Taiwan was a shopper’s paradise. This, together with a decent disposable income, made it the ideal place for me to spend six years of my life.

By the time I left at the start of 2006 I had a fine collection of clothing mixing some designer labels, funky street wear, and cheap socks. Shopping for clothes was definitely something I missed a lot when I returned back to South Africa.

Besides being a student again last year and therefore pretty poor, I just did not find the same wide range of inexpensive and trendy clothing. As a result I spent almost no money on clothes last year, in fact, I only bought one cool hooded sweater and three pairs of socks. If not for the hoody it would have been the most bland year for my closet since primary school.

So after not really shopping much for a year, and then traveling for another year and also not shopping much for clothing, I recently started going mad at all the brilliant clothing stalls at markets around Bangkok, especially at Chatuchak Weekend Market. Not since Taiwan have I seen such an enormous selection of cute, hip, sexy and cheap T-shirts, Bordeaux staples.

Here are a couple of examples. Cool, don’t you think?