Awake at 5:30 am
It's Sun, Dec. 23rd at roughly 5:30 am local time and I am clearly wide awake. Drat, I forgot to figure out which way to go to get over this whole jet lag business. I wake up really early per the local time and then am tuckered out by 7:00 pm here. Guess I should push myself to "stay up late" so I can reset my clock. *argh*
Yesterday we left the house around 11:00 am and met up with the Twins' girlfiend, E, who had recently returned from a Thailand vacation with her parents. We had a nice coffee/early lunch at Jack Cafe, a local coffee chain. They offer espresso, americanos, teas, etc. along with light, fluffy pastries. It was nice to look out at the local park next door and see children playing on the jungle gyms. During the weekday the kids are in school or at home, but on the weekends their parents take them out to the parks. Frankly, I've been surprised that, other than the limitless supply of mopeds on the road, that for such a large city, I haven't yet at any point been overwhelmed by a "sheer mass of humanity". Maybe people are on vacation, maybe they are busy with work during the work week, but the streets and boulevards are surprisingly clear. I see people around, it is not desolate, but it doesn't feel blazingly overcrowded either. Hmmm...
On the walk back, we stopped at the local "open air market". It used to be out in the open, but the space was needed for a building and after construction the first two floors were left for the market: 1st floor fresh groceries, 2nd floor: meats and spices. These markets were much more common in the area and were where people used to get their fresh groceries and food items, but the Twins have note that the younger generations prefer the convenience of supermarkets and that many just don't know how to cook and so tend to eat out for most of their meals.
Okay, the irony after my comments above, in the afternoon Twin#2 and I took a 20 minute walk and explored the local Walmart-like Supermarket chain, the French owned Carrefour.
Carrefour offers groceries, small electronics, cosmetics, clothing. We found organic peanut butter, which the Twins cannot get enough of and which is difficult to find in the area, and bought more veggies and dry goods, supplies needed to make a spaghetti dinner for an upcoming night. The layout is similar to American supermarkets: the grocery, meat, bakery departments, young women passing out samples of chocolate flavored soy milk or Nescafe sweetened coffee. You place a 10 dollar coin in a slot in order to get out a shopping cart which is then returned to you when you return the cart. Seems everyone the world over tries to make off with the shopping carts when they can, in the US the wheels stop turning once you reach a certain perimeter, here a simple coin lets you "rent" a cart. While we were walking past a row of the toy machines where you insert a coin to get the chance to snare a toy with a hook, my friend pointed out that one particular machine sold cigarrete cartoon stuffed toys. I, unfortunately, did not have my camera in tow or I would have snapped a picture of this "get them while their young" bizarre piece of advertising. Yikes.
For dinner, we walked to a well-known alleyway (we turned a corner and I thought on a Vegas strip, there were so many neon signs) that is stuffed with food shops, some of them closing down for the night, others roaring at full blast. Tonight's dinner meal was Dumplings! We had several stacks of yummy, freshly steamed dumplings: some with pork, some with celery and some with a generous portion of leeks for the ingredients-All delicious.
Alas, I was pretty much out for the night once we got back to the apartment. Zzzzz
-Del
Yesterday we left the house around 11:00 am and met up with the Twins' girlfiend, E, who had recently returned from a Thailand vacation with her parents. We had a nice coffee/early lunch at Jack Cafe, a local coffee chain. They offer espresso, americanos, teas, etc. along with light, fluffy pastries. It was nice to look out at the local park next door and see children playing on the jungle gyms. During the weekday the kids are in school or at home, but on the weekends their parents take them out to the parks. Frankly, I've been surprised that, other than the limitless supply of mopeds on the road, that for such a large city, I haven't yet at any point been overwhelmed by a "sheer mass of humanity". Maybe people are on vacation, maybe they are busy with work during the work week, but the streets and boulevards are surprisingly clear. I see people around, it is not desolate, but it doesn't feel blazingly overcrowded either. Hmmm...
On the walk back, we stopped at the local "open air market". It used to be out in the open, but the space was needed for a building and after construction the first two floors were left for the market: 1st floor fresh groceries, 2nd floor: meats and spices. These markets were much more common in the area and were where people used to get their fresh groceries and food items, but the Twins have note that the younger generations prefer the convenience of supermarkets and that many just don't know how to cook and so tend to eat out for most of their meals.
Okay, the irony after my comments above, in the afternoon Twin#2 and I took a 20 minute walk and explored the local Walmart-like Supermarket chain, the French owned Carrefour.
Carrefour offers groceries, small electronics, cosmetics, clothing. We found organic peanut butter, which the Twins cannot get enough of and which is difficult to find in the area, and bought more veggies and dry goods, supplies needed to make a spaghetti dinner for an upcoming night. The layout is similar to American supermarkets: the grocery, meat, bakery departments, young women passing out samples of chocolate flavored soy milk or Nescafe sweetened coffee. You place a 10 dollar coin in a slot in order to get out a shopping cart which is then returned to you when you return the cart. Seems everyone the world over tries to make off with the shopping carts when they can, in the US the wheels stop turning once you reach a certain perimeter, here a simple coin lets you "rent" a cart. While we were walking past a row of the toy machines where you insert a coin to get the chance to snare a toy with a hook, my friend pointed out that one particular machine sold cigarrete cartoon stuffed toys. I, unfortunately, did not have my camera in tow or I would have snapped a picture of this "get them while their young" bizarre piece of advertising. Yikes.
For dinner, we walked to a well-known alleyway (we turned a corner and I thought on a Vegas strip, there were so many neon signs) that is stuffed with food shops, some of them closing down for the night, others roaring at full blast. Tonight's dinner meal was Dumplings! We had several stacks of yummy, freshly steamed dumplings: some with pork, some with celery and some with a generous portion of leeks for the ingredients-All delicious.
Alas, I was pretty much out for the night once we got back to the apartment. Zzzzz
-Del