A girl was walking up to me, when I just took a look at some traditional handbags made of cloth at the corner inside the market. I checked the bags for just a mere interest, say, killing time at the time, not actually looking for the souvenir in here, and I knew I would not buy it. And she knew it, too.
The girl was actually selling a fan, which might be a traditional handicraft, the small bamboo fan, so, she kept creatng airflow to me with it. She said something in Myanmar language, sometimes in English. Maybe, she said the price of the fan, two for some US dollars.
At the time, the elder selling a small spinning top, which was made of plastic, not traditional, was coming to me, and also telling me some price of it in English. Two or three for some US dollars. Around me, there seemed to be a fierce competition between them, sadly.
I'm just still wondering if I should take the fan or top at the time, but don't know for what.
At the market, Yangon.
I walked around Yangon city on the hottest day in a year. Looking for the particular, no, not really, not for anything at the time, as always.
Just near the famous, huge souvenir market, there was a modern, western-style cafe in the city, yes, it's just like a Starbucks. I found its name was "Bar Boom", since the store's original mug put the black label on it, and it said "Bar Boon, Dutch-Deli". So, it came from dutch capital, maybe.
Sipping coffee from the mug at the cafe, looking outside, I found people in Yangon city seems to be busy, going somewhere to work, or to buy groceries at the local market or small stalls around near here.A mother with a baby was just standing near the cafe-entrance, and seemed to keep asking for something to the people leaving from there.
On the other, many Yangon people played with their smart phones, of which the cheapest SIM card are sold at 1500 kyat, in short, just 1USD and 50 cent at the moment. The man at the stall showed various SIMs at the stall with a big parasol, along with Androids' phones, some of which had a cracks on the surfaces.
Another day, I took a car at 4:30 in the morning, seeing few cars running, and stopped at an intersection with red traffic light. A girl of 5 or 6-year-old walked up to my car, and showed flowers in her hands.
Yangon city, Myanmar
One of the interesting scenes
the visitors surely find in the capital is that the cars running there
are quite good, almost all are the "new" cars, not the used ones.
One of
the reasons is that there is a restriction on importing used cars since
08 in order to reduce traffic jams. The other reason is that the middle
or upper class, especially public employees in the capital, frequently
use loans for buying new cars.
The colors of number plates are different
between the car with loans and the car without loans, in order to find
which one is still a collateral.
Quite interesting.
Here is Vientiane, Laos
Waiting at the cable-car stop, which was at the bottom-end of a long slope
near San Francisco Bay area, I felt a little bit chilly even though it
was in the middle of August. Maybe, inside this foggy town, this kind of cold
summer was not special, but seems to be a part of everyday life. It was in the evening, and I
was standing in the long line waiting for this famous cable-car going
over steep slopes ranging north, south, west and east, whatever.
Some people in the line sipping on cups of coffee,
which apparently they took from the Starbucks located in front of this
stop. As usual in this cold evening, the Starbucks kept giving off the familiar roasted beans flavor. Then, I decided what I would do. So, turning back and
checking how many people coming after me, I found not so many were there and I
just left from the line and came to the Starbucks. Until I sipped on my cup of coffee, and took my first bite out of a marble pound cake, some seagulls were flying and mewing above people still waiting for the cable-car. The evening came deep at the time, and the gulls looked like swimming in the sea of orange twilight.
San Fransisco, California.
