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After gym and breakfast, Bong picked us up and we again set off for Chinatown. This time, we made it in only 30 minutes.
As Bong parked the car in the most tightly packed and yet disreputable parking lot I think I've seen in my life, he told us to not use my phone from the street. ...???... He said to step into a store and text him where no one could see. Oh, and don't keep a wallet in an obvious pocket. T quietly handed me his cell phone to lock in my Pacsafe purse and my feelings of potential danger immediately skyrocketed.
We set out. It was... Well it was Chinatown. The schlock and decent jewelery and statues mixed together. Prices were not spectacular, but not terrible. Decorations were statues, typically lots of horses (it is now the year of the horse).
But it was also the bad side of town. There was a thin layer of glitter over the obvious poverty. I am mostly accustomed to being followed around in stores in the Philippines. Here, I was followed in stores and it was not always clear that they were a store employee. Here, people talked to us more on the street... The kind of talk you hear in movies before the oblivious white guy gets dragged into an alley and robbed. I did not feel safe, even with T. I would definitely not want to have wandered Chinatown alone.
As Bong parked the car in the most tightly packed and yet disreputable parking lot I think I've seen in my life, he told us to not use my phone from the street. ...???... He said to step into a store and text him where no one could see. Oh, and don't keep a wallet in an obvious pocket. T quietly handed me his cell phone to lock in my Pacsafe purse and my feelings of potential danger immediately skyrocketed.
We set out. It was... Well it was Chinatown. The schlock and decent jewelery and statues mixed together. Prices were not spectacular, but not terrible. Decorations were statues, typically lots of horses (it is now the year of the horse).
But it was also the bad side of town. There was a thin layer of glitter over the obvious poverty. I am mostly accustomed to being followed around in stores in the Philippines. Here, I was followed in stores and it was not always clear that they were a store employee. Here, people talked to us more on the street... The kind of talk you hear in movies before the oblivious white guy gets dragged into an alley and robbed. I did not feel safe, even with T. I would definitely not want to have wandered Chinatown alone.
