15 Best Places to Shop in Tahiti, French Polynesia

This is possibly the biggest shopping mall outside the capital. It's located a few hundred yards south of the Sofitel Resort, near the Marina Taina, which also has many restaurants. You can take the west coast L'Truck bus from Pape'ete to this center, which has a huge supermarket, boutiques, a post office, and an artisans craft shop.

You can pick up ingredients for dinner, wine and beer, baguettes, and most other essentials at this large supermarket a block behind the Paofai Protestant Temple on Rue du General De Gaulle.

This shopping mall, just a block or two from Centre Vaima, has boutiques, duty free shops, and restaurants.

There's a large selection of local art (including the acclaimed Bora Bora artist Alain Despert), as well as international and aboriginal art. Apart from the Pape'ete store, there is also an outlet at the Radisson Plaza Resort at Arue, east of the city center.

Situated opposite the Place To'ata (where the huge dance shows take place), this large gallery has several rooms that display the works of French Polynesia's best artists including paintings, carvings, ceramics, and sculptures.

Displays feature the work of craftsmen and -women from across French Polynesia and the Pacific. You'll find stone carved tikis, tapa (bark cloth), wood carvings, and paintings in both traditional and contemporary designs.

As well as being a popular brand of beer, Hinano is a clothing label selling trendy board shorts and surf gear. This store near the Notre Dame Cathedral also has baseball caps, girls' and women's wear, swimming costumes, and accessories.

This shop has postcards and stamps, bottled water, candy, and phone cards. There are books and maps, but rarely anything in English.

The four tattoo artists at this studio, which has been operating since 1980, specialize in black and gray tattoos as well as Marquesan and Maori styles.

Small gifts such as monoi oil, vanilla, shell necklaces, hats, and baskets are downstairs, while the bigger craft items, as well as pearls and jewelry, are upstairs.

This lovely museum also has a retail section where you can purchase single pearls and jewelry (necklaces range from 130,000 to 500,000 CFP) as well as Wan's line of skin-care products that contain nacre, or mother-of-pearl shell. Nacre contains certain proteins that are said to have anti-aging benefits. Wan is the largest pearl producer in the country. There's also a store at InterContinental Tahiti Resort.

You'll find these tattoo artists at the Pape'ete market place most days of the week—call first to check.

This huge four-story market claims to have the largest selection of black pearls in French Polynesia with more 150,000 loose pearls on show in Pape'ete and around 70,000 in their Bora Bora store. There's also a range of jewelry and a short movie about pearl production to check out. The company also has a small boutique—the Tahiti Pearl Shop—with a limited range of Italian designed pearl jewelry, located at 349 Blvd. Pomare.

Tahia Collins is another big name in the pearl business. The former beauty queen's boutique is across the road from the cruise dock. Free transfers are provided from hotels.

The Te Tare label is one of the hippest in the islands; buy yourself or the man in your life a Te Tare Tahitian shirt, or a great surf T-shirt or pareo.