Its far from a pleasant place. My wife and I had an exchange student from there and while she was a firm believer in the system (you don't get to leave the coun

Its far from a pleasant place. My wife and I had an exchange student from there and while she was a firm believer in the system (you don't get to leave the country without some serious trust from the authorities) but even she could tell you that buying things from the government shops was fraught with fraud, poor quality goods, and lines. Everyone shops at the non-government bazaars and you can buy smuggled goods there for inflated prices--but the goods are of a much higher quality than what you find in the government stores. You can also buy US dollars in the bazaar, which is what everyone does because the local currency (the manat) is essentially worthless and the value fluctuates wildly. A 'fun' story about our exchange student and goods--she would save her pocket money (allowance, some small money she would make by doing errands for people) all month so she could buy a kg of Turkish salt. See the Turkmen salt you could buy in the store is made from the Caspian sea (distilling salt from the water) and their filtration is crap. So the salt you buy is brownish in the bag, and is filled with small rocks and other clumps of junk. So when you buy a bag of Turkmen salt, you have to carefully clean it before use. Otherwise you bite into your rice pilaf and break a tooth on a stone--which is what happened to her mom. Thats what finally pushed her to take the small amount of money she had and spend it on buying salt for her little family.