Sharjah- Day 9

Today, our friend Sulaimon came back to take us out.

We left our hotel around noon ( I had been reading and writing all morning of course!) and cruised around a bit and then went to lunch. It was a decent buffet, nothing to write home about.

After that, I made my one request of the day, which was to sit somewhere and drink some American style coffee. Arabic coffee is ok, but I don't like to drink a lot of it. It doesn't seem like it's been roasted long enough and the taste is tangy and bitter. We had some coffee, laughed about how much all teenagers are the same EVERYWHERE, shopped for a minute ( I got my Sheik Zayed T-shirt. YESSSS!!!), and left.

Next we hit the historic district of Sharjahm and let me tell you, this is where the REAL shopping is. Like Sulaimon so sagely put it, "stuff in a mall you can buy anywhere, but thiese things are unique." Well, that's sort of what he said.

The first thing I looked at were some woven wool rugs. I like the kind that are about 1.5' x 3' and the first vendor spread a half dozen beautiful rugs out for me to choose. When I asked him how much for one, he came back with 350 AED (Arab Emirates Dirham), or roughly $95. Abargain in the states, but WAY too high. Sulaimon admonished the guy and he told me to make an offer. How could I? I had no idea what they were really worth. Sulaimon told me we could get them for AT MOST 150 AED, or $40, so when the guy came back with 200 AED we just walked away.

If you've never had to haggle for prices before, I can tell you it can be heartbreaking, but you must be firm. It also helps to have someone with you who knows what stuff is actually worth. The next shop had all sorts of brass, copper, pewter, silver and other types of jewelry and trinkets. There were swords, rifles, tea-pots, rings which bore the seal of some animal or Arabic phrase, necklaces, bracelets, and more stuff I just can't remember. There were ancient Arabic vinyl records too, which I was eyeing greedily.

He wanted to have us look at his rugs, and having heard the last guy try to ruin us, he sarted at 200 AED. He wouldn't come down below 150, so we walked off again. They tried SOOOO hard, I swear I thought I was killing his children.

At this point I must give all praise and honor to my friend Sulaimon and his masterful bartering abilities. I did pretty good, but without him to give me a price baseline, and to haggle a few more Dirhams out of the merchants, I could now be a poor poor man. Instead I'm am a slightly poorer man with a lot of interesting stuff. Huzzah!!!

Next came some more stuff, which I can't write about here because it involves secret gift detials that should not be divulged. All I can say is that this place is probably the coolest shopping experience I've had in this land of shops and malls. In fact, I think that as a tourist, Sharjah is a cool place to visit. It is much more down to earth than Dubai, has really beutiful mosques and other architecture, has a nice lake front Corniche (street by the water), decent shopping malls and hotels (gotta have those), and a really nice fine arts and historical area. One thing of note is that there are realtively few Arabs around here; most of the people are foreign workers--Iranis, Bangladeshis, Indo-Pak, and Filipino. Another thing to note is that like Dubai, the city is completely under construction, and if I came back in a year, I doubt I would recognize very much of it.

Let's see.... after this time killer it was full on rush hour, and that is a very very bad thing in the Emirates. You have three choices: wait in it, wait it out, or go the opposite direction. We went the opposite direction of everyone else and came to another mall type area with a bunch of restaurants. We ate some stuff, and then called it a night.

Now I'm here typing this, and soon I will be done. In the morning we are off to the emirate of Fujiera to see our friend Hammoudi and prepare for his wedding feast.

In Sha Allah!