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got a room. The whole hotel and town and shops are over-run with the [[underline]] Babbits [[/underline]] of the SS. California. After I hear their conversation and see the lot of them I am more than ever unlikely to join in any of their ^[[organised]] [[underline]] Around the World trips. [[/underline]]
[[underline]] March 14. [[/underline]] Paid $140 Hongkong Mex. Dollars for my passage on S.S. [[underline]] Angkor [[/underline]] to [[underline]] Saigon. [[/underline]] Will take [[underline]] 3 days. [[/underline]] Wanted to buy some of those excellent bamboo chair as I saw on Lun-shan Prices offered are $3.00 Hongkong Mex. a piece, and 2 are packed together for 80 cents making 40 cents more per chair. Freight is very expensive because it goes by cubic contents. I believe the freight for 12 chairs to New York will be 70$. (American?)
The [[underline]] circumstances [[/underline]] of the SS. California, have invaded
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the [[underline]] lobby [[/underline]] of the hotel and all comparing and displaying their bargains. One addressed as "the doctor" [[underline]] explains [[/underline]] his prices and bargains and tries his shawls on the women of his party. Another one, with a parchment dried face, is calculating with another that by going from Paris to London in a certain way he comes out [[underline]] 40 cents [[/underline]] to the good. Another is calculating that in 71 days he will be back in Los Angeles [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] as if he had to pass thru some further ordeal. The man addressed as "Doctor" must be a [[underline]] surgeon. [[/underline]] He [[underline]] enumerates the money he has spent on his purchases [[/underline]] and winds up by saying: [[underline]] "One single operation of appendicitis will pay for the whole lot!"  Scott [[/underline]] introduced me to the local manager of the Standard