To market, to market

For the first time in my 29 years of existence, namalengke ako.

Full disclosure: spoiled ako, sorry. There was always someone to do the wet market shopping for our family growing up. When I got married and moved to Singapore, we did all the groceries at Fairprice because it was just a lot more convenient than going to the neighborhood wet market. Marlon is awesome at buying fresh fish and meat (his dad took him to wet markets growing up) so he was in charge of those purchases, prodding fish and prying open their gills while I ran around collecting all the dry and canned goods.

After three weeks of grocery shopping at the biggest Dutch supermarket chain, Albert Heijn, which all the Dutch seem to think is poorly stocked and overpriced, I decided to do as the locals do and shop at a real market. There was only one market on my mind: Albert Cuypmarkt, the biggest and most famous street market in Amsterdam.

The market runs the length of Albert Cuypstraat, a street in an area known as De Pijp (the pipe), just ten minutes by tram from my house. I took a big bayong, a stroller, and my grocery list for the week one Monday morning... and entered into utter bliss. 

The singular phenomenon that caused this rush of nirvana was cutting my grocery budget down by half. Our first grocery bill from the supermarket was €80 for a half-week (horrible, I know, but we had just arrived and didn't know any better); a week later we managed to shave it down to €40 for a half-week. 

At Albert Cuypmarkt, even with my big splurge on scallops (six of them for €1 apiece) and Norwegian salmon (€8 for 400 grams), the total came up to only €32.90 for the entire week! In Singapore dollars, that's about S$57. By comparison, my weekly grocery bill in Singapore would run between $S75-80, up to $S100 if we wanted to cook something special. I knew Singapore was expensive but I just didn't expect these kinds of savings here.

You can buy practically everything and everything at the Albert Cuypmarkt, and it's probably because I was so overwhelmed and giddy that I didn't do just that. There are stalls for fruit, veggies, cheese, nuts bread, spices, meat, fish...

Living essentials like kitchenware, mattresses and pillows, blankets, upholstery fabric, and of course, locks and other accessories for bikes...

Even my favorite guilty pleasures like second-hand clothing and chocolate!

My favorite Albert Cuypmarkt find of the week, though, was a gorgeous wooden dining table in a small furniture shop called Gerard Dou. I dragged Marlon back to the market after work the same day because I was totally set on buying it.

The shop owner, Maarten? Martijn? saw us approaching with our new cleaning materials (we had just bought a mop and bucket across the street) and greeted us heartily: "So you've come to clean my shop eh?" He immediately got all chatty and friendly with us, which was great. He explained that the tables were new but made out of old wood: recycled train tracks from India. How crazy is it that of all the things in his entire store I was drawn to something all the way from India? 

We ended up getting a 2-meter table for €675, with free delivery. After looking around online and in a couple of furniture stores, I haven't been able to find anything of the same size and quality for less than €800, with some tables even running into the thousands. Ah, the bliss of bargains indeed.

Upon learning that we were from the Philippines, Maarten excitedly led us over to a huge statement shelf which turned out to be... a banca sawed in half! "I had a container full of these things, but that was a long time ago," he remarked. "Things from the Philippines are so beautiful, but so expensive to bring over." I complimented him on his ingenuity and told him that it's rare to find such a lovely paint job and patina on bancas nowadays.

He packed us off with a promise of free polish for our new table plus a ceramic photo frame, also from India. He also told us where to go for DIY supplies that we need for the house, like a drill, hammer and painting equipment. Yes, todo na 'to.

So after my very first palengke experience, I came home not only with a bayong full of produce, but also a beautiful piece of furniture, a new friend and the sheer thrill of serendipity... and that's way more than I bargained for!