He catches a plane, pops malaria pills and hopes he won't have problems with his visa.
She catches a train, pops ibeprophin and walks through customs without bothering to take out her passport.
Both dash to get out of the monsoon rains ... and run into bitty hotels.
He stands out irreconcilably as the only white person for miles around, finds a terribly sloppy job done at the bank and resigns himself to another meal solo.
She finally speaks French well enough to blend in just a bit, finds that no one knows what's going on at the the conference (who said the UN is organized??) and resigns herself to a stiff drink, solo.
An acquaintance invites her to a ritzy dinner, she gets a bit tipsy on good French wine and decides it best to head back to the hotel.
An acquaintance invites him to tour the town ... he is chased by flocks of merchants who want to sell their artisan goods and gets a bit tipsy on some unknown substance.
He decides to buy many sculptures, bowls, masks, paintings and other semi-interesting, semi-useless things and is chased by even larger flocks of merchants, then decides to go home with said acquaintance in the slum area of town to play the drums.
She receives SMS message which reads " I went to explore the city with some Africans and bought a whole lot of stuff that we don't need and got drunk on drinks that I don't know what it was, but it was a lot of fun", gives her presentation, and receives an interesting proposition from someone in the audience that went something like this: "I was fascinated by your presentation and would really like you to consider writing a guest submission in the journal for which I am editor. I also run an on-line dating service?"
He loses his bags; she loses her patience.
Ahhh yes ... just another manic week.
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