Shopping in Chuuk, Micronesia. We live on a tiny island here that is the only commerial island in our state. It's maybe 4x7 square miles and the closest industrial civilization is 600 miles across the Pacific. A lot of the locals eat the local food and use the locally grown things BUT they are very limited. Don't get me wrong about any of this - we do what we have to do and we love our island and the people here. But the local food is not our most favorite part of being here. We post these mainly for the families and friends of the our elders to see what it is like for them here in Chuuk and what they do with their $$. 
These are the regular small cans of soup. $3.95 what a steal (this is called sticker shock).
And this is the cheap stuff - you're gonna have to pay up if you want to be clean.
If you get the munchies you're gonna pay - $7.00 for a small bag of Lays or $8.00 for Frito's. Not that we need to eat this tasty, fattening food but what if we want a treat? Well I am afraid we are going to have to pass on these.
Truthfully we wouldn't mind paying these prices on occasion, for some FRESH in-date products. Most these products are usually out of date or very close to expiration. We have taken a few risks and purchased out of date products. We've had some bad experiences to say the least. We've just decided that we'll go without. The problem here, besides it's very expensive, is it is all shipped in and we never know from container to container what we're going to get. Every time the price of fuel goes up, it hits here very hard, in all kinds of ways.
They must walk down the aisle in the states and look at the dates and say, "hey, let's send it to Micronesia". :) haha! We do really love it here and all this just adds to our adventure in Micronesia.
And that is what we call our Cost Of Living Allowance in Chuuk.
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