Split Pants and Snake Oil

After Eileen's first massage the other day I headed out for a walk with Sarasota John and Athens Jim. We headed north from our hotel for about a 2 mile walk. Here are the highlights of our mini adventure. Within a short distance of our hotel we watched as a little boy about 2 years of age drop right in middle of all of the scurrying people and proceed to urinate on the tile walkway. The smaller children wear split pants and no diapers - so it is not uncommon to see their little bums as they walk through the towns. We walked on and on through street vendors selling everything from lotus root and other vegetables to carved pineapple to fried things like crabs and fish. This is about the time we cam upon the snake oil salesman. There was a fairly large crowd of people surrounding a man who was squatting low to the ground. The man was wearing a headset and speaking constantly through a small speaker system. In front of him there was a tarp covered with a few hundred snakes and a few turtles. All of the critters were dark brown appearing to have been fried. He had three small glass bottles that he was adding what appeared to be crystals and other items all the while barking through his speaker. The solution in the bottles looked like blood. We hung around for a short while as enthralled as the locals. We proceeded on for quite a while until we came upon what appeared to be a school. There were some boys playing basketball and we joked about challenging them to a game. That is when we hear the school girls yelling up to us 'hi', 'hello' as they held up peace signs. They were excited to get responses from us and they giggled as we waved back to them. We proceed on a little further and saw a store called Jan-Mart. We entered the store but were promptly redirected right back the way we came in by some security guards. We have never figured out why but we didn't argue with him. It turns out Jan-Mart is a home appliance type of store - nothing unusual - toilets, stoves, etc. The return back was pretty uneventful although we did stop by the snake oil rep and he was still barking and mixing. It is amazing to see all of the apartments, one after another after another - everywhere you turn. You can see that many of the apartments have cages on the backside - the cages are used to hang the laundry but they are also used to store items - you can see some wooden chairs crammed into one of the cages plus boxes and just stuff. There is also a picture of an older gentleman tending to a garden - the garden was immediately off the sidewalk smack dab in the middle of all the commotion - to the left was a fairly major road with tons of traffic - the sidewalk was packed most of the time during our walk. We never did cross paths with any other westerners. Along the way we were greeted with some hellos and good mornings - it was about 6:00 in the evening - the people we happy when we responded back with a hello or thumbs up. What an experience.