Snack foods and basic grocery needs!

         If you have traveled the islands for a while in SE Asia you will find a welcomed change in Bali, there are real supermarkets! If you have a car or bike check out Carrefour, its on Sunset Rd near Kuta. For those not familiar with this chain its like a Walmart on steroids. The actual building itself has a KFC and A&W in it, a little taste of home, along with two floors of food and entertainment stores before you get up to Carrefour. Once inside the store itself you can find just about anything from TV’s to facial scrubs to sliced turkey. It’s massive and if you are renting a place with a kitchen definitely stock up there. It has a great selection of produce, meats, drinks, toiletries, and most other food selections. It even had a Mexican section where you could get tortillas! This is probably one of the biggest if not the biggest store I have ever been in. Pricewise it was cheap but we thought Hardys in Sanur was cheaper by a fraction.

            If you are staying in Sanur check out Hardy’s. It doesn’t have the same selection as far as TV’s but you can get your toiletries and food here. It’s not as big but things like razor heads and produce were cheaper here. Again it doesn’t have the selection that you get at Carrefour but it will have anything that you will need to stock your cupboards. It’s located in the middle of Sanur and there are signs everywhere for it. These two places had a much better selection than Indomart. Be prepared to pay for parking, although we just parked on the street in front of the places. Hardy’s also has an optician and movie store inside as well as a cheap department store with clothes, sarongs, jewelry etc. At both places you can buy crates of beer, bottles of wine, and spirits.

            Indomart was cheap, we stopped at a few during our trip to get things like suntan lotion and lunch stuff, but it had less of a selection. It was more like a big mini-mart, but did offer more than Circle K.
            Circle K is everywhere. Those not familiar with this chain think of 7-Eleven or another basic mini-mart. Here you can buy beer, ciggerettes, chips, and those kinds of things. They are all over the place, especially Kuta, Seminyak, Sanur, and the other tourist spots. They are a little more expensive than Hardy’s or Carrefour and have a fraction of the selection. Movie shops are everywhere, they are actual establishments and seemed offended when we tried to bargain. 10,000RPH seemed the going rate, they throw in free movies if you buy 5,10, or 20 movies at a time. For the most part the quality is very good, we had a few that weren’t but the clerks told us beforehand that they would be a little off. In the stores you will find a wide selection of movies, TV series, and music. They charge by the actual CD so if the series you want is 5 discs, you will pay for 5 discs. In Seminyak they sold video games in one of the movie stores, I’m sure they do in other stores as well. I have no idea the quality of these games however. There are other little stores that sell noodles and canned goods all over the place, some of the cheapest soda and beer are in these stores, but don’t expect them to carry your brand of anything.