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The word bazaar passed from Urdu (an offshoot of Persian) to
the English language in the period when the British established their colony in India.
Necessarily, a bazaar is a market where miscellaneous items are sold. With the exception
of the Tsukiji fish market which, as its name suggests, specialises in the trade of fish
and other seafood, all the markets covered here are bazaars in the true sense of the word.
From the bizarre to the boring, they’ll have everything. But, apart from what the
stores stock, they find themselves here because without exception they’re all hubs of
hectic activity, bustling places that are bursting with colour. At all these places there
are three rules: a) bargain-bargain-bargain b) beware of pickpockets c) beware of antiques
(especially in Tsukiji!). And yes, take your camera along!
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Chatuchak
Weekend Market, Bangkok
| For marketing mayhem and complete
chaos just land up at Bangkok’s famous Chatuchak weekend market. It’s location
is the Chatuchak Park, which if nothing else is indisputably Huge! The park’s entire
35 acres, once the weekend arrives, becomes the site of the greatest affair that the world
of shopping hosts. For sheer scale, variety, punch and spice, for colour and taste and
smells and sights, for atmosphere – there isn’t another shopping event to beat
this one. |
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Just about everything and anything that may be sold lands up at Chatuchak
over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. From garden plants to fine benjarong pottery,
from incense sticks to smelly durian, caged birds to feather boas, little tuk-tuk models
to… well, bowls of steaming phad thai, the big and the small, things that
appeal and things that appal are all here. And to lead you to these goodies are
innumerable tiny winding lanes where makeshift stalls stand cheek by jowl and this huge
mass of humanity is on the move - browsing, bargaining, buying while at the same time
trying not to step on anybody’s toes.
The Chatuchak weekend market comes up on Saturday and Sunday at Chatuchak
Park. On Fridays it is open mainly for wholesale distribution but small shoppers
aren’t discouraged. The garden plants section is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays as
well. Which brings one to the issue of the ‘mapping of Chatuchak’. On paper the
market is actually divided into sections according to what they sell, but that’s only
on paper. In practise the good old disorder prevails and just as well. The method in this
particular madness works well for somebody who hasn’t turned up knowing exactly what
they want – so they get a fairly good idea of all that’s on offer without
trudging from one ‘section’ to another. Which is something that you certainly
don’t want to do under Bangkok’s famously hot sun.
The official timings are from 9 am to 6 pm (‘Garden Plants’ on
Wednesday and Thursday is open from 7 am to 6 pm). In fact the market comes up between 9
and 10 in the morning and shuts down around sundown. The best time to visit, keeping in
mind the heat and the crowds, is the morning. There are many ordinary and air conditioned
buses to suan jatujak or Chatuchak. The Skytrain though is by far the most
comfortable transport option: get down at Mo Chit station and head in the same direction
as the crowd - everybody’s headed for the market. It’s a 5-minute walk between
the station and the market.
For more information on Bangkok, click here.
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Thamel – Kathmandu
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In Thamel, a
sprawling locality of pubs and pool parlours, bookstores and budget hotels, t-shirt stalls
and teahouses, it’s impossible not to see why Kathmandu is hot. The life of the city,
this is where the young and the youthful are headed, where cars and cows share not only an
anatomical organ but also the road, where the hobos have settled down and where you can
spend hours and hours just finding the alley that your hotel is on. The thing about Thamel
isn’t that it sells anything special, but that it is special in spite of not
doing so!
Thamel lies at the very heart of Kathmandu. The neatest way to approach it is from
Tridevi Marg that comes down the front of the Hanuman Dhoka Palace. |
Coming due west down the road, you’ll find Thamel on your left. The
street side shops here offer only a sample of what waits inside. Take the alley going in
to find tattoo parlours and video shops, restaurants and trinket sellers, souvenir stalls
and traces of incense smoke.
You’ll find travel agents, information centres, and the Department of
Immigration office, which issues trekking permits is right at the Tridevi Marg entrance to
Thamel. The entry fee collection centre for the national parks (like Sagarmatha and
Annapurna) is just across the street from the Immigration Office. Thamel also has a good
amount of currency exchange bureaux.
Recommendations: The Rum Doodle Restaurant and it’s 40,000 ˝-Foot Bar,
which is named after a book and serves a cool cocktail; the Typical Nepali Restaurant 'cos
how gutsy is it to call a spade a spade; Pilgrim’s Book House – the earliest
travellers were pilgrims; Pumpernickel Bakery for the best croissants in town.
For more information on Kathmandu, click here.
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Waterlooplein
Flea Market – Amsterdam
| Today the
Waterloopleinmarkt is a place for second hand goods and antiques. But it wasn’t
always only that. Dating back to the 1880s, when two canals were filled in to make a
square, the Waterloo Square soon became the site of the Jewish Market. Through the early
1900s its reputation grew as a place where you could pick up just about anything. |
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Then came the Holocaust, the war and finally the formation of Israel in 1948,
which meant that the Jews of Amsterdam like most others in Europe left the scarred
continent for the homeland. Since then Waterloopleinmarkt or ‘the market on Waterloo
Square’ has never regained its original personality.
It became instead, as the post-war recovery of Europe progressed, a place
where people could buy furniture, books, clothes and other odds and ends at affordable
prices. In the 60s and 70s, the era of flower power and peace demos, Amsterdam rapidly
became the chosen destination of the ‘liberal generation’, and in Amsterdam,
Waterlooplein the chosen spot. Jewellery, pipes (to smoke ‘the peace’ in),
psychedelic clothes, funky junk and even things of real value like old books and antiques
found their way to the market, which was thriving once again.
Located behind the Town Hall, today the market has around 300 stalls selling
quite a bit of the stuff that it used to. If you’re looking for a good browse among
musty old books or for a funky artefact at a throwaway price or well, for furniture
because you’ve loved Amsterdam so much you’re settling down there (these things do
happen!), then head for the Waterloopleinmarkt.
The market is open six days a week (Sundays closed) from 10 am to 6 pm. It’s
served by trams and the subway. If you’re driving, you could park at the Town Hall
for a fee. If you’re on a boat tour down the Amstel, get off at the Jewish Museum
– it is a pleasant 2-minute walk from the market.
For more information on Amsterdam, click
here.
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Khan al Khalili - Cairo
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The Arabic word
for bazaar is souk, and the Khan al Khalili in Cairo is the largest in its
category. Famed for its atmosphere as much as the incredible variety and finesse of the
products sold in this vast market, the Khan al Khalili is visited by every traveller who
sets foot in Cairo. You needn’t be a shopaholic or even interested in souvenirs to
visit the Khan. In fact, you need only be interested in the sights of Cairo to find
yourself at the market, parts of which are as old as the city itself. When the market was first established,
spice was its most important commodity. Today the spice stores still exist but no longer
dominate the scene. |
Instead it is jewellery – made from bone, gold and finely crafted
Egyptian silver, perfumes, essential oils, Mouski glass hand-blown from recycled bottles,
waterpipes, silk carpets, kilims, paintings on papyrus and countless other
knickknacks that you’ll find here. The imposing entrance of the market yields unto a
maze of shops, narrow winding lanes and a riot of colours and sounds. People will be
chattering, metal workers will be hammering away at their creations, the workshops will be
bustling with activity and every once in a while you’ll hear the call of the muezzin
rising above the din. Khan al Khalili is at the heart of Islamic Cairo, one of the best
preserved older sections of the city and undoubtedly, among its most interesting.
The market is open every day of the week between 10 am and 10 pm; some shops
close a little earlier on Sundays. When you’re planning your itinerary, reserve about
3 hours for the souk. Because while you’re there, there’s every chance
that you’ll be tempted to sit down a while and survey the scene even as you sip cool
mint tea at one of the Khan’s many teahouses.
A word of caution: that very expensive papyrus with the very beautiful painting
on it may not be papyrus at all but the humble plantain. Don’t pay up unless you know
for sure that it is papyrus you’re being sold.
For more information on Cairo, click here.
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Chorsu Bazaar
– Tashkent
| The twin disasters
of an earthquake and Soviet architecture stripped Tashkent, the capital of the Central
Asian republic of Uzbekistan, of much of its traditional Islamic buildings. However, some
of it has survived in the old part of the city where sixteenth century madarsas,
mausoleums and mosques still stand. No traveller to Tashkent leaves this part of the town,
called eski shakhar for ‘Old City’, unvisited. |
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For it is here that Central Asia still inhabits Tashkent, otherwise a city
that is largely unremarkable. In the older area, which lies in the northwest section of
the city, not very far from the 16th century Kukkeldash Madarsa and the Kaffal
Shashi Museum is Chorsu Bazaar, ‘the market at the crossroad’.
Chorsu is a vast open-air market where you’ll find all the juicy wares
that dreams of Central Asia are made of. Carefully woven carpets sit next to glistening
ceramics, which in turn are neighbours of shiny watermelons, plump raisins and juicy
apricots. Chorsu also has a large number of spice vendors from whom you can pick up an
unusual but guaranteed-to-please gift for friends back home. There are shoe stores and
handicraft shops, stalls that sell traditional clothes and row after row of stalls selling
dopys, the traditional Uzbek men’s cap. You’ll also find many choykhana
or ‘tea stalls’ where you can sit down to hot tea and juicy shashlyk
kebabs.
Chorsu stands at the junction of Navoi Street and Samarkand Darvoza Street. Like
most markets in Tashkent it is open every day of the week between 9 in the morning and 7
in the evening.
For more information on Tashkent, click
here.
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Tsukiji Market
– the world’s largest fish bazaar – Tokyo
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Incredible as it
may sound Japan with 2.08% of the world’s population consumes 15% of the world’s
catch of seafood (truly, no exaggeration). Is it any wonder then that the world’s
largest fish and seafood market has its home here? Welcome to the land of delicate cuts of
sashimi and delicious sushi, welcome to Tsukiji, welcome to Tokyo! |
The activity begins at 2 in the morning when trucks loaded with the previous
evening’s catch roll in with their cargo. Licensed wholesalers take stock of the
fish, sorting it out according to grades, weights, freshness and what not. At about 4:30
am the arrival of the middlemen means the action begins to hot up. There are two kinds of
middlemen – jobbers who are individual or small-scale operators and ‘market
participants’ who represent large processing firms or big retailers. They examine the
day’s ware and inspect the quality of the stock before trading actually begins. At
about 5 am, by when the sky is well and truly bright in the Land of the Rising Sun, the
first bell goes off. The auction at the Tsukiji market is really not that different from
the trading floor of a stock market, the notes of the bell triggering off frenetic scenes
that one usually associates with the floor of the Nasdaq. The best prices are reserved for
the tuna that has high fat content and makes for good succulent sashimi. Trading carries
on till 8 in the morning, with a batch going off after each phase is concluded. Tsukiji
also has a warehouse for frozen fish, which are usually purchased by the processing
companies. The fresh fish heads out towards restaurants, markets and stalls in the
suburbs, sushi bars and even to private kitchens.
More than 30,000 people weave their way through Tsukiji everyday, many of these
housewives who have the time to come out till the market to catch a pretty bargain.
Tourists too make their way here to get a feel of the energy, and to take in the sights
and sounds. And to thereafter breakfast on noodles or sushi at the stalls nearby. About
two and a quarter million kilo of seafood are sold at Tsukiji everyday – cuts of
tuna, varieties of seaweed, eel, red snapper, sea cucumbers, cockles and jellyfish, squid,
barracuda and octopus. Just about anything that’s ever been in the sea and has some
edible potential lands up at Tsukiji!
Tsukiji is located on the Sumida-gawa River, very close to where the origins of
Tokyo lie; the city may be a mega metropolis today but its beginnings are moored in a
small fishing village called Edo. The market is open till 10 every morning but Sundays,
some Wednesdays and on national holidays. It lies south of Ginza (Tokyo’s popular
shopping area) and quite close to the Rikyu Gardens. The Hibiya Line of the subway
connects Tsukiji with city centre; get off at the Tsukiji Eki station. You can get to
Tsukiji by taxi too. For coming away, we suggest the double-decker river buses called suijo-basu
that ply the Sumida River.
For more information on Tokyo, click here.
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Camden Markets - London
| Perhaps the most chaotic that London
ever gets, barring an Arsenal/Spurs match, the Camden markets are London’s answer to
Asia’s bazaars. The northwestern suburb of Camden Town has not one but six open-air
and enclosed markets - each specialising in a particular kind of merchandise and each with
an atmosphere of its own. |
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- The Camden Stables Market, (1)
named so because it was where the horses used to pull the canal barges were housed (the
Horse Hospital is now a part of the market), is the place to head for if you want
unmentionable anatomical parts pierced, are looking for antiques, period clothing and
other cool collectibles or for international cuisine. Most of the shops here are open all
days of the week from 10 am to late in the evening.
- The Camden Lock Market (2) lies
just south of the Stables Market. This is where you head if you’re looking for Stella
McCartney’s pręt line, herbal oils, new age books, crafts, jewellery and arts. This
is the oldest of the markets, and most of its 250 shops, workshops and stalls are open on
all days of the week from 10 am to 6 pm.
- Also open all days of the week are the 200 odd
stalls of what used to be called the Buck Street Market and is now known as the Camden
Market (4). This is the place to head towards if you’re looking for
clothes, footwear, accessories or jewellery. From the way-out to the totally in, these
stores have the best of London fashion. Most stores are open from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm.
- Across the Camden High Street from Camden (Buck
Street) Market is the Inverness Street Market (5). Stalls of fresh fruits
and plump vegetables, a tremendous variety of restaurants and all-English pubs, stores
that sell bargain clothing and footwear make Inverness a mix of many pleasant things. The
shops here are open from 8:30 am to 5 pm on all days of the week; pubs and restaurants of
course, are open until later.
- The Canal Market (3), across the
High Street from the Camden Lock Market, is the only one of the Camden Markets that opens
only for the weekend. On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, between 9:30 am and 6:30 pm, the
150 stalls and shops here offer gift items, collectibles, music records, clothing and
jewellery. It’s also a good place to go if you want a takeaway meal - there are
several take away counters for foods from around the globe.
Running through the length of Camden is Camden
High Street, which eventually becomes the Chalk Farm Road. Lined on both sides with
shops and eating places, this mile long road is links all the other markets together. Get
down at the Camden Town Underground station (6) at one end of the road, take a day,
make your way through London’s most interesting and vibrant ‘bazaar’, and
in the evening having eaten, drunk and shopped the day away, climb into the Tube at the
other end of town, from the Chalk Farm Underground station (7). The shops on Camden
High Street are open from 10 am. Some begin to down shutters around 6 in the evening. As
for the many pubs, bars and restaurants - the night is still young and the best is yet to
come!
Camden Town of yore, all farmland and a few wayside
inns to break the monotony was the domain of wild highwaymen. In 1791 an effort led by the
then earl of Camden resulted in the development of the town. A canal was built to link it
to the Grand Union Canal junction at Paddington, and as a consequence Camden had found a
waterway link with the Thames. A subsequent train link meant that the boring poor cousin
would be transformed into a part of the bustling metropolis of London. By the end of the
19th century Camden was already flourishing as a market town. It had attracted people
fleeing the scourge of the Irish famine; in the post war era after 1945 it became the home
of Greek Cypriots and later of the migrant Bangladeshi community. As happens with most
localities that envelope a happy mix of many communities and cultures, the cosmopolitan
nature of Camden meant that it soon became the area of choice for avant garde artists to
set up studio, a hub for those who danced to a tune all of their own.
The Camden Town of the 1990s and 2000s is the home
of more than a thousand shops and stalls, of pubs, bars, theatres, hotels and cinemas. In
the evenings the pink neon of shop signs colours the area, during the day the activity of
shoppers and casual strollers fills it. It’s difficult to find parking in Camden so
we recommend that you use public transport instead. Buses, coaches and the Underground
link Camden with Central London and other suburbs. The Waterbus service, which plies
during spring and summer, does trips at brief intervals from Little Venice to Camden Lock.
For more information on London,
click here.
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Alkmaar Cheese Market - Netherlands
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Say cheese. Talk cheese, breathe
cheese, dream cheese- and eat cheese, of course. And if you're as mad about cheese as all
that, then travel cheese too. To the Alkmaar Cheese Market in the Netherlands, the world's
largest cheese market. Just about 38 km from Amsterdam, the town of Alkmaar is a small,
fairly non-descript town which wakes up with a bang every summer Friday to celebrate
cheese in a big way.
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With Netherland's penchant for `milk's leap to
immortality', it's hardly surprising that they'd have specialised markets where only
cheese is sold. And this one is it- a cheese market which has been around for the past 600
years. All through the summer, Fridays see Alkmaar's main square come alive with a cheese
market where the local produce is bought and sold. The Cheese Market is flagged off at
6.45 in the morning by a `Cheese Father'- a master of ceremonies, so to say- and over the
next three hours, the cheeses are brought into the square to be arranged. By 10, the
square gets full to the brim with rows of wooden trestles and racks, crowded with
innumerable golden wheels of Dutch cheese. At the stroke of 10, a bell is rung and the
action starts- the trading of the cheeses.
Till noon, cheeses are sniffed, tasted, admired and haggled over. A sale is concluded by a
`high-five' between the buyer and the seller. Cheese porters dressed in ceremonial white
uniforms with jaunty beribboned straw hats on their head wheel the cheeses to the Waag,
the medieval weighhouse next to the square, where the weighing happens. Cheeses, once
weighed, are packed into waiting lorries to be taken away, to land up in shops and
restaurants, pubs and hotels across the country.
This isn't the place you'll get to buy much cheese- but samples are passed around for
tasting, and the entire atmosphere is too cheesy to miss. If you're really keen on buying
some cheese, there are plenty of shops around town where you can indulge.
The Alkmaar Cheese Market is held every Friday between April and September, in the main
square of the town. The action starts at 6.45 in the morning, but most people start
arriving only by 10, and things begin to wind up by 12 noon.
For more information on the Netherlands,
click
here.
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