Travel Tip 88
Here’s why to go to a local grocery store
Local grocery stores are a great way to see what the majority of people use in their cooking. Pink olluco is a tuber commonly used in kitchens throughout Peru.
Farmers’ markets get all the glory, but a grocery store is also a fascinating slice of local culture.
My favorite grocery store experience was in Borneo.
I couldn’t read any of the packaging at supermarkets in Sandakan, on the Malaysian side of Borneo. Since it’s an island, they import just about everything and since it’s in Southeast Asia, they import from China, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Nepal and many other countries. Packaging in the grocery store was in at least a dozen languages, none of which use the European alphabet, and none of which I understood at all.
I was left with trying to figure out what a product was just by the packaging or what I could see of the product, which in most cases was impossible. It was fun to try to guess what the product was and fascinating to see how differently things were packages and presented.
You can learn a lot in a grocery store.
Chuño powder is used to thicken all kinds of soups, sauces, and even desserts in Peru.
The non-descript packing of powdered chuño in Peruvian grocery stories doesn’t explain that chuño is freeze-dried potato. It’s traditionally made by leaving potatoes out overnight in the winter to freeze. The next morning, people walk on them, usually with bare feet, to squeeze the water out, like people walking on grapes before they use the juice to make wine. The process is repeated until the potato is completely freeze dried.
Porotos Negros
You can learn vocabulary, like beans in Chile are called porotos, not frijoles like in Mexico.
You can see what nationalities of immigrants a place has. I was visiting my friend Amanda in Los Angeles, and we listened to a little too much Sublime, so we took a trip to Garden Grove and ended up in grocery stores in Little Saigon.
You can see the quantities that people in that country buy, like 20 kilos of ketchup in Peru or tall cans of light beer in the US.
Common ingredients
Sometimes the exotic things we see at farmers’ markets look like novelties. You might not realize how common they are in people’s kitchens until you see it at a supermarket, like the chicken feet from the supermarket in Ilo, Peru.
Bottom line: Farmers’ markets are wonderful slices of local culture, but don’t skip the grocery store.
Tuna, it’s what’s for dinner - at the night market in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo.
Blog
This was my second trip to Borneo, when I really got into the markets and grocery stores. The digital camera I had then was not great, but if you want to see why I loved Borneo, and what my blogging was like 10+ years ago, click on the blog title above.
Biologist Raul Perez Purizaca at Los Amigos Research station in the Peruvian Amazon downloads photos from a camera trap.
Article
How to Visit NGOs when Traveling
When I was in Borneo, I spent most of my time visiting NGOs for experiences with endangered wildlife and cultural experiences. Click on the article above to read how you can incorporate NGOs in your travels.
