Day 2: Bazaar District

Home to 2 world famous bazaars - the Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaar, we started off our 2nd day at the Grand Bazaar, which reminded me very much of Saigon's (Cho) Ben Thanh Market. It was bustling with people, and aisle after aisle contained the same knick knacks - ceramics, handicrafts, glassware, rugs, jewelery, silk, leather, etc. They say that you're not to buy anything at the Bazaar without bargaining first! After awhile, I got pretty tired of haggling though, especially since I knew no matter how clever I thought I was, I was still going to end up paying more than what the item was worth! On top of that, every stand we walked by would try to grab our attention by saying, "Ni Hao Ma!!!" or "Konnichiwa!!!" It was amusing at first, then annoying, and soon after, we had no choice but to humor them. I think I now know the Turkish word for "Chinese" and "Japanese" since I heard so many of them whispering it to each other. They weren't being rude by any means - more intrigued than anything, but you would think that they saw enough Japanese / Chinese tourists to know the difference! Or maybe that was the reason why they were so mystified with us since we didn't look like the others? I should have written on Michael's forehead, "we're neither." But as we pretended not to hear most of the bored vendors who tried strike a conversation with us by speaking "Asian" :) we did let some of the them take a gander as to where we were originally from - and boy did they love to guess!... every east Asian country under the sun, except Vietnam! They ended up spending more time guessing our ethnicity, then bargaining. One guy even guessed as far as Holland and another guy actually said Madagascar.

MADAGASCAR!!! Has any of you even met anyone from Madagascar??? What do they even look like?



I was really on the lookout for a cool Turkish charm bracelet (with an evil eye - muahaha), since Istanbul is supposedly a great place to buy jewelery, but after just 2 shops, I couldn't be bothered to haggle anymore.




Now the Spice Bazaar (below) is great for spices, tea, herbs and sweets with huge displays of turkish delights and large color pyramids of spices!




I saw a super long line of people queuing for fresh ground Turkish coffee. It turned out to be Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi Maddumlari (say that 3 times fast), Istanbul's most famous coffee supplier. Of course I had to get my hands on some!

I use to buy so many knick knacks when I travel, but over the years, I just decided to refrain from accumulating useless... well, knick knacks! But being in Istanbul, I kinda' wish we bought a magic carpet and lamp so we could come back anytime we wanted :)