Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Looting the grocery store!

As Joe and I we walking down the street by our apartment to go grab some dinner we noticed a ton of people walking out of the loading dock of the local grocery store by our house with huge boxes of food. We rarely see this loading dock open but tonight swarms of people were coming in and out of here everyone with big boxes of food. It got us really curious, as we continued walking down the street we continued to see more and more people walking past us and going into the grocery stored through the loading dock entrance. I began wondering what these people knew that we didn't. Finally curiosity got the best of us, so we decided to turn around and follow all these people in and see what was going on? As we entered the grocery store all we saw was mass chaos! Hundreds of people flooding the store, pushing and shoving past one another, looting the shelves and grabbing whatever they could and throwing it into their baskets as fast as they could. This scene honestly looked like everyone was preparing for the end of the world, the zombie apocalypse, or some sort of natural disaster! With the recent earthquake and all the heavy raining and flooding throughout the city the last couple of days I'm not surprised that the first feeling I had when I saw all this happening was panic. I thought "oh crap what is going on? Is something bad about to happen that we weren't aware of?" So I asked one of the ladies working there what was going on? She told us that the store was going out of business and they were getting rid of everything super cheap so we should stock up while we can. This put my mind at ease, but then it went into an instant frenzy! Joe and I joined in on the mass hysteria and started looting the grocery store as well! Pushing and shoving our way through the crowds to grab whatever goodies and snacks we could while they were still on the shelves, this was no place for the weak only the strong survive and get what they want here! You also always had to have an eye on your stuff you lose focus for one second or leave your basket unattended at all and someone will swipe your stuff right out of your basket! I'm not gonna lie this might have been the most fun I've had in Taiwan so far. It was almost like a game we didn't need half the crap we bought but my heart was pumping, I was sweating like crazy, and the fact that they weren't really ringing people up didn't help either, the way they added up your price was they rummaged through your box really quick and looked and how much stuff you had in there and then just through out a random price, so I wanted to see how much stuff I could get and for how cheap. I'm regretting not leaving the house earlier now because by the time we got here all the legitimate food had already been sold all that was left were drinks, snacks, and some frozen foods, But since we mostly eat out anyway we just stalked up on the "essentials" After it was all said and done Joe and I went to go get our crate of stuff priced. They looked through both our boxes really quick pretty much just counting how much stuff we had not even looking at what it was or how expensive it might be and said it would be 500 yuan each (the equivalent of about $16 US dollars) I was shocked I thought I would at least pay double that for all the stuff we bought. So we ran back to our apartment unloaded our stuff and went back for round two! By the time we got back all that was really left was soda so we decided we might as well stock up on some tasty beverages while we are at it. That ended up being about 100 Yuan each (about $3 US). So after it was all said and done we each spent a little under $20 for all this stuff not a bad night!

It's the end of the world!









Stocked up on the essentials





   

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