Bizarre

We had local vendors put on a bazaar, at which they sold various, well, junk. They sold stacks and stacks of Saddam dollars, and had some sets of various bills and coins. Turning something worthless into something of value, I guess. They had silver and gold chains and jewelry, lots of rings (of a different style than you susally see in the States), carpets, blankets, and the mother-lode of Haji DVDs. All kinds of DVDs. I saw one DVD with all 4 Indiana Jones movies on it.

It's easy to tell the bootlegged DVDs, by the packaging. However, I same some "boxed sets" that looked just like the ones they sell in the PX or back home. I was wondering about whether they were Haji movies, or legit ones. They had several boxed sets related to certain actors. They had a Sharon Stone boxed set, and a Nacholas Cage set, for example. I looked at the Cage boxed set, and it included National Treasure. I can't belive that is out in legit DVD already, so I'm guessing they are Haji bootlegs. Still, they ask full price for them.

Our GIs aren't used to haggling over price, so they tend to pay the full freight. It seems to me you can take the soldier of out the mall, but you can't take the mall out of the soldier. These kids have pretty good income, and nothing much to spend it on here, so merchandice, crappy though it was, was flying out of the door.

Before the bazaar opened up, they took explosive sniffing dogs through all the stuff. Each vendor had a soldier in the stall keeping an eye on things.