Sunday, April 02, 2006

Culture shock continued

There are some nice improvements here over India. Things are clean, tasty soy milk is available everywhere, and fruit vendors seem to be on most street corners selling pineapple at 25 cents a bag. Mmmm.

However, after eating a few bags of pineapple, and consuming a few bottles of soy milk, you're hit with a problem.... where's the toilet.

It's almost a joke in India that you can never find a public toilet. They just don't exist, for the simple reason that in India - the entire country is a public toilet. Men (and to a much lesser extent, women) simply piss on whatever wall is closest - even if that wall happens to belong to the local police station.

I've gotten so used to the Indian way of things - spitting everywhere, and peeing whenever I get the urge, that to come back to civilization is quite a shock.

Also - i've started to notice my own smell considerably more.

Ok, it's hot here. But it can't be that much hotter than India... but for some reason, I notice my own unpleasant scent much more than I did in the last 6 months. The only explaination I can come up with is that everyone else around me doesn't smell, a new experience in itself, and so I stand out.

I'm not yet at the point where i'm considering wearing deodorant again - but I think I'm going to have to adopt the thai habit of 2/3 showers a day.

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