Grocery shopping in Thailand

After our wonderful experience of studying with Homprang at the massage school , we learned how much better we felt if we ate something good for breakfast and ate more vegetables. As a result we decided to start eating breakfast at home instead of at the school canteen. So for breakfast we are eating granola, yogurt, and fresh fruit with snacks of vegetables. This leads us to our story...the adventure of grocery store shopping in Thailand. As with most stories this has a very valuable lesson and some comic relief. Our first experience of shopping went pretty well but recently we have had some different experiences.

Last week we went to the store for carrots and a few other things. Most fresh produce in supermarkets here come packaged up into reasonably amounts, however this day we found some carrots much like you would find at home (select your own) and placed them in the bag and headed to check out. We emptied our items on to the counter. When the lady came to the carrots she began searching for the bar code on the carrots. Finding none she placed them aside for them to be returned to the store. When I inquired about getting the carrots (that was the reason we came after all) she called someone over and they took them away! Lesson: if it doesn't have a bar code you are not getting it! Okay point taken- we'll get carrots next week.

So this week when we went to the store we were sure to only pick up items that had a bar code, but this left us with no less interesting of an experience. We go to check out and there are two young ladies working the cash register. They are wearing university uniforms so this may be the first time they have ever worked. (In Thailand the parents take care of everything until they are out of university and possibly even married- to the point of spoon feeding their kids well into elementary- literary. Their main focus is on school and very few work until they are completely done with school- very different than us) With that being said this is what happened...They started ringing up our items and when we got to the produce something happened- they were ringing the items in but it was not adding to the total. I noticed but they had no idea. Then we get to the bananas, they were in a package with a bar code but they wouldn't ring up. The girls were trying to fingure out what to do and asked a more experienced lady next to them- she must have told them they need to go find another package and try and ring that up because one of them left with the bananas in hand out into the abyss of food in search of more bananas. She clearly had never done this on her own before because it was some time before she returned with more bananas to ring. Then as they were trying to ring them up they closed out the transaction and we had to pay for them separate. While all of theis is going on we notice a sign right behind the girls with the price of the bananas. Moral: two are not always better than one and work experience is really important! Hope you all have enjoyed your trip to the store this week as I am sure it was an experience as well getting stocked up before the blizzard. Don't forget to check for bar codes!