Bread fight!
Newsflash: Danang has a new grocery store: Big C!
The goal: find all the new fabulous foreigner-friendly products and hoard them at home
The new features: fresh baguettes, a salad bar (albeit, w/Vnese pickled veggies rather than a Cathy-style deli), RIBS, boneless chicken, canned ravioli, candy in bulk, fresh milk (I don’t even remember what this is anymore), smoked salmon, Energizer batteries, and other delights
Les resultats: crowds worthy of a rock concert, ppl stealing/grabbing locker keys from each other, a frenzy that Danang has not seen in a very long time (not even when the big theatre hall opened last year)
On my first visit, I got burned…literally, MY THUMB GOT BURNED when I went to buy some bread. In order to accomplish this, one must have both hands free, so I took off my jacket and scarf, gave my basket and wallet to my friend, and dove into the crowd (it was a bread-crazy mob). I’m telling you, it was wild….I was elbowed, squeezed, and yelled at…you’d think we were lining up for some freebies. Luckily, I made it to the front of the crowd just as fresh baguettes were coming out of the oven. I got two but w/o a bag and so my fingers were feeling the pain as I yelped for a bag….at the end of the ordeal, I emerged triumphant, but it was all for two small baguettes that cost maybe 25 cents each. Ouch!
And that’s the headliner from my world in Danang today. Over and out.