Mustafa

We went hunting for home appliances at Jalan Besar and ended up at Mustafa, where we heard the prices are cheap. Call us suah-koo, but we have never been here before and did not realise how much merchandise they can pack into so little space and still get them sold.

Several interlinked buildings where you can walk from the basement of one building and find yourself across the street, then take the escalator to the top floor and walk over another road to a third building before realising that we were on a bridge. Ok, the space is not so little. They must have started from one building and bought over others near it when they expanded. It was like a colony of mushrooms expanding from a core and occupying the spaces beside them. They sell all things from toiletries to gold to cars to airplane tickets. I have never seen toiletries and jewellery being sold so close to each other, and I have never seen a supermarket above a store selling clothes.

They have more variety of kachiam-puteh than I have ever seen in other supermarkets. Hardly surprising considering they are run by Indians. There is a Sony digicam booth just outside one of the buildings, curiously staffed entirely by Chinese guys. No Indians as far as I can see, no girls either. There is no food court or eatery inside the buildings, but no lack of prata shops along the streets outside. Not a place to hang out, but a place to get bargains. And they are open 24 hours a day. Maybe I will make another trip if I have a sudden craving for kachiam-puteh in the middle of the night.