Kiwi Sylvie, Sara, and I took the overnight bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and arrived early this morning. Along the way, we picked up a Swede - Markus - who's joined our traveling circus. Markus is a teacher from Stockholm who's making his way to Melbourne and has been traveling all over Asia for the last 5 months. He has one month to go before he lands there. We found out today that Irishman Martin will be joining us tomorrow night. Today, we met up with Tim and Laura again and went out to explore the city along the riverside.
We settled at a cafe where we ordered some food and drinks. While we were sitting, a ten year old boy who was selling books came along. His English was actually 90% fluent. He worked his little game on us and managed to convince Tim to play him Tic-Tac-Toe and if he beat him, Tim would have to buy a book from him for $3. Tim won and technically got the book for free, but of course wouldn't take the book. The very determined kid sat down at the table with us and watched the cartoon that was playing on the TV in the cafe. Suddenly, he got an idea.
"Hey lady", he said to Sylvie, "how about you buy me toy?" Plan B apparently was on.
"What kind of toy?"
"Um...remote control car!" We all groaned in disapproval.
"Okay, how about ball, so I can play with my friend?"
"What kind of ball?"
"Football. Soccerball." Now we're talking.
"You play soccer?", I asked.
"Sure, sure. My team is Man U." He think he actually beamed with pride a little. Who knows, maybe he believed it?
The bartering continued while we peppered him with questions about how much a ball would cost, where we would buy it from, whether he was going to turn around and sell it to someone else, and whether the stores he pointed out to us that sold the ball were actually owned by his family. Finally, we told him we would get him a small gift but we would buy it from a marketplace, not the stores he recommended so a few of us stayed with him at the cafe while the others went to go find a ball for him. After about 15 minutes, they came back but said they couldn't find a ball. They ended up finding a Man U soccer jersey that fit him perfectly. You'd think he would jump up and down for joy. But no. He sulked and said what he really wanted was a ball. The cafe owner laughed and told him that if he didn't want the jersey, he could give it to her 1 yr old son who was standing close-by sucking on a popsicle and couldn't care less about a red soccer jersey. We tried convincing him that it was actually a really useful gift because then he could go sucker all the Brits into buying books from him, but he really just couldn't see the business sense in that. And thus ended our encounter with the ten year old sales(con)man. A pretty good one at that.
Laura wasn't feeling too well, so she and Tim retired after our cafe encounter and the rest of us walked over to the National Museum in which Sylvie struck up a conversation with and subsequently fell for...a monk. We did get an invite out to his pagoda tomorrow though so that worked out well. As we walked to the front gate of the museum, Sylvie plotted ways she could marry the monk. The rest of us tried pointing out that there was a slight flaw in that plan but she wasn't having any of it. Markus and I just looked each other and shook our heads. Women.
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