Here is the complete monument of which I wrote about yesterday. Today I want to speak more about Kinmen Island, and how it facilitates my secret (and most likely destined to fail) plan.
Because of tensions between China and Taiwan, for decades you were not allowed to fly directly from Taiwan to China and vice versa. If you wanted to go to China from Taiwan, you first had to fly to Hong Kong, then fly to your destination in China. A few years ago this changed and there was one flight a week that went to Shanghai, and then they added more flights and more cities. At this point I think it's still not as convenient as it could be, but it's much better than having to go through Hong Kong. As anybody who has traveled in Asia can tell you, Hong Kong's airport could be one of the rings of hell.
Also new, is a ferry between China and Kinmen Island, this trip is about 90 minutes to china, and 50 minutes back to Kinmen. Are you beginning to see where I am going with this?
With my birthday coming up, I'm thinking about taking a trip to Kinmen. The flight from Taipei is only about an hour, and then after exploring Kinmen for a bit, I'd like to take the ferry over to China. The city there is called Xiamen and i'd really like to take a look. There are a lot of huge cities in China that have their own flavor, but since they are not Shanghai, Beijing, or Hong Kong, they aren't so well known.
Once in China, I'm also considering if I'd like to fly to another city within China. Flights within China are comparatively cheap, but with that comes crowds, unreliable service, broken planes, etc. So you take the good with the bad. Is my plan becoming clearer now?
What I'm getting at is to fly directly from Taipei to China, the timetables are not so convenient, and I need to go to an extremely busy international airport that is an hour (at best if taking a taxi, longer if taking a bus) outside of the city. Also the price is not so cheap.
On the flip side, for half the price I could go to that same city in China (let's say Beijing for example) by first going to the domestic airport in the middle of taipei city (it has it's own subway stop), then fly to Kinmen. Then take a ferry to China. Then take a domestic flight to Beijing. the trip from Taipei to china by this method is probably the same amount of time it would take me to get from taipei and through the international airport that is outside of the city. And the customs once getting off the ferry is much faster, than an international airport in Beijing.
Not to mention it's more of an adventure and on top of seeing new things...it's all less than half the price. Yes the flight from Taipei to Kinmen, ferry from Kinmen to China (Xiamen), flight from Xianmen to Beijing...all total is less than half the price of a direct flight from Taipei to Beijing.
Great plan huh? Then again I think the day I'm posting this is fitting. Cause it seems that with so many steps, there are just so many things that could go wrong. But if going out and doing things the unconventional way makes me a fool, than a fool I shall be!
