Funnily, after this one indoor play area, I never went to another except once at the top of a department store.
Itinerary: Hsin Yi Kids Park, curry
Today was a rainy day so I decided to look for an indoor play area. I found this great website that gives you the lowdown on places to go in Taiwan, mostly Taipei. They’re on Facebook too.
There were a lot of cool sounding places, like a Toy Museum, and the Science and Technology museum. But since it was raining pretty hard, I decided to go by taxi to somewhere close, Hsin Yi Kids Park. It’s right in the basement of the Hsin Yi publishing company bookstore. What sold me was the sheer amount of disinfecting they do.
The “park” itself is basically 5 main areas, a huge reading room that noone really went to, an empty space that parks toy cars and is where you have music time, two areas devoted to motor skills like puzzles or thematic activities, and a huge gross motor skill area which features a ball pool. Ball pools seem to be the thing for most indoor play areas here. And there are so many too. I can’t quite imagine Studio Grow having such an area.
We had our temperature taken and our hands sprayed with alcohol before we went in. The kids went straight for the plastic ball pool. We paid $250/person to stay there for all 3 “sessions”. Each session is 2 hours long with half hour disinfecting time, and limited to 50 families. However, we only stayed from 10 to 2 or so. I got really bored just watching the kids play. 
They mostly played with the pool, and some of the fine motor toys. It was pretty full in the morning with a lot of young children but less so in the afternoon. What was neat was that the theme this time was the “Barefoot King“, which is a newly published. So they had activities from the book, like walking on stilts.
During the time the park was closed, we went looking for food down the street. Thumper wanted curry instead of potstickers, so we tried this place called Ebisu. I was hesitant because it featured items such as cheese and chicken curry and yogurt and mushroom curry, which we ordered. It came with cut up slices of cheese right on top. Strange I say. But at the end of the day, tastes just like curry and the kids wolfed it down.
Anyways, after I dragged the kids away at 2 something, we came home and I forced everyone to take a nap. It took some doing and they all slept till 6pm. We then had another delicious dinner by Aunty. (I must take a picture one day). My third aunt came and brought some toys. (yay!) and Thumper is now learning how to read the chinese characters off of Chinese Chess. Hopefully my uncle will be able to teach her how to play because it’s been awhile for me.
