Funny Hats

At night, in every city we visited, the streets were overwhelmed with women walking around with trays strapped to them (a bit like the trays used in cinema’s and theatres during the interval to sell ice cream) full of nik naks, such as bracelets, hats and wooden frogs that make a sort of croaking sound when you rub a stick of wood over their back. We never did actually count how many would approach us during our evening meals, but on some evening’s it was easily 20 or so different women all offering exactly the same thing.
After a while Rich decided to mess around with them a bit, so he would point at Hans (our team leader) and mime putting a hat on him. One lady obviously thought that there was scope in this for making a bit of money, so she put hats on everyone at the table while we took photo’s and had a bit of a giggle. Jason then commented to Rich something along the lines of ‘I wonder how much this is going to cost us?’ No sooner had the words been uttered, the lady was asking for money and insisting that we buy something in return for the photo’s. Suddenly everyone else around the table was very deep in conversation and I, who was sat right next to the lady, was left to try and explain that we didn’t want anything. Eventually she did go away, but I was convinced that she would be waiting for us around the corner when we eventually made our way back to the hotel at the end of the evening!