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Published: June 23rd 2005
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Dates Dates Dates
A huge selection of dates on sale in the Old souk. The small round yellow dates are my fav so far. oh soooo delicious. Well, we have been here for a few weeks now and I think we are adapting well. We seem to be finding most of what we need to get this place fixed up, and making a few mistakes along the way which is all part of the learning process. (You can laugh about my mistakes in a bit).
OK so most of what we have done over the past 6 weeks is trail shops and follow advice from people we have met on which shops we should go to, which ones to avoid, wheres the cheapest, who's the trendiest. WOW... Im very lucky hubby has a great sense of direction... All roads lead to somehwre here but to me its major confusion.But Gad says it works on an huge grid basis. Each area is a grid like layout, and all main roads work on numbers. He finds it simple, I just get very disorientated. I Think to date we must have visited nearly all the shops in Kuwait and will be able to give pretty good advise to any new visitor who needs to buy furnature, clothes, food, gifts or any thing else you may fancy. Also where NOT to
food glorious foooooood
Fruit and veg stall in the old market. the choice and qaulity is amazing. and just look at all those colours. shop.. eeeeeek.. we have made a few poopoo buys but we learn from our mistakes don't we... 😞
I have to admit, Im abit of a market (souk) junky. I love to roam around and bargain find. We were advised by our NOT so helpful neighbour, that you can buy absolutly everything from a market called SOUK JOMA'A (friday market), ironicly open wednesday thursday and friday. According to my neighbour, you can find everything as well as the kitchen sink at this market, so we did some research and off we went. High hopes and expectations. We desperatly needed a sofa and some rugs... Finding the rugs was not a problem. I swear I reckon there must be a thousand or more rugs of all differant sizes and colours in this market. And the prices are veeeeeery cheap. We bought a couple and off we went in search of a sofa. You may be wondering how we carried huge rugs and transported a sofa. hehehe, throughout the market there are hundreds of men pushing wheel barrows. They all wear blue overals with a number stamped on the back. What ever you buy they will put in there wheel barrow
wow Mo, thats huge
Our Kuwaiti friend Mohammed showing another friend that the fish in kuwait are a little bigger than that sold in Tesco back home. hehehe and follow you for hours if thats what ot takes. Thay have perfected the skill of balance and packing down to a fine art and seeing some of them carry a 3 piece suite, 2 rugs and a palm tree on one small wheel barrow is amazing. The only thing they use to keep it all up is a piece of string. Most stalls and stands will also deliver for around 5kd extra. Don't forget to haggle. Haggling in the market is all part of the fun. And remember that alot of stalls sell the same thing so if one stall holder wont budge, just move on and find another. They are most likely gonna call you back if they know they had a good sale anyways. Start low and work you way up.
Well I found a sofa, among hundreds, that was reasonably suitable. A little hard under bottom but we thought it was just a fill it till we got the one we wanted. ANything had to be better than sitting on the floor. Had I forgotten to mention at this point that most of our excursions to the market were in the cover of darkness. Being
Shop within the old suok
Just how much stuff can you cram into one tiny shop... em, this much. Two Egyptian workers try hard to sell me some make-up. Were they trying to tell me some thing !!!!! closer the the equator, kuwait gets dark alot earlier than the UK in the summer so come 7 its pretty dar. And because its soooo hot during the day it was better for us to wait till around 6pm to go wandering. better for the children. Friday marke also has NO SHADE and is the size of 4 football pitches so wear sensible shoes (trainers). After haggling witht he seller and getting him to drop 10kd we purchased our 4 piece suite for 50kd and off it went with the delivery man. 10 minutes later we were home and seconds after us arrived our sofas. they carried the sofas and rugs up to our apartment and off they went with a small tip. We were so tired all we could do was go to bed. It was ponly around 9.30pm by this time but the market is huge and the heat is very VERY draining. ..... As we awoke the next morning we began to see the errors of our purchase. I think our sofa had actually been stapled together. You can actually see staples on the armrest ends and alonge the edges. The cushions were thrown together not sewn together and it already had a rip along on of the 2 seater backs. WHAT HAVE WE DONE. looking back now the cheapness of the sofa over took our sensible :
go over it with a fine tooth combe
general policy. But all is not lost. In a few months we will go get a nice new one from one of the more well known shops and put these ones in the kids bedrooms. But a lesson to be learned. Just because something is cheap, doesn't make it a good buy. lets just say our purchases here after were done in less haste. I have to say though, we can't fault the rugs. They are excellent value and make soft cushioned comfort for under foot. Most of the apartments, villas in kuwait are all ceramic flooring. Lovely and cool but nothing like a bit of comfort. They can be annoyingly dusty also and the rugs make as great dust clingers, easy to vaccum.
Other purchases so far include book shelves which we searched every shop for and ended up finding them in a tiny rotten run down back street shop right next to a huge VERY popular shop called Landmark. They guy delivers for free and makes all teh flat packs for you.. excellent. can't ask for more than that. ANd the qaulity of these book shelves is excellent. A great find at last. We have debenhams, Landmark, and IKEA here for furnature but can work out pricey if, like us, you have a whole house to furnish. The qaulity of our bokshelves were also much better than that of IKEA and we would of had to make them ourselves.. eeek..
Another great find was the Old market in the city centre. Its also huge but hosts a meat market, vegetable market and fish market also. You can buy everythig here from clothes, shoes, sandals, electricals, kitchen equipment, bedding, rugs, throws, gifts, spices, gold, silver and much much more. Parking can be abit of a nightmare so its best to go a little early if you can. Unlike Friday market, this one does have quite a bit of shade and is not as big. And is alsomore organised. Saying that we have been here 8 weeks now and still frequantly get lost when we go. hahaha... The choice of fruit and veg in this market is out standing and the quality is also very good. Fruit and veg here is alot cheaper than the super market and you also don't have to carry any thing. you will find men wandering with small shopping trolleys. they carry your shopping (or children) in these trolleys for half a dinar (500 fils) a time. Great. You will notice not many people actually carry or do any thing that will exert them here in Kuwait. Far to hot for that.Most of the labour force in kuwaot are asian, indian, pakistani or Egyptian with a few other nationalities thrown in. Its shop till you drop in kuwait and so effortless. Even in the co-op or super market, they unpack your trolley, pack your bags and carry it and load it onto your car all for 250 fils. superb. (but oh soooo lazy hehehe)
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