Even though it is the last observation I made today I put it first since I already mentioned it in the previous article: Chinese men (as well as women, which I found later) have some disgusting habits like spiting on the floor, drawing the spit from the depths of their throats seemingly making as laud a sound as they can manage.
A custom that applies to everybody – men and women alike - is discarding of (in this particular case) fishbones straight from one’s mouth onto the surface of the dining table (no plate for bones or anything like that) or again straight on the floor.
Oh, and they all squelch a lot too while eating.

I have been dining with the family that owns the guesthouse I’m staying in and that is why I made these observations so quickly. When they saw me putting the fishbones back to my rice bowl I was told to throw them on the floor or put them straight on the table as well, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. In the end they noticed that I was not really comfortable doing as they do so they brought a small plate for the bones for me. I think that made everybody happy.
Please don’t get me wrong. This is simply a different culture and we have to learn to accept it. They are undoubtedly very nice people.

Crossing the border to China only confirmed another of my observations and that is how much the way that people look changes as one crosses country borders. I find it pretty astonishing that the differences in body and mainly face topology changes so markedly. I have to say that completely to the contrary to what I originally thought I think that so far the most beautiful people are actually the Cambodians – both men and women.

Although Laos surprised me a lot by the state of its development crossing to China made me realize again that I spent the last month in low profile, still developing countries (Cambodia & Laos). Not only the houses suddenly changed from bamboo & reed based to stone and brick mostly, but also you can see it in the amount of development that is going on and even the variety of cars on the roads. While most lorries in Cambodia and Vietnam are cheep Hyundays and in Laos ISUZU here in China the variety seems to be bigger, including two probably Chinese makes. And wile driving to my today’s destination I witnessed the biggest road construction project I’ve ever seen. After about 200 kilometers of riding on third class roads (I assume), that are all sealed and pretty smooth I reached a second class road. However, as they are in the middle of construction of a seemingly straight highway that will replace the very curvy road I was on, this old road is mostly in pretty bad condition – worse than the third class roads that I was on before. This only changes at places that are probably not going to be superceded by the new road. They are leaving the rest without repairs while all the trucks involved in the construction of the new road (and there was a lot of them even today and it is Sunday!) are contributing to accelerated damage of the old road. The highway they are building just cuts through all the hills and mountains, consisting mostly of bridges and tunnels, or perhaps huge cuts into the hills that are otherwise in many cases used to grow tea bushes. The "bridge & tunnel" style of the new road keeps the highway under construction not only straight but also very leveled. There was stuff happening concurrently on the whole about 60 or 80 km length of the construction site. As I said before, I’ve never seen anything like that.

This is an interesting one: Volkswagen seems to have a very good business partner in China as most of the cars are brand new and some a little older Volkswagens. Citroen seems to have a piece of the cake with two or three cars sighted. I actually don’t think that I’ve seen any other make of a passenger car then these two today.

Most motorbikes here are Hongda. No, that is not a typo. As a Vietnamese travel guide in Vietnam put it: “It is far from as reliable as Honda, but it sounds the same when you say it and that together with much lower sale price makes all the difference. Some of the Hongdas even look bigger than those 125cc’s that are being sold in Vietnam. I’m not sure what their engine capacity is but the difference to my bike is not that huge as if compared with the little 100 to 125cc machines sold in Vietnam. Thanks to this fact not many people are taken aback by the sight of me and the bike, which I was experiencing day in day out in the previous two countries. Only a few small children or children in groups wave or express their amazement by “WOW!” or similar word of astonishment. However, it must be mostly my whole appearance in full riding gear and dark full helmet that is so different from the normal here, where people still ride in shorts and T-shirts with only the “coconut style” helmets.

Petrol is surprisingly cheap. Based on my Internet research I was expecting a price of about USD0.6 per liter and my first refill cost me not even USD0.4 per liter.