Deoderant

Today was a public holiday (international women’s day of course)
I decided to investigate a different supermarket from the one near my house. I arrived and spent considerable time wandering around the isles looking at all the things that possibly I could buy… cambodge supermarkets are reasonably well stocked, but are not really that big… they are primarily stocked with lots of Chinese produced items – China is the commerce king over here…

Anyways after I had indulged in imported items such as apples and camembert cheese, I set out to find some deodorant, which was really why I went to the supermarket in the first place… I passed rows of ‘whitening cream’ (what is it with Asians wanting to bleach themselves and Europeans wanting to tan themselves?) and hair gels and toothpaste and soap and all the usual toiletries… but no deodorant. Now in my usual supermarket this is where you find deodorant, so I was pretty confused. I couldn’t believe there would be no deodorant, after all temperature is well above 30 degrees outside… I really needed some deodorant so I kept going back and forth thinking id missed it… eventually I found myself at the end of the shop, staring at a counter manned by little Cambodian ladies in smart suits, behind which was a wall of deodorant. Now please imagine this to be a make up or perfume counter – that was what it was like, but no the shelves were just stocked with deodorant. So I asked one of the ladies to get me some from the shelf and I went to put it in my basket.. but no it was snatched off me… the lady had to take the deodorant (it cost less than the cheese) with me to the cashier and then, and only then, was I left alone with it… and free to pay…

Perplexing?
Very… you would have thought I was buying something very valuable or precious…