Tricksters, Swindlers and Bad Soughts in Paramaribo!! Today is my first day in Paramaribo and luckily I have organized to meet up with a local to show me around. CJ headed off to work at 7am and as his apartment is secured like Fort Knox I could not leave or enter without him and his biometric fingerprint. At 11am CJ returned and let me out of the building and I made my way into the city for my first look around. The architecture is certainly the highlight of the city and you can't help but notice the strong Dutch influences. I headed for the central market on the east side of sound and was met with a busy and chaotic mess of people, cars and goods. To no surprise I was offered drugs, women, rare animals and everything else in-between and after politely declining the first few times I decided just to ignore the rest. The market was very interesting and along with all the fruits and vegetables there were dried meats, seafoods, Indian food, Asian food, Indonesian food and Creol foods. The market was spread over 4-5 large buildings and had certain areas with certain goods. I had to meet the local Couchsurfer Dana at 1pm at the Cathedral so I had to leave the market early without seeing even half of it. I met the lovely Dana at the church and we hit it off straight away; Dana is just 22 but after living and studying in Holland for 2 years she has many interesting stories. We walked towards the waterfront where most tourists visit to eat typical foods but after seeing the place empty and observing the high prices we decided to try our luck at the central market instead. Having Dana with me was pure gold in that she could not only explain everything but talk to the locals and ask questions for me. I had heard of a man that sells iguana in the market and after some asking around we found him but unfortunately today he didn't have any. It was now around 2pm and we were both hungry so we tried to find some lunch. I found this little Chinese guy selling smoked and sweetened Chinese chicken out of a little stall and he had a huge line out infront of his shop so I new whatever he was selling it was good. For about $1.50 he gave me a pound of cooked and smoked chicken sliced and diced into small pieces ready to eat. We then found a little Indonesian resteraunt run by a couple of old Javanese ladies and Dana ordered this dish of fried fish, cassava and vegetables. We also got a couple of glasses of Dawet; a very typical Javanese drink of coconut, cane sugar and lime - delicious. This very angry guy came into the little resteraunt and after ordering his food had a fight with his girlfriend and she left - he then turned his anger to me accusing me of causing the fight because his girlfriend couldn't sit because I was taking up a seat. I found it hard to believe what he was trying to say but apologized and said it was not my intent, he excepted this and then proceeded to chat-up Dana which was quite comical in that he had literal just had a domestic with his girlfriend. Unfortunately my impression of the locals is not improving and I would have trouble trusting any of them at this point in time. Dana and I then made our way to the North side of the city and the 'I love
Suriname' sign for some photos. We crossed some more interesting buildings and a very interesting haunted house before arriving at the sign. The compulsory photo was taken and then Dana had to head off to meet some friends. Dana kindly dropped me off at CJs apartment and after a quick yoga session CJ and I then headed out for another walk around the city. We visited this interesting park of palm trees and then made our way to a very touristy bar to watch the football and have a drink. As dark came so did the Mosquitos and we both agreed it was time to go. For dinner I made a vegetable, chicken and egg soup in CJs trusty rice- cooker and then chatted some more before calling it a night.

OBSERVATIONS:
- Dutch architecture
- Met the lovely Dana
- Drank Dawet, ate cassava, ate Chinese smoked chicken