First I’d like to make a correction, did I really say that Oriental Market was a small slice of paradise in the last post? This is a problem with travel writing across the board; people tend to romanticize the past whether it’s a trip abroad or a failed relationship.
I started SHABL after being a longtime reader of iBC and respected the real-time of it all; most travel writers talk about the past through technicolor glasses while sipping LSD infused lemonade through a straw.
The Oriental Market is a chaotic mess. That said, you can find near anything you need, just don’t look for any type of luxury item or high end electronic; everything else and more is there. It’s city blocks that form a smelly labyrinth of stalls with sellers grabbing your shirt or getting in your face trying to push their wares.
Most of it is covered but with cracks between the not quite connecting roofs that let through flashes of light and soak the place when the sky cries. The lanes are filled with people and carts moving cargo or selling cola.
That said, you’re rewarded if you go and we found basically everything we were looking for. Claro aka the most useless cell carrier in the world is what works best on the Corn Islands. The shop is always filled with brain dead service staff filing their nails and listlessly looking for keys they don’t have.
Long story shorty, they don’t setup what I need anymore which is a data plan for an iphone 4?! That said, some guy in Oriental can sell you a SIM & data for a month on the spot for C$120 or roughly $6; go figure?
Afterwards it was off to the Dentist where she did a stand up job for $12 aka below the gums too before telling me I had a deep cavity in a molar. She drilled me without anesthetic; the moment that drill gets near your nerve your eyes will pop and you’ll spring from your seat.
The filling only cost $10 and she did a good job, I dare say. Drillings are different but find the best cleans are from mom & pop dental shops abroad. The clinics back home treat you like cattle and let a dental hygienist do all the dirty work while you pay for a dentist to inspect and say “looks good”.
FYI – Top photo is from just outside the market.
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Wow on getting your filling done. I’m intrigued about the idea of getting dental work done overseas.
I’ve had lots of cleanings and a few drillings; can’t speak for other things but a huge fan of getting them cleaned.
In fact, having my teeth cleaned is an odd but productive pass time of mine.
Dubz, sorry to hear about the tooth. What material do they use for fillings down there in Nicaragua?
I’m also curious as to your final procurements of non-perishables for the stay on the islands…
It happens, went 32 years before ever having my first.I have no idea what they used but my cavity is filled so I’m a happy camper. It was white though, none of that silver stuff from the 1960’s.
I did a decent shop and will make an update before I pass out along with a video from a previous sunrise flight.
Did I just read you went to a third world dentist to get a filling without an anesthetic?
It wasn’t the plan but I’m on the island a few months so I figured why not. It wasn’t lead, it was some paste.
Be wary of LEAD fillings.
I’ve never had a cavity. When I was a child, my dentist was a crazy little New Yorker that my mom liked, but my dad hated.
On one visit, he told my mother that my new adult molars had deep pits in them that would surely attract decay, but he had a new space age polymer he could seal them with (for a modest fee, of course).
She was sold, and my dad was so upset when he found out what she paid, figuring she’d been hustled my a New Yorker….after all, that’s what they’re known for.
Bottom line, it worked!!!