Interesting shopping day

Today we walked from the hotel over through the open market and on to a pretty cool shopping area. The open market was divided into sections, including a dried seafood and insect section, a live scorpion/turtle section, an open pet store section, and some dried herbs and mushroom in one other section. Here are some pictures we took: Big tub of live scorpions anyone? Scorpions are good for something to do with your health (yep, still not paying attention).

This guy stands in the more upscale part of the shopping mall area blowing his little whistle and selling olives to kids that come up. In the US, we would probably freak out if someone was trying to get our kids to come up to him dressed like a big chicken with lipstick on, but our guide says this is a very old Chinese tradition.

A local wine store. Make that a local snake wine store. I kid you not.

I think 2002 was a very good year for Cobra.

Yep, you read it right.

A big bag of dried seahorses, also known as Ancient Chinese Viagra.

If you don't want the big tub of live scorpions, here are the ones that did not make it. They ended up becoming dried scorpion chips.

Mmmmmm. Beetles.

Ok, enough of the market stuff. Natalee was showing off for Tonya.

The market was just a little too much for Natalee today. Or maybe it was the fact she woke up at 5:00 this morning demanding a bottle and then would not go back to sleep.

Just relaxing in the room. Well, we are off to Lucy's to eat. It has a little bit of everything from hamburgers and pizza to Thai food to quesadillas and enchiladas. Haven't tried the Mexican food there yet, just doesn't seem quite right to me.