International Fair

I was going to introduce pottery town aka Gharyan today, but since I went to Tripoli's International Fair this week, I thought I'd slip that in first.

The Fair is one of those things I'm rather surprised could ever get organised here. It's really a business fair - a large range of businesses, organised by country, display their various goods in the hope of tempting Libyan importers to start bringing them in. But since some also sell to the public, and there's not a huge array of things to do here, it's a popular drawcard for locals too. I have been told this is only the fourth fair, but a Turkish brochure called it the 36th fair (could have been a long break in the embargo years).

We were there on only the second day of the fair (it runs for two weeks, I think), so they were still getting their act together: here's the main gate, still locked forty minutes after the fair was supposed to open - we eventually walked in through a service gate, and the main gate stayed locked all day. The other noticable thing was that quite a few stalls still had no goods to display, because their stuff had been held up in Customs. So apparantly the Pakistan stall was excellant last year, but this year only three or four of the stalls were open (selling lots of sandstone stuff).

This is a general shot of the fair grounds - kind of like the Royal Show grounds when the Royal Show isn't on. Countries include Morocco, Syria, USA, China, India, Pakistan, Tunesia, Malta, Austria, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Iraq (spotted: lots of posters of Saddam with a thick noose Photoshopped around his neck), Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and so on. No Australia, though previously we've had a small presence. As good as all those countries sound, most of them aren't selling comsumer products and none of them are providing samples of national food (much to my disappointment).

Last year, I went into the India pavilion, and it was far too busy for me, but this year it was quieter - I managed to get this (somewhat gaudy) bedspread set, sorry about the photo quality. They also sell a lot of the small tables and cushion covers now available in the Medina (so the concept works, some Libyan businesses do choose to start importing the products), except slightly cheaper.

Here's a photo of my Morrocan lamp, made of some variety of animal skin (it's sitting on a table available from the India pavilion, except I got it at Souk Thalat, the big housewear market). This year, the Moroccan pavilion didn't have these at all, so I'm glad I got my pair last year. Again, you can find something similar in the Medina, though not as large as this one usually.

Last year, there was a whole row of Libyan exhibitors with some unusual metal ornaments, but not this year. However, some of the Egyptian products you can sometimes find in the Medina were available at some back-stalls (not affliated with any particular country, purely for the public visitors, someone's got the right idea...).

Emergency: I need a million dollars. Heh. Seriously, thank you to my Vegemite volunteers, much appreciated.

Reading: The World and Art of Shakespeare...I picked it up for $1 from a library book sale before I left Oz. It was published in 1967. The first half was a struggle, but the second half finally gets into analysing the plays, which is filling in some gaps in my education.

Watching: Season 3 Doctor Who (oh, Doctor, you big fat flirt). Documentaries, including one on the sport of spider fighting (it's big in Japan).

Knitting: nothing, though I plan to start a headband later today.

Up next: Pottery Town, I promise.