Not for me the strip-lit, noisy, impersonal malls of England - when I shop for fruit and vegetables in Malaysia, it's at the marketplace in town, a mass of brightly-dressed women, each crouched beside a mat that holds the produce of their little plot of land in the village - a few bundles of rambutans, a bag of wild rice, perhaps, or some little packets of red chillies, the fewer the chillies the higher the potency.
When I drive out to the villages I have another option: the roadside stalls. Often built of scavenged wood, they are a representation of one of my favourite aspects of living here in Sabah. The owner of each stall will visit it in the early morning, bringing whatever produce she has harvested from her land the day before. She will string up each bunch of bananas or packet of chillies on its own nail, and price it - usually one ringgit (25 pence) per item. And then she will leave it, return home to work. A customer will come along, choose her item, and tuck the ringgits into a rusty tin or sometimes a custom-made wooden box - my favourite cashbox so far is an old baby's bottle, a slit cut into the side, nailed to a wooden post. No one steals, no one leaves without paying. At night, the owner returns to collect her cash and take back any unsold produce. I simply cannot imagine it working anywhere but here.
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