NIGHT Market

I was skeptical as to whether anything could beat out the morning market… tonight it was proven that there is.  The NIGHT market!  Kylie Moe, Kendra Kimber and I went on a bit of an adventure this evening after dinner… and we will never be the same…

So here’s how it went –

Another meal of hand gestures and a lot of pointing to show what we want.  Some delicious mango drinks (as shown below). 

Quick trip up the street to the Tunnel of Death – more on that later – and then a search party for the night market.  What rejoicing when we found it!  And that was before we saw what was there…

It was a combination of a carnival and the streets of New York City.  There was lots of food, lots of things for sale.  Tonight there was a huge blow-up play ground thing for the kids to play on and a performance with dances and singing happening on a stage, but I don’t know if that is night market protocol.

They had birds for sale!! Little tiny birds!

My favorite part - you’ll find out why in a minute – was all the little games they had set up to play.  It was all carnival type stuff – knock down the characters, shoot the balloons, throw the ring around your prize.  That last one is my particular favorite!  Kylie wanted to try it so she paid… we got a large bucket full of rings for the equivalent of about 3 US dollars, and the three of us went at it.  Now you might not believe this, but I have pictures to prove it – I won a fish!! Basically the highlight of my day, maybe my week too if that spot hadn’t already been filled by coming here.  It was AH!-mazing. To say the least.  After that, Kylie won a pencil sharpener that looks like a lotion bottle, and we watched a Taiwanese guy win a nice large bottle of alcohol.  Lucky him.

We tried one other game (shown above) because there was an Angry Birds pillow that a certain member of our group wanted (bet you can’t guess who! Ahem Kylie!) It was somewhat similar to Bingo… but it may have been a mistake to try it because we weren’t really sure of the  rules… There was a card taped to the table and a bunch of tiles.  We got to pick about half of the tiles and matched them up to the pictures on the card.  We thought a full row meant we won… we came pretty close the first few times, and then we finally won once! But the guy just gave us a couple more turns… so I don’t know what went on, but the game was fun! And it was completely thrilling to fill up a whole row! But that’s probably because I’m pretty sure I sometimes think like a child.  Oh well!

It’s probably the child in me that’s so excited to have a fish too.  MY roommates and I named him Lanzi (pronounced Lawn-si, for you non Chinese speakers) which means blue-purple.  Super original, as you’ll be able to tell once you see his picture, but he needed a Chinese name and our abilities are rather limited at this point.  He now lives on top of Kendra’s dresser (because it’s in the middle)  He had to ride home in the basket of my bike, poor guy! So he is recovering now.  I’m pretty sure he is going to become our mascot for this experience.