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Taiwan's Time Travel Train

Ever needed to get from Taipei to Taiwan's second city, Kaohsiung, in a hurry? Oh, maybe not. Let's try that again. Love bullet trains? Wanna try a new one?? Check out the unsexily named THSR (Taiwan High Speed Rail) which opened earlier this month to a few teething problems. In fact they've been selling tickets for half price all month because of a few glitches--don't worry, mostly with ticketing, and nothing too important like safety.

The THSR wends its way across Taiwan for 345 km, in a rapid 90 minutes--the previous method took four hours. On the way it makes stops in 4 major cities and 77 towns. And the big bonus is that, depending on which press release you read, the THSR apparently also travels through 10 countries in this hour-and-a-half journey. Okay, unfortunately they obviously meant counties, but we are still hanging out for some super transport method that gets us through 7 or 8 nations per hour.

[Photo: a-giau]

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