An afternoon foray to The Avenue shopping mall to purchase some essential life support items. When my wife is here the shopping focus is on irrelevancies such as washing powder, vegetables and fruit. My shopping list today was small but perfect: several bars of chocolate, some tonic (to go with gin) and, as a token of nutritional goodness, some lemons (which will conveniently go well with gin and tonic). Oh, and some bread and some stuff to stick inside it to make a sandwich for my evening meal.
When I was a lad in the UK, I recall it was difficult to buy anything after the sun went down. A trip to New Zealand not that long ago had me caught out on a Saturday when the shops all shut down after lunch with no intention of opening again until the Monday. And one of the shut shops was called “The Frock Shop”, modern wear for the modern lady no doubt. I am sure shopping availability has improved in these places, but Asia has always been ahead of the game.
There are many places you can now shop 24 hours a day, and The Avenue has a supermarket where you can do just that. The supermarket also has a 24 hour mini-restaurant, so when you are exhausted from buying all that chocolate you can have a meal. God knows who must stagger in at 0200, but at 1400 it was me, and 60 baht got me chicken fried rice which revived me sufficiently for a quick walk around the mall with the camera before I headed home.
