Khan el-Khalili

Khan el-Khalili is the epitome of the greatest bazaar ever, in fact I would call it the mother of all bazaars. Well, it's not that I have been to many bazaars in my lifetime since I am not a shopper anyway. One thing for sure, whatever little I have seen, I was very impressed.

I went there without knowing much about the history of Khan but I have since found out that it was established in 1382. It used to be called Turkish Bazaar during the Ottoman times.

Due to time restriction, I was only there for about 2 hours. I am not sure exactly how big Khan is, but I believe that I have not even seen 25% of it. If anyone thinks that Petaling Jaya is impressive, Khan is at least 100 times the size of Petaling street.

Its narrow streets with tiny shops are amazingly disorganisedly organised into different sections of goods. Of course as you enter, you see shops selling mostly souveniers but as you dwelve deeper, you come across goldsmiths, brass, sheesha, copper lanterns, clothes, spices etc. Towards the end of the bazaar which I never made it to, that section contained shops selling household fares mainly for locals. I find it very romantic and most beautiful for photograph taking.

I did not buy much since goods there were more expensive compared to other non touristy parts of Cairo. When I was in Khan, security was very tight ever since the bombing a couple of weeks ago. This must have attributed to the lower than usual number of tourists in Khan. In fact, I thought there were more shopkeepers standing on the street (trying to woo shoppers), compared to tourists themselves. And since that same types of shops are lined up next to each other, the shopkeepers had to say alot to attract your attention. Of course because I am Oriental, I was constantly badgered with "ni hao" (how are you?) followed by "wo ai ni" (I love you). Then some would ask me if I were Japanese. When I told one shopkeeper that I was from Malaysia, he said "apa khabar" (how are you?) and proceeded to tell me that he knows Abdullah Badawi. An American friend who was with me, always got the Obama comment whenever she told them that she came from America.

It could be a little bit irritating when some of the shopkeepers kept pestering us as we walked along the shops. In fact I found out that it is was something they would not dare do to the local women. It was really like going into a bar, and be bombarded with 100 different pick-up lines all at the same time!

Two very memorable ones were:-

• "I may not know what you are looking for, but whatever you are looking for, I have it for you."


• "I will kill my wife for you."

The second one was said to my American friend, Rebecca. I could not stop laughing when I heard that one. hahaha...