Cool stuff from the world's most obscure & exotic marketplaces, now online

project bly marketplace

Hitting up the street markets in some of the globe's more exotic locales is a great way to get cool trinkets, awesome gifts, and dysentery, but getting to 'em can be super-expensive. Well now you can get all that cool stuff and keep your vital bodily fluids, thanks to just-launched ProjectBly.com, who go to the knicknack-vendors in some of the more obscure corners of the world, buy their stuff, and put it online for you to peruse.

project bly vendor

The launch marketplace is the "thieves market" in Mumbai (apparently "it's just a name", which is reassuring), and they aim to get decent street photography of everyone they buy from, so they can show you the vendor.

project bly head

What kind of gems will you find? Well, there's stuff like this brass Wife of Shiva "adorned with a tasteful assortment of bling". Also, "in some texts, Parvati is even said to transcend her husband", so...those texts are the Kama Sutra??

project bly poster

Then there's the likes of this sweet Bollywood poster. Literally translating to Fair People, Black Deeds, "we imagine this 1986 action flick is something like a Hindi take on The Godfather". Easy there, The Godfather was never this cool.

project bly coconut grater

You'll also find more useful stuff, like this coconut grater. Finally!

project bly map

The plan is to hit a different market every couple of months, with the next up being LA Paz in Bolivia, Malacca in Malaysia, and Bukhara in Uzbekistan... which, luckily, is much different from the Oozebekistan you typically experience while traveling abroad.