Buying in bulk!

One of things you notice when you are shopping here is just how much people buy in bulk. Now when I think of buying in bulk, I remember when mum used to buy meat in NZ in bulk, or think of the big bags of rice you can get from the Asian supermarkets. The case here is that it would seem just about everything is available in bulk. I am not actually sure why because everyone seems to love shopping so it is no drama to pop down to any one of the numerous markets, hypermarkets, or grocery stores to pick up what is needed.

One of the stranger ones to me is tissues; 5 boxes at a time… I don’t get it. I know it is dusty and I know walking in and out of air conditioning makes your nose run sometimes, but I don’t see the need to buy a pack of 5 boxes of tissues (although no doubt we will get around to doing that in the not too distant future). hmmm just had a thought… maybe it is all related to the bidet thing!

An example is the other day we bought some pasta… well not just some pasta, but rather a bag with 8 or so smaller bags in it which would be more or less enough to last us at least a month (but maybe more). Don’t know why it comes in bulk, but it just does… but this of course leads to another issue. If most people buy in bulk I think they must have heaps of cupboard space in the kitchen… which perhaps provides some sort of explanation of why our kitchen is so big… but we just don’t have the cupboards.

Something else that comes in bulk is chocolate. No, you don’t just buy a chocolate bar here… you buy a box of them. Maybe that should be changed from chocolate, to sweeties and snacks. At the moment we have our junk food cupboard which is full of various bits and pieces that will probably be in there for a couple of months. Just to give you some idea the boxes of Nestle Hushhhh and Tola bars were about 10 Riyals each (24 bars in each). You have to love the Oreo’s!

They love packaging here, and most things are packaged well. What I don’t understand is why do we pay so much for everything in Australia!