playing outside & street markets

Now that the weather is warming up, people are getting outside a lot more. You can see big groups of people congregating everywhere. Kids play games, old men sit around and play cards, old women play mah jong, people dance, companies have meetings outside, it's great!

The street markets are open now as well. These are a great place to see all kinds of awesomeness. There are day markets and night markets. The night markets are kind of ridiculous because they are not very well lit, so you really can't see what you're buying, but you can hang around them and have a beer. Both day and night essentially have the same stuff. Booths with clothing, food and utter randomness. From booth to booth there is a lot of the same stuff, a lot of designer knock off stuff and a lot of stuff with terrible English. I'm always on a mission to find the worst possible English. Everything at the markets is super cheap, but you have to haggle. The vendors tend to love haggling with foreigners, so it's a lot of fun.

One thing at the markets that just makes me sad is the boxes of chicks. Men dye baby chicks to make them cute so people want to buy the for pets. When you buy a chick, they put it in a small plastic bag for you, just like any other purchase. Even when you can't see the chicks, you can hear them cheeping from far away. One of the other foreigners in town saw a child buy a chick last week and immediately use the bag to beat it against the ground and kill it.