went shopping today @ the "morning market"
Vendors squat along the streets, laying out their day-before-picked vegetables, tofu, little green eggplants that look like tomatillos, bananas still on the stalk,even pre-cooked rice noodles wrapped in leaves. There's a lady selling live chickens, squawking submissively. + a big tub of grubs: fresh, i would imagine, but they're not wriggling. It's shoulder to shoulder traffic, buyers haggling and men pushing big wooden carts piled high with Thai basil, green pineapples (last of the season), Chinese broccoli, some fruits i've never seen before (dragonfruit, eggfruit, some cactus/beehive looking thing?)
There's moms shopping for the day's meals, small market owners tryin to get the best deals. The market opens before dawn (5am). The early bird gets the freshest + cheapest worms: the street vendors leave at 8am + for the rest of the day, the vendors inside the covered stalls sell for twice the price.
my grocery list:
thai basil/cilantro, 15 cents a bunch
eggplant, 25 cents a kilo
bananas, 25 cents a bunch
lemons, 40 cents a kilo
galangal, 50 cents a kilo
pineapple, 40 cents each
pomelo, 50 cents each
i also got a 10 kilo (22 lb) plastic bag of rice for $5.00
+ a week's worth of groceries for $3.00
beat that, wal-mart
