As I pass the gaping hangar that was the Alas Arum store in Sanur I feel a twinge of nostalgia for things of yesteryear. I don’t know what’s happening to the elder sister in Seminyak, but I imagine their day is done. By month’s end, if things go as posted, a new emporium called Hardy’s Grosir will arise. Whether this will be a major improvement or merely Dusty Arum by another patina, remains to be seen. At the moment Sanur lacks any so-called supermarket at all. The original Gelael in Sanur had a brief lacklustre existence as something called Sarina, but is now also a building site too. Can it be that Snoring-on-Sea will soon have two spanking new state-of-the-art supermarkets? Dream on.....
Casting my mind back over the years I do recall Dusty Arum as eccentric in a variety of endearing ways, quite apart from the compelling need one felt to head home and take a shower as soon as one emerged blinking into the sunlight. For one thing, they were forever shifting the whole place around and whoever owns or runs the place had a distinct taste for redbrick dingy Bali Grandiose. As soon as one area of floor space or new venture was constructed they shut or tore it down to do something else. Great porticoes were constructed and reduced to rubble within months. Such endeavour, such expenditure of time and wealth to such curious effect, one has to wonder what off-kilter genius is behind it all.
Of a morning, I especially enjoyed how the shopgirls tried to sweep me away as I tried to shop and they to clean. I also loved the 3% game and the boiled sweeties.
It went like this:
“
3% on top, alright?”, the check-out girls would say doe-eyed passive aggressive when presented with a credit card.
Absolutely not! No way! from the outraged tourist or expat. That or a sullen “Well. OK, but you really ......” Which provoked an equally sullen jutting chin from the girls in response.
First I thought this was a management ploy to reduce employee wages and replace it with a 3% bonus if they could get it from the customer’s hide. Actually all you had to do was to smirk and croon “ Uh, uh, uhhh, I don’t think so......”, and it seemed OK.
Then of course the boiled sweet routine. How many times did I swear I’d lay hands on a great big sweetie jar, fill it up and return in a month to redeem in cash or goods. It all mounts up you know.....
Hello Shoppers Everywhere....!
While on the subject of shops and shopping I noted a want ad recently in these here pages looking for a lady expat to gather information on shopping and pricing in the Kuta and Denpasar areas. Presumably those of us in the boonies of Snoor ‘n Oobood don’t warrant the research, as yet at any rate. I do hope they get along the by-pass as far as Makro, though. That’s another weird and wonderful institution.
Apparently the publisher of this great periodical reckons we should have a regular column on the vagaries of shopping in our beloved island. And, ever one to curry favour with the boss, I reckon he’s right, if not inspired to do it. Just think of all the quirky anomalies and odd pricing structures such a column can shed light on.
Why does the Galleria Mata Hari have the most expensive soy milk and the cheapest Volvic? Is my Evian really Evian or is it Nestle or Danone’s best filtered tap water? Why is Hero still the best supermarket in town? Can you please explain Makro’s stock control policy or lack thereof? Why is it my Energiser and Duracel batteries last a fraction of the time they do anywhere else? If branding is as important as they say, how can these multinationals allow their local Indonesian franchisee to offer up such travesties? Where can you get the freshest fish? And, God Bless ’em both for finding the way - who has the edge and for what between Dijon and Gourmet Garage? How can we encourage the sale of more organic produce and Bali’s wonderful red rice - how can we find it grown organically in the old way? These and many other important questions affecting our equanimity and overall wellbeing cry out for coverage and it is right we should be told.
I just hope whoever it is who is touched to write such a column knows what they are in for and are up to the awesome responsibilities of the task.
Time Warp
Thinking of these things, I find myself in a bit of a time warp. Thirty years ago in Bangkok, Singapore or Hong Kong, shopping was rather like it is here now. In fact Indonesia seems to me to be politically and socially rather where Thailand was 30 years ago.
It was the wet markets were where everyone shopped. There were some real apologies for supermarkets like Welcome and Park ‘n Shop in Hong Kong and it took them 20 years before they got the hang of it. The Singaporeans were much quicker off the mark. There was usually one grocer of pretension, by appointment to the expat and managed by a lightweight Jardine Johnny, which really only sold expensive up-market packaged goods peculiar to the Brits, certain other Euros and Americans, along with some wine and smelly cheeses.
Back then, the first visitor to my house in Bangkok was the Chinese liquor man. He could sell me a vast array of hard liquor, all good stuff at one fifth the price you’d pay if you were fool enough to buy it in the shops. The fiction was that it came from Vientiane, which is where we all headed off for our visa runs. Ask him what wine he’d got and you’d get a blank look and a gaping maw decorated with a few gold teeth. Notta chance. There were some appallingly sweet local wines and the hotels all sold one variety of some dreadful cheap Australian plonk at grand cru prices. I was reduced to grovelling to a sniffy and disapproving acquaintance of mine in the Chancery section of my Embassy before I got fixed up.
With the explosion of tourism in Thailand through the 1970’s things got better fast. Also some of the more enlightened bureaucrats finally got it that you actually made a heck of a lot more money if you didn’t swag the wretched expat or tourist with 600% duties and only hit them 60%. Everyone was happy, the country prospered, except for the poor Chinese liquor man and the fat cat general who sponsored him, but that’s progress I guess......
More or less the same thing happened with immigration in Thailand. Until a dozen or so years ago woe betide the hapless tourist who overstayed his visa. Up till then, to do that was a hugely serious matter and you got treated somewhere between a regicide and a serial killer. Until that is, you emerged after a few uncomfortable hours only too happy to have coughed up a large sum of baht and be on your way. By the mid 1980’s that had all changed. A polite immigration officer would simply chop your passport and indicate an office where you would pay 100 baht for each day overstayed. It went up after 10 days or so overstayed, but then that’s fair enough.
The Bali Premium
While Jakarta may be way ahead in some respects, change in Bali is coming, but it is oh so slow. There is still the “Bali Premium”. Somehow every product and brush with bureaucracy seems to be more expensive and opaque than elsewhere else in Indonesia. Islands are a bit like that anyway (you ask people who live in Hawaii about prices) and I guess the Balinese think we’re lucky to be here anyway and should pay for the privilege. I reckon they’ve got a point, but the thing is - how much, how many times and to whom? After a while the feeling that you are perceived more as a walking wallet than a real human being can get to some. But you shouldn’t let it, it’s never as simple as that. Nothing is here, and soon the sun shines again anyway.
The wine thing has been fun to watch here. Not so long ago I got my wine from a little old Chinese lady who was very jolly and sat in a dusty shop house somewhere in the depths of Denpasar. Not bad table wines and not badly priced either. Other than that, there was some local stuff and overpriced Ozzie/Cal plonk in the hotels and restaurants, which is where I came in. Oh yes, you could get Mumm Cordon Rouge for some reason. People said that was because it had fallen off an aeroplane. Then there followed that extraordinary period when all the wine on the island disappeared from the shelves and for a short period you couldn’t even find a bottle of beer. I heard all kinds of interesting stories about that. From that time on things have improved spectacularly. You can actually buy some half decent wines here cheaper than you would in Hong Kong or Singapore so there’s really no excuse for a restaurant or hotel here to serve up overpriced paintstripper any more. This is progress certainly, but of no account to me as I don’t drink.
I’m afraid there hasn’t been as much progress on the immigration front yet and the airport here is still an unedifying spectacle of rampant free enterprise. The current todo over the tourist visa is a case in point, but at least on this, Bali’s powers-that-be are on the side of the angels. Long term expats here on extended tourist visas however, are almost certainly going to have to go legit. Good thing too, I’m sure they’ll be much less anxious about all sorts of things. It would help though, if the whole process was a little simpler, less laborious and more transparent. And if one felt there was an appreciation that the majority of foreigners who stay here actually do contribute something to the place, that would be nice too.
But then again, for most of us, we feel blessed to be here on almost any terms. So you try and figure out where that leaves us and where it’s all going. I think I’ll just try and enjoy the ride.
Is my Evian really Evian or is it Nestle or Danone’s best filtered tap water? Why is Hero still the best supermarket in town? Why is it my Energiser and Duracel batteries last a fraction of the time they do anywhere else?
