(written by Dave)

Today we went to Tesco – for those not familiar with Tesco, it is a large UK grocery store change that has invaded Asia. We actually like Tesco because it is big and that means it will have a few of the things that we are used to seeing in grocery stores. Familiarity is nice when you are on the road in a foreign country.

Anyway, today I thought it would be fun to take some pictures of things in Tesco that make us go ‘huh?’. Even though we find lots of familiar things, there are also lots of things that are completely Asia…

Milk – See the two photos below. The first is the long-life milk section, all the way to the end of the row. The second photo is of the fresh milk section, including flavoured milk. People have refrigerators here but they must be pretty small and/or they don’t drink much cold milk.

Crab Donuts – Yes, that’s right, crab donuts. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the photo below. It’s not real crab, more like that fake crab made from fish by-products but all the same it’s weird. The fish flakes on the outside are a nice touch as well.

Green tea in bottles – There are literally rows and rows of green tea in bottles. In pretty much every flavour. We actually like these and pick them up quite often on our 7/11 stops while on the road.

Cereal is not big – See below, the entire cereal section from Tesco. This is not a small store, in fact it is bigger than most Aussie stores and on par with Fred Meyer. They just don’t eat cereal in Thailand. The next photo is a bonus of the oatmeal section, the entire oatmeal section.

Cheese is even less big – The photo below is the entire cheese section. In fact, the photo is of the cheese, butter and margarine section. Most of the cheese is imported and highly processed. While we’ve seen cows and there is lots of long life milk, they must not make much in the way of fresh cheese.

Rice is big – If cereal and cheese are small, rice is massive. The photo below is of the rice section. Yes, that is Nancy at the end of it waving. I didn’t know that there were so many different kinds of rice. It turns out that Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter – but they appear to like eating it as well.

Oyster sauce is big as well – Every sauce in the photo (best I can tell with my limited Thai) is some form of oyster sauce. They use this in cooking but I’ve never seen quite so many choices. I tried to buy oyster sauce in Carson City a few years ago and had to go to three or four stores before finding any.

Weird chips – They have some weird chip/crisp flavours here. But the 2nd and 3rd photos are even more weird. Cuttlefish and Octopus chips anyone?

Beetroot or Beet? – In Australia, we call it “beetroot”. In America we call them “beets”. It would seem that the Thais did not want to take a side in the argument and have one of each in the juice section.

Taxi home – Taxi’s don’t have doors, glass windows or seatbelts. We took a tuktuk home from the mall and Tesco. It was actually quite fun and refreshing. Not sure how it would work out in the rain. We had fun negotiating the fare except that Nancy butted in and said “OK” well before we reached a price that I wanted to pay – all in good fun and we’re talking about a buck or so.

Tomorrow is route planning day – hope that you enjoyed the trip down Tesco’s aisles.