Bargain hunting

On Sunday, I needed some office supplies to complete a little project that I was working on, so I headed to the mall.  I decided to go to SM City, because there is a National Bookstore there, and I figured that on a Sunday, that was the most likely place that I would find what I was looking for.

Unfortunately, I struck out when I went to National Bookstore, they didn’t have what I needed.  I was kind of disappointed, because I needed these items badly, or else would not be able to finish up the job that I was in the middle of.  Suddenly, I remembered that SM Department Store also had an office supply section, so I gave them a try too.  No luck, again.  There is a great office supply store in Davao that almost always has anything I need for the office, it is called GH Office Depot, but unfortunately, I was pretty certain that they were closed on Sundays.  I decided, though, to go and just double check if they were open or not.  On the way to GH, I remembered another place that I had recently discovered, and decided to stop by there too.

This new place that I recently discovered is called “DCLA Shopping Center” and is located in Uyanguren, the name of the Chinatown section of Davao City.  DCLA is kind of mixed mart with various vendors located all around the shopping center.  They sell everything from cellular phones to clothing, jewelry to kitchenware.  The way that I found DCLA was recently when I started getting in Coffee Roasting and Brewing as a hobby, I heard that DCLA had French Presses, so I ventured out and found the place.  Indeed, I found some nice, albeit cheap Chinese-knockoff French Press coffee makers there, and I’ve been back about 4 times since.

So, on Sunday, when I ended up at DCLA, I wanted to see if they had the office supplies that I needed (which they did not!), but I also wanted to shop around the place and see what I could find there.  In the past, I had only looked for supplies for coffee making there, although I noticed that they had all kinds of stuff.  So, on Sunday, I set out to see exactly what they did have.

I found the amount of selection there to be endless.  Everything from pirated DVD’s to kitchenware, clothing to jewelry, cellphones to imported foods.  I was actually quite amazed.  Feyma is always wanting to buy imported shampoos and such, and I spotted some imported shampoo there, Pantene, Dove and lots of other brands.  These were big economy sized bottles, and I was stunned at the prices.  These huge bottles were P180 each, about $3.50.  Surely, I thought, these must be pirated, counterfeit goods.  But, when I inspected the packages, they looked genuine.  Often you can tell when stuff is fake because there will be mis-spelled words on the package, poor printing, etc.  These goods showed none of the obvious signs of piracy, though.

Some of the goods were obviously counterfeit – first run movies on DVD, XBox Games for $2 or so, I mean, on this stuff there just is no doubt about it.  But, much of the other stuff looked quite genuine to me.  I called Feyma and told her to come down and meet me at DCLA, which she did.  Feyma was quite excited when she saw the cheap imported shampoos and lotions and such.  Then she started seeing things like cosmetics and such, and was even more excited.  Honestly, we both think that much of this stuff is counterfeit, but we tried the lotion and shampoos and they seemed fine to us, so as long as it works, we’re OK with it.  We don’t know for sure if it is not legitimate anyway.

Anyway, Feyma and I had fun exploring the bargains at DCLA on Sunday.  Feyma already has plans to go back and do more shopping  when I am not around.  When you have a Kano in tow, it makes bargaining more difficult, after all.

Hope to see you at DCLA!