Did anyone else stock up on vitamins instead of toilet paper during the early days this past year?

It took me a week to work up the mental energy to head to the supermarket to do a shop. It felt dicey to go out during the early days of lockdown. We are in Indonesia, which is a super lovely place to live, but healthcare is not the same as it is in Australia, where we are from or Singapore where I grew up. There is (or was) an entire industry called medical tourism and people fly to places such as Malaysia, Thailand or Singapore. No one flew to Indonesia for a medical holiday, they flew from Indonesia so you get the idea. So we are happy to stay where we are and stay healthy. We were very lucky we didn’t need to go anywhere. So many people had no choice, stay home and pay the bills with what money? But what could they do, police would stop you if you were out and send you back.

So this supermarket shop. It needed to be done, I couldn’t get any online deliveries because they were booked out for days and days. We could have used a few rolls of toilet paper (I’m talking about 4 rolls not 40 rolls) and some rice, some fruit, so we didn’t sit around marinading in scurvy whilst chewing on the furniture. And I wanted to get some staples for some people we knew who did not have a lot of money. Not everyone can just work from home. So I headed off with my little face mask and at the time I thought gloves were a good idea. I wasn’t even the most wrapped up person there – there were people in HAZMAT type suits. Although how do you go about disinfecting those things? Don’t you need a special chamber? We had to queue for our turn to go in and people were jittery. We looked like we were waiting in an emergency room. Once we were released inside, everyone was back to normal, chatting to each other about this apple or that durian.

There are a few things that are considered staples here in Indonesia: flour, oil and rice. Another one is instant noodles. They don’t spoil easily which is important in a country that can be so hot and not everyone has a fridge. People in Australia were making the news for fighting over toilet paper meanwhile over here people were pushing trolleys stacked with cartons of instant noodles. You can’t eat toilet paper in a food shortage. So I got myself a few boxes of instant noodles, flour, oil and rice to give to people we knew who might appreciate some support. I didn’t go back to the supermarket for a long time after that. But I did get stocked up on vitamins and supplements. At first I tried to buy from local pharmacies which was hit or miss. Sometimes there was no stock, or they were expiring soon, or they were superrrrrrr expensive due to import taxes or when they arrived the glass was broken. So I got myself an iherb account and that has been pretty helpful.

I appreciate the range but at the same time it’s a bit exhausting to go through especially at first. Later during the course of the year I also had some health issues so I was really glad I could get some things from iherb to help me out.

I’m not sponsored by iherb but they give every person a rewards code that apparently gives users a discount? What I would do is CHECK if they have any promotions. Every time I go on the website they have “20% off homeopathy products” or “10% off vitamin d”, etc, really random things going on, so check first if there is a discount that you need and then type in my code CEI0659 and see if you get more money off. It works for me. This is the link you can try clicking on that or just manually enter the code.

https://iherb.co/hAYDk9S

If you would like to know what I tend to get from iherb I will be happy to share with you in another post. A few of my friends asked me about my shopping experience on iherb so I just thought on the off chance you were also going to buy something from iherb you would appreciate the discount code. x

(Only joking I don’t get the vitamin gummies)