Taiwanese trains are notoriously bad. They routinely oversell their seats, and instead of turning away customers they allow them to stand in the aisle. Most everyone is given a ticket with a seat number on it, but they are given blank tickets and it becomes a free-for all to try to grab a seat.
Most of the people who stand in the aisles are young people, so they can get by but what about the elderly? The problem is that there are no hand rails for the people to hold. Additionally there are issues with getting up out of your seat. They might mis-interpret that you are leaving the train when you just want to visit the toilet. Lastly, and most annoingly you have the noise pollution of chatty ladies who are standing up next to you staring down at you in your seat.
This isn’t my only experience on a train, Read about my trip from Kaosiung to Taipei about one year ago when my train hit a pig.
