At the breakfast place the guy tried to ask me about the friends of mine I mentioned yesterday. But that was about all I could gather. I managed to mumble "too fast" but I still couldn't understand and he gave up and changed the subject.
Yesterday morning after breakfast I felt great and decided to go venture out in search of a map. Following some directions from an MRT official I took the MRT to the next stop and wandered around looking for a bookstore. The station was in the middle of a sort of plaza that was formed out of the space between the two monorail tracks.
The first thing I saw was this vegetarian restaurant!
It was still only about 10am though, and it was understandably deserted, so I didn't go inside. I passed a bakery that had some interesting-looking fare, and bought some kind of chartreuse bun filled with coconut and "craisins". It was pretty big, and I ate about 3/4 of it. I circled around the several blocks surrounding the MRT station, and I found a store displaying cages stuffed with little birds, a shop awning that said "Angel Cigar Fun", an old man missing all the fingers on his right hand who tried to convert me to Christianity (I think), a little hole-in-the-wall open market in an alleyway that turned out to be half a mile long and jammed with people buying things ranging from surplus clothes to dried mushroom packets, about half a dozen 7-11s, and a store with this sign (I wondered "what is a time gear?" before noticing they were really just selling normal gears to be used in your free time--i.e., bicycles)
but no bookstore. After about an hour I started to feel sort of dizzy and my head started to hurt. The green coconut craisin bun had been a little sickly sweet, but I'm not sure if it was that, jet lag, the time gears, or something else. I ended up just going back to the vegetarian place (where the proprietor spoke English and I ordered a "slightly spicy tomato stew"), and then going home to take a nap.
Afterward I went back to the coffee shop and had another pot of tea and made yesterday's blog post. One of the two ladies brought me a plate of cookies. The taste of the craisin bun was still lingering unpleasantly, and the cookies were regrettably reminiscent of it (was that coconut flavor?) but it was a really friendly gesture and I was touched. Speaking of food at the coffee shop, here is the dinner I had there the first night:
Last night I took the MRT to the center of downtown and met Ivy. I got there early so I went into the department store next to the station. It was completely jammed with people. I decided to see what they had for men. The first floor had makeup and things like that, and the second floor was women's clothing. The third floor was also women's clothing. The fourth floor was designer women's clothing. I think it was the sixth floor where I finally found the men's department. The Polo section had some very nice mannequins, with jackets selling for the outrageously exceptional price of $16,500! It's a little bit disconcerting that they use the '$' symbol here. Thinking of you, Grandpa, I asked about ties, but they didn't have any! They did seem ready to sell me the ones the mannequins were wearing, though. I came to the second-to-last floor, No. 11, AKA the Gourmet Collection, and realized it was time to meet Ivy, so I took the elevator down. Greeting me in the elevator was an elevator attendant. As we stopped at each floor she said exactly the same thing, even in the same tone of voice, although I didn't understand what it meant.
Ivy bought me dinner and gave me an English map (THANK YOU!) and then took me to a fruit stand, where I tried bell fruit, and little tomatoes with pieces of some kind of dark dried fruit stuck inside.
That's it! The day is going by, and this blog post is too long already.
1 comment:
A terrific installment! I love the pictures and the text is great! Keep it up, Isaac. It's fun to read about your adventures.
James
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