Last mail must have been from Thailand. From there I went to Laos. It is one of my favorite countries, very laid back and many friendly people. Also because there is almost no traffic it's nice to cycle. Laos is a communist country and the people are real proletarians: so many children and they all say "sabadee" and wave and smile at you when they see you. It automatically puts you in a good mood. So I did a lot of waving and high fiving when I was going through villages.
Kids fishing
Returning home after work
Sun falling on the limestone mountains
War veteran with a picture of the statue of liberty
Many Vietnamese are still fighting a war, although it isn't any more against the imperialist Americans and their puppet regime (I love the communist terminology) in the hills and rice paddies. No, it's against their own comrades on the roads. The Kalashnikov is replaced by a horn which they use all the time and instead off the break. Some of the most reckless driving I saw on this trip was here. Well, travel rule number one is do what the locals do, so I also drove like a maniac. The big cities are swarming with motorcycles which make cycling not really a healthy enterprise. Although the weather wasn't so nice, it's fun cycling in the river delta's (finally flat land!) where you can see the people working on the rice paddies, which are also dotted with graves (maybe the corpses make the earth more nutritious), while you peddle by.
Good for nutrition: a grave in the rice fieldI didn't have much trouble with dogs, but that is maybe because they are on many peoples menu so they rather keep a low profile.Like in many countries bad taste and money go hand in hand in Vietnam. This especially concerns the architecture. While there are many characteristic wooden and stone houses, once the people have enough money they have some monstrous concrete structure made, all of them designed obviously by the same mad man. It's hard to describe but just let's say if Liberacy was still alive today even he would doubt to set a food in one of those houses. They are the ultimate in kitsch with a lot of fake marble pillars and the most hallucinant colour combinations. Some time the people apparently don't have enough money to paint the whole house so they only do the facade and leave the rest nice concrete grey. I always thought the Chinese earned the first price for most ugly architecture with their "school of blue windows and white bathroom tiles" but they Vietnamese surpass them easily.
Beautiful Halong Bay
Nowadays American culture is more popular then before:kids doing some amazing break dancing on a square in Hanoi
So now I'm in China and it's amazing how different people are again. So shy in Laos, outgoing in Vietnam and here in China most of the time you just get a blank stare, if they look at you at all (even if you are the first long nosed barbarian they see in real live). Not much greeting going on here. Well that's okay, can't greet everybody here right? I mean is over 1 billion people living here, I would get a bit tired from it. So they are much more indifferent although I had also situations I was in internet shops with loads of people following every movement I did on the keyboard. Apparently it's also very funny for Chinese when they hear a foreigner say hello. They will say hello to you and when you say hello back they start laughing like it's the funniest thing they heard in years. Mmh Chinese humor, I don't know. Of course they are all very happy that they host the Olympic games this year (it's quite a hype). And they probably all think it's very rude and mean of those Tibetans that they want to disturb that. Well what can I say? Maybe electro shock therapy works against all the shit that has been put in their head all their live.
The Chinese are hard working people. They don't only work hard, also long. On the countryside you see people working the land who in Holland would already be locked up in a retirement home. Not here though, they literally work till the grave where they become fertiliser (also here are the graves often in the rice paddies). They plough the land while carrying a grandchild on their back. Many old people walk like they are still picking rice, so bended are their backs.
I will fly back to Holland on the 21st of May to start working on the bicycle taxi again. It seems my life is revolving around bicycles nowadays. So this probably will be my last mail, but I hope I will be writing you new mails next winter from South America.
Kurt
Hmm, this gonna be a long one, since I found some another old email:
Hello, this will be the last message of this trip, written from the city of Amsterdam. Which means I made it back home alive. I am very lucky to have found a reasonably priced room in Amsterdam Oost and I started to work on the bike-taxi again with a lot of enthusiasm.
Some facts about the trip: I cycled about 5500 km with a top speed of 70 km and the longest distance in a day 127 km, I had a few flat tyres, broken spokes and one broken chain, got hit by a car twice (one of which was just a scrape) and once by a bat and almost hit a cow while going down a hill at 35 km per hour. That's enough facts about the cycling, now some facts about China and its many inhabitants. First of all I want to note that many people in Holland consider the Chinese to be strange or weird. We even say "rare chinees" which means strange Chinese person. But if you consider that strange behaviour is the opposite of normal behaviour and that normal behaviour is considered the behaviour of the majority of the people then actually the 18 million people in Holland are the strange ones, compared to 1.3 billion Chinese. So in that sense you can say on a global level normal behaviour is found in the countries with the biggest population: India and China. It makes you think doesn't it? Some of the normal behaviour I noticed while I was in China:
- It is either a fashion or probably just for convenience to walk around in your pyjamas on the street. Sometimes I saw people in nice matching pyjama suits strolling the street.
- Some other fashion news I have is for parents: in China the babies and little children walk around in pants with holes in them, so when they have to do peepee or kaka they don't shit or wet their pants. It looks very convenient. Fortunately they don't have these pants for adults.
- The women take a lot of care over their appearance. It's only too bad that many seem to lack any sense of taste.
A image from the old China- Apparently half the population is deaf or they don't know how to turn up the volume level of their cell phones, because cell phones are in general not used to talk in but to shout at.
and one from the new China- In Shanghai it's fun to ride the subway if you want to practise your rugby techniques. Instead of making space for the passengers who want to go out, the people who want to go in block the door and the moment the door opens all try to get in as fast as possible (even if there aren't any free seats anymore). There is a saying that civilisation is just a tiny layer; having used the subway in Shanghai, I'm convinced of this. Better grease your elbows when you take the subway (or put some pins on them).
For praticing your rugby techniques: the subway in Shanghai.But better not with the guy in the red who was quite big for Chinese standards.
- For the food adventurers, China is paradise. Everything is eaten: from the dick of a donkey (for increased potency) to the feet of chickens. And what to think of a meal called "floating bladder"? Mjammie he? The most extreme thing I ate was pork intestine, but this was in a vegetarian restaurant and so not really the intestines of a pig. It's hard to be a vegetarian here since many people cook in pork fat and they use chicken extract as a flavouring. I did a cooking course and asked what I should use instead of chicken extract since I'm a vegetarian. "Just put some extra salt" was the answer.
- Because of the Olympics the government is trying to ban spitting. But of course you cannot just get rid of age old traditions so you can still hear the scraping of the throat (for some reason this has to be done very loudly) followed by a spit in many places.
- The Chinese have a bit of a bad rep for occupying Tibet and I have to say I didn't meet one Chinese who said Tibet should be an independent country, except for my friend in Hong Kong (but Hong Kong Chinese are very, very different from the Chinese people from the mainland). It's a touchy subject which I decided to avoid discussing since they always see you as the misinformed (that's funny) stranger who doesn't understand the topic. But on average they are not such bad and evil people, although they do tend to like karaoke.
- Chinese are in general very nationalistic people, they are proud of their country (including Tibet and Taiwan of course) and their long history and culture. Only too bad that long history in culture kind of took a dip. Present day culture is not something to be proud of. Interesting Chinese bands are very rare also when you think of the amount of people living there. Although I can recommend Er shou mei gui (Second hand roses). Since the "Let a hundred flowers bloom" campaign in the 50's the party doesn't take any criticism, so artists are very careful, although I saw some "reactionary art" in a Shanghai gallery with propaganda like paintings of soldiers waving the little red book while sucking on pacifiers. So there are some interesting artists in the big cities, but considering the size of the population it's on a really small scale.
- The military is, not surprisingly for an authoritarian regime, strongly represented. On tv you see many army soaps with sometimes crying soldiers (soldiers have feelings too!!), if you zap there is a big chance you see a concert of army brass bands (soldiers are culturally minded too!!!) and the army even has news reports in which you see the presenter (of course in uniform) talk about the latest news concerning fighter jets or tanks. (This is no joke!)
Chinese propaganda movie: Comrade Ping is watching you!- They are very surprised to see a left handed person. When they see me write or eat, they always make remarks and act like they never saw something like that before. Because in the school where I was staying we ate communal on small tables I sometimes had chopstick fights with the person sitting left from me.
- Chinese people like to sit on small chairs.
- The Chinese government is blaming Western media for being manipulative and coloured. I have to say that considering the events in Tibet indeed there was some manipulation by some Western media. But it really is a case of "the pot calling the kettle black": in general, reading the newspaper or watching the English spoken news on CCTV9 makes you wanna throw up.
- Concerning the naming of rock formations in National Parks the Chinese have a vivid imagination and they use very poetic names. I went to one National Park which had amazing sandstone rocks that were eroded into pillars which together looked like a kind of stone forest. Unfortunately the park resembled an amusement park and was very overcrowded with many Chinese lining up to pose for pictures of course making the V sign while doing that. What to think of the following names of stone formation which not even being stoned out of your mind you could see in it: "Five ladies visiting the Generalissimo", "The supernatural hawk guarding the whip", "Commenting freely on a dominant position", "The god of longevity welcoming guest" and so on.
Wulingyuan national park: enjoy the eroded rocks amongthousands of Chinese who all want to pose in the picture
doing the v sign and sign karaoke on the mountain
- Concerning the hair growing out of moles: this should not be cut or pulled out, but grown long, apparently it is a sign of longevity. It really is a disgusting sight.
For a slideshow of Laos click here
For a slideshow of Vietnam click here
For a slideshow of China click here
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