Anytime is a good shopping time agree? 
I do online shop occasionally. And I’m the sort who would only buy from reliable sites. Other than Lazada, eBay, Amazon, ASOS and Groupon I had been wary of trying other sites.
Taobao is a China based online site, and is probably one of the biggest consumer-to-consumer shopping site in the world. Previously only popular with the Chinese educated crowd, things looks set to change with the South East Asia site - www.sea.taobao.com.
Well, hurray for us! Here’s another site to explore! And to shop!
As usual, to start you would need a Taobao account. Registration is easy enough. For language, just diligently select English each time the page loads.
For guidance, do refer to this link –> Create an account (registration guide: http://goo.gl/VhAPCH)
For someone who appreciates orderliness and clean designs, the SEA Taobao site can be a bit confusing. My advice?
Just focus on the sheer amazing amount of choices to shop!
The site reportedly have over 800 million product listings and support payments from from banks like RHB, Maybank and CIMB, and well, major credit cards.
Finally, the marketplace also supports consolidated shipping, which means a buyer’s goods gets transported as a package instead of individually. Obviously, this method cuts down on shipping costs which translates to savings for the customers (us!).
I’m a very fashion oriented person and frankly, I seldom buy electronics online. Thus, it was the women’s section for me!
Browse for the items you like and add to cart.
For myself I’m in dire need of new sports shoes so I browsed for Nike. I decided to try a pair of Skechers as well since they had launched their sports line.
Lastly was a chic, elegant dark coat which would be useful for my travels next year. 
A few of my blogger friends had different experiences while making their purchases on sea.taobao.com but I was lucky that I didn’t have much of that complaint. Maybe it’s cos I only bought 3 items? I know one friend who bought 48 items!
What you need to do here is to keep an eagle eye on your cart and make sure all items are successfully added. Refresh the page if the situations calls for it.
Once you’re done, check on all your items before confirming your purchases.
When you’re ready, select the International forwarder. There’s a few to select from but I selected 4PX based on feedback from a few friends who had shopped here.
How it works for Taobao here is that once you have paid for your purchases (this is direct to the sellers), you would have to wait for the seller to send the items to the parcel forwarding service you have selected (in my case it is 4PX).
Thus for your order, do allow some time for the seller to send the items to the Parcel Forwarder.
*You may then choose to consolidate or have your items sent to you individually & pay your shopping fees (using your Alipay Purchase card or Credit cards) to the Parcel Forwarder to have your parcel shipped to your address.
You can check on the Forwarding Agent & Fees from here –> http://bit.ly/1dcCK6J
Done with the freight forwarders, it’s payment next. For us Malaysians, credit card or one of the local banks are your best bet.
I however, had some credit in my AliPay (China’s Paypal) account so I used that.
Next you’ll see the below that states that you’ve paid.
To monitor your purchases, you can log-in to your account and check on its statuses.
After which is this message that you’ll want to see.
I can’t wait for my shoes! As you know I’m taking up personal training lessons in Celebrity Fitness and I had doubled my workout sessions lately so extra pairs of shoes would come in handy. Besides, I need to rotate my running shoes so my feet won’t hurt so much.
Here’s away to earn some Taobao credits so you can shop for Christmas, new year, etc. Heck who needs an excuse to shop anyways?
Here’s how it’s going to work. I do always run giveaways on my blog, Instagram, FB page and FB. So if you’re not following me on those social platforms you should!
Taobao & Rebecca Saw ‘Gifts’ Back - Its the festive season and I would like to reward YOU – my friends and readers by “buying” you your Xmas/New Year/birthday or well, anything you can find on Taobao!
So here’s what you need to do, leave a comment here on this post on WHAT you would buy from the SEA Taobao site and for WHO.
That’s it. THREE winners will EACH stand a chance to win 500RMB credit (RM270)! Winners’ name will be announced at Midnight Jan 5, 2014 (GMT+8).
Note: Winners must provide their Taobao ID & mobile number for them to receive their top up.