Taipei Travel

This mall is a favourite of mine for very affordable shopping. Starting from Taipei Main Station, the mall stretches for about a mile under ground. You can walk down one side with stores on either side, then back the other side of same. The mall has clothing, footwear, watches, jewelery, Chinese arts & crafts in one section, computer games, manga and anime, electronics for the other half. Play Station and Nintendo are huge here. There is even a coffee shop with waitresses dressed as anime characters. I was amazed by the number of vending machines which dispense toys of all kinds. The restaurants at the end are mostly Indonesian for food. Duroyal Ice Cream at that end also, is a must for $1 ice cream cones and they have 40 awesome flavours. Price has not gone up for years. It is at the other end of the underground mall so if you want to go there first, go to Beiman metro stop instead of Taipei Main, to save walking a mile to get there for ice cream.

We walked this underground mall twice a day from our hotel to the MRT. Not much of anything really interesting to purchase at the Taipei City Mall, however I did find some post cards to send back home. The best thing about this mall was, it was a conduit to the MRT.

It can be a maze here. You may miss the signage here and there, but thankfully, there are location maps every few meters. Taipei City Mall is divided into a few sections; M, R, K, Y and Z zones. We only managed to sweep Y zones because of the Japanese anime, games and lots of gachapon and claw machines. If you are not a fan of any of above, there are still some clothes, jewelries, souvenirs, bags shops along the way.

This is some kind of amazing underground scene going on. You walk and stroll for a long while if u want throughout all the small shopping stalls here on the Taipei City Mall. You can find local and international food, games, clothes, souvenirs, 3C or media gadgets, even get a quick massage by (semi) blind people and help them a little bit. It connects the Taipei mrt with also many other exits to the Taipei main station/highspeed rails and and airport rail or to the streets above and other bigger shopping malls. It’s a beautiful maze where u can wonder around for hours!

Chinese New Year’s Eve, had a great time: fewer people in the city as most went to visit relatives back in their respective provinces. Enough shops and restaurants remained open to keep things interesting. Trains are neat, efficient, and convenient. Taipei Mall, 4th floor gourmet restaurants were very good. Overall, a pleasant experience, albeit, it rained most of our 3 day stay. Our hotel was 4 star, quaint, and well appointed, at a modest cost. Next time we plan to travel around more...