SHOPPING!!!

I LOVE SHOPPING!!
Yes, today was a shopping day. Our friend Michael Headen was heading to Nong Khai today and invited us along. As Martine had a class at 1300 she had to decline but gave me a medium-long list of things to get. And so off we went.

To put things in context, it is possible to get most things in Vientiane but some items can be very expensive and of ... not the highest quality, sometimes, maybe. So a chance to visit Tesco or Makro in Nong Khai is a chance to stock up on some necessities, luxuries and sheer frivolities (Alfred: Is that even a word?) of life. Makro, for my Irish friends, is like Musgrave's, only good.

Earlier posts have dealt with shopping in Thailand but now that we have been a few times, we are a little less 'lose the head and buy everything in sight' about it all. We also realise that buying enormous amounts of perishable items is not a great idea! So, having said that, here is a list of everything I bought:

3 tins corn
4 x 500g grated Parmesan (Alfred:This stuff is the BEST! It lasts forever, tastes great and the containers are awesome for storing things in.)
6 tea towels (Alfred: Proper, old-fashioned stripy thin cotton/linen type, green stripe)
2 kg mangoes (Alfred: this is a kind of Dan Quayle mongooses/mongeese moment: what is the right plural for 'mango'?  Mangoes? Mangos? It turns out to be EITHER!!! If you don't believe me (or Ruairí) check these out. 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mango
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/mango
Ruairí wants me to point out that Martine was especially insistent that 'mangoes' was the only acceptable spelling but that would be ungentlemanly of me.
1 pomelo  (Alfred: You don't know what a pomelo is? For goodness' sake, even Dunnes and Lidl sell them! Think giant sweet grapefruit).
200g cumin powder
ditto coriander
1 watermelon that may be the kind that actually has yellow flesh when you cut it open (bought in Makro)
1 watermelon that definitely is the kind that has yellow flesh when you cut it open (bought in Tesco) (Alfred: Martine has specifically asked for this kind of watermelon. So Ruairí bought one in hope and the second in expectation).
3 dragon fruit
1 kg purple grapes (Chinese)
8 packs of wasabi-covered peanuts (Alfred: More about these later ... why is that opening bracket in bold font?)
2 packs of bbq-flavour-covered peanuts (Alfred: mad, daring experiment)
10 small packets of holy basil and chilli flavoured crisps (Alfred: description tells it all. For clarification, 'holy basil' is a specific type of herb here, it's not the crisps that are holy. Would make communion more interesting, though).)
1 squeezable mop (Alfred: See previous posts on ceiling/leaks/water for clarification)
1 water-squeegee thing for pushing water around the floor and out doors and off the patio (Alfred: it's a VERANDAH! It is RAISED! That weed-infested limestone square thing outside your back door in Dun Laoghaire, THAT was a patio).
4 large bottles of beer, all Thai (Alfred: And the first one opened, Red Horse Beer (640ml 6%) was a disappointment. Will keep you posted on the rest).
1 giant papaya (Alfred: Wait until you see the photo!)
1 large packet cashew nuts
1 pack kaffir lime leaves (Alfred: According to Martine, Ruairí has been dong a pretty good job of cooking up authentic Thai/Lao-style soups, but kaffir lime leaves have been one missing ingredient. So has galangal - see later on the list)
100g oregano
3 jars Crespo green olives
1 pack dried galangal (Alfred: See previous comment)
1 drum Pringle Sour Cream & Onion (Thai manufacture) (Alfred: One of the problems here is when you THINK you have found a long-lost favourite from home - Pringles, Cadbury's chocolate, Nutella, whatever - but it is actually a Thai brand made under licence. They are not necessarily inferior, absolutely not - just ...... different. Unlike in Rwanda where the chocolate you found labelled 'Cadbury's (manufactured in Kenya) was barely fit for human consumption).
2.5 kg potatoes There are a number of interesting things about this vegetable. I always liked how, in Rwanda, they called them 'Irish potatoes' to distinguish them from sweet potatoes, even though no Irish person had ever set foot in Rwanda at the time! In Lao PDR they call them ມັນຝະລັ່ງ which transliterates as mak frang. This was a bit of an eye-opener for a number of reasons. ມັນຝະລັ່ງ translates as 'foreigner vegetable' which is fair enough. But ຝະລັ່ງ - actually, looking at this (copied from Google Translate) I don't see the 'r'sound represented. Anyway: the word for foreigner is usually written as 'falang', originally meaning French. But in fact Lao people say 'frang' and not 'falang' (Alfred: OK, kinda banging on a bit about the old falang/frang thing here. Next thing we know you will be resurrecting the whole 'what does mzungu' really mean? debate) 
5kg purple Asian shallots Onions and their relations are the key to all cooking and these Asian Purple Shallots are the absolute best. So I bought 5kg. Sue me. Or come by and see what happens when I cook traditional French Soupe a l'oignon using these babies. Yeah. Thought that might shut you up. Wipe up that drool .......
2 large heads Chinese leaves My Lao students thought it was absolutely f***ing hilarious that we call them Chinese leaves but they wouldn't tell me exactly why
1 bag lemon grass stalks (half a kilo for 13 baht!!!!!) For making any Thai/Lao soup, lemon grass is the key. But it does go hard and lose flavour so I will need to make a LOT of soup in the near future. By the way, 13 baht is 30 cent. I presume it is considered a weed here.
2 kg carrots
500g yard-long green beans (Alfred: WTF? Of all the strange things that have popped up on the radar here, I sometimes think this is the weirdest. The beans are long, yes. Maybe not usually the full yard but a good two feet. So, there you are. But this is Lao PDR. Invaded by Burmese and then Thai, then the French. Threw out the French and fought off the Americans. No English. No English or British whatsoever. SO WHERE THE HECK DOES 'YARD' COME FROM?????????????)
1 head celery Seriously hard to find, celery is.
2 kg mini-tomatoes 
200g decaffeinated Moccona Instant Coffee  This was the single most expensive item of all. The coffee here is good but Thai and Lao people take the completely unreasonable attitude that, if you want to drink coffee, it's because it contains caffeine, so why would you want to drink coffee WITHOUT caffeine? So decaff is really hard to find. You find it, you buy it, price doesn't really figure.
2 packs Tom Kha soup mix Like Tom Yum which people know but with coconut milk. Really good.
1 pack roasted pork with honey and herbs/spices
2 packs corn puffs
1 container of Bic board markers (3 black, 3 blue) (Alfred: Of all the things Martine was insistent upon, this was the .... one she was most insistent upon. It had to be Bic markers. And they are!) 
2 packs x 250 sheets 150g coloured card
20 transparent A4 folders
2 packs 6cm x 4 cm plasters (Alfred: These are for the knee. You really don't want to hear any more about the knee. And that first bracket is in bold again. Just saying.) 
2 extension leads, 4-gang (Alfred: This was really funny. Ruairí picked up an extension lead near the checkout while he was summoning up the courage to actually leave and not buy any more stuff. When the stuff all got put through, the extension lead was one of the last items. When it scanned, there was an alarm. The girl scanned it again, and then fired off a long string of Thai at Ruairí . Lao would be hard enough, but Thai? So she began to mime - waving one hand in the air, then a second. Appealed for help to all around, no luck. So she ran away. Just legged it. So R. stands there wondering what the hell is going on and, as she reappears with an extension lead in each hand, a 4'11" Thai angel leans in over Ruairí's shoulder and whispers 'Buy one, get one free').