On promo girls and blisters

Mr Martin recently bought me a new phone, because I lost my phone on my trip home last month. It's a nice smart phone with a decent camera, and wish I had had it a few weeks ago when the Payless Shoes stores had its grand opening in the Vincom Center.

This is the Vincom Center:

It's a very fancy multi-level shopping mall in the centre of Saigon. It has all kinds of shops that most Vietnamese people can't afford to shop at, and most foreigners don't want to shop at.  It's a mystery how they manage to stay open, and an even bigger mystery how they found enough demand to open another almost identical shopping mall across the street: the Vincom Center 2. 

A further mystery is how Payless Shoes got a shop in the very fancy shopping mall - but I have no answers. 

Payless Shoes is just as it is overseas - rows of cheap shoes displayed in the box and arranged by size.  The largest size available for women's shoes is 38 - so tough luck if you're taller than the average.

Like, say, a promo girl.

For their grand opening, Payless Shoes had approximately 20 girls in slutty orange dresses and too much makeup wander around the mall wearing their shoes and carrying shopping bags with their logo emblazoned on them.

I happened to be at the mall towards the end of the promotion.  About a dozen girls were gargoyling in a row by the MAIN ENTRANCE to the mall.

This is a Vietnamese gargoyle. They can sit like that for hours.
And they do...

They all looked unhappy, wearing their slutty dresses and with their orange bags heaped on the floor, and they had all kicked off their cheap shoes and were rubbing their blisters.

I can't think of a better advertisement for Payless Shoes, than 12 promo girls with blisters - can you?