7-Eleven Taiwan  (watch video)

If you’ve seen my last video on 7-Eleven in Thailand, you’d know Asian 7-Elevens are more exciting than in the U.S. Here’s some reasons why 7-Eleven Taiwan is awesome! Today we’re going to take a peek inside the Taiwanese 7 Elevens.

Okay one thing about the Taiwanese 7-Elevens is that they give you these receipts.  If you’re local, you want to keep these receipts because these are kind of like lucky number or lottery receipts. You would go online and plug it in and find out if you won anything. Apparently this lottery is country wide and are given in other stores too. If you have a Taiwanese friend, give them your stack before you leave and wish them luck- I’m sure they’ll be happy with it.

If you buy something online or buy something from another convenience store, you can have them deliver it to a 7 Eleven and then you can pick it up here in 7-Eleven. If their client buys something from their store and you live all the way across town, they’ll just send it to the closest 7-Eleven.

You can do business here with your bank. If you have a card it will check on what your balance is for your mobile phone, utilities or bank. If you have a membership card you can swipe it.  You can pay your bills, check on how many points you have. You can also buy tickets and pay for parking tickets. The parking meter guys that go around put little tickets on illegally parked cars -i.e. you get charged for every half hour 15 minutes, like 10 NT dollars or 15 NT dollars. So when you leave you’ll still have the ticket on your car, but you can pay it at any 7-Eleven store. If you don’t pay it, then if if its past 60 days or something like that you get a fine, that’s a lot higher than if you didn’t pay it.

They have these oden stands where you can pick which soup items you’d like- fried tofu, turnip, radish, fish cake, boiled eggs.

.”My friend, she’ll buy one of these $12 NT dollars. Then she’ll fill this whole thing with broth and take it home and use it as a soup and put noodles in it. Because the way it’s cooked, it’s got that flavors of all the fish balls and all those things in there, so makes a really good soup base… and that’s a 12 NT dollar dinner.”

5.  Taiwanese consider breads as pasteries

While rice is a staple starch, it’s still a little weird to be that people here consider bread as kind of like a breakfast pastry or just like a dessert.

6. They photo ID their rice balls to show you what the main ingredient is

I love that the photo ID their rice balls makes it so much easier to see what’s inside, such as tuna, shredded meat and salmon… In other convenience stores, you just have a written word and so there’s guesswork involved in what you’re getting in the rice ball.

7.  They popular western brand snacks with flavors you wouldn’t find in your country

When I visit grocery stores around the world, a favorite past time is looking at the brands that we have back in the United States, because they will have localized flavors that we don’t have. …Like a burger-flavored Pringles?  Or is that cheese omelet flavored Pringles.  Pineapple M&Ms anyone? (You’d think we’d have this in Hawaii, but we don’t. At least not yet)

8.  Beauty and Energy drinks

Okay, energy drinks and multi mineral drinks like Vitamin C are standard to the United States too. But we don’t have beauty and collagen drinks which read: “Supports your beauty from the inside of your body.”  Asia, I’m not sure why but they’re really into Collagen drinks. Thailand also. I don’t remember if Korea was like that too. But here’s vitamin collagen.

9. Taiwanese mystery foods

There’s definitely things that freak me out and this would be one of them- soft boiled eggs but like the inside is really, really orange, like food coloring. There is also an egg they call Century Egg, an egg that supposedly has been preserved for a century and sadly, it tastes like it too. The egg whites are a gelatinous black and the yolk is not quite yellow. Opened up, you might not even recognize it as an egg. It is a Taiwanese/Chinese delicacy.

10. A decent hard alcohol section

I wonder what the Taiwanese age limit is for buying alcohol.

11. Apparel

In winter when it gets cold, 7-Elevens and Family Marts in Taiwan and Korea, maybe Japan too. They sell these shirts that keeps the heat in. So you can actually buy shirts here so travelers if you forget your shirts and it’s cold, 7-Elevens might thane them. The only problem is that you might want to figure out your size before you buy them. In Asia, you might find sizes run a little smaller. That’s a good things to know.