Second Hand Flea Market- best way to recyle/reuse unwanted stuff

Hi peeps, as you know since long time I am on mission to find out diffrent ways to recycle/reuse unwanted stuff at my home. The ultimate goal is to divert our waste from landfill! And not only me, but many people living in UAE face same situation. Some of my friends told me that while goining to vacation in their homecountry they carry their unwanted luggage (which is in good condition) like clothes, electronics, children toys etc and give away to needy poeple. I also know many people who go to labour camps in UAE and give away their unwanted stuff. But you can't give away ladies purses and shoes in these labour camps!

There are many charities in UAE where you can give away all your stuff right from clothes, books to medicines, spectacles. I have discussed these charities in UAE in older posts.
If one has enough time and creativity, reusing unwanted stuff to create something useful is also a very good idea, I have dedicated a lengthy post for this subject. Would love to let you know more, as I find anything new.
You find recylers for papers, plastic waste in UAE (find locations in past post). But we can not really throw readable books to these recycler, I would say it's insane and of course non-sustainable. When it could be reused, then there is no point in wasting resources to recycle it.
The yard sales concept it not much matured in UAE yet. Also there are also not big permanent second hand marketshere in UAE, like chor bazars India .

Many people use sites like souq.com, dubizzle.com or newpaper classified to resell their unwanted stuff in UAE. There are others like Take my junk, to help us clear our house from unwanted stuff.
But just recently I found out a very funfilled as well as sustainable way to recycle my unwanted good stuff, Second hand Flea market!

"One man's waste is other man's treasure" I really like this sentence, and how it is so true we experienced in this flea market. Many people who want to buy some stuff at cheap, they visit this very popular Dubai Flea market, which is organized every month by Green Spot Entertainment. It is organised in Al Safa park and Uptown Mirdiff. Checkout their website, http://www.dubai-fleamarket.com/when_and_where.aspx

If you want to sell items they provide you a stall (tables, chairs) at a cost. It's not cheap, but if you have bulk things in good condition to get rid off, it's good. You not only get back your cost of setting up stall but you also earn money!

Many times it happens that people are not ready to give away their unwanted stuff like that, for which they paid a good amount of money. Looking at shopping tempatations in Dubai, we all face this situation, where we bought some expensive high end/branded stuff may be clothes, which are in very good condition but are not fitting now. As we can't let it go like that, we keep it and increase our luggage. But when we can sell these kind of unwanted stuff which is in good condition, we don't feel that bad. And good thing is somebody else, who can't afford to spend high price for these things, can have it in cheap.

Not just that I personally started feeling better to buy some stuff second hand, if we want to try 1st time than buying new. Movie and music records are my favourite second hand things. As my choice I will never buy any personal second hand item for hygene reason but I would love to find some antique or decorative artistic items in such markets at a good price.

Few days back I had a stall at this Dubai Flea market along with my friends. A week before the market we organised all our unwanted stuff (items stricktly in good condition) and decided prices (as low as possible). I am purposely specifying items which we sold in this market, Kid's toys, shoes, bags, elctronics/electrical appliances, utensiles, clothes, lamps, books, movies, jwellery, accessaries.

The response was very good. Many taxi drivers, workers bought many items from us in very cheap rate. Our intent for this market was not earning money. But we wanted to sincerely get rid of our unwanted but good stuff in return of some small amout. As example, selling our unwanted branded shirts at 5dhs was definitely a win-win situation for both seller and buyer. By profession none of us sold anything, but selling our stuff in this market was a great fun. Sometimes we also gave away stuff like that. The market was huge with hundreds of stalls under the trees in Safa park and there was a big crowd to buy stuff since early morning.
The second hand flea market was very good, no guilt, sustainable business. You get  satisfaction by sort of recycling your stuff by selling it somebody for low cost. And the buyers are happy to find good affordable deals and they reuse your unwanted stuff happily.

Guys waiting for some innovative sustainble ways to reuse/recycle from you. Till then Happy Reusing & Recycling!

Camping on Beach and Encounter with Blanford's Fox!

Before the weather gets hotter here, few weeks back we camped on one of the pristine beach in Oman on Musandum side. I have written before about the same scienic journey from Ras Al Khaima to Musandum. There is clean blue arabian gulf on one side of the road and mountains on other side, the road is artistically curvey. This time we did not go upto Musandum, we drove upto just before Khasab inspecting each and every beach on the way. Many beaches were already occupied leaving no space for us to camp. So finally after sunset we settled with our tent on a beach after Bukha.

A walk with bare feet on beach, with waves washing our feet and taking sand beneath it; was very soothening.

We lit up our barbeque with least possible fuel and lot of hand excercise to provide enough wind for lit coal to lit up surrounding coals. The smell of barbeque worked as apetizer for us, I love the food cooked on coal. After our very tasty dinner on beach next to our tent, we relaxed and watched the stars and heard the wind and sea. Apart from street lights it was very dark, seeing bright stars in this away from city area is an experience. It is fantastic how our sky looks diffrent every hours in night, the locations of stars change and rising of next stars. And then suddenly we saw our favorite arabian fox swiftly passing on beach, definitely looking for his pray. The mountians are so close to beach that for these nocternal aminals who stay in mountains it is very easy to climb down the moutains and look for food either fish or turtle eggs etc on beach. The fox was looking white in dark, but with it's unique long ears and long brushy tale it was easy to recognise them. Of course not to forget we have experience of seeing them in same area previously :).

These foxes are so quick and calm that we never hear any sound as they come and they pass swiftly so again this time we could not capture them in our camera. But the experince was thrilling for us. With this encounter of wild life we went to sleep happily in our tent. We had finished all our food and had only some fruits in basket left outside or tent, we did not realized that it may attract some animals (or wild animals)!

It is very tranquil to sleep right next to sea. The continuous sound of waves and breeze coming from sea makes perfect atmosphere for sleeping under stars.
During late night I suddenly woke up as I felt something near to me from outside of the tent, when I opened my eyes and looked around, I could see silhouette of those long ears and face on tent just near my head! It was annoying, I hurried woke my husband up and shouted on the fox, who was just next to me, but outside the tent. My huband quickly went outside the tent, but couldn't see anything. He did not belive me that there was a fox outside our tent and he almost laughed seeing me annoyed. Of course I know foxes don't harm humans but it was scary for me to feel the fox and seeing his shadow next to my head.

My husband went to sleep immediately saying it must be a dream. I told him we'll check the pugmarks in morning and went to sleep. After some time or may be hours again I felt the fox outside the tent near my face, so this time I woke up my husband and just asked him to look at the shadow. When he saw it he agreed and told me (and  himself) not to fear. We watched the shadow, without making any movement or sound for around 20/30 seconds and then the fox ran away swiftly. I thought is it fruit basket attracting foxes? but we agreed that foxes don't eat fruits and we went back to the tranquil sleep again.

First thing in morning, we opened the front cover of tent and watched the sea and next thing, my husband got the camera and started taking photos of pugmarks of foxes. The pugmarks were concentracted more on the side of tent near my head (lol? do foxes like hair or smell of my shampoo?). We also found out the fruits from basket were on floor and one apple and one banana were missing. So guys, let me announce Blanford's fox eat apple and banana :D!

These foxes are frequently seen in mountains of UAE, Oman and the region. But for us they are still wild animals, as we don't get to see them anywhere near Dubai/Abu Dhabi or cities in UAE. This part of Oman is not developed and commercialised so it is a perfect place for eco-tourism and camping. Everytime we come here we get to see some beatiful arabian wild life.

We enjoyed the sea and water for a while and looked for some natural souvineer from the place. On these beaches surprisingly pabeles are carried with water to shores along with shells. The varied color of pables and shells red, yellow, brown, green is definite indication that this region is mineral rich.

We found some small colourful fish just brought with wave on shores.





We saw many types of jelly fish on beach. Not just dead but lot of live jelly fish we found, so we decided not to swim.
Some jelly fish were looking like yellow rubber/plastic tiny baloons. This jelly fish with eye was breathing, so we lifted these live jellyfish and threw them back to sea.

I also came across a very unique phenomenon on the beach. There was hole digged on the beach and all the dug sand was piled up at some distance from the whole. There were markes indicating path of that piled sand from hole. I did not understand what it is, but felt like it must some crab or something who might be doing this. Please let me know if you know about this phenomenon.

On the way back we took a stop near marshy land in Bukha. This place is a good spot  to watch birds. We could spot only these black headed Common Tern this time. The beach where we camped, we also found red backed shrike.

These tiny yellow flowers on wild natural shrub on beach drew my attention. This plant must be saline water plant and looking at these beautiful flowers, I felt why these kind of plants are not used widely as landscape plants? Lot of potable water, which is otherwise used for irrigation of landscapes in region could be saved, if saline water plants are used for this purpose.

Camping in wild definitely is very refreshing, soothening as well as thrilling. There must be very few activities which can provide this all. But everytime we enjoy wild nature, we need to make sure that we are not disturbing the nature and not leaving our trace in form of garbage or anything else. When I thought about the incident of night and how I shouted as first reaction. Did I scare that fox as well? But definitely not or else it wouldn't have returned again. If the fox was scared by my loud shout (!) it would have run to it's cave home in mountains and stayed hungry for at least that night; but instead the fox decided to have our apple and banana for dinner that night!