This city is crazy! When first arriving here, we could not get over the pollution! The city feels like it is shut out from the world as you can't see very far. Then there's the driving lol. Crazy driving - in which I held my seat the entire way and could not get over how different it is here. There are all sorts of animals on the streets - cows, chickens, stray dogs, monkeys, you name it. Non-stop beeping, no road rules (from what I could tell), everyone shared the small streets - cars, trucks, bikes, motorbikes, walkers, kids, animals. It was great!!!
Unfortunately there's also the harder part of being in such a place. At the lights, we had a few young homeless kids beggings for money through our window. They were so young, and so dirty. Throughout the next few days, we discovered how hard it is to handle the poverty here. If you give a kid some money they want more, or other homeless people see and quickly you can be surrounded. Unlike Brisbane where you don't see much of this, you see quite a bit of it here. And its very hard and quite sad.
As for the streets - crazy! We got lost everywhere. Lost our hotel, where we took our washing, where the grocery store is - everything. Half the fun is just finding our way back! Oh - and the spitting! Everyone spits lol. And not little spitting. BIG spitting! They sound like their trying to spit out their tonsils as they hawk everything they have in their throat and wham! out it comes! so classy lol.
Yes - an eye opener. Everything is so interesting as its all so different. The people can be friendly, but not as friendly as other places. Desperation has led to greediness and most of the locals look at us with disgust if we don't buy everything, as they assume we must have a lot of money if we can afford to visit in the first place. Bargaining can turn nasty and they always seem annoyed that they couldn't get more out of us. Takes some getting used to. Still - love experiencing new things!
