Happy Birthday To the King's mother!
School was closed today due to the national holiday celebrating the King's mother's birthday (say that three times fast, what a mouthful). We ate breakfast at the star house then spent the morning running errands at the central market. The central market is bigger and more organized than the Russian market near our volunteer house. It is a large yellow building that juts out like a spider with halls going out in different directions from a central dome. In the domed area there were jewelry counters selling a wide variety of sparkling colored stones. Apparently, you can buy stones relatively cheep here if you know what you are looking for. If you don't know stones well though you are likely to come home with fakes. We walked the halls not looking for anything inparticular. There were women busy on sewing machines, intricate paintings of local attractions and lots of vendors selling tshirts for tourists. I bought a pair of cotton pajama style pants. Next to the central market is the large air mall where we had lunch on Tuesday where I picked up an SD card.
We came back to our side of town via tuk-tuk. The drivers outside the mall must be used to tourists because they originally quoted us twice the price to get home as we had paid to get there. We negotiated back down to $3. I want to pay the people here a fair wage but at the same time I don't want to be taken advantage of because of the color of my skin. At orientation we had learned that a tuk-tuk in the area should cost no more than $5, and that was to the area that was furthest away.
We stopped at the Russian market on the way back home. While I am here I am hoping to get some clothes made. We found the stalls that were stuffed full of fabrics and I purchased a few different fabric options. They indicated I could get the clothing made only a few blocks down. While walking through the market I realized that they meant a few stalls down because once again their were women working on sewing machines. I didn't have my pictures with me of the clothes I wanted made so I put off that errand and we made our way home for lunch.
$3 tuk-tuk to the central market
$70 32gb wifi SD card
$6 Asian style cotton pant
$3 tuk-tuk ride back
$5 t shirt
$9 $3/ yard for three yards of cotton
$12 $4/ yard for three yards of nice fabric
Morning Total: $108
Morning Total: $108
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