Food Shopping in UB

Since I last wrote I wish I could say that we are now settled but I can't. Seeing as there are no apartments on the market to view in our price range we had decided to move into "The Dog Box" as I call it. This is the apartment is the one which one of the families has moved from to go to another job else where. So with no other option except back to the hotel, we are moving into this apartment. I will post some photos once we have moved in.

Over the past week we moved into a guest apartment for a week until the apartment we are going to is painted and cleaned. Plus we cant stay in the guest apartment after that as another family has been booked into here.

Well living in UB isn't as easy as living in Indonesia. I shouldn't compare but as I have learnt its hard not too, I think it is because I have only lived here for one month and we are not settled yet, so much is different here too our life in Indonesia.

Seeing as we have been staying at the guest apartment I have had to do some food shopping so that's been a bit of an eye opener. Three times a week there is a shopping van that the company dedicates to the ladies to do their food shopping. So Paige and I decided to try it out.

Once all the ladies that want to shop are picked up we all say where we need to go and the van driver takes us there and waits for us to finish. Even if you don't need to shop at one location the ladies will usually go into the shops to see whats new or if there is something they might need anyway.

As I found out once you have paid and bagged up your own shopping at the check out you are unable to take the shopping carts to the van so you can only shop for the amount you can carry in bags so it seems most ladies will shop a number of times a week. GREAT.......... so after the van has visited a number of shop locations we are dropped off home where you have to get all your bags from the bottom of the apartment building to your apartment. I never thought I could carry so many bags in my life at once. This has made me decide to get our own driver which I will look into. So the other thing about food shopping is most things are labeled in Russian, German or Chinese so I am so glad for pictures on the items. There are items I have had to buy to try so it is all hit and miss to see what you get and if you are going to like the taste.

After having some snow over a couple of days it made me relise that when we do move into our apartment it will be a good idea to have a good stock of items at home as we may not be able to do shopping over a number of days due to the weather. A number of ladies buy extra items when they can as some of the food items are not there when they go back the next week to find them. I dread my fist real food shop and the bill it will be as stocking the cupboards at the start you seem to spend a large amount of money at once.