Today, the time came again for me to brave another sojourn to the Mustafa Centre. My mission was to buy a new suitcase for my move to Holland Village next weekend...
---
After my first excursion to the 24/7 department store known as the Mustafa Centre, in October, I wrote about just how dazzlingly enormous it is. A few of you then asked for photos to illustrate its size. I went back today to buy a new suitcase in preparation for moving into my new Holland Village condo next weekend. Last time, I had got lost among a healthy supply of Samsonite luggage at Mustafa for a good price, so I knew they were somewhere in there.
Unfortunately, it's just so big that fitting it into one photo is nigh on impossible! I did take one from a painstakingly oblique angle looking down Syed Alwi Road. I have highlighted the various sections of the store. In between is a road that runs perpendicular to Syed Alwi Road and cuts the building in half...but that doesn't stop them! Mustafa just starts again on the other side of the road and carries on!
You have to go with a plan. You have to know what you want. So that you can get in and out as quickly as possible before the throngs of crazed Singaporeans trample you in their insatiable lust for materialism. It can be, as you know from my account of my first trip, an overwhelming place on your first few visits, before you've mapped your way around enough sections to be able to find the most tolerable route to the thing you want! This time, I remembered that entrance 6 is the easiest one to get in from: that is the one nearest to the foreground in the photo. Entrance 6 leads into the relatively peaceful pharmaceuticals section, dozens of aisles of First Aid supplies, cosmetics, over-the-counter medicines, shampoo, shower gel, toothpaste, shaving razors! I remembered that the luggage section is the one above the 25 aisles of chocolates and sweets, so that was where I tried to get to first. It wasn't hard to find. You just follow the screams of excited children and hear them turn into banshees as their parents try to drag them away from the reassuring certainty of dental work.
From the tooth decay aisles, it is a few minutes walk round to the escalator. When on the right floor, I looked around a few moments, swinging this way and that around aisles of miscellaneous travel items about halfway down the section. And then I spotted the luggage along the back wall - only if I squinted and concentrated really hard! - and checked my watch. It was 11:41 as I began my walk to the luggage area, which comprises at least 17 aisles of suitcases, hand luggage, backpacks and bags! When I got there, it had taken me nine minutes to traverse half the length of this one section. If you're following along, then I was now in the middle ground of the photo, where the road cuts the store in half.
It seems that the most popular luggage brands among the Mustafa clientele are Swiss Polo and American Tourister, for their products make up the bulk of the range. But I was not here to settle for those! There is a good range of Samsonite specimens to browse through, small ones, large ones, medium ones, large-medium ones, small-medium ones, handheld ones! All of them in three or four colours, too. I took about ten minutes to examine the largest ones for prices and hiding places, but was happy with my choice ultimately, for which I paid $262 (~£125).
It was only on the way back down again that I got lost. I had to take a few trips around the underwear before I realised I was going in circles. So getting out of the place took some 15 minutes, and I didn't really know which door I ended up coming out of, but it all worked out well because it happened to be near the bus stop.
---
By:
The Imperial Orange.
23rd January 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment