Shopping in Taipei

Before I moved here and after all my previous visits, I knew that there was not much for me to shop in terms of clothing for a shopaholic like me. I was both right and wrong.

In Taipei, you can actually find all kinds of shopping. What kinds of shopping can you anticipate then? You can find lots of sports fashion, outdoor activity stuff, shoes, toys, bags, cosmetics, watches, sweets, stationary, etc.
Something you will find are cheaper than elsewhere are bikes, often made in Taiwan.
Foldable bikes are very popular in Taiwan and I bought one online.

Where can you go shopping then?
There are big department stores like Shinkong Mitsukoshi, Breeze, Sogo and Eslite. We live just next to Qsquare Mall, which is a quite big mall.
The mall in Taipei 101 is very high end, so we normally don't go there. The shopping areas I can recommend are Ximenting, Zhongshan, Zhongxiao East Rd and Xinyi.
I have been to Wufenpu, but I wouldn't recommend this wholesale area unless you are a looking for low quality, "use-and-throw" kind of clothes.

You can also find night markets like Shilin and Raohe. Other night markets can be considered to focus more on food. Another kind of shopping opportunity you can find are the underground markets. They are very centralized around Taipei Main Station. Don't expect to find anything fancy in the night markets or underground markets. Things are instead very local and cheap.

Speaking about online shopping, it is also very widespread here in Taiwan. There are lots of homepages selling basically everything. It is quite convenient that you can pay in the convenient stores if you don't dare to use your credit card online.

Don't expect to find big outlet villages like the ones in the US. There is a small outlet department store called Leeco, but it is far from what you can expect from something called outlet.
We found two outlet stores, one near Sogo and one in Zhongxiao Dunhua. They sell some kind of defected or no-good items, often quite smelly. You can actually find some bargains there sometimes.
You can also find some short-term sales, so called 特賣會 (temaihui),  where they want to clean out some stocks of old season shoes, bags, cloths in some locales that are kept for these kind of purposes.
I have seen some "temaihui" sales where they sold very high end brands and the queue was stretching super long outside from morning to late afternoon. I wonder why they don't have to work...

In Taiwan, there is a normally Anniversary Sales in the department stores where some banks are be involved. You simply can get discount by using the banks' credit cards. Except for some discount (10-20%), the deal is normally: "Buy 5000NTD and receive a 500NTD voucher for your next purchase". This activity will move around the chain stores around Taipei or even nation wide. You will see that the stores will be overcrowded with shopping crazy people.

When it comes to discount, it is opposite to our Western way of thinking because the Chinese way of giving discount is called 打折 (dazhe). Instead of saying "It is 20% discount", they turn it around and say "You pay 80% of the price" instead. I get confused every time I see the sign inside a store.

When there is sales and they say "From 8 折", it means you will get maximum 20% off.
In Western countries, it would be "Sales starts from 20% off" or "At least 20% off". This is also something that conflicts with what we are used to.

Sometimes there are big sales like 50% off, but I find it quite unusual. I guess 10-30% is what they normally can give as a discount when sales seasons come.

Something about casual clothing then. Uniqlo has been established here for some years. Just recently, their sister company GU has also opened its first stores in Taipei. Swedish giant H&M will open here soon. Gap and Zara are already here. I brand I like is Global Work, a Japanese chain.
I would like to mention one brand that the Taiwanese are crazy about: Roots.
This is a Canadian brand and is actually not famous in Europe at all. I have never heard of it before, so I found it very strange that Taiwanese people go crazy when there is sales from this brand. Prices are actually surprisingly high and the design is just average. However, they buy it like it is some fancy brand.

When it comes to shopping high end brands, you can expect to find all the classic high end brands in the upper class department stores. Asian people seek for status, so having a brand name bag, watch, shoes and cloths is still something very important to them.

If you prefer buying used high end items instead, you can also find lots of stores in Taipei selling second hand items.

I would also like to mention that it is not common to find counterfeit products here in Taiwan. It is definitely not like Thailand and China.

What I like about Taiwan are all the convenient stores open 24h. Even Watsons selling cosmetics are open 24h.

What is different here compared to shopping in Bangkok, which I used to like, is that Taiwan has seasons. Not four, but at least two seasons. It means that you can buy jackets, sweaters and boots here.

We have enjoyed shopping here. My wife went crazy about shopping sports clothes and so did I. It's the easiest thing to find here. When it comes to casual apparel, I couldn't find anything worth buying except for Abercrombie & Fitch, which are imported and sold in lots of local stores scattered around the city. Well, I find the Taiwanese brand A Pirate Store quite OK sometimes.
I have instead enjoyed shopping cheaply at the Japanese low price chain Daiso. Everything, except for snacks, costs just 39NTD. There are local variants of low price chains also, but I find Daiso more fun and colorful.
My wife did some nice shopping here. She also thinks that shoes designed and made in Taiwan are quite comfortable at reasonable prices.

Don't forget, as a tourist, you can enjoy a 5% VAT refund (min purchase 3000NTD) if you bring your passport along with you. However, this is mostly just valid in the department stores.

Eating out in Taipei

Eating out in Taipei is easy and is mostly cheap. If you want to have a fancy dinner instead, you will find that as well. That is why it is so good with such variations and choices in Taipei.
This is not a food blog, so I will not blog about food or restaurants in detail.

Yes, in Taipei, you don't have to worry about being hungry. Wherever you go, you will find something to satisfy your stomach.

In general, I feel that Taiwan is influenced by Japanese food a lot. It's everywhere. You can of course find pasta, Hong Kong food, Korean food and their local food too. However, European food is more difficult to find.

I might not know much about Taiwanese food, but I notice that almost everywhere you can find Paigufan (pork chops rice), Jituifan (chicken club rice) and NiuRouMian (Beef Noodles). This has then given me the impression that Taiwanese food is Paigufan, Jituifan and Beef Noodles.

When it comes to deserts, tian tang is very popular in Taiwan. It's some kind of sweet soup.
Hong Kong style Dim Sum is also a very popular choice here.
For lunch, a popular meal is the Lunchbox - so called Bin Dang. Easy, cheap and often delicious.

During lunch, I eat around my office, which is near Guang Fu Bei Lu.
I pay around 100NTD for a lunch, which is less than one third of what I pay for a lunch in Sweden.

I have some favorite lunch restaurants of course, but after being there for a year, I got bored of them still. My favorites are the one with steamed dumpling (best in town), the chicken rice called Ji Rou Fan, and the teppanyaki.

When it comes to dinner, we have plenty of choices around the city. I can't name them all and I haven't tried them all either. I will just briefly go thru some.

Pho Hoa - Near Sogo in Zhongxiao Fuxing. One of our favorite restaurants. It's small with a small menu, but their pho is very delicious.
Din Tai Fung - Quite expensive and award-winning Taiwanese chain. Their dumplings are very famous.
Plum Blossom Room at Brother Hotel - Located on the Nanjing E Rd. Dim sum here is good and I like the old-style when they walk around with their carts.
City Star (Jing Xing) - 24H HK style restaurant. Long waiting time, but quite nice food.
How Fun - We found this in Zhongxiao Dunhua. Paella and other latin american influenced food. Not bad.
Calcutta Restaurant - This place in the basement of Ximending Wan Nian Plaza. Delicious Indian food.
Long Du Restaurant - Near Zhongshan Rd, which is near around apartment. Best Beijing duck in town. Must try! Book in advance!
Kai Fun - A chain with great Sichuan food. Can highly recommend.
Emporer Food - Chain with very delicious paigufan.
Lao Wang Ji Beef Noodles - Probably the best beef noodles in town. Our favorite beef noodles restaurant ever. The beef is really tender! You can find this one in Ximen.
Si Hai Yi Jia - One of my favorite business lunch restaurant, because it is really delicious. You pay just 120NTD!
Bao Wu Japanese Restaurant - A small cozy Japanese restaurant only in Shilin station. Very delicious food.
Mushroom Forest - In Chang An W Rd. Nice pasta. Big portions.
Mita - Pasta chain. Nice pasta.
TJB - A chain with delicious pasta and other nice food.
Saizeriya - Japanese chain. One of the cheapest places for pasta, pizza or steak. Cheap doesn't mean it is bad. Actually, it is quite nice quality here, especially the pizzas.
Ippudo - Japanese chain. Their ramen is delicious, but menu has changed a bit.
Hokkaido Ramen Santouka - Japanese chain. Their ramen is not bad, but quite expensive.
Watami - Japanese chain with a big menu. Relatively expensive though.
Yoshinoya - Japanese fast food chain with nice rice bowls.
Ba Fang Yin Ji - A very cheap dumpling chain. You can have them cooked or fried. Very yummy.
Thai Town - An expensive Thai food chain. Delicious though!
Ootoya - Japanese chain with decent food.
Coco Curry House - Japanese chain specialized in curry meals.
McDonald's - Comparing to other western countries, hamburger meals here are cheap. We went there just a couple of times. Why having this kind of food when you can find delicious Asian food here?
MOS Burger - Japanese fast food chain selling burgers. However, we didn't like it. Quality is poor.
Oldie Burger - Next to our apartment building. Very expensive burgers, but delicious.


Some other things worth mentioning:
Food courts - In every mall or department store, you can find food courts with quite OK quality. The price of a set meal is around 150NTD.

Night markets - Shilin, Raohe and Ningxia are the night markets worth mentioning. You can find lots of snacks, drinks and other food here. However, we find them quite greasy and we don't know where the oil came from considering the oil scandal here.

Att 4 Fun in Xinyi - They renovated the eating floor during autumn 2014. Lots of nice and cozy coffee shops. Some of them serving meals. Nice place with decorations of Alice in Wonderland.

Bakeries - There are lots of bakeries in Taipei. It is so convenient to just walk in a buy a bun if you feel like it. After coming to Taipei, and when we travelled to other places in Asia, I really miss the Taiwan bakeries by the time I feel for something sweet. One of the most popular is ChiaTe, which only has one store and it is located on Nanjing E Rd. This store is so popular that people have to line up to go in to the store. Their cakes and other stuff are very delicious at a good price. Tourists from other Asian countries stop by to buy bags of cakes to bring home as gifts.

Bubble tea - You can basically find bubble tea bars everywhere. Whenever I'm away from Taipei, and I feel for a bubble tea immediately, I wish I was in Taipei at that moment instead. There are lots of chains, but I find Come Buy as one of the best.

Teppanyaki - This is quite easy to find and it is cheap. There is one big chain serving for around 130NTD. At night markets, you get two choices of meat for around 250NTD. I like this kind of food.

Hot pots - Hot pots and sukiyaki seem very popular in Taiwan. You can find it everywhere at a nice price. Momo Paradise is one of the chains we have tried.

Grill - You can find lots of all-you-eat places for around 500NTD. It's often very Korean influenced.

Cafés - We have been here for a year, but we only paid a visit to Starbucks once. There are Starbucks everywhere, but we don't find them very interesting. Too pricey and average quality. We rather walk around to find more local coffee shops. For instance, behind Mitsukoshi in Zhongshan are quite many nice coffee shops. In Zhongxiao Dunhua, you can also find many nice ones.
We have brought our books to have some desserts and teas. I recommend reading and eating, I think it's relaxing and a cozy activity.

Final words: I know that, when we move back home, food in Taipei is one of the things we will miss the most for sure. Of course we often miss Western food, but I like the variety of food here much more. One more thing is that I need something lean and clean most of the time. In Taiwan, the food is quite oily and sweet all the time. Therefore, we cook at home 1-3 times a week to avoid unhealthy food. However, we have enjoyed eating out a lot!

Yangmingshan (陽明山) - Part II (Juansi Waterfall)

In the first weekend of November, we decided to go back to Yangmingshan to hike again.
We found on the internet a trail called Juansi Waterfall 絹絲瀑布 Trail and we wanted to check if the waterfall was impressive or not. Beforehand, we learnt that this trail is quite easy, almost only downhill. Compared to hiking to Mt Qixing, this should be a "walk in the park".

We took Bus No 260 north exit 2 of Taipei Main Station and reached to Yangmingshan terminal station. From there, there is a special queue for Bus 108, which is a small bus, that loops around Yangmingshan. Our target was Lengshuikeng 冷水坑 where we could to start hiking from there to Juansi Waterfall.

There were a lot of people around lunch time and suddenly they used a bigger bus (still Bus No 108) with end station Xiaoyoukeng 小油坑. We didn't know if Lengshuikeng was included in this bus line, so we jumped on the bus together with almost all the other people. It turned out that we were on the wrong bus. The bus reached Xiaoyoukeng and turned back to terminal station. I asked the driver how we should go to Juansi Waterfall and he then stopped at Qixing bus stop so that we could catch the real 108 instead.

I read a forum that we should start from Lengshuikeng Visitor Center, but there was no such bus stop. We passed Lengshuikeng and arrived to Qingtiangang 擎天崗, which was the other end station, not far from Lengshuikeng. It turned out that Lengshuikeng stop was the one we were supposed to go to, not a stop called Lengshuikeng Visitor Center, because that doesn't exist. This was explained by a guy in the Qingtiangang Visitor Center who was kind enough to bring us to a trail so we could hike to Juansi Waterfall anyway. This was not what we planned, but anything goes if we only could reach our target.

Qingtiangang is a nice and quite flat grassland with cows and people go there for picnicking or just to relax. Here used to be a lava terrace! Yes, we passed by a few cows and some cute calves and the visitor center guy told us they are Japanese cows and the farmers don't milk them.

We started hiking from here and arrived to the waterfall after just 1.7km. It took around 1h. The waterfall itself was not very impressive. It was quite small actually. However, a waterfall is a waterfall and it always brings some "magic" to it. It began raining when we reached the waterfall. We stopped here for a small sandwich lunch before hiking 1km for 30min to the end of Juansi Waterfall trail. We arrived to a road with a bus stop for Bus No S15 to Shilin MRT. All the buses which passed by were too crowded. It was nearly 16:00 and we expected to catch a bus sooner or later. However, after 30min with buses that were crowded or didn't come regularly, we decided to take S15 on the other side instead, ie back to the end station on the mountain so that we could remain in the bus which will turn back and go to Shilin MRT. However, the driver told us that we needed to get off the bus at Qingtiangang and line up again. Most of us were pissed. I was already so frustrated about waiting too long for the bus back to the city. It was raining and I was freezing and I just wanted to go back to watch a football game.

Qingtiangang

Qingtiangang

Qingtiangang

 Juansi Waterfall.

We lined up for 1h in Qingtiangang in the rain and the fog before we could catch the bus back to the city. It was a nightmare and I can't believe that they didn't organize to have bigger buses when they knew that everyone wanted to go home in the rain.

Waiting for the bus back to Taipei.

However, all in all, the Juansi Waterfall Trail was quite nice and was not tough at all.

Keelung (基隆)

Keelung 基隆, actually known as Jilong, is a port city northeast of Taipei. You can either go by bus or train.

We took a train, which leaves every 20min, for about 80NTD for a return ticket per person. It took 40min from Taipei Main Station.

Downtown Keelung, there is not much to see. Even though Keelung Night Market (Miao Kou) is quite famous, there is actually nothing very special. I thought it was like Raohe or Shilin in Taipei, but the market street is actually quite short. Having seafood here is cheaper than in Taipei though. The food market here is opened until 2-3am.

I walked around east of Keelung and found a park called Zhongzheng Park with a quite nice temple on the hill.

In terms of shopping, there is really not much to get from here.

Miao Kou Night Market.

A short visit to Keelung is worthwhile though if you haven't been there before.