two stories.

The royal palace at noon is a remarkable place. It is easily the size of ten football fields. A sharp spike protrudes from each of the golden dome shaped roofs. The walls are a luminous ivory. A broad stairway greets at the entrance. They are framed by stone supports. Two ten headed cobras sit frozen in mid hiss flank the stairway. Their cold eyes stare intently. Their swollen bodies sprawl lazily across the grey insipid stone.

The throne room lies behind the imposing rosewood doors. Human traffic is directed to the left and right. An intricately woven carpet rests of the cut marble floor. It is cordoned off. The throne sits in the recesses behind the thick red curtains. A golden ten-tiered umbrella extends to the ceiling. Saffron tassels dangle from the edges of each tier. An imaginary King holds court.

A single wall encircles the palace garden. It tells stories of long past. Winged beasts attack the kingdom. They have the heads of demons but the body of an eagle. Their eyes are gold. Their white teeth bared in a snarl. The beasts swoop into the market place. Chaos ensues. A young boy is carried away.

A valiant prince rides out in robes of white and gold. The steed is black with a single white star encrusted on its forehead. He gives chase and fights the demented beasts. The fight is long and bloody but the prince triumphs. The boy is rescued but his shirt is torn.

The palace garden is immaculate. Miniature trees vie for attention, under the watchful gaze of the giant garden guardians. Their expressions are stern, their eyebrows wild and their eyes, on fire. Their bodies have been weathered down. A crack runs from arm up to the left chest of the largest guardian. The fingers on his hands have since been chipped off.

-

The Russian market at noon is a remarkable place. The cloying scent of saccharine perfume knock-offs and the stale smell of sweat beneath the background odour of dried meat and rotting fish impregnate the air. I stand next to a corner stacked with boxes. There are at least two hundred pairs of shoes crammed onto the makeshift box shelves. I pick a pair and the stall keeper smiles at me. She is small in size and short in height. Her face is lined craggily with wrinkles. Two gold studs shine from her ear lobes. Her teeth are yellow but the smile is genuine. I ask her how much the seemingly genuine pair of khaki diesel shoes cost. She names her price. I bargain it down.

A boy turns the corner. He must be no older than eight years. His clothes are old and dirty. There are three tears in his shirt. None of them have been patched. I can see his ribs from one of the bigger tears. The bag he carries is large, obscuring a good half of his lithe frame. He kneels in front of me and his bag rests on the muddy earth floor. He offers to shine my shoes. I do not know what to do. I look at the lady at the stall. She turns to the boy and shoos him away. I concentrate on the diesel shoes.

From the corner of my eye I watch the boy retreat into the corridor adjacent to the shoe stall. He catches my eye and scurries back. The lady of the stall moves to chase him away. I glance at her and she stops to watch. I let him shine my shoes. There is something about having a tiny human being kneel in front of you; shining shoes that you know he'll never be able to afford that crushed my gut together with all my unsubstantiated beliefs that somehow or other the world was indeed a fair place that somehow all the good that a person was blessed with was evened out but the bad he or she was yet to experience, somehow or other.

I gave him all of my riel. The yellowing notes amounted to no more than 2 Singapore dollars. He looked at me like a child who just got a bicycle on Christmas day.

The world did not change, but at that moment, I did.