How to Book Chiayi to Alishan Bus Tickets Online (Seat Guaranteed)

When taking the bus from Chiayi to Alishan (on of Taiwan’s top destinations), foreign tourists usually swipe their EasyCard. However, this gives them last priority for seats. At peak times (weekends, holidays, cherry blossoms season in March/April), the line is sometimes so long that they can’t even get on.

To avoid this, you should reserve seats Alishan bus seats in advance. The only way to do this is by using the FamiPort machine in any FamilyMart convenience store in Taiwan, but the machine is in Mandarin only – you’ll need to ask the clerk for help.

But guess what? You can actually do this online! In this guide, I’ll show you how to navigate FamilyMart’s online FamiTicket system and reserve your Alishan bus tickets like a pro before you go!

You’ll probably want to consult my table of bus times from Chiayi to Alishan while you go through this article. Also see my more general guide to Chiayi, guide to Alishan, and other options for getting to Alishan.

Things to Know Before You Book

• If you find the below booking process too complicated and/or don’t want to take a deal with these buses to Alishan, just book a Taiwan car rental with driver via Tripool (book on their site or download app for Android / iOS). They offer point-to-point fares or an hourly rate. Find out the price here.

• To book bus tickets online, you’ll need to sign up for membership first, with local phone number and address (I’ll show you how, even if you don’t have those).

• You’ll be able to pay online with credit card, then pick up the physical tickets from any FamilyMart in Taiwan (additional TWD 10 fee per ticket).

• Purchase your tickets up to one month in advance (buy early for holidays or cherry blossom season!) You can buy up to 4 tickets at once.

• Under 6 (age 0 to 5) ride free but don’t get a seat. Kids age 6-12 get half-price tickets and get a seat. If you want a seat for your 0 to 5-year old, but a children’s tickets.

• You’ll be able to choose a bus from Chiayi HSR station (see my guide to booking HSR tickets) to Alishan or Chiayi Station (see my guide to booking train tickets) to Alishan.

• It’s also possible to buy partial tickets to stops on the way, such as Xiding (for Eryanping trail), Shizhuo (for hiking or staying on tea plantations), or Fenqihu/Shizilu (for connecting to Alishan Forest Railway.

• But you can only reserve tickets starting from Chiayi or Alishan. In other words, you can reserve a ticket starting at Chiayi and get off at a smaller stop like Shizhuo or Fenqihu. But you CAN’T reserve a ticket starting at Shizhuo or Fenqihu.

• You can buy tickets for one ride at a time. For return tickets, you’ll have to book them separately.

• Tickets can be exchanged or refunded, minus 10% fee, up to one day before your trip.

• Ripped or stained tickets won’t be accepted.

• If you miss the bus that you have a booking for, you can still use the ticket to ride a later bus that day, but you won’t have a guaranteed seat. You’ll need to line up like everyone else, first-come-first-served.

• Also consider to just rent a car and drive there yourself.

See my similar guide to booking tickets on the bus from Taichung to Sun Moon Lake and the equally popular bus from Sun Moon Lake to Alishan.

How to Buy Alishan Bus Tickets Online

Here are the steps you need to follow to reserve and pay for your seats on the bus from Chiayi to Alishan.

Step 1: Sign up for Membership

Go to the FamiTicket login and sign-up page. The bottom on the left (登入) is to sign in. The button on the right (註冊) is to register. Click on the 註冊 button to sign up.

Now you’ll need to fill in the above form. Here are the items in the order you’ll need to fill them in.

• Click 海外國護籍 (born overseas)
• Enter name as it appears in your passport (characters are limited so leave out middle name if necessary)
• Male (男) or Female (女)
• Passport number (護照號碼)
• Enter date of birth
• Enter Taiwanese mobile number (If you don’t have one, just make one up. It must be 10 digits and start with 09). Next line is to enter a second number (don’t need to).
• Enter Address in Taiwan. I put the address for Amba Ximending, one of my favorite hotels in Taipei. First column choose 台北市 (Taipei city). Second column choose 萬華區 (Wanhua district, 5th option). Third column copy-past this address: 武昌街二段77號
• Enter your email

Scroll down and there’s more info that needs to be entered, as in the above picture. Here are the items:

• Password (must be 8-15 characters and contain 3 of the following 4 items: lower case letter, upper case letter, number, symbol)
• Re-enter the password on the next line
• Password hint (don’t need)
• Receive newsletter, choose 是 (yes) or 否 (no).
• Click gray button if you are disabled with ID to prove it.
• Keep the blue check at the bottom to agree to the terms.
• Click 送出 (submit) button.

If anything didn’t work, you’ll get the above error pop-up. The problem will be highlighted in red on the form. If it worked, you’ll get the below success screen.

The above screen says that the registration was successful and that you should receive an email in 3-5 minutes.

Once you receive that email, open the email and click the long link that it contains. The link will take you back to the FamiTicket website, with a notice which says you’ve successfully verified your email, as below.

Step 2: Book Your Bus Ticket

Now that you’ve successful signed up, go back to the sign-in page. This time, you don’t need to click anything, because it should already be on 登入 (sign in).

Enter your email and password that you created when signing up. Click the blue 登入 button at the bottom.

Hover over “交通 Transportation” and choose “阿里山線 Alishan Route” at the bottom left (see image above).

You can also book other Taiwan Tourist Shuttles here by choosing the button on the right (I won’t cover those other routes here, but the booking process will be the same).

There are now 6 possible buses you can book. I strongly suggest you use my Chiayi-to-Alishan bus timetable to figure out which bus you want to take.

#1 and #2 start at Chiayi station but don’t go all the way to Alishan. #3 and #4 start from Chiayi HSR station, with only #3 making the 20-minute detour to Fenqihu. #5 and #6 start from Chiayi Station, with only #5 making the detour to Feqihu.

The 6 different bus options are as follows (starting from top-left and going across):

1. 7314 (嘉義大雅站達邦線) Chiayi Station to Xiding or Shizhuo, only two per day, very early or very late
2. 7302 (嘉義大雅站-奮起湖線) Chiayi Station to Fenqihu bus which also stops at Xiding and Shizhuo
3. 7329 (阿里山線(高鐵出發)經奮起湖) Chiayi HSR Station to Alishan bus which also stops at Xiding, Shizhuo, Fenqihu, only 1 per day
4. 7329 (阿里山線(高鐵出發)) Chiayi HSR to Chiayi bus which stops at Xiding, Shizhuo, but NOT Fenqihu
5. 7322 (阿里山線(臺鐵出發)經奮起湖) Chiayi Station to Alishan bus which also stops at Xiding, Shizhuo, and Fenqihu
6. 7322 (阿里山線(臺鐵出發)) Chiayi Station to Alishan bus which also stops at Xiding, Shizhuo, but NOT Fenqihu

Note: all the buses make the return journey, too. So if you want to book from Alishan back to Chiayi, click on the relevant one above (the return routes will be included too, but need to be booked separately).

Once you figure out which bus you want to take, click the blue “購票” (buy ticket) button at its bottom-right.

For my test, I plan to buy a ticket from Chiayi HSR Station to Alishan, so I clicked bus #4. (Note: I could also choose #3, but that one will take about 20 minutes longer due to the detour to Fenqihu on the way).

Above you can see the details for the bus I chose, including the three possible departure times for Chiayi HSR to Alishan (9:30, 10:10, and 13:10) and Chiayi back to Chiayi HSR (13:30, 14:40, 16:40).

The notes in Mandarin also mention that the date, time, and number of seats should be written on the ticket when purchased, stained or ripped tickets are not valid, and there’s a 10% fee to refund tickets.

Click on the blue 我要購票 (I want to buy tickets) button in the above image.

Now you’ll see a calendar at the top. Click on it and choose your date of travel (up to 31 days in advance).

Then you’ll see a list of the six possible buses (see above photo). This one is relatively simple (other buses are more confusing, as we’ll get to below). The first three times in the table are from Chiayi HSR to Alishan, and the last three are from Alishan back to Chiayi HSR. You can confirm this by consulting my Alishan bus timetable here.

In my table, you’ll notice there should be one more departure from Chiayi HSR to Alishan at 11:00, but it’s not found on the above screenshot. Same thing for a 10:10 bus from Alishan back to Chiayi HSR.

That’s because those two buses stop at Fenqihu on the way, so you need to go back and choose the 7329A bus with the words 經奮起湖 (stops in Fenqihu) at the end of it (bus #3 in the list of 6 different buses I provided above).

There’s one more very confusing issue which I need to explain. If you’re buying tickets from Chiayi train station to Alishan, you might notice that some of the bus times don’t match my timetable exactly. Here’s why.

Just to make things EXTRA confusing here, on the Chiayi train station to Alishan list of departure times, some of the times listed are from Chiayi train station (where almost everyone gets on).

However, for two departing buses labeled 班次 in the middle column (5:55 and 13:55), the time listed is for Daya stop (one stop before the train station), so you need to add 10 to 15 minutes to it for the Chiayi train station boarding time. This means the bus will depart Chiayi train station at 6:05 and 14:10, respectively, and these times match the ones in my timetable.

And once again, if you’re planning to take any of the buses which stop at Fenqihu on the way, you’ll need to select bus 7322 (阿里山線(臺鐵出發)經奮起湖), or #5 in my list of 6 buses above. Then you should see the below options.

For the Chiayi station to Alishan (with stop in Fenqihu) route, there are four options. The 9:10 and 14:10 are from Alishan to Chiayi station. The 9:40 is a departing time from Chiayi station to Alishan, while the 11:55 is from Daya station, so you need to add 15 minutes, for a 12:10 departure time from Chiayi train station.

Now that we’ve got the confusing times sorted, it’s time to actually select the bus you want. Once you decide, click the blue 立即購票 (buy now) button beside it (see last 3 screeshots).

If the button is gray instead of blue, the reservable seats are sold out. This doesn’t mean the whole bus is sold out, since only about 10 seats per bus are reservable. You can still line up and swipe EasyCard to ride that bus.

Then you should see a screen like below. Just to confirm you’re on the right track, the first option should say 全票嘉義-阿里山 if you’re going from Chiayi to Alishan, or it will say 全票阿里山-嘉義 if you’re going from Alishan to Chiayi.

On this page, there is a list of possible stops with prices (top five are adult prices, bottom five which start with 半票 (half-price ticket) are child prices for the same five stops).

Starting at the top, the stops you’d be riding to are: Alishan 阿里山 (TWD 278), Shizicun 十字村 (240), Shizhuo (197), Xiding/Eryanping 隙頂 (172), and Longmei 龍美 (154).

Note that Shizicun is the same as Shizilu (十字路 or Shitzulu). The Alishan Forest Railway travels from Chiayi to Fenqihu to Shizilu, the terminal stop, so you can access the train from either of these two stops.

Since I’m buying a ticket for myself only from Chiayi to Alishan, I chose the first one and selected ‘1’ (see screenshot above). You can choose 1 to 4 people.

At the bottom, leave the two boxes checked to agree to the terms and click the gray 電腦配位 (automatically choose seats) button on the left or 自行選位 (choose your own seat) on the right. I chose right.

NOTE: When booking a ticket from Alishan back to Chiayi, you may notice the stop choices are different. They may include unfamiliar stops like 頂六, 觸口, and 龍美. They don’t include stops you might want to get off at (Shizhuo, Fenqihu, and Xiding).

If you want to ride the bus from Alishan and get off at one of these three stops, choose 龍美, which is usually the cheapest adult ticket option (around TWD 124). 龍美 (Longmei) is shortly after Shizhuo, Fenqihu, and Xiding. You will still be able to get off at the stop you want. If your desired stop is Fenqihu, just make sure you’re on one of the buses that actually goes to Fenqihu by checking my bus timetable.

Now you get to choose your seat(s)! Dark gray seats are taken, light gray are available, and my selected seat is in green.

Use the zoom in/out magnifying glass to see more seats. However, I couldn’t find a way to move to the back of the bus. I was using desktop – apparently this works better on mobile.

After making your selection, click the 確定 (confirm) blue button at bottom.

The above is a just a confirmation page showing your booking number, date of travel, bus, row and seat number, destination, and price.

There’s nothing to do here. Just click the blue 下一步 (next step) button. Notice that a 10-minute timer to finish your order has started counting down (see the green circle in the above and below screenshots).

You’ve now reached the payment page. You must click the circle beside the words 取票手續費10元. This means you agree to pay TWD10 to pick up the ticket later at FamilyMart.

Scroll down and enter your credit card information. Click the blue 結帳 (checkout) button at the bottom when ready.

If your credit card doesn’t work (some international cards sometimes just don’t work for certain things in Taiwan), try a different one.

If the payment goes through, you’ll see the above confirmation screen. Congrats – your seats are booked!

I suggest you screenshot the booking as I have above. You can also click the blue 列印 button at the bottom if you want to print the ticket. However, you should also receive an email with all the same details.

Step 3: Pick Up Your Tickets at FamilyMart in Taiwan

Your final step is to pick up your physical Alishan bus tickets from any FamilyMart in Taiwan.

According to some readers, when they tried at certain FamilyMarts, it didn’t work or the staff didn’t know how to help them. Tell the staff that it was booked on FamiTicket, which will help them click to the correct section on the machine. If they still can’t figure it out, just try a different FamilyMart.

There’s no deadline to pick up the ticket, it just has to be before your ride. However, due to the above issue (you might not succeed at certain FamilyMarts), I don’t suggest leaving it to the last minute.

If you can read Mandarin, you can try to use the FamiPort machine in FamilyMart yourself. I’m not going to cover how to do this here, because there are several steps.

If you can’t do this yourself, just show your booking to the FamilyMart clerk – the email you received is best, but the screenshot will also work. If you have multiple bookings, you’ll need to show each one.

The clerk will go to the machine for you. After keying in your booking info, the machine will print a receipt. You’ll need to take that receipt to the counter and pay the booking fee (TWD 10 per ticket). Then the clerk will print the actual ticket for you.

And just like that, you’ve got reserved seats on the bus to/from Alishan! At the bus stop, you can still line up like everyone else, but when the bus arrives, the driver will ask anyone with reserved seats to step forward first.

Step 4: How to Cancel Alishan Bus Tickets

Unfortunately, canceling your FamiPort or FamiTicket bus tickets to Alishan is not super easy.

According to the online booking system, in order to receive a refund to your credit card, you’ll need to mail in your ticket to 3F, #61, Zhongshan North Rd. Sect 2, Taipei 104 (104台北市中山北路2段61號3樓), and they must receive it at least 1 day before the bus departure.

A member of my Taiwan Travel Planning group also reported that they were able to refund their ticket at a FamiPort machine in a FamilyMart in Taiwan. To do this, a Taiwan phone number must be entered. If you don’t have one, you can try to make up a 10-digit number starting with 09. I’ve done this in similar situations in Taiwan and it usually works.