch online but most of the websites are crap and hard to tell what you are really getting. Any recommendations?
There is only one airport hotel and it is a shuttle ride from terminals. I like the Novotel, nice for relaxing, good food. But nothing around since on airport area.
There are some other hotels outside the airport that are very simple also with nothing around. Don’t get your hopes up too much to find a selection of nice hotels in the area. It’s more common to go into Taipei or maybe another city but not near airport.
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Yep, really your one and only choice is the Novotel. There’s the City Suites when you first come into Dayuan, but it’s not as nice as the Novotel.
You could take the MRT to the terminal station in Zhongli (Huan Bei Station), which is not too far from the Kuva hotel. The Zhongli night market is within walking distance from there. But since your flight isn’t getting here until that late, I’d recommend just sticking with the Novotel. They have a pool (which seems to be rare for hotels in Taiwan) and their breakfast buffet is excellent.
You have a place to stay after the first night?
My wife and I used AirBnB to rent an apartment in Taipei for our first week. (And later AirBnB’ed another apartment in Kaoshiung instead of imposing on family.) We have three little kids so having our own kitchen, laundry, bath, separate bedrooms, made a huge difference.
Even if you have another place to stay, this is a good option to keep in mind as a second option when you’re traveling with kids. My wife knows Taipei so I relied on her to pick the neighborhood, talk with AirBnB-ers, and select an apartment.
jmee - Thanks. We have an AirBnB lined up in Taipei the next day! I don’t like hotels and travel a lot with my kids so I always try to get a furnished property instead.
In fact, I saw the need for furnished housing years ago so I started a corporate housing company (in the USA) - which is doing well.
My main concern is arriving late. I have only been to Taipei once so not that familiar with airport transportation, etc.
Could take the new Airport MRT line right into Taipei.
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Frankly, at any time of night (or day), it would be just as easy and more efficient to take transportation to your preferred hotel instead of staying at the airport. It still requires transportation to go to airport hotel, so might as well use that effort of loading a vehicle to go another 30 minutes or so and arrive where you really want to stay.
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OP, if you’re coming into Taipei in the evening after getting in, I would consider just taking a taxi at the taxi stand. Less hassle, you go door to door and don’t have to unpack and pack the next day.
Fully agree. Grabbing a taxi or better yet a pre booked limo makes way more sense. Stay in the airbnb that night and the cost saving over a hotel well offsets the limo cost.
Ended up staying at City Suites-Taoyuan Gateway. Arrived around 11 pm.
Good: It had two king beds and a separate living / den thingy.
Not so good: The blankets were the exact size of the bed. Great is both people are 2 cm thin. Blankets are usually larger than the bed so they actually cover the occupants. One person rols and the other one is cold.
I turned on the heat but it never worked. Thermostat had a switch for heat or air. When I quizzed the front desk in the morning they said they don’t have heat. Oh. Being new to Taiwan I didn’t know. To me there are days when you need heat. But even in southern Japan they were too cheap to put in heat and it is much colder there.
The all-you-can stand breakfast was OK. Local food was decent. Western food blah.
The Dumb. Their website sucks. Scares away people. We are a family of 4 so need two big beds. It said two double beds. Luckily when i checked the specs they were 85 cm wide - which is King size.
Yep, when we entered the room there were two king beds. Great. And that living room we didn’t expect.
$2300 all in. WIll stay again if I need a place by the Airport.
Now in a decent BnB in Taipei. Has 2 queen beds. One softer the other hard as a rock (hey, kids you get the big bedroom because you need space for your toys!). TW$140 a night.
Headed to Carrefour to get provisions. Wine is more expensive than USA but cheaper than Korea or Malaysia - or Thailand. Got some decent French stuff along with other generally needed provisions (chocolate, breakfast food, veggies, fruit - in order of importance).
Luckily my young kids speak, read and write Mandarin. I am at near zero Chinese and wife not much better.
Tomorrow off for meetings and school visits.
Thank you for the feedback!
City Suites is an odd chain because it’s hit and miss and that particular one doesn’t get great reviews. Some of them are fantastic, some are just ok.
Hard beds are common in Taiwan especially at non-western places.
Carrefour is one of my go-to places because of the variety. Lot’s of people like Costco, but sizes are too big for me.
We are a Costco family but it was too far from our current shack. I was a fan of Carrefour in Seoul years ago (they had good wine and chocolate - life’s essentials).
Any other good places for provisions?
If you’re willing to spring for it, as I said the Novotel is a much nicer hotel in all aspects. We used to so have a contract with the City Suites for when out of town customers would come visit, but now we only keep contracts with the Novotel and another hotel (Orchard Garden) a bit outside of Dayuan because the couple of customers who stayed at the City Suites complained.
Maybe missing a zero there?
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Wait…who taught them mandarin?
They attended a Chinese school in the US.