If you really want to make an impression as an American in Bhutan, evoke comment, and appear as an exotic exhibit, then shop at the weekend market in the cliff-dwelling town of Wangdi Phodrang. Wangdi is known for having had a fastidious district adminstrator, who insisted on streets being clean and who would turn off the town's electricity if it wasn't kept up properly. The town clings to a high promontory over the river, with the dzong perched on the very end of the promontory, and on Sundays there is a busy outdoor market on the hillside. We spend the middle of the day at the market and wandering the main street with its busy shops. There are children buying empty notebooks for the start of school the next day, red-robed monks out doing the shopping, and lots of taxis clustered in the central square. Down in the market the sellers are as interested in us as we are in their wares. There are the kinds of produce seen in Thimphu, though in less quantity, and some that I have not seen: one dark red bud the size and shape of the first appearance of Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors turns out to be a banana flower, and they show us how to peel it (sort of like a giant red endive) and pull out the little flowerets inside, remove the stamens, and then cook them into curry. Well, we are having dinner guests later this week, so we must try this and we buy one.
Back up along the main street, we stroll with our children having sudden fits of shyness and clinging to us, slowing us down so that we look like one giant 6-headed amoeba wending its way along Wangdi's shopfronts. We buy a handful of candy from one of the plastic jars sitting outside of nearly every shop, with individually wrapped pieces: Centerfresh mintgum, Milk-n-Nut (a coconut taffy), and Froote (mango hard candy with a prize wrapped around it). When we ask for a restaurant recommendation, two schoolboys proudly march us to the Kuenga Hotel (hotel in the loose sense here, meaning a public eating establishment), and then join us for the meal upon our urging. Don eats lightly of the stewed beef having seen the meat-house at the weekend market up close. One of the boys has had his money to buy school notebook stolen and is worrying about his mother's scolding. We spring the 50 cents for his two notebooks before taking our leave of Wangdi.
