Country Counting

I’m Terry and I love to travel.

How to shop for gold in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar — or any other bazaar, for that matter

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Buying gold in a foreign country may seem a bit daunting, but believe me it’s about the most fun I can imagine.

Two summers ago, I came down with a terrible case of kidney stones when Kelly and I were in Istanbul. I had planned to buy some 22 kt. earrings for a friend and in the middle of bargaining at the Grand Bazaar, I had an attack and had to spend the next two days in bed.

On our recent trip to Egypt, I saw that my flight was going through Istanbul and I thought, “well, why not stop there for a day or two and get those earrings?”

By the time the trip came around, I had a list of items friends and family wanted and a few items for myself.

The Grand Bazaar is huge. Take your time, look, shop and bargain!

Here are my six tips for buying gold.

1. Be ready to spend some time shopping. This is not a quick in and out. You will need to wander around the bazaar – which is huge — and look in windows to see what you want.

2. Bargaining is required. You are not going to pay the price they first quote. You need to chat, smooze and haggle. Don’t be intimidated.  It’s really fun and a great way to get to know the culture of the bazaar. You will find some nice folks, some sleezy salesmen and some people you will want to come back to trip after trip. And yes, they are mostly men.

3. When you find something you like, ask for one of the store’s cards, have them weigh the piece and give you a price. Write that on the card and take a picture of the piece. Then you can shop from store to store and compare what you like. All the pricing is based on weight, no matter what they tell you. So use what you learn as you shop to compare equal weights.

4. Find out the karat gold. You’ll find 14 kt, 18 kt, 22 kt and 24 kt. Of course prices will get more expensive as the karat goes up. So compare like to like.

5. When bargaining, be kind, firm and smile. It is a bit of a dance and the sellers enjoy the game. So work them.

6. Don’t limit your shopping to the main corridors of the bazaar. Some of the best bargains are at the smaller stores located off the main drag. I found a great “wholesale” chain guy there. I had been shopping for a chain in several of the bigger stores and finally when I couldn’t find anything, I was referred to the chain guy. My salesman took me directly to the store and I found what I wanted – a 40” chain — for about a third what I would have paid in the States.

I had a full day at the bazaar, came back to the hotel and texted my sister a pix of what I bought. She saw the chain and said, “was it pricey?” I said, “no, do you want one?” And back to the bazaar I went to buy one for her. When I got there, I knew I’d never find the chain guy on my own, so I went back to the original store and asked them to take me to the chain guy. They did and another purchase was made.

An interesting aside, while shopping for gold, I found two miniature paintings I bought for $200. I asked the shopkeeper for his card. Since he had just moved into his shop, he didn’t have any. So I gave him my email address so he could send me contact information. When I got back to the hotel between runs, he had emailed me and told me I overpaid him by $50. (I had given him crisp $50 bills and one had stuck to another.)

He wanted to give me my $50 back.

How often does that happen? So this guy is a keeper and I eventually found my way back to his store and got my $50 bill back.

What do you do when your holiday implodes?

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I knew from the very first communication with the travel agent in California, that things would not go smoothly.

Emails weren’t answered quickly. Messages were cryptic and poorly written. Price quotations changed.

But there were few other companies that handled French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname so I committed. I paid for a week with my niece, Kelly, and we scheduled the trip.

We had planned a year in advance, so we had plenty of time for all the formalities – or so we thought!

Then we were told we needed a visa to go to Suriname – just a month before our trip. No problem? Except we were on another trip which needed a passport and weren’t able to send our passports to the travel agent until two weeks before our trip to the Guyanas. They told us there would be no problem. Two days before our trip, we still had not received our passports. They assured me I would get the passports “today.” That day, our road was being paved, so my darling husband sat in his car at the end of our street, patiently waiting all day for the Federal Express truck to arrive. It never came.

The next day, the passports arrived – two hours before I needed to be at the airport.

Strike one.

After meeting up with Kelly in Miami, we got a phone call from the travel agent. There were “strikes” in French Guiana and we would have to spend the night in Guadeloupe and arrive in French Guiana a day late.

(Par for the course, our travel agent never explained what the “strikes” were. We found out by searching news sites on the web. The people of French Guiana were blocking roads and stopping airport traffic in their efforts to get the French government to help the country with more social programs and overall assistance.)

OK, we thought. We can deal. Air France said they would cover our meals and hotel and bussed us to a hotel on a beautiful piece of coastline. When we saw the room, our hearts dropped. A dump. When we asked to get lunch, we were told by a surly desk clerk that lunch was over and we had to wait until dinner at seven. A sympathetic bartender gave us a mini cup of peanuts to tide us over until dinner.

Dinner was a dried up piece of fish and lots of starches – not what we had hoped for. But as my Mom used to say, “it filled the stomach.”

Of course we had to get up at 4:45 am to get to the airport in time for our flight to French Guiana. Not a morning person, I was not happy.

On arriving in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana, our trusty travel agent lived up to our expectations. No driver to pick us up.

Strike two.

There were a total of eight passengers on our flight from Guadeloupe to French Guiana!

I went to the information desk at the airport and asked if they knew anyone who could drive us to our hotel – an hour away in Kourou. Luckily we found a driver and for the tidy sum of $240, he drove us to our hotel, where fortunately we had reservations.

But all our other activities had not been scheduled.

Strike three.

We were through with the travel agent and solicited the help of the hotel’s wonderful manager, who helped us schedule our activities and even found us a driver to take us two hours to the Suriname border, to make the crossing by river in a rickety boat that was held together with duct tape and a wish and a promise.

Our driver, who spoke no English, just French, crossed the river with us and found a driver to take us to Paramaribo, Suriname, another two-hour drive.

Kaieteur Falls in Guyana is the longest vertical drop falls in the world!

In Paramaribo, hearing nothing further from our trusty travel agent, Kelly figured out restaurants and a walking tour of the city. We hired a car to drive us to the airport for our flight to Guyana and from there had a wonderful visit.

After all these frustrations, what did we learn?

  1. If you have a bad feeling about a travel agent, run as fast as you can. Even if you have to plan the trip on your own, you’ll be better off than worrying about him and how you will deal with him when you get home and want your money back.
  2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Everyone we asked, was helpful and kind and we wound up doing quite well on our own.
  3. Be sure you pay for any tours with a reputable credit card. Luckily, I paid through American Express and have disputed the travel agent charge. I am hopeful, I will get my money back.
  4. When you are sent to a hotel you didn’t select, don’t be afraid to inspect the room and leave if it isn’t up to your standards. We should have done that when we got to the Guadeloupe hotel. I would have gladly paid for any place else!
  5. Use every recourse you have. This particular travel agent used the Traveler’s Century Club mailing list. I copied the president of the club on my letter detailing all the travel agent’s failings.
  6. Document every expense in case you need to battle further with the travel company.
  7. Hire a visa expeditor to get your visa if there is a tight timeframe for acquiring your visa.
  8. Remember, every trip is an adventure. The bad things that happen make the best stories after you get home.

 

If seeing the pyramids of Egypt is on your bucket list, now is the time to go!

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Five-star hotels for under $200, taxi rides for $3 and metro fares for six cents. Egypt is cheap, fun and the people are friendly.

My niece, Kelly, and I just returned from a week in Egypt and I gotta say — Egypt is on sale and it is safe and easy to get around. Here is what you need to know.

First, look for cheap airline tickets. Kelly and I got ours for free with our frequent flyer miles, but she originally found a Delta fare for $600 from Atlanta to Cairo. So getting there is a deal if you watch the airlines carefully.

I’ve learned that when traveling to a poorer country, I like to stay in a nice hotel to escape the craziness of the city. I found a rate at the Ritz Carlton for $150 per night – which was a steal! Use your government rate, AAA or senior rate and you can find a bargain. The people at the Ritz were kind, helpful and friendly. Food at a 5-star hotel is usually expensive – but not the case at the Ritz. We ate breakfast for free (included in the above rate) and lunch with drinks and dessert ran $25 for both of us. All was served in a beautiful setting overlooking the Nile River. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

Getting around was an even better bargain. It cost 20 to 30 Egyptian pounds to go just about anywhere in the city ($2 US). The most we paid for a taxi was $9 to get to the airport. And when we decided to ride the metro from the old city back to our hotel, it was a staggering 6 cents apiece. Yes, that is cents, not dollars. It was quite an experience to ride the metro and only when we got off did Kelly tell me they had women only cars. I would have loved to ride again and get in the women only car – just to people watch!

We walked a good bit, too. From our hotel it was an easy walk to see the Nile at night. We were never harassed or bothered and we were two obviously foreign women alone in the city. Never a problem.

If you are going to take taxis, be sure to have your bellman tell the taxi driver where you are going and have a map with you to point to locations you want to visit – or better yet, have your concierge write out your destinations in Arabic, so there is no confusion. If worse comes to worse, there is generally a person around who speaks English and can tell your driver where you want to go.

We spent a day seeing the pyramids and had a fabulous time. We hired a guide through the concierge at the hotel and requested a woman. (We always request women and have found them to be more in tune to social and women’s issues and better guides – except the one we had in Beirut – but that’s another story for another time.) We paid $140 for the day with a guide, driver and car. We paid our guide about $3 for the two of us to ride a camel to the pyramid overlook and it was well worth it. Our camel guide took pictures of us atop our camels with the pyramids in the background. Priceless.

For museums, see Kelly’s blog about all the museums we found. They were great and it was fun to find them, too! My favorite part of our museum trek was getting caught behind fences near one museum and being rescued by two workers – who drove us around the fences and to the museum entrance – all without them speaking English. Kelly gave me one of her “are you sure about this AT?” looks, but I knew they were well-intentioned, and off we went!

Get that schedule out and plan your trip. You’ll have a great time, you don’t have to be in a group to be safe and this trip will not break the bank. So go already!

Of the 125 I’ve visited, here are my three favorite countries

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I’ve been to 125 countries so far and a good friend recently asked me, “what are your top countries?” So, here you go. These are my favorites — so far!

Cambodia. There aren’t many places in the world where you can still visit inexpensively, stay in wonderful historic hotels and meet people who are kind, joyful and friendly. This is Cambodia. I’ve been there four times and each time, I came away in awe of the people. When you consider all they have been through (think Khmer Rouge) and the suffering they have experienced, it is unbelievable that they have kept their welcoming and kind spirit.

What do you do there? In Siem Reap, tour Angkor Wat. Hire a cyclo driver to get you around. Go out for a morning tour. Wear good walking shoes. Come back to your hotel for lunch, take a rest and then go out in the afternoon for another tour. You can easily spend 2-3 days exploring the ruins and you can still get close to everything, with very little roped off or off limits. Food is delicious. We love the Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor, a historic hotel that has lovely rooms, a beautiful bar and several restaurants. Spend time roaming the streets and buy some of the beautiful crafts (scarfs, clothing, linens, pottery, lacquerware).

Turkey. It took me a while to make my way to Turkey, but I fell in love with this country the minute I arrived. Istanbul is geographically gorgeous – located in the most scenic spot with the Black Sea to the north and the Marmara Sea to the south. The monuments, mosques, churches and architecture are spectacular. But the shopping here is world class. I am going back in two months, simply to spend a day at the Grand Bazaar on my way home from Egypt. (I had a kidney stone attack while there two summers ago and missed my day of shopping. But that is a story for another blog.) Wonderful food, charming little hotels and lots of cobbled streets to explore. In the center of Turkey, Cappadocia is other-worldly. This region looks like the surface of the moon – covered with painted caves and fairy chimneys. It is a must-see area. We stayed in a cave hotel that was fabulous. I haven’t explored the rest of Turkey, but if you have the time, plan for 2-3 weeks there. You won’t regret it.

Vietnam. Ken and I went to Vietnam for the first time right after Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton made their first visit to Vietnam in 2000– the first visit of any president since the Vietnam War. We spent time in Hanoi and Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City as it is called now. In Hanoi, stay at the Metropole Hotel. Located close to the city center lake, it is a charming hotel with old and new sections. We’ve stayed in both and love them equally. The hotel has beautiful restaurants and friendly and helpful staff who can arrange tours and shopping expeditions to the many shops. Most of the people in Vietnam now are under 30, so the war is part of their history but not their personal experience.

Our first guide in Hanoi was a former Viet Cong soldier. When I asked him how he felt seeing all these Americans in his country after he had fought us, he was direct. “I was 17 when I went to war. My parents didn’t want me to go and I didn’t want to go. I welcome you with open arms,” he said. Who wouldn’t tear up at that?