Karama!

Last night I went out to Karama with Suzanne and two of her friends. It was crazy! First of all, it was pouring rain and we were all wearing flip flops and jeans. We were soaked! The entire place is run by Indian, Pakistani, and Philipino men (at least according to a review I read about on tripadvisor.com or virtualtourist.com) and they all say things to you like "we have real fakes" "copy watches follow me". Karama is basically this place in Bur Dubai (old part of Dubai) that has a million shops that sell fake accessories, like purses, wallets, sunglasses, keychains, shoes, etc. We would go into a shop and whoever was working there would lead us to a "secret room" and in that room would be a ton of knock-off Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and a ton of other high end designer brands purses and wallets. It was insane! The secret room usually involved us walking up a flight of stairs and sometimes the stairs were really steep! Since I'm pregnant, I was extra careful to watch my step and at one place I actually sat down on the stairs and went down that way!

At one particular shop, a guy brought us into a mirrored dressing room, and one of the mirrors turned out to be a door. The door led us to this back room that probably had 3,000 purses and wallets in it. Another guy wanted us to climb up a ladder to go into the attic of a store to look at stuff but we said no way!

It was a lot of fun and definitely an eye-opening experience! I had no idea a place like that existed in Dubai. I didn't end up buying anything although I was tempted to when I saw a really nice knock-off LV purse that was part of their new collection! I think that overall I must have seen 15,000-20,000 fakes last night.

I brought my camera but didn't take any pics because I didn't want any of the shop owners to get mad at me. It's not exactly "legal"! I did find a few pictures on the internet so that is where the pics below came from. They in no way do Karama any justice but I wanted you to at least have something to look at to give you an idea of what it was like!