As the more observant readers (both of you) would’ve noticed by now… we’ve actually been home for a couple of days now. Thailand was great, but we didn’t do much touristy stuff. And by “much”, I mean “any”. Pretty much exactly what the doctor ordered, topped off nicely with catching up with some good friends who live there or were passing through. On the other hand, definitely a place we want to go back to and do it justice, from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot to see there.
So I guess that’s it. Best thing is that we’ve been gone from Australia for so long, I almost feel like a tourist here. Everything feels new or different, and therefore exciting again in my mind 
. I guess they always say a change is as good as a holiday!
Alright, last lot of things that make one go “Hmmm…”
Apart from the dozens of (rather amusing) examples of what is commonly referred to as Chinglish (Chinese badly translated into English, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish, one example I can remember was a sign that warned us to “Slip Carefully”), I have to admit there weren’t actually that many What The’s… here goes anyway…
- A bunch of warnings on the Great Wall to be careful around the edges, not to stray from the path, etc and of course… not to use your mobile during thunderstorms. Fair enough. You’d probably need both hands to fly your kite properly?
- There are quite a number of national TV stations (12 I think… makes the 3 or 4 BBC channels look a little anemic), one of which is CCTV9 which is fully done in English. Fair enough (and the only thing we watched for the three weeks we were there), but I was quite surprised to find that one of the anchors doing the news (in a rather Australian accent) was none other than good old… Edwin Maher. Who said weathermen couldn’t go places…
- I have seen some pretty full-on sales in my time, but nothing prepared me for walking down a stretch of shopping street in Xian. This 100m stretch was home to half a dozen mobile phone companies or so and to say things are competitive in the Chinese mobile market is a bit of an understatement. Each shop had at least 10-15 sales assistants (give or take) manning the entrance to what looked like department-store-sized mobile phone shops. All vying to get passing shoppers’ attention. Not often you see them do that though by what to my western ears sounded like (but admittedly could’ve been anything) chanting slogans and singing songs. I guess I noticed them, so perhaps the Chinese walking past did too.
- After having traveled around Japan and Nepal before arriving in China, we were pretty used to the squat toilets generally used around Asia. Wasn’t quite prepared for the old communal squat toilets though. That’s right. One of the monasteries we stayed at on Mount Emei had a set of communal toilets, which instead of having the usual discreet cubicle around each squat toilet, simply had a low concrete divider (about 50cm high, along the side of the squat toilet), and no door or other cover across the “entrance”. Combined with the balcony style “wall” (admittedly giving a great view of the surrounding forest due to the complete lack of wall from about 1m from the floor and up) and interesting (and generally short lasting experience).
- The ability of just about all Chinese (van, bus, taxi, etc) drivers to at the same time instill a complete sense of insanity (quite commonly found amongst Asian drivers) and complete competence. Intriguing.
Forgot to put these up, figured better late than never…
- Upon moving into our room in Kathmandu we were slightly intrigued to find a complimentary box of matches with not the hotel logo on it but… Microsoft Windows? Perhaps one of the latest initiatives of the Gates Foundation?
- When checking the expiry date on some peanuts at the local supermarket, I found that it was 3 months from the date of production. The date of production was March 30th, so nothing that strange I guess… except that that day was March 28th.
- During our trek around Annapurna, at the end of one day I found that my deodorant had moved around and accidentally been emptied. Not wanting to smell too much (always a major concern when trekking ), of course we set out to look for some deodorant around the village we were staying in. We found some, which I was quite impressed with (at 1600m), but I was somewhat intrigued that the four different types that they sold were all produced by… Playboy. Makes you wonder about some of the trekkers that had dropped by previously throughout the years (and perhaps gave the locals the idea that this was a winning marketing strategy?).
- Many a guesthouse had a dining area for breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. Generally fairly functional areas, a (disturbingly large) number of them had spruced them up with a few posters. Makes sense, except that most of them were pictures of tanned, oiled-up body-builders or swiss chalets. One or two would’ve just been a little odd, but the regularity makes one wonder what the locals think westerners are into. Or what they’re into. Then again, Arnie in his heyday was pretty buffed…
- Cigarettes were regularly included on food menus. I’m guessing Nepal is still a couple of years away of banning smoking in restaurants and other public spaces.
- Quite a few clothes stores could be found selling the latest North Face (or other brandname) gear. At prices generally around 10% of what you’d expect to pay in western countries, the authenticity sometimes was a little questionable. Some stores perhaps made it a little to obvious though, one example I found was of some underwear made by “Calvan Klain”. Whoops.