A do nothing day today – have to do some grocery shopping, so we walk over to the grocery store, pick out our supplies and have them delivered. My wine box developed a leak- and I lost almost a whole bottle in the fall out (or leak out I suppose!). So I had to replace it – wow! Wine prices are so expensive. Picked up a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc in a box – for $24US. Sheesh. But it was either that or 3 regular bottles for $32US – and I’d never heard of any of them. So – Chilean box – here we go.
Made lunch at the condo of our left over cooking school food and scrambled eggs on the side. Then just hung out at the pool, reading and enjoying a gorgeous Sunday.
Sunday night is the walking market – a weekly market set up all along one of the main roads in town – which we really enjoyed last time we were here. It’s more local people and crafts than the Night Market touristy stuff. We head over that way around 6ish – and OMG – has this thing grown in the last 3 years! When we first visited, it took up maybe half the street. Now? The whole entire road – from gate to gate – jam packed with stalls. And food – holy cow – there are more street food vendors here than we’ve ever seen. A wholly different environment!
We wander through all the displays and take a break at the Garden restaurant – a favorite of ours from our last visit. It’s a pleasant place to relax – and listen to good music. Tonight its a welcome respite from the madness of the walking market.
After an omelet with veggies and chicken, beer and wine, we’re refreshed and head back out into the crowds. Oh my, we thought it was madness before? You can barely walk now – the market is so packed its ridiculous! We manage to make a pit stop for dessert – banana spring rolls with chocolate sauce – Yummy – and some of the really pretty little flower shaped tealight candles. Then we crawl our way to the end of the street and start heading back. We are waylaid at a t-shirt vendor who actually has shirts with messages printed on the back! Seriously hard to find here – and these are great shirts. So we pick up 2 for Ed (300b or $10US for 2) and then begin our long slow shuffle back to the other end of the street.
Good thing we bought what we did, because there’s no stopping now! It’s so packed you can’t even see most of the stalls, much less stop to buy. And we’re WAY far away from our condo and the Gekko Garden our planned next stop. Wow!
Seriously – it takes us about 1/2 an hour just to get out of the market. We wanted to look at an apron and some sandals we saw earlier – but gave that up! We’ll come back next Sunday – EARLY – and hope the same vendors are in the same locations. Then we can shop and get the heck out of Dodge before the madness begins!
We’ve still got at least a 20 minute walk back – and it’s nearing 9pm. Ed makes a pit stop at In Town (the restaurant with the music we’ve been to a couple of times), even though we aren’t staying, we figure we’ve been here enough to sneak to the bathroom! Then we continue our trek onward to the Gekko – passing a large – and rather boisterous – Chinese New Year’s celebration on a corner where they’ve set up a stage with lights and sound – and they are either doing Karaoke or have a really, really cheap band! (btw – firecrackers have been going off all day in celebration of the New Year – they light off whole blocks at a single time with a huge explosion at the end – fortunately we know what’s going on – otherwise you’d think you were under siege here!).
After the bad band, it gets much quieter on our side of town and we safely duck into the Gekko to join all the other ex-pats watching football – sadly – not American football – but a good game between Tottenham and Man City (although Tottenham lost in the last seconds on a penalty kick –pretty exciting actually – but the crowd was obviously more Tottenham than Manchester).
Rudy surprises us all with popcorn (oh yum!); we order spring rolls and tempura chicken legs for our app’s/dinner – both were excellent – and hang out there chatting and watching TV and generally having a good time in the quiet of our little residential area here!
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