Ya gotta love ‘The market’!

The word Market conjures up images of long, lazy, warm summer days. They are about meeting friends, family and shopping for things you don’t need.

The market in Baynes Lake, near Jaffray, B.C. Canada, still marks the start of summer and busy days of swimming and lounging at Surveyors Lake with friends and kids.

Held on summer Sundays, the day begins with a Lions Club Pancake breakfast inside the old school, and eventually spills out onto the busy grounds with stalls filled with home made baking and preserves, artwork and photography, pottery and handi-crafts. You can find jewelry, home made remedies and creams, hand crafted wood products and fresh fruit from the Okanogan Valley. There is always something to take home as a memento of the day. And displaying his or her wares are the friendly faces of people I either knew, or am about to meet.

When my parent’s had their 50^th wedding anniversary the family got together on the Sunshine Coast for the first time in more than 20 years. We all ended up at the local outdoor market and the Lions Club Pancake breakfast. It was a different location, but there were those same faces.

Granville Island is the market I never miss on my trips to the coast. The huge commercial area, under the Granville Street Bridge, not only displays crafts and produce from all over the valley, but there is always a lively busker and a brewery!

The first time I travelled out of the country to Mexico, I found myself in a hot, noisy, aromatic (and I use that word politely), maze of a market in the middle of Puerto Vallarta. Besides all the knick-knacks for the tourists, I stumbled upon the butcher’s stall. There were men bustling about with full sized carcasses on their backs, and pig heads hanging from the rafters, drooling. The image is burnt in my memory as well as my nasal passage. It sealed my love of markets.

In Beijing I came across a series of great, white, tents in the downtown area under which was pretty much anything you could imagine. Pottery from dynasties long gone, Tibetan relics, fake fossils, paintings that were not what they seemed, snakes, spiders and food were all available if you could haggle using hand signals and just the right amount of cash.

Then there was the market close to the Forbidden City; not nearly so clean or inviting. This long, open alleyway is where people shop for half dead cats, turtles and even scorpions for human consumption. It is relatively disgusting!

While visiting my nephew and his wife in Bulgaria, going to the market was the highlight of our week! Along with obtaining the weeks supply of fresh veggies, we would haggle with the gypsies over the price of a hand made woolen sweater or a pair of knock off Nike's. Shopping was always topped off with a sausage in a fresh roll and a beer, no matter what the time of day!

Jackie took me to the Mutrah Market when I first arrived in Oman. It was my first time in a place so exotic, hot and humid, as it usually is in the Middle East, and I was totally taken aback by the Arabian atmosphere of the stone streets and smoky stalls. Set on the Arabian Sea and surrounded by towers, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Sinbad himself jump off one of the big Dhows in the harbor. Customers were covered from head to toe: women in black, men in white, unless they were westerners in shorts and a T-shirt, sweating and gawking around like idiots: like me!

The market sold curled toed shoes, great wooden carvings, headscarves, old maps and navigational stuff. There were barrels of henna and frankincense, and all shapes and sizes of sheesha pipes and the flavored tobacco. The place was a huge maze, in which I was to get lost more than once.

My favorite market in Oman was the Nizwa Fort. Situated in Hajar mountains, sitting precariously close to the edge of a wadi, the old walled city had tourist shops and vegetable markets that were open seven days a week. But on Fridays the goat auction attracted people from the mountains and neighboring villages. Everyone was either buying or selling fresh pomegranates, grapes, vegetables, fish and honey. They would browse through fabric, or the spice markets while others would buy and sell guns, leather goods, pottery, carpets and shoes. Fridays in the Middle East are always good days!

It was on a Saturday, this past weekend in Queensland, that Vas and I visited a far quieter place just outside of Cairns. It wasn’t as romantic as the market on water at the end of the street in Port Douglas or as trendy as the one in the mountains at Kuranda, but the Gordonville market proved to be another lovely day here in paradise and the scout moms served up a pretty good bacon and egg sandwich!

While all my travels have made my life a whole lot richer, I am pretty excited about heading back to Canada next week. The first thing I am going to do is head down to the Baynes Lake market and enjoy a great Canadian pancake breakky!