Here in Kuching, 7-elevens are not
the biggest and best convenience shops
in town. They lack variety and the most
of traveler might buy are soft drinks,
chips and snacks and water. You'll find a
huge selection of condoms and chewing
gum in the front of the cash register.
There's standard beverages. They must love
their milk and their yogurt drinks
because there's an entire refrigerator
dedicated to it. Then you have a huge
variety of coffee.
Here's your Redbull. Then they stock quite a
bit of international soft drinks like
Western soft drinks.
KK is a Malay-owned convenience store
and it kinda looks like 7 Eleven from the outside.
But going inside, it's a slightly different but same
experience. While 7-Eleven has a lot of
Western drink brands. KK has a lot of
Sarawakian (and Malay) brands or flavors.
Now I'm definitely noticing a pattern with
condoms. They're always seemingly at the
front of every convenience store near
the register and there's always like
this sizable variety and quantity of
them ...and then right next door you have chewing gum!
Toiletries and bathroom aisle.
Here's the deodorant.
Interestingly this is called "Casablanca",
which is a deodorant for women. If you
like, you put this on romance is in
the air and you can feel like ingrid
Bergman looking for your Humphrey Bogart.
If your stamp pad ink ever ran low then
you can come here and refill it for a
$1.24 USD. Badminton
must be big in this town.
KK has a lot of sarawakian brands or
flavors like Lychee- flavored drinks and
Guava! This is the instant noodle aisle
and there's a variety of brands and
flavors here which I feeling might be
echoing Kolo Mee (a noodle dish). We have Asam Laksa.
Asam must awesome!; it's actually a sour
tamarind flavor and laksa is a spicy
noodle dish.
Here's Tom Yum flavored noodles.
(surprise) this goes back!
This is always a good for travelers to
pick up for humid environments. This is an
electrical mosquito repellent. You plug
it into the wall outlet and it perfumes
the air with a repellent solution which
is supposed to chase away mosquitoes.
Now what would a convenience store be
without flip-flops, in the case you ,..you
know, broke your flip-flops.
Here's some socks and for those who need
a plug extension here you go!
Ah! Shrimp paste.
All these curious things, ya know?
They have cumin powder...
agar agar,... Ooh!
I guess you can make your own Tom Yum soup.
And there's a lot of cooking condiments
like bullion cubes and I think this is
flavored coloring ? I wish I had a Malay friend to help me
translate this. This is the aisle that always
interests me and it's the snacks section!
So they have the big roll seaweed stick
that you'll find in Thailand ,as well . And
then you have a huge assortment of Mentos!
There are Mentos flavors here
that I have not seen in the United States.
Like Air Action Mentos, ... like what is
that? I think i have to try this and see
what the difference is.
Here's Mentos chewing gum. We definitely
don't have this in the United States (circa 2014?) yet and
this has center filled with breath
freshening mint.
I love the snack world.
Recently Idiscovered that
Kinder (candies) was illegal in the U.S. and that's because Kinder candies come with a little toy in the back.
And the U.S. has outlawed any type of candies with toys.
They have a version for boys and for girls, so you
get two different type of toys. I've been noticing
stores like KK & Everrise having dried
fruit and nuts. Ooh, that looks good. A whole
mixed nuts bag.
It costs 9 ringgit; that's like the most close
to two dollars. This I actually am tempted to
take my... take one of these home for
my dad. He loves his mixed nuts but i
think this would completely surprise him.
Everrise is one of the grocery stores that you
might see
common in Kuching. It's kind of a big
go-to spot if you need groceries...
or you want household appliances or
toiletries...
I even found like some travel adapters
here . Prices are pretty reasonable
like the
the one-stop shopping
here in Kuching. Even water i think is fairly inexpensive here.
I got water and
some fruits. This is like a whole little section
that's dedicated completely to
Mentos. Like different types of Mentos,
from regular stick roles to...
kids Mentos,... Chews... and they 've even got
Lychee-flavoed Mentos.
I'm curious about these because these are Yogurt
flavored Mentos.
Then there's also these.
Kinda like breath mint Mentos, with little things
inside of them.
There are different flavors.
Holy mackerel it's like.. waah
Chewing Gum Mentos, .. Holy cow.. Chewing gum Mentos...
they have a ton...
Sugar-Free Mentos... this one has green tea filling
in it.
Malaysia didn't create Mentos, so
technically this should be in my ( bucket) list, but
the fact that there's a whole section
dedicated to different types of Mentos,
a variety of them... variety of flavors that I've
not even experienced yet..
Then if you asked me, I would say that Malaysia
owns Mentos. I feel like
condoms are pretty much like at
the forefront of every (cash) register
here or maybe I'm just hitting the certain
stores with registers that have condoms
placed right next to them.
You know I guess in the U.S. we're
just not used to that they put the
condoms way in the back or sneak it off to
the side. I didn't really even know
there was such a large assortment of
condoms styles that you can
use...'Comfort', 'Love', 'Tingle', ...
'Pleasure'.