Lulu Hypermarket=Awesome

When I first discovered Lulu Hypermarket, I was happy.  We took the besa bus up to the street across from Lulu.  We couldn’t miss the giant warehouse adourned with tacky green, red, blue, and yellow lights that looked like a combination of Christmas celebration lights and 1980‘s-movies-spaceship-style animated lights...It was night time so these lights made the start of this grocery adventure especially nice.  As I walked into the store, it looked like a regular massive market such as Walmart except the things being sold throughout this store were much more exciting.    The entrance presented a verand with several sections; the ordinary area for ATM machines and customer service area but the other sections were made up of stores with bargain prices on authentic gold jewelery (extremely popular in Oman), a stand with all kinds of beautiful smelling perfumes, and a KFC.  In the center of the entrance were three mannequins advertising the latest fashion of traditional Omani attire with huge price tags expressing their bargain prices.  “Dishdashas for 2 Rial, Women’s traditional Omani dress for 17 Rial, small girl’s traditional dress for 10 Rial...”  It reminded me of Halloween to see such sparkly and fun clothing being sold but this is really something someone would buy to wear everyday!  (One of the many reasons I love Oman).

We walked through the small entry stands to get to the main store aisles.  There were nut stands, an entire aisle of just bags and bags of all the most delicious spices, an entire section for huge bags of flours and rices.  But, my favorite part of the market was the produce section.  I felt like I was in the pictures I see of overcrowded India.  It was difficult to get around through the many aisles of oranges, baskets and baskets of all types of chiles, as many kinds of gourds one can think of, garlic, and pounds of fresh ginger roots!  We bought rambuntuns, dragon fruit, a custard apple, some different types of chilies, rocca, ginger, and many other things.  I really enjoy going to the market and looking at the produce and trying new things.