What to do with teenagers in Taipei - Wu Fen Pu (shopping)

Oud kids are teenagers - the hard-to-please age. When in Taipei, it is tough to figure out what will interest them.

The old favorites like Taipei Children's Amusement Park (兒童新樂園) and National Taiwan Science Education Centre (科教館) don't appeal to them much anymore.

While Taiwan is a great place to visit -transportation is easy and cheap, good food, lots of interesting places to visit, friendly locals, shopping in Taiwan is uninspiring. In fact, one of the dumb things to do in Taiwan is to shop for electronic gadgets. Electronic goods like PCs, phones are not cheap in Taiwan.

On the other hand, shopping for clothes/accessories remain "fun" in Taiwan, and for our kids, at the right places. These days, every year we visit Taiwan, we would visit Wu Fen Pu (五分埔). Wu Fen Pu is the wholesale clothes market in Taipei.

Visiting WFP is an experience in itself. It is a bit like visiting Paddy's. WFP is like a "block" of shops. A bit dark once you wander inside the warren (or grids of streets). Many of the shops are wholesalers but they sell to retail as well. Inside, you have to weave and duck and get out of the way of the bikes with big bags of clothes. It is almost like a maze. Once our daughter found something she liked, when we tried to circle back, we could not find the shop again.

Prices were not bad according to the expert shoppers in the family. Also many designs (plus the mis-spellings) would not be available in Australia. The fun part for me was one could haggle.

Also there were plenty of snack shops somewhere inside the maze.

Getting there is easy. Get off at Hou Shan Pi  MRT station (後山埤). Hou Shan Pi station is on the Blue Line (Bannan), only 2 stops away from the Taipei City Hall station (市政府). Then it is around 10 mins walk.

It opens till 10pm. Somewhat quiet during day time when we usual visit.

Another shopping place worth visit is Gloria Outlets in Taoyuan. Plenty of big brands outlets. Similar to other outlet malls. BUT it is quite a hike on the train. So make it a whole day out if one wants to visit Gloria Outlets.