Day 6, Mr Tasty's Fast Food, Lugogo Mall

Weekend, time to explore a bit. I needed to get a mobile dongle and sim card for Uganda. Of the 4 malls in Kampala, Lugogo had the most choice and had the advantage of a Shoprite there as well.

It's a bit of a trek on the other side of the city centre, still it'd give me a good opportunity to see more of Kampala and understand the geography of the place a bit better. After sorting out my weeks laundry for the reasonable-ish price of 15,000 UGX (£3.75). Helmet in hand I headed down to the road to get the next available boda.

On the way I got see much more of the city and experienced the sheer bedlam of driving in the centre. I don't miss Thorpe Park at all, if you want an exhilarating thrill ride get on a boda in Kampala, the constant slopes of the hills are the main drops and inclines with added excitement from all the near misses and near constant speed bumps and rumble strips add to the rollercoster vibe.

I also passed through what I've now called the Betting District as one particular cross-roads that had nothing but betting shops. I'm quite shocked by their prevalence here. Virtually all of the gambling is on football, primarily Premiership, but also lower and European divisions.

I saw many of the much fancier hotels they all looked great, but I can stay at my passable hostel for a whole month for the price of one night in many of these swanky establishments. Eventually it was clear we were heading out of town as the traffic thankfully thinned and about half an hour after setting off we arrived at Lugogo Mall.

I was scanned by a security guard with a wand on entering the car park and on entering every shop in the mall. The mall by the way is of the strip variety, Westfield this isn't. There was a massive queue outside the MTN (one of the mobile networks) shop when I arrived so I went and had a wander round the Shoprite.

Having experienced the delights of this South African supermarket chain on my previous trip to Africa I was pleased to find that it was pretty much identical to all the others I'd been to. I'm sure I'll be visiting more often when I've got my own place for the weekly big shop.

First things first I went to the aisle with sauces and cupboard ingredients. I was overcome with joy (seriously I almost wept) when I found my much loved half litre bottle of All Gold Peri Peri Sauce. They also had a variety of other hot sauces including Tabasco (normal and green) and many Nandos sauces. Both options were pretty expensive, so I went for a bottle of American Garden Hot Pepper Sauce. Lunch will be much more interesting next week.

I also managed to get some biltong, not the greatest, but it will do. Final shopping list included a packet of crisps, large bottle of Coke Zero, some crisps, and some Gala apples, wonderful. Shopping complete it was time to head to the MTN store as there was no queue. I got a PAYG dual SIM phone and a modem (dongle). Unfortunately the new 4G network didn't extend to where I currently am, but maybe when I move / they roll out it out further I'll switch up.

It was now lunch and there were only two options. An over priced coffee house / restaurant and Mr. Tastys. Mr Tastys was reminiscent of those awful fried chicken places you see everywhere. It wasn't KFC standard, it wasn't even Chicken Cottage standard. I ordered a chicken burger meal for 10,500 UGX and after a short wait received my meal. 

I quickly part finished the horrible weedy greasy chips (thank God for the tomato ketchup), and opened up my chicken burger to find a meat burger. I think it may have been some part of a cow at some point, but couldn't be certain. I know it wasn't horse, but it could have been anything. The highlight was the red onions on the burger. The rest truly awful apart from the bottle of coke, which was a standard bottle of coke. 

0.5 out of 5 for the onions and coke. Never again, and maybe I'm being premature marking this as by far the worst meal I've had so far, but I can't think of anything that could plumb these depths, despite the dodgy quality of the meat in most meat dishes I've had so far.

Shopping done it was time to find another Carl (apologies for yesterday I thought Mr. Fogarty was a Karl, I was wrong). I was flagged down by one such Carl before I'd even got out of the car park. Helmet on and on to the back of the boda and away we went.

Most bodas are pretty old bikes with thankfully very little oomph. This one was different, it had oomph in spades. I had to hold one quite a lot as he weaved through concrete bollards on the pavement, before heading into light incoming traffic before heading off in the right direction. We took a slightly different route back through the very upmarket Kololo neighbourhood. Very nice, shame I won't be getting a place there, here are some Kololo rentals.

After a record 25 minute journey and in spite of even more traffic in the centre of town, I was back at the Hostel and thankful to see that the power was back on.