How to go: TW times is located quite far from town and is generally inaccessible via public transport. Driving or hiring a driver for a day trip is strongly advised. You can locate it on a map here. There is also the option of taking the Nantou bus. Some information on the services that go to the village can be found here. Fengchia Night market on the other hand, is located next to Feng Chia University, in Xitun district and can be easily reached via many buses, such as service numbers 25, 29, 35 & 37. Taxi is also an inexpensive option if you travel within Taichung city. Map of the night market location here.
Entrance fee for Taiwan times village is 150NTD on weekdays and 250NTD on weeks, but only on weekends you get a 100NTD voucher which you can use on any spending or purchase within the 'village'. We visited Taiwan times village on a weekday, during it's early opening hours, right before lunch. The whole space was largely empty, save for a few local tourists.
The decor of the place was made to recreate a 60s-70s feel, with many old posters, decorations, street stylings. Interesting thing is they tried to make it into an entire village on it's own, with many stores selling things, restaurants, open areas to mimick old open air cinemas, and even a pseudo train station:
Some booths had games/toys from the 60s for sale, though at ridiculously high prices. Q saw a lotto shop and decided to try her luck at it.
There's also a mini museum within the village, but photography wasn't allowed. Only in the souvenir store section we were allowed to take photos. Some of the things that were on sale:
What amused me most was that they sold candy packaged in those easily recognizable famous brands such as the nim jong pi pagao, but with a slight twist to the usual packaging- they changed some of the words/syllables so they sound the same but have an entirely different meaning.
shocking pipagao. haha.
Overall however we finished exploring the entire place in less than 2 hours and were somewhat disappointed. It felt like an overpackaged madeup village, with the sole purpose of selling retro things to consumers at absurd prices (some of the same things can be found at tamsui or pingxi at a fraction of the price). Very contrived feeling... Thus if you have limited time I'd say give this a miss, it's not a must go.
After the village we also made a short stop at the following places: Banana New paradise and 宫原眼科.
The former is a retro-themed restaurant whilst the latter is a high-class store selling pastries and sweets.
We were quite full from lunch, so we just went in to take a look but didn't buy or order anything. Some photos here:
upmarket sweet/pastry store
reminds me a little of harrods
retro overload..
In the evening we went to the famous Fengchia Night market, which has quite a following among Singaporeans (for reasons that I fail to comprehend?). We had a little misadventure and got off at the wrong bus stop, only to take a taxi and realise it was less than 10 minutes walk away. By the time we reached we were already famished! Some of the more interesting things we ate:
Squid stuffed with rice. yums
Famous (according to Q) bear paw fish burger
incredibly cute but very average taste
chocolate coated banana- tasted like ice cream
In terms of eats the market was really impressive given it's sheer size and variety offered, but in terms of shopping I was incredibly disappointed at how normal things were, in terms of the pricing. It might have been that I was having unrealistic expectations- I was expecting a lot of cheap stalls selling a wide variety of clothes, shoes and bags, but what we saw were a lot of stores selling clothes similar to those you see in Bangkok, at prices similar to that in Singapore. We gave up after window shopping a while and decided to focus on the eats.
Though it was a short 2D1N trip to Taichung, we had quite an enjoyable time, though the lack of shopping did disappoint us a little.
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