Supermarket!

So we decided to go find a supermarket today. The closest one that was within walking distance was a supermarket located in a mall, called Big C. This was located in a pretty busy and extremely bustling area with little stands selling everything from pickled goods, candy by the weight, household products to helmets. It reminded me of wholesale markets in China. This area is collectively called Vinh Trung Plaza, though I think officially it's probably just the large building that is the mall. 

The mall has a Lotteria and KFC, as well as some chain stores like Levi's and some other brands I did not recognize. There was also a tourist stand and other small food retailers.

The whole area was extremely bustling today! I guess it is because of the upcoming Tet where it seems customary to shop your hearts out. I presume it is for the preparation of guests, as candy and other snacks seem to be the most popular item. Also if it is anything similar to China, having new clothes for the New Year is also extremely important. One thing about the stands next to the plaza and in the wholesale market, bargaining is hard. I saw the "prices are reasonable, no bargaining" sign, but as all good Chinese folks, I promptly accepted it and tried bargaining anyways. Based on the quality of things there, nothing was worth the asking price! I only got a hair tie after 1 hour of circling the hundreds of stands. 

Let's talk about Big C. It totally reminds me of any supermarket in China, specifically Carrefour. It is also split in two levels with top selling household goods and lower selling food. The two levels are connected by the sloping escalator for shopping carts. The selection is extremely similar, though replace the foods to Vietnamese tastes. For example, I found bottles of nguoc mam sauce, which I really, really wanted. The only problem is that this stuff expires in 1 year, and I am not Vietnamese enough to eat it every other day. Also, the ice cream selection had chocolate, strawberry, coconut and my favorite: DURIAN!

Alright, by the virtue that durian seems to be a basic ice cream flavor, you know you are in a SE Asian country. 

The prices are fairly reasonable, though it definitely gained me more perspective, which is that Bahn Mi's are just ridiculously cheap! The tub of ice cream above is about 60,000+ VND. This comes out to be about $3, which in China would have cost $5. Detergent was fairly expensive at $5-$8. Meat was also expensive, running around $10 per kilo. The fruits were variable. The dragon fruit that I keep getting charged 40,000/kilo was slightly cheaper at 36,000. But the star apple fruit (I will talk about this tomorrow!) that I pay 40,000 VND/kilo for is sold at 43,000 VND. So yeah, variable prices. Oh, I have been paying 10,000/500 ml bottle for water. Turns out the 1.5 L bottle costs 7800. Now I feel pissed... 

I also found listerine (they had green tea flavor!) here, which has been the only place that I have found so far to have it at 250 ml bottles, though it was still expensive. Also, Kotex here is waay cheaper, like 70% cheaper... yep, I stocked up. 

And just my two cents on these jello cup thingies. 

I love jello cups. In fact, I even like the bigger cups that come in durian, passion fruit and coconut flavors. And these looked just like the ones I have had in China, which was pretty good, so I bought some to try. They taste NOTHING like the Chinese ones. They taste like artificial flavoring mixed with gelatin. Yep, it's that bad. Interesting flavor choices like plum, banana, watermelon and taro, but they all just taste like chemicals made to taste like each flavor... T.T My durian ice cream was much tastier! 

So I think I mentioned this supermarket is just like a Chinese one, which meant that everything that is sold by weight needs to be weighed at the weight check, obtain a sticker for check out. With the huge hoard of people, I somehow remembered to do such for the jello cups but forgot for the hoard of fruit that I bought. After waiting in line for 15 minutes and being pushed and shoved, the check out lady is like WTF... So I ended up taking my stuff back and rechecking out through the horrendous line. 

So speaking of people mountain people sea, I could not figure out if the sheer number of people is due to the upcoming Tet holiday, if there is a huge sale, or if this is just the norm on Thursday evening. Business certainly seems good, and I somehow got a 500 VND bill! Did not know these things existed... 

I am debating whether to keep for souvenir's sake and challenge myself by trying to spend it somehow...