The Yellow Brick Road

Today I went exploring a little bit. There is an alley off of Min-Tsu road called "the yellow brick road", and that is pretty much where all the clothing stores are in Changhua. There are no cars allowed on the road, only scooters and bikes. It is a really long street, with a bunch of alleys coming off of it. Here is a picture of the road:

I decided that I deserved to do a little shopping for having such a successful week here so far. All the stores seemed more or less the same really. They all sold the same types of clothes, and all the shoe stores were really similar as well. The stores are also very, very tiny. Almost none of the stores have fitting rooms. You are not allowed to try on the clothes before you buy them. And the stores that do have fitting rooms won't let you try on certain things still, like anything that is white. Very few clothing items in the stores have sizes, and most of the clothing is super tiny. It was an interesting experience, trying to shop without trying things on or knowing what size they are. One thing that I thought was really funny was the shirts that had English writing on them. Anything with words on it usually didn't make sense. The sentences were all wrong using the incorrect words, but it was really entertaining. I'll have to take pictures of that next time.

I met these really sweet girls at a shoe store who were so excited to use their English to talk to me, but other than that, I didn't run into anyone who spoke English. The people that worked at the store would say something to me in Chinese, and I would have no idea what they were saying. Overall it was a pretty pleasant experience, and I got some cool stuff:

I got four shirts (three for me and a batman shirt to send home to Elle), a pair of comfy pants, a pair of shoes, and a phone case for about NT$1,900, which is about $63 US. And everything fit! Definitely a successful shopping trip. :)