Classically, Songkran is the celebration of New Year (Does every county have its own calendar or what?) in the Thai lunar calendar, in the middle of the hot season. And at least in Bangkok and other big cities, it is celebrated as giant city-wide water fight. Especially in the backpacker tourist area Banglapoo.
Khaosan Road, the heart of Banglapoo, was a watery hell that day. Lena insisted on going into that street, she came back soaked from top to toe – even though she didn’t even have a weapon. Well, the western tourists seem to have the biggest water guns but also make the best target. The area was so full on these days that I guess that many western tourists come to Thailand just for the water fight.
Getting away from the center of the action, where there was enough place for cars on the street, the battle continued. We’ve seen loads of pickups, trucks and tuk-tuks loaded with gangs of water gun slinging and trigger-happy Thais.
After Songkran, Lena just had enough time left to do a course of Vipassana meditation on her own (but at Wat Suan Mokkh) and I used the time to take some vacation in the island world of south Thailand.
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…or plants?
Also, don’t climb up that power pole! I wonder how many people do climb up that mast if it needs a sign to forbid it to them? :-)
On self-made electro-motor driven ride-a-ponies. How cool is that? I can’t help though to find them a bit creepy in their slightly tattered but colourful composition.
Or, let’s have a ride on living banana split with chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream with a cherry on its head! Oh wait, oh god, it’s melting!
Okay, then lets get on this pink seesaw for … only one child? Where your playmate is a robot either disguised as a pink deformed Micky Mouse or a giant pink rabbit? Argh those eyes, they keep staring at me!
Well, there is still the choice to ride in that colourful car with that broken nose… No wait, what is this creeping up behind me?? A white slime thing with a pipe in its mouth and a sirene on it’s head?
Kunming is not one of those third world mega cities with endlessly sprawled out slums in the suburbs whose city center look much much smaller than one would expect it considering the size of the city. Rather, Kunming reassured my first impression of China (or rather Yunnan) how modern, civilized, clean and rich it looks.
One thing I noticed is that in the bigger cities in Yunnan, most motorcycles, transporter motor-rickshaws and city-cars have an electro motor. The difference in noisiness and air pollution within the cities is noticeable.
A reason we Europeans are so ignorant of China might be that in our heads we classify it as one country (think of certain statistics about e.g. pollution produced). But by area, population, history and culture, it should rather be looked at as a cultural zone in the same class of the whole of South East Asia or Europe. China is about as big as Europe – only unified under one rule.
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On a snack package with dried peas. They don’t even bother to consult a dictionary, google translate or something before they put this on thousands of packages.
In a menu at a restaurant aimed at tourists.
And here are some more highlights I found in restaurant menus:
I hereby solemnly award China the Guinness Book of Records title
“Country with Worst English Translations”.
This really shows how European languages and Chinese languages are quite incompatible with each other.
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