Shopping in Divisoria

I got up really early this morning because I wanted to go to Divisoria with my aunts. Cutting my usual sleeping time back a couple of hours was a pain in the ass, but the experience was worth it. We left at around eight a.m. because everybody else had other things to do after lunch. And it’s also ideal to go to Divisoria that early or else you’ll have quite a hard time finding a parking space.

Divisoria is beside Chinatown and the moment I stepped down from the car my nose recoiled at the awful, awful stench of that part of the city. In order to get to the Divisoria mall (which is basically just a building with lots and lots of stalls, not really a mall) we had to walk two really long blocks from the car. And no matter where we walked, the stench was always there. It was the most horrible smell in the world. It was like the atoms of the aromas of rotting garbage, horse shit (for there were horse-drawn carraiges there), human piss and goodness knows what else formed a chemical combination that resulted in some sort of a deadly gas. I don’t think there was a single speck of oxygen present in the atmosphere of that place. Jesus Christ, how can anybody breathe that fetid air?

I guess I must’ve looked really ridiculous, with my nose wrinkled as we made our way down those two blocks. I felt a little bit better when we arrived inside the building. After getting a quick breather, we began our search for Barbie party items.

If the tiangge at Greenhills was really huge, Divisoria was a frickin’ maze. Nothing but stalls, stalls, stalls everywhere and they all seemed to sell the same pirated and non-pirated things. It seems to me that you can buy anything in Divisoria, from hair clips to revolving disco ball thingies in either wholesale or retail prices. Divisoria is really the wholesale center for those who have small businesses in tiangges and stuff. The prices were really cheap too. I bought a lot of makeup, nail polish, and even a revolving disco ball thingie for my room. It looks really cool. My aunt was also happy with her finds; she bought these really cute Barbie watches which she would raffle off at my cousin’s party. She also got Barbie plates, stamps, rulers and glittery tattoos. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any Barbie dolls, and since we didn’t have time to go to a real mall I wasn’t able to buy my Barbie today. And I was really looking forward to starting my collection too. Oh well…maybe tomorrow.

We ended shopping at noon and by then I was really tired because we’ve been walking nonstop for like, four hours. We passed through those two blocks again–the stench was still in the air and from the looks of things, it seems like it’ll be there for a very long time. I swear, humans can be so sloppy sometimes.