An Evening Walk

Today I went for my first walk outside the hotel. I don’t think I will be making a habit of it, at least not until the weather cools down a bit.

I went because, on my way to work this morning, I noticed a stall that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there last week, selling stuffed animals and other toys. Let me explain: In Belgium (and other countries), there is a particular model of stuffed big cat which is popularly offered as prizes in fairgrounds and similar venues. They come in a range of sizes and colours (tigers, leopards, snow tigers and leopards), but the basic design is always the same. Now, the quality of the materials is pretty cheap, but somehow, these things still manage to be some of the nicest and most realistic stuffed tigers on the market, often much more so than those available in toyshops. I’ve always wanted to get one, but I never end up doing it, because really, I have so much stuff already.

When we passed the stall, though, I noticed that they had, among other things, the smallest version of that very same model! I decided it was fate and resolved to walk to the stall after work to buy one.

It turned out to be a half an hour walk along the road directly in front of the hotel. I tried to stay on the pavements, where there were any, but I was the only one: Pretty much everyone else ignored them entirely, unless they were using them to lay out stalls, or even occassionally as extensions of their homes. After a little while, I noticed a funny thing: Far from being simple rocks and dirt left where the road surface stopped, the pavements had once consisted of what looked like rather nice tiles. Abuse and neglect, though, had left them in such a dreadful condition that you couldn’t tell the tiles had ever been laid unless you looked very closely.

I saw much the same things as I do every day on my way to work, only on foot: Basically, people going about their daily business in the same way they would anywhere else, except here they live in shacks by the roadside, often so poorly constructed that they wouldn’t even qualify as a garden shed in Europe. I mostly kept my eyes on the road, as I didn’t feel very comfortable staring into these people’s bedrooms and going ‘oh, how quaint’.

The weather was heavy and muggy, promising yet another storm later on, and by the time I finally got to the stall, I was hot, damp and extremely dusty. The stall itself turned out to be a disappointment: Remember above when I said the European versions of these things are pretty low quality? Well, it turns out it can get quite a bit lower. I took one look, realised that there was no way I could talk myself into buying one of those, and headed back.

On the way back, I had wanted to take a rickshaw – I’d seen plenty whizzing by me on the way, so I thought I’d have my pick. Perhaps if I had been paying a little more attention, I would have noticed that all the ones going by were full. I did eventually manage to flag one down on the other side of the road, and then amuse him by trying to cross rush hour traffic with no crossing in sight. I did make it eventually, and he took me back to the hotel (it was easy to describe this time, just a straight line).

The first thing I did on getting back was shower. It’s amazing how dusty you can get here just by walking along the road! If I find something else worth walking to I will, but at the moment all I’ve seen are shacks and roadside stalls, so I don’t see myself venturing out for another walk just yet.