Someone once told me that in Surabaya, all we have are shopping malls. They were 100% correct.
Surabaya has something like 8 Shopping malls located within an 8km radius of the city centre and each of them has about 4-6 floors of goods and XL sized clothing which can be purchased with your fat stacks of Indonesian Rupiahs.
As someone who grew up in a town with a population of about 450,000, I found these ‘megamalls’ and their Hogwarts-esque elevators absolutely fascinating and felt like some kind of country hick which is basically what I am when you see things from a global perspective.
If you want to visit a 6 storey mall dedicated to cellphones and cellphone accessories, Surabaya is the place to find it. I had to purchase an SD card as I left my micro SD card adaptor at home. Taking a quick stroll down to what I thought was just your average shopping mall, I discovered that this was indeed a cellphone shopping centre.
They also have an outdoor clothing and equipment chain store here called 'Eiger' (Like the mountain). Eiger is basically the Indonesian of Kathmandu in NZ but about 1/3 the price. Still expensive by Indonesian standards. This is where high population density, centralised location globally and cheap labour rates can get you; neither of which we have available in New Zealand.
This is incredibly dangerous for me.
I've never been a big shopper, but when you take a look around and find yourself surrounded by high quality, well designed goods which you will never find back home, it really does become a temptation. Two things can result from this. I either end up hauling around 15-16kg worth of stuff everywhere, or I basically export goods en-masse back to NZ and go home 4 months earlier than expected. Neither of which sound very appealing right now seeing as it hasn't even been 2 weeks yet.
I need some trousers though.
If you want to visit a 6 storey mall dedicated to cellphones and cellphone accessories, Surabaya is the place to find it. I had to purchase an SD card as I left my micro SD card adaptor at home. Taking a quick stroll down to what I thought was just your average shopping mall, I discovered that this was indeed a cellphone shopping centre.
They also have an outdoor clothing and equipment chain store here called 'Eiger' (Like the mountain). Eiger is basically the Indonesian of Kathmandu in NZ but about 1/3 the price. Still expensive by Indonesian standards. This is where high population density, centralised location globally and cheap labour rates can get you; neither of which we have available in New Zealand.
This is incredibly dangerous for me.
I've never been a big shopper, but when you take a look around and find yourself surrounded by high quality, well designed goods which you will never find back home, it really does become a temptation. Two things can result from this. I either end up hauling around 15-16kg worth of stuff everywhere, or I basically export goods en-masse back to NZ and go home 4 months earlier than expected. Neither of which sound very appealing right now seeing as it hasn't even been 2 weeks yet.
I need some trousers though.
![]() |
I could never see the logic behind this one. There were like 30 Samsung Dealers here. |
No comments:
Post a Comment