Map

Agora Garden Hotel

Hotel entrance

Hotel entrance

Rear garden

CSS

CSS office is 10 -15 minutes walk from the hotel. Look out for the Pizza Hut sign at street level ([1] on the map).

CSS office building and street

CSS nursery is roughly one hour away by taxi (depending on the traffic, it could be forty minutes or one and a half hour).

View from CSS nursery

Baby Supplies (1)

On the corner of SongXin Rd and SongLong Rd ([2] on the map) on the first floor –on the ground floor there is a Matsusei supermarket- there is a great baby pharmacy that stocks everything from baby formula to child-proofing material. From the Agora Garden, it takes five minutes by taxi and fifteen minutes on foot to get to the pharmacy. I went there often during our three-week stay and three out of four times I found helpful English speaking staff who taught me how to use a Japanese-made digital thermometer, found the right teats for the bottles I had brought from home (Avent with 1 drop holes as opposed to the 3 drops I needed for my child) and helped me with the door stoppers and padded corners I needed to childproof our hotel room. They also helped me find pacifiers (dummies) that are not exactly the same as the ones that CSS uses but are similar enough for our son to accept (CSS uses dummies that do not have a “cherry” or bubble at the end; theirs have a straight shape that is not common in Australia and that I found difficult to find in Taipei too; when I did find a few brands that seemed acceptable I spent A$90 stocking up for the months ahead and I am glad I did).

Pharmacy Street

Pharmacy entrance

Business card with address in Chinese and phone number

Baby Supplies (2)

On a tiny lane behind the BenQ sign at the end of Songren Rd ([3] on the map) there is another pharmacy. Very small and with no English speaking staff when I visited but well-stocked with baby stuff and useful to pick up the odd jar of baby food while waiting for our Vietnamese pho and rice paper rolls to be ready for collection (pls. see below my comments on the traffic on that narrow lane).

Baby Supplies (3)

On Zhongxiao Rd, there is a French Geant supermarket (marked yellow on the map) that sells everything from fresh food to grand pianos (literally!). The supermarket covers several floors but it is completely underground and has a rather modest entrance on the side of the Tango Hotel.

Baby Supplies (4)

On the 5^th and 6^th floor of building A4 in the Mitsukoshi Dept store (marked blue on the map) one can find baby clothes and toys. The department store is very posh. Here you can find a big selection of ritzy western brands at expensive prices. In a corner of the 6^th floor there is a small and colourful padded playground. It cost approximately A$10 for one parent and one child to enter (you will need to take your shoes off and wash your hands with an alcohol solution on entry). The crowd, when we went there was rich little kids in designer clothes accompanied by their nannies. The games on offer are appropriate for a toddler (slide, balloons, large foam blocks, rocking teddybears, “waterbed”, padded merry-go-round). If you are picking up a toddler or you are travelling with one and you are at a loss to entertain him/her on a rainy day (or –as I did- you walked out of the hotel with your child strapped onto you and you forgot to bring his shoes), it might be worth a visit.