Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Allison is on Fall Break from school this week so Katie took a break from work and we went on a marathon shopping excursion to Green Hills which is a HUGE shopping mall filled with small booths of many different kinds of things to buy. We spent the majority of our time in the pearl market which is the size of a gymnasium filled with booths of different pearl vendors. These booths have thousands of fresh and salt water pearls from many different parts of the Philippines. They also sell other jewelry made of leather, shells, crystals, stones etc... It is overwhelming because all of the vendors try to get you to look at their booths so you are constantly bombarded by people calling out ,"DVD Ma'am" "yes ma'am", "pearls ma'am", "you buy ma'am." Everyone calls you ma'am and sometimes it sounds like "mum." The thing is that it is constant and coming at you from many directions. When you do pause to look at something the vendor is literally all over you. It is very much like this everywhere we go to shop in this country. Yesterday I stopped to look at some purses and the sales girl was smashed up against me saying "you buy bag ma'am". Well my personal space is quite important to me so I turned and put out my hand and said "please give me some space." She thought I wanted to give her a high five and her face lit up because I gave her attention. One more time that I have failed at communicating with the locals. They are very nice and happy but make very little money and even though I know this, I can't get over the feeling of being stalked and suffocated at times.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Allison spent Halloween with her friends in a neighborhood near our condo. They didn't trick or treat because the neighborhood had trick or treating only from 1-4 in the afternoon. Everyone is out of school this week for Fall Break so before dark all the little goblins were off the streets. They went to their local hang out place while Terry, Katie, and I took off for the streets of Malate, downtown where all the action is supposed to be. We had a great dinner at Portico and then walked around town. It was actually pretty calm. We saw some costumes, but not as many as we thought we would. We saw a few transvestites, but they were very obvious, and not very pretty. We had the most fun in a little club called the "Hobbit House" All of the waiters and waitresses were dwarfs. They were all so cute and friendly and there was live folk music. By 1 AM we were pretty tired and headed home. I guess the area is open all night long so we may have missed the real action! Oh Well!
This was the busiest club on the street, filled with transvestites inside. They were having quite a show inside- music and dancing.... I walked in, but had to leave because there were no available seats. There were a few very badly disguised men on the sidewalk.
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