Food items, craft items and stringed instruments (& laptops)

(Yes, I’ve done a quick search…)

I’d like to know where in Taipei (I’ll be in the central area, studying at ShiDa for a year from late August this year) I can get hold of the following:

A [color=#BF00FF]viola[/color] - a cheap-ish model, a 2nd-hand one or a rental instrument would be fine. I can’t bring mine with me so I’ll also want to sell it back at the end of the year. (A viola is a stringed instrument that looks like a large violin, btw :wink: )

[color=#BF00FF]Tinned/canned tomatoes[/color]. When I was living over there back in 1997/8 they were like gold dust, very hard to find and pricey. Has availability improved at all?

Decent [color=#BF00FF]wholemeal bread[/color] that isn’t sweet! I can make my own, but when most places don’t have ovens…

[color=#BF00FF]Wholemeal pasta[/color]

[color=#BF00FF]Peppermint tea[/color] and the Chinese for it. Is it ‘bohe cha’?

[color=#BF00FF]Embroidery supplies[/color]. I know where the fabric markets are as I visited those last spring when we came over, but threads and so on were more elusive. I’m going to badly miss my workbox. :cry:

The only other thing is that my [color=#80BF00]laptop[/color] has just died and we’re considering waiting to get a new one until we get to TW. I know where to get them from, but what are the prices like at the mo in TW and what’s the chance of getting English Windows included? I can get a decent HP one here in the UK for under US$500 including Windows, that’s about NT$15700 at today’s exchange rate. I can manage with Chinese, but would rather not have to and I have all the other software I need already.

Thanks in advance guys! :bow:

The food items will be in the Food Forum, not WCIF, so if you’re looking for something like good bread, that explains why your search didn’t find it. The best deal on canned tomatoes is at Costco.

Wholemeal pasta – Jason’s (101, B1), I believe.

[quote]Peppermint tea and the Chinese for it. Is it ‘bohe cha’?[/quote] Yeah, that’s it. I think you can find it in various supermarkets, and Jason’s has a lot of teas. I’ll bet they have it.

Thanks. I hadn’t come across the Food Forum, so hadn’t looked there. I will do though, (although I have no objections to answers here as well!!! :laughing: ). I’ve never seen a Costco in TP, (I didn’t get around that much last time as we were seeing friends and also out of the city for a while), where are some branches? And what do the locals call it? My Chinese is quite passable, but you know what it’s like when you use the Western/Japanese name for something they only know in Mandarin. :slight_smile:

I was at Carrefour today and they have a pretty good selection of canned tomatoes, tomato sauces, pastes, herbal teas, even wholemeal bread. The Carrefour bread section has improved a lot recently. My friend told me and I didn’t believe her, but it really is true.

Locals seem to call Costco “Costco”. You need to pay for a membership and the amounts of each item you have to buy are quite large. Branches are not in the city, so it’s not so easy to get to.

Yeah, Carrfour’s improved, and they have some good bread – see the relevant threads in the Food forum.

Or hao3shi2duo1.

The Neihu branch is just off the east end of the Minquan Bridge – I consider that quite accessible, personally. For other branches, see the Costco threads; there’s already info on locations.

Bao_Lisha, if you’ll be at ShiDa there are some places nearby you’ll want to check out, like Grandma Nitti’s (an eatery that also sells a few choice grocery items), and the P&P import store, which are both within walking distance. The P&P shop isn’t well known, but you can walk in and ask for things like canned tomatoes, whole wheat pasta and so on, and they might have them. Local supermarkets carry canned tomatoes too btw – just not as cheap as at Costco. For any other specific items, pls. run a search in the Food Forum.

Here’s the info for finding P&P – I’ve been posting it a lot in relevant threads because it’s a fairly recent discovery, with some very nice items, and it’s not well known yet (among the Forumosans I’ve talked to):

P&P Food & Spices 東遠
Taibei, Zhong1zheng4 District, Jin1men2 Jie1, 9-14, 1F
金門街9-14, 1F
This street runs southwest off of Roosevelt, just southwest of Shi-Da. Take Heping westward to Roosevelt; turn left, go about 200+ yards, and turn right; after a ways it’s on your left (small entrance, not well marked)
2365-0633

OK, so Costco probably isn’t an option! :unamused: :laughing: I’m not up for bulk buys etc. Carrefour I remember going in a branch of somewhere on the way from the MRT to Tianmu. I’ll have to see if I can find it again. It is 12 years since I lived in Taipei and didn’t get much chance to mooch around last spring when we were over there.

So, no ideas on a viola, embroidery stuff and current prices etc of laptops?? :eh:

A viola should not be a problem. There’s lots of music stores. You can check music schools and even high schools and ask where they get their instruments.

A good carrefour will have the tomatoes (not cheap still, about 10-20x the price in the Europe), I saw plenty whole meal pasta last time I was there and they have some decent wholemeal bread these days that isn’t sweet. I think I also saw some peppermint tea there, but again not cheap.
I suggest checking out my blog as well for a few bits and bobs, although I guess it’s time I update the list a bit, as it’s about a year or so since I last made any changes.

The canned tomatoes at Costco aren’t just in giant restaurant cans; they have boxes with about eight small cans in them which are a good value, and not such a ‘bulk’ item since you can open the cans one by one as you need them, and eight isn’t very many, being only enough for 2-3 batches of pasta or pizza sauce. :idunno: You can latch onto someone with a membership card to buy a box, without having to pay the membership. Many Forumosans go regularly, and I’m sure someone would be happy to help you out.

Imoho, the ones in Costco are no good, the tomates are hard, not soft like the kind of tinned tomatoes they sell in Europe.
I have to put the stuff from Costco in the blender before I can use it.
RT-mart has fairly affordable passata (or had at least), so if you just want the saucy kind, that works great, but I like it a bit chunkier.
What I’ve found is that it’s generally cheaper to get whole tomatoes here, about NT$35-50 a can and you can easily chop them up and they’re much softer than the stuff from Costco.
Just my two cents…

For embroidery supplies, maybe wait till you come over and see what area you are living, because there are small stores all over Taipei and it’s easier to give you an address once you know what area you are in. (There is a sewing group on http://www.parentpages.net, I remember it’s in the living in taiwan section, you can do a search on the forum to find it.)

They seem fine to me, but I always slow cook them with sauteed onions, garlic, olive oil and spices to make my sauces, and they soften up more during that process. I also use a stainless steel potato masher to break up the bigger pieces as they cook. Maybe the ones from Europe are picked riper or cooked longer before being canned?

As for embroidery, I’m told some embroidery supplies are available locally, e.g. the 9th floor of Sogo (although not cheap). I think Fortigurn’s wife might know where to get it too. But if items are light, Dragonbabe recommends you bring a lot from home, especially if you already have it or can get it cheaply.

[quote=“Bao_Lisha”](Yes, I’ve done a quick search…)

I’d like to know where in Taipei (I’ll be in the central area, studying at Shi-Da for a year from late August this year) I can get hold of the following:

A [color=#BF00FF]viola[/color] - a cheap-ish model, a 2nd-hand one or a rental instrument would be fine. I can’t bring mine with me so I’ll also want to sell it back at the end of the year. (A viola is a stringed instrument that looks like a large violin, btw :wink: )

[color=#BF00FF]Tinned/canned tomatoes[/color]. When I was living over there back in 1997/8 they were like gold dust, very hard to find and pricey. Has availability improved at all?

Decent [color=#BF00FF]wholemeal bread[/color] that isn’t sweet! I can make my own, but when most places don’t have ovens…

[color=#BF00FF]Wholemeal pasta[/color]

[color=#BF00FF]Peppermint tea[/color] and the Chinese for it. Is it ‘bohe cha’?

[color=#BF00FF]Embroidery supplies[/color]. I know where the fabric markets are as I visited those last spring when we came over, but threads and so on were more elusive. I’m going to badly miss my workbox. :cry:

The only other thing is that my [color=#80BF00]laptop[/color] has just died and we’re considering waiting to get a new one until we get to TW. I know where to get them from, but what are the prices like at the mo in TW and what’s the chance of getting English Windows included? I can get a decent HP one here in the UK for under US$500 including Windows, that’s about NT$15700 at today’s exchange rate. I can manage with Chinese, but would rather not have to and I have all the other software I need already.

Thanks in advance guys! :bow:[/quote]

  1. Lots of second hand instruments on the net -Yahoo Kimo - and especializwed stores -like the one on the Zhongshan-Zhongshiao Intersection, stone’s throw from Taipei Main Station. Anyway, new ones are dirt cheap.

  2. Organic canned, spiced canned, diced or whole canned, all kinds of canned tomatoes come and go from COSTCO -best deal pricewise, and as Dragonbones says, not bulky.

From Shida, it’s a 5 minute MRt ride and then bus maybe 10 minutes. Or direct bus like 30 minutes -does a lot of crisscrossing. Bus top is right in front. Easy as pie. Taxi should be 150 to 200 nts.

Otherwise, now in Taipei there are lots of “foreign” supermarkets -City Super, Jason’s, etc…- or good quality localized like Careefour and Takashimaya and Matsusei. Plus plenty of organic stores, to browse and compare prices to your heart’s content.

  1. Embroidery supplies: there are several especialized stores. I know of a biggie one in my neighborhood in Xindian, but also on Zhongshan Road and Chang An East Road intersection there is a small one that’s an institution. They have patterns and stuff. I’ve seen a few behind Taipei Main station, no biggie a worry, either.

  2. Whole meal bread/meal: seach for the organic stores, I gave the address of a place in Beiping east Road, for example. No biggie, not hard to find either, just find one that fits your taste.

  3. Mint tea is quite popular mixed with green tea. Herbal stores also carry it in bulk. High end supermarkets have the expenisve British and German brands, too.

  4. As to the laptop, depends on what you want. 500 nts seems a bit low, though, unless it is a netbook. Might be more expensive here, though, but we have teh latest models.

Certain brands -like Toshiba and Acer or Asus- give you a choice of Windows in English or Chinese. Getting XP instead of Vista might be more challenging.

Thanks guys. :slight_smile: I did see one stringed instrument shop whilst in TP last year, I just hope I can afford something… I’m not even in the music student quality bracket! Mine is a £200 including case outfit at home, so that’s about NT$10000, and I’m not looking for anything more pricey out there. Great if I can just get a cheapie that I can re-sell on leaving.

You must make quite big batches of pasta sauce Dragonbones!! Still, I tend to just do enough for what’s needed (ie one tin at a time), but that’s possibly 'cos I can get exactly what I need easily at home!! Like your recipe though! Sounds quite similar to mine, only I use ffresh basil instead of spices normally. We’ll have to give Costco some thought. Getting larger amounts of stuff around will be a bit of a problem, although Sir can carry more than a little wimp like me can! :laughing: Anyone know how much their sign up is? I remember how much stuff like tinned toms cost from last time I was living there. You could get them at home for the equiv of less than NT$10, but they were NT$70 or more! I take it it hasn’t improved any! :frowning: If anyone has the actual (or approx) addresses of Carrefours and Costcos in the central TP area, that would be helpful. I do appreciate the encouragement of ‘it’s only 5 mins on the MRT’, but I don’t know in which direction and so on from that.

Not normally such a skinflint, it’s just that we’ve got what looks like enough for one year and, if we make that last out and maybe even get some work/more funding, we can stay up to another year. That being the case, we’re now considering shipping out a decent sized box of stuff - in which I can shove a bit of sheet music and stitching stuff, esp as some of the styles I can do seem unknown in TW and I may be able to make some NT$s selling my ‘art’!! :unamused: :laughing: Icon, you couldn’t give me the street addy of the embroidery shop in your area sometime, could you? I don’t know Xindian at all and would appreciate some more specific clues. Last time I found a lot of beading craft shops in the Datong (west of Zhongshan N Rd) area and also fabric shops, but no embroidery stuff. I have such a lot of stash at home that chosing what to bring will take most of the 9 weeks there are left before we come! :ponder: :blush: Oh, and I don’t mind going to other places in the city for specialised things.

Did I say NT$500 for a laptop? I think I meant US$ anyway.

Naw, three small cans of tomatoes doesn’t make much. I may add a large jar or can of pasta or spaghetti sauce if I need more volume. After two of us eat one meal, there’s enough left over for about three or four small tupperware containers; I put one in the frig and the others in the freezer. Yeah, I use fresh basil too, when I have some on hand. Recently I’ve taken to pureeing basil in olive oil and freezing it in an ice cube tray. Then I can pull a cube out an add it to my sauce at the end of the cooking time.

Costco is something like NT$1200/year. If you buy beef four times in a year, the savings will pay for the membership. The local supers charge double (!) what Costco does for beef rib fingers, heel muscle, steak, and so on. The savings on a large box of microwave popcorn are comparable. You still have to compare prices, though. Not everything is cheaper.

Ooof! I’m a vegetarian!! :laughing:

Oof! Ok, they’ve got bagels and ciabatta. :laughing:

You can check notebook prices here shopping.pchome.com.tw/?mod=area … =AAAK&BB=A but it’s not that cheap here in all fairness.
Most come with an option to chose between English and Chinese the first time you set it up, but this is none reversible.

Thanks a lot for that laptop link - you’re right, none too cheap! So that helps me decide on getting one at home first. :slight_smile:

Bagels Sir likes, Dragonbones, and we both like Ciabatta. :lick: Are there many branches of Mr Marks bakers around Taipei? We saw one up in the ZhongShan area last time and a few down in Kaohsiung, and they seemed to do pretty fair bread products.

I decided to bring my own stitching supplies as far as poss, although them being labelled as ‘expensive’ won’t shock me much as I’m British and most things like that here are twice or more the price of the same thing in the States, Canada or Aus. :bluemad: I’ll probably continue to ship specialist stuff from the US and hope to get some decent silks locally.

Thanks for all your help peeps! :bravo: