Yilan Shopping

Yilan, also referred to as Ilan, is nestled between hills and the soaring mountains to the west, and open to the majestic Pacific Ocean in the east. Yilan’s scenic beauty is absolutely stunning. Often referred to as ‘another heaven’, the area’s geographical features and natural scenery are its major attraction along with its unique and rich culture and traditions. Additionally, its location in the central, and most favoured part of the Lanyang Plain make it the administrative, educational and cultural centre of the area, and a budding hub for business. It also benefits from decent tourism traffic along the Northeastern coast.

At just about an hour’s distance by road from the ultimate Taiwan shopping destination (Taipei), Yilan is not really visited for shopping per se but for those who need or wish to shop around it certainly doesn’t disappoint. One of the biggest attractions in town is the Luodong Night Market, voted the third best night market of Taiwan and at the top spot for friendliness.

The Luodong Night Market is a daily market in the centre of town near Zhongshan Park. It starts business around 17:00, with most shops/eating spots operating until 24:00. Lively, vibrant and crowded, the market offers phenomenal options with an exhaustive variety of clothing, fashion accessories, handicrafts and electronic products. It’s not just super trendy, but also highly affordable and combines the best in prices with the optimum in trends and variety.

Another popular place to spend the day shopping is the recently opened Luna Plaza shopping mall. Located on Minquan Road, it’s the biggest mall in Yilan and offers pretty much everything you might need. The mall has three floors dedicated to serve shoppers looking to shop at high profile brand stores, besides regular stores, and also has several specialty stores for kids, women and men.

The first floor majors in cosmetics and fragrance, watches, costumes and shoes and bags and retails Chanel, Estée Lauder, Elizabeth Arden, Lancome, Body Shop and Christian Dior. Jewelry stores are also on this floor, including ‘Ya cited’ and Hardy, besides some local jewelry brands. Benetton and Esprit have outlets, while there’s Mont Blanc and Swatch exclusive stores for those particular about their watches. There are about 19 stores for shoes, bags and sports related goods, including the world famous Lacoste brand. For the regular shopper, it has a couple of department stores too, like Family Mart convenience store while the first floor hosts the ubiquitous McDonald’s and Starbucks.

The second floor has several stores such as Women, Casual Male, Cowboy, Neutral Casual, Leisure and Perfume. Women can get their trendy fashion clothing from Red-Leaf, IRIS, D’Accord, KiKi, and Top-Do besides many others. Levi’s and Wrangler have their own stores, as do Pierre Cardin and Balilla, Triumph, Apple Swimwear and Daiso.
Kids particularly love the third floor for toys and gaming equipment. The famous ‘Toys R Us’ is a universal all-time favourite for the little ones, while the Elite Bookstore is much loved by teenagers and parents. This floor also has a quite a few outlets for furniture, furnishings, kitchenware, health equipment, and maternity requirements.

The fourth floor has close to 10 themed and fine-dining restaurants, besides street food counters, coffee kiosks and bakeries offering cakes and donuts. This floor also offers automatic laundry facilities.

For regular grocery shopping, Yilan has the huge You-Ai departmental store, besides other smaller stores like Surewell, Welcome and Carrefour. You can also frequent the traditional markets close to the train station for vegetables, meat, noodles if you’re familiar with the language; but tourists are best advised to shop at the stores or the mall.