Shopping Day

Apparently, I arrived in Taiwan during one of the many "shopping seasons." A LOT of the major department stores are having their anniversary sales (which is a little strange since why would these stores choose to open at the same time of the year?).

In any case, it was insane! The amount of people in the store on a weekday morning. I went in expecting no one but instead I was bombarded by people (mostly women) left and right. There were people at every cosmetic counter (unheard of back home!)

If you shop $5000 NT (the equivalent of $165 NT, approximately), you get a $500 NT voucher (so basically it's a 10% off scenerio). But, in addition, there are all kinds of prizes (e.g. Snoopy dish set) if you hit a certain amount. There's even a prize for going over your credit limit (or, "bust your card"!) The 10% off is not really a very good deal, but the merchandise are usually already on 40%-60% off sale so it's actually pretty good savings in the end.

There was one floor dedicated to gift exchange/voucher redemption. If I had thought downstairs was insanity, this floor was complete chaos (okay I exaggerate, people were actually nicely lined up. It's just there were SO MANY people...)

In the end, I was able to snag some nice footwear (nothing too frilly of course, which was actually kind of difficult to find), but was too tired to look at any business casual clothing. I'll have to go back, but just have to muster up the courage to venture back in that crowd.