Wed Apr 13, 2011
Dead cat on the sidewalk. Dead frog. Many closed shops and markets. Is it too early? No, it’s the end of the year. Soon it will be 2555. Many big 4 wheel drive cars. A place called Heart of Darkness. Alien bar. 9:30. Little stands where I can upgrade my PSP, Wii, PS3 and install games. Looking for a place where I can have breakfast that’s not empty and not for tourists either. I find one. Prices are in dollars, unlike in Vietnam. USD is mixed with the local currency here. A tuktuk passes carrying a Sony home cinema in big boxes. Less traffic than in Vietnam. Quieter too, no much honking. Another tuktuk passes carrying dead pigs. Trash here belongs to the floor. In street restaurants it’s under the tables, sometimes on a small basket, but usually outside of it. The trash from the streets is later wiped from the side walks to the asphalt, then picked up by someone. Same in Vietnam.
Monkeys in a park. An entrance with a label “please pay 1 USD to enter here”. I choose another entrance without that sign. A small dead cat lies on the ground. I have ice cream on a white book store that looks like THX1138. We take a photo of a plant, guys run to us and ask us to the delete the photo. The plant was in the US embassy.
Yesterday we saw many kids selling things next to the river. The river is wide, the area full of tourists, hotels, shops. At night the same kids sat in one line on the ground waiting for food. A few women with red t-shirts were giving food packages to those kids.
Since we crossed the borders a few days ago I lost my ability to read. Characters look complicated. I think it must be slower to write that using the Latin alphabet. I saw a mosque, a slum next to it, a guy standing in his scooter while driving.