As a companion piece to the post about the high speed rail a day or two back, here is a picture of the bus line. There are several small towns that are outside of Taipei, and currently the subway doesn't go there. There are some public bus routes that go out that far, but they take a long time and are very infrequent.
To make up for this there are coaches which take people to these towns. Usually they only run in the mornings before work and the evenings right after work. To save time they will only go from one place in Taipei, to one place in the town they are going to.
The thing is, the place they go to in Taipei seems completely arbitrary. For example the bus to town A may arrive/depart from the Macdonald's on 2nd street, while the bus to town B might arrive/depart from the electronics store on 5th street. Because of this at random places in the city you will see long lines of people just waiting for their bus.
The unclear picture above is of a very long line of people waiting for one of these buses. You can't tell from the picture but the line wraps around this building and goes about 50 meters or more down the street. Also on the other side is a line of buses waiting for their turn to pick people up.
The actual building itself is a hospital. It's a hospital that was opened several decades ago by one of the richest men in Taiwan, who is well know for his philanthropy. I'll probably have to have a post about him and/or the hospital at some point.
