Shopping

The first day here we ventured out to fit out our little house with a few things – toaster, iron, jug, towels, sheets, mats, broom, dustpan, etc. Our first stop was a shop about 2 metres wide where we thought we could only get the broom and dustpan (looked like a type of hardware shop from the stuff outside the door) but turns out when you go inside it looked more like a type of newsagent but also sold irons, kettles, batteries and pretty much everything we needed except sheets and towels. They even sold perfume!

We kept walking along footpaths and came to another shop about 1 ½ metres wide where we purchased sheet/pillowcases (and I do mean sheet because sheets don’t come in pairs here because presumably nobody uses a top sheet), and towels (which still don’t absorb the moisture properly, even after several washes). Everyone was really friendly and helpful and even if they couldn’t speak great English we were able to stumble along.

The shops vary in size and grandeur. There are some really lovely silk (sari) shops which sell saris and salwars and anything you need to go with them – jewellery, handbags, shoes etc – some 3 stories high. There are also a couple of up-market clothes/variety shops.

On our 30 minute walk every morning to have coffee, we pass a mixture of motor bike/car “showrooms”, phone shops, hospitals, jewellery shops, music shops, electronics shops, shoe shops (by the score), dress shops (also by the score), restaurants, grocery shops, (every possible space, no matter how small, is filled with shops of some description), little food bars and what we have affectionately called “Boost Juice” stalls 

– mostly orange juice with cane sugar – a little man with his portable trolley sets up beside the road, under a tree, and squeezes (by hand) dozens of oranges and adds liquid sugar cane juice – Gary and I shared one the other day and it was fine (a little sweet for my taste). Just a little unnerving when you get served your juice in one of the 3 glasses he has for his customers, especially when you see that he has just rinsed one in a bucket of not such clean looking water next to his trolley.

A most interesting thing here are the uniformed doormen at every shop (even the grocery shop) and if there is an entry and exit door there is a doorman on each, even if the doors are side by side. You aren’t allowed to take parcels from other shops into stores either. They have another man at the door of nearly all shops, who takes your parcel and gives you a number which you have to hand back to him after you have finished in the shop, before he will give you back your parcel – once again, even in the grocery stores.

In the larger storied shops you choose your purchase on each floor and take it to a counter on that floor where they give you a docket with the amount you need to pay. You then proceed down to the bottom floor (without your goods) to pay for everything you have bought on each floor. Then you go outside the shop with your dockets and wait in a lineup for the men out there to hand you all your purchases – a very long, drawn out process where they actually didn’t give us all our purchases the first day and we had to go back to collect them.

It seems that in all shops there are huge amounts of employees (certainly ten or more times as many as in Oz) so getting served is not usually a problem (if they understand English).

Most of the shops are tiny and dingy and the footpaths outside all shops would be litigation waiting to happen in Oz.

(We mostly walk on the road and take our chances with the traffic!). Lights aren’t turned on in the stores either unless they have customers. I think because we are white they also make sure they turn on the air-conditioning and the fans to make us comfortable – too bad about the poor workers before and after we leave!!

The fruit shop! Now here is an interesting experience. All we want is some salad but no, it’s not quite that easy. I mean what the heck is a murungakai, a brinjal, a chow chow, a nukal, a goss, a bitter gourd, a bottle gourd or a perkangai and what do I do with them? “Where are the lettuce?” is what we want to know! Oh yes, that might be the little wizened, brown thing there in the corner that nobody else buys because they don’t know what to do with it. We mostly survive on potatoes, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes (by the ton), grapes, oranges and apples. We are really missing our good old Aussie salads though. Once again everyone is very helpful.

Fresh meat hanging in 100 degrees.  That's our butcher!