En sista komentar pa Kina-resan

Hej alla.
Jag befinner mig nu i Jodhpur i provinsen Rajastan efter att ha spenderat ett par dagar pa vagen hit med att besoka Taj Mahal. Inte sa mycket att saga om det forutom att det ar lika maktigt som man inbillar sig efter att ha sett ett par tusen bilder av det stora marmor-palatset som Indien ar sa kant for. Jag ska tillbringa ett par veckor har i Rajastan, som ar den delen man i forsta hand tanker pa nar man tanker pa Indien. Ni vet männ pa kameler ikladda gigantiska, färgglada turbaner, balong-knickers och mustascher stora som illrar. Jag har faktiskt redan sett precis det jag just beskrev. Tagresan hit var ungefar sa kaotisk som jag befarade. Pa stationen sa tavlorna att taget skulle ga fran en perong, rosten i hogtalaren sa en annan medans taget kom in pa en tredje. Lite forvirande att veta vilket tag jag skulle ta. Till raga pa allt var taget sju timmar forsenat vilket innebar att jag kom fram klockan halv fem i morse, sa dar lagom sliten. Standarden ar inte heller riktigt i klass med kinesiska tag. 8st harda, galonkladda britsar inklamda pa en allt for liten yta pluss att tagen kanns mer nergangna an ett riktigt nedskitet pendeltag. Men det ar en kul upplevelse i sig.
Anledningen till att jag skriver just nu ar egentligen att jag vill avsluta mina komentarer fran Kina med ett sista litet inlagg. Jag fick ett mail fran schweizarna jag reste ett tag med, som var sa bra att jag maste sno det fran dom. Sa har kommer en liten lista (pa engelska) pa saker ni inte viste om Kina.
Thanks Markus and Jennifer for letting me borrow this part from you.

Did you know that in china…

– the chinese eat dogs and cats and you can buy them dead or alive on any market.

– not many chinese own a car. so you see the whole family together on a moped, always without a helmet!

– people all dress very similar and most men wear a suit, even to work on a construction-site.

– you find all similar shops on the same road. so there are food-streets, mobile-phone-streets, curtain-streets, 10 or more same shops, all selling the exact same products. it really makes it easy to compare and bargain!

– on crossroads there often is a countdown that shows how many seconds the traffic-lights still are red or green.

– nobody takes the traffic-rules seriously -> you can drive over a red light, cross a street anywhere, overtake on the right or drive too fast infront of the police and nobody seems to care.

– if chinese don’t know the answer they rather just say something wrong than nothing, as they don’t want to loose their face. so I’ve experienced standing at a roundabout, getting 4 different directions from 4 different people, how to get to the longdistance busstation!

– most chinese men seem to smoke alot, as a packet of cigarettes costs only about 1 euro. so you can imagine the air on a bus after 17 hours with only 2 women and 25 men!

– you have to fill in a form in every hotel with lots of details like passportnumber, birthdate, profession and purpous of visit to let the police know every day exactly who and where you are.

– the chinese are not used to our western toilets. they usually squat down over a hole in the ground. so it happens that you read signs over western toilets that you should not stand on the rim of the toilet but sit down on it. toilet paper is never provided and you’re not allowed to flush the paper down the toilet but have to put it in the bin next to the toilet.

– in tibet you find the worst toilets in the world! and often there is no toilet at all, so you go behind the next house which anyway is much cleaner than the public toilets where some people don’t seem to be able to aim into the hole. in tibet and western china lots of people make their pile on the road – disgusting!

– loud spitting seems to be as normal as breathing. they do it everywhere and always – in the bus, train, street and even in the hotel.

– some people here work 7 days a week, 12 or more hours a day. that’s maybe why you often have to wake them up behind the counter in shops, restaurants or hotels if you ”want” to pay. you hardly notice that it’s weekend as all the shops, banks and postoffices are open.

– chinese usually don’t use a deodorant. most don’t even know what it is or how to use it. it’s really hard to find some place to buy one!

– to educate the 250 million schoolchildren, china has 14 million teachers, 3 million are untrained. this is still a leftover of mao’s anti-intellectualism.

– everything is perfectly faked in china: clothes, cds, dvds, watches, rucksacks, …and you can buy expensive brands to extremely cheap prices. but… the quality is often very bad. fake-dvds work to about 50%.

– if you need to buy cream for your face, you will only find one with whitening-formula. it is a sign of being poor to have brown skin. so you see lots of women walking around with their umbrella if the sun shines, not to look brown like a farmer.

– there seems to be more hairdressers here in china than restaurants. you find them on every corner and they often are opened till midnight. often they also
provide massage-service and if you’re not ”careful” as a man you might get even more…

– the dentists work on streets and markets. they try to sell fals teeth to everyone and pull the broken ones infront of everybody watching.

– women often wash their beautiful long black hair out on the streets and comb it for ages, even in restaurants, on busses and in shops.

– clothes often get hung up to dry on trees and bushes out on the street. towels are put over bikes and mopeds to dry outside.

Kolla aven in deras websida fran deras resa. http://bigtrip.milsom.ch/
Om ni kollar deras bilder fran Yunnan-provinsen hittar ni nog lite bilder pa nagan ni kanner igen :-). Men aven de andra bilderna fran deras resa ar riktigt bra.

Nu ska jag ge mig ut i solskenet igen och battra pa solbrannan lite. Vi hors snart igen.
Johan.