This is my series on our 2018 Round the Island World Schooling Trip. For more post, you can check out the index page or subscribe to my Facebook page. You can also subscribe to my Instagram for pics.
Taiwan is a very modern city, and there’s really nothing you can’t buy here if you really want to. However, many Western items can be cost double or triple the cost at home. For example, cereals for $8!
I like to travel as light as possible, but with every long term stay I pack more and more comfort items. One major reason is, with only public transit available, it takes a lot of time and energy to track things down and bring them home, especially if you’re a bit of a granola mom. It’s faster to just bring it, consume it, and use the suitcase for books and other things I spend my Taiwanese Monopoly money on.
So here are the items that I’ve told friends to bring, and items you may want to consider bringing if you’re moving from one Taiwanese AirBnBs and B&B 民宿 to another.
I didn’t list items you typically bring such as bug spray, hats, or things to entertain your kids. Instead I listed items that I started bringing due to some travel experience.
1. Comfort Food
I used to bring Annie’s Organic Mac and Cheese, organic oatmeal, some Costco pasta (good for curry when you don’t want to buy rice), Trader Joe’s trail mixes and maybe a bit too much chocolate chip granola bars. Fleur brought more snacks and Costco sardines.
For WSA19, we only brought along oatmeal and granola bars, to save on luggage space.
My kids don’t love Mac and Cheese but for them it’s a good comfort food when we grow tired of Chinese food. For me it’s a quick meal when we’re traveling. We buy some Costco chicken and packs of frozen peas and carrots and cook it together for a bit more nutritious meal.
The granola bars and trail mixes were a new habit I gained in Japan. When you’re on the move and 7-11 isn’t as ubiquitous, it’s nice to have a snack ready for hungry children. In Taiwan, as much as I love 7-11 and wish we could stop there whenever we’re hungry or tired, I try not to have the kids buy so many snacks there as many are processed junk food.
Of course you don’t need to get these specifics. But if you have some strong breakfast and snack habits or want some Western comfort food, make sure to bring them or else you’ll pay a huge markup. For example, cereal, pasta, sphaghetti sauce, etc. Alternatively, if you’re really staying put at one place, you can always go to Taiwan Costco for your Western comfort food. As I vaguely remember, the markup isn’t as high there, though I didn’t look at cereal prices too closely since we don’t eat them.
Oatmeal is a prime example of something you can buy in Taiwan. But really do I want to spend 15 minutes at the store trying to figure out all the different oatmeal options or do I just bring a pack from home?
2. First Aid Items
Thermometer, Children’s advil/tylenol, first aid kit
It’s inevitable the kids get sick the first few times they’re in Taiwan. A thermometer is a must as we’re more used to the Fahrenheit readings and there’s no need to add to your stress needing to track down a pharmacy to buy a thermometer when the kid has been sick with high fever for 3 days.
Taiwan doesn’t have the same brand names you’re used to back home. Learned this the hard way during GYA13 when Thumper had fever for 3 days. When we’ve been prescribed medication and I look them up, it’s often stuff sold in Japan or Taiwan but not approved for US.
My kids don’t have allergies. So we just make sure to always bring children’s advil when we travel. In general if there is medication you’re used to back home, just bring them.
The kit idea is one of those “best thing since sliced bread” idea that I wish I’d known about. As a dis-organized person, it’s made our day trips so so much easier. You can buy little pouch from Daiso and in it pack some bandaid, Neosporin spray, Advil, and q-tips. It goes into our day pack and it’s super easy to access when the kids have a scrape.
3. Lightweight Travel Towels
Taiwanese towels tend to be hand towel size that aren’t too fluffy, unless you’re living somewhere that caters to foreigners, like AirBnBs. Keep in mind that some AirBnBs or 民宿 sometimes state up front they don’t provide towels. In any case, these kind of towels take a LONG time to dry in the humid Taiwanese weather unless you have a dryer.
For awhile I brought one fluffy towel as a luxury item and 2 quick drying travel towels I got from Amazon to share amongst 3 people. But I’ve since dropped the fluffy towel as AirBnB towels have all been serviceable.
The towels serve as great backup towels for swimming pools or beach towels. They’re lightweight and dry fast. The small towel serve as a hand drying towel in the kitchen. Many AirBnBs don’t have these hand drying towels.
4. Eco-Friendly Utensils and Straws
We all know how easy it is to not cook in Taiwan. All those take out food and bubble tea adds up to A LOT of plastic usage. Given that we travel 2 months out of the year that’s way more plastic than what we normally consume at home.
For WSA19, both Fleur and I invested in titanium products. Titanium because they’re super lightweight, which really make a difference when you’re lugging a lot of stuff in your daypack and you have a back problem. I havn’t made the complete switch yet but it really makes me feel less guilty about all the plastic we’re using while traveling.
After trying a few types of straws, my recommendation is to get sharp tip un-bendy titanium with cleaning brush. Bypass straws without sharp tip and bypass bendy straws, those are too hard to store.
For jumbo bubble tea straw, we have Keith Titanium Jumbo. The skinny straw we got was from TiTo, but their straw isn’t sharp. Keith sells Skinny Titanium Straw, but it’s bendy.
The hardest thing about using these items is remembering to bring them with us and not being lazy. You have to be super quick in telling vendors not to give you a straw or plastic utensils and you have to not mind needing to wash your utensils.
The bendy straws are great for kids but a real pain to lug around. They don’t fit into bags nicely. You can also look for short straws. But honestly we seldom used those as they tend to get lost.
I’ve been immensely pleased with the titanium sporks we bought. We bought 2 titanium sporks and 1 regular titanium utensils set (includes chopsticks!) and it’s perfect for 3 people. Chances are if you watch the kids eat first and eat their left overs, you also just need 2 sets. I avoided the colored titanium ones so that there is no fighting whatsoever.
For chopsticks I ended up bringing two sets of short chopsticks to share. They were the same weight as the long titanium chopsticks on Amazon. The only down side to my chopsticks was that it’s hard to cook with. You probably don’t need to be concerned while you’re in Taiwan but most non-Asian AirBnBs don’t provide chopsticks.
Fleur bought these lightweight mesh bags to put her straws and utensils in. I have the Planet Wise wet/dry bag because I thought I would put the dirty utensil in the wet bag. But I seldom did that because I was too lazy to keep washing the bag. Instead I just kept wrapping them in napkins to take home to wash. So if you’re going for lightweight, the Planet Wise bag isn’t the way to go.
Daiso also sells mesh bags and I used them to hold my toiletries and the backpack + mats. I like those because they’re big and soft fabric. I may switch to these for our next trip.
If you’re going to go off researching your own best titanium or stainless steel chopsticks and straws, make sure you see how long they are. Some of them are super duper long and others are super duper short.
So to summarize:
- Keith Titanium Sharp Tip Jumbo Straw
- Titanium Utensils set (fork, spoon, chopstick, knife)
- Titanium Sporks
- Titainum chopsticks or regular chopsticks
5. Reusable Grocery Bags
The first eco-friendly product that Taiwan made me adopt the habit of using is reusable bags. They’re cheap! Just $1.50 from Daiso.
These bags are so useful when we travel. In a jiffy, they can act as beach bags for wet swimsuits or laundry bags.
Back home, I used to never remember to bring my grocery bags. Until I learned to hook them onto my carabiner keychain during our WSA16 trip.
The only problem is of course now I look like a crazy lady with 2-3 little bags on my keychain. But I don’t care.
6. Lightweight Backpack, Beach Mat, and Reusable Snack Bags
Another new habit established during our WSA19 trip. These Sea to Summit Ultra-Sil Day Pack, along with those titanium sporks, were my happiest purchase. Though I brought along 2 other backpacks, I ended up using this backpack the most. The titanium utensils and backpack were pricey and I hesitated in ordering them. But they were definitely worth every penny.
What’s to like? It folds up into a teeny tiny itybity bag that I stick into our daypack. We always bring along 2 backpacks to share amongst 3 people. Because one kid almost always complains about carrying a backback. But when we need that third backpack as a grocery bag or extra backpack for carrying jackets noone wants to wear, it gets unpacked.
Even though the straps are not adjustable at all and you would think it’s not ergonomic, it’s so light that I actually prefer carrying this all day. The only downside is that it’s not really for young kids (since no adjustable straps). But you can bypass this problem by tying the straps into a knot to shorten them.
For our trip to Hawaii, we also bought a lightweight beach mat, which I loved but kept forgetting to bring with me. But I learned I can remember it more if I stick the mat and the backpack into a Daiso pouch.
I’m not sure how useful this will be in Taiwan. But if you ever wish you had a mat for whatever outing you have, this is a good one. It’s super duper lightweight, and it has little spikes you can stick into sand. We usually also just weigh it down with our backpacks.
We used these Planet Wise snack bags when we go out to play for a day. We cut up cucumbers and apples and put them in our snack bags. I didn’t know when I bought it that they have a thick plastic/silicon lining, which is good for wet food.
Fleur bought these Silicon Food Storage Containers from Amazon. I’m seriously contemplating bringing them for our next trip. We recently learned just how much PVC is in products you don’t think about, like plastic bags that so many of those night market vendors use to put your food in! Or how styrofoam is super duper bad when it gets heated up (which it does when you put hot food in it!) But like I said, I’m a lightweight and forgetful traveler and I’m just not sure how likely I am to put it in my daypack.
7. Handkerchief
Handkerchiefs come in handy when you’re traveling, provided you have a habit of using it. I tuck one into each child’s day pack. They use it to dry their hands, as a bandana, to wipe off sweat, etc. It came in handy one day when Gnome fell and was bleeding profusely and we had no kleenex on us whatsoever.
On super hot days in Malaysia and Singapore, we wet the towels and wrap them around the kids’ necks to cool them down. Just make sure you don’t keep it on all day otherwise you may get a rash like one of our kids did.
You can get a cheap handkerchief for $1.50 at Daiso.
8. Stamp Book
Taiwan has a strong stamping culture, much like Japan. My children go wild when they see a stamping station. We’ve found them at just about every major tourist attractions and some train stations. Every MRT station in Taipei has its own unique stamp as well that your kid can collect.
You can buy stamp books at regular stationary stores, Daiso, or even Carrefour.
The MRT now sells a stamp book for you to collect stamps at every MRT station. This is partly why it takes us so long to get from one location to the next! You can find the pop up shops in certain high tourist MRT stations.
9. Deck of Cards
The longer we travel the more we cut down on the items we bring to keep the children entertained. The kids are easily entertained by TV shows they have never seen in the states and often end up not using toys I bring, even on the plane.
For WSA19 and WSA18, we went down to just all the drawing utensils and a deck of cards or two. We didn’t even bother with Uno like I did in WSA16, though that is also a good option.
The deck of cards have been a good addition this time around for our elementary kids. The 4 kids play War and Spit for a long time and somehow it’s more fun than just 2 kids playing at home.
In a jiffy I can teach them any variety of card games and alter them so they can practice math facts. For example, using two cards for War. Whoever had the highest sum in each round wins.
10. Name Stickers
It’s well known that I lose things. My friends make fun of my ability to lose things like umbrellas in 5 minutes. So we put name stickers on all our personal belongings that can get lost. I’ve yet to figure out what to put on the name stickers to ensure that someone calls me when they find the item though. Typically it’s got my name and my phone number, which is not useful if it’s a US number in another country.
In any case, I bring my stickers with me in my purse and put it on any item I purchase where I need name stickers (new umbrella, water bottle, etc, because I keep losing them!).
Okay okay, I know. These aren’t technically 10 items. 10 types of items? Some of these are kind of obvious items. But I hope others are helpful to you in your travels around Taiwan.
Don’t forget to also download all the useful apps you need while traveling in Taiwan before you go!
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