What the Fu** is the deal?

There's not much to say these days. We're just chillin on a beach all day, eating good food in cheap restaurants in the evenings, sometimes sipping on cheap but decent beer (30 rs., 42 isk, 0.70 usd. pr. bottle).

Anna has sometimes remarked about the indians that "They have no shame". They just do whatever comes to their mind and have no idea about the western mentality. That's fine and we as their guests just have to get used to that but when they're working in the tourism industry and their income depends on the money from the tourists, you'd think they would try a little to adjust to our way of doing things.

Here are simple examples.
When you go to a restaurant in China and many places in South East Asia, the waiter who brings you the menu, doesn't leave the table until you've made your reservation. At first we thought this was really unpleasant and it put a pressure on us to hurry up with deciding what to have. Then we got used to it and now I just take my time in deciding what to have even though the waiter is breathing down my neck.

In Bangladesh it was worse but then again, they're not used to tourists at all so I must forgive them for this. When we went into a restaurant and were eating our food, the waiter stood over us and stared at us while we ate. I'm not saying that he was close by and was watching us with one eye, he was standing by the edge of the table, leaned forward and stared at us like you would stare at fishes in a fish tank. This had not happened to us before and although we became very self-concious, we just tried to ignore the guy and kept on eating.

A less funny example is the fact that many restaurants (especially here in India) don't realize that tourists don't like flies on or in their food. In Orchha I didn't have an appetite for anything because there were flies everywhere. If you think that I'm just a "chicken" because of this, you've got to remember that I've eaten food that's been prepared on the street in numerous countries and I've eaten a spider, a rat and a grasshopper (engispretta). Here in India you've got the holy cows roaming the streets eating out of garbage bins, then they shit everywhere on the streets which is very good for the flies and then no one (or at least very few) seems to understand that westerners don't like dirty food or flies in it. You should also see some of the kitchens here. Anna has sometimes looked the other way when they're making our food because she knows that if she would see how they make it and how dirty everything is, she wouldn't be able to eat it.

The final example is litter/rubbish/trash/muell/rusl or whatever you like to call it. It's everywhere and nobody cares. We were on a train the other day and when I finished my water, I put the empty plastic bottle under my seat so I could throw it away later. The guy sitting opposite me then asked me; "Why do you take the bottle with you, why don't you just throw it" he said and pointed out the window. I didn't know what to say because I knew that I couldn't explain to him that plastic waste in the countryside was just something that we didn't like. Here in Goa where thousands of tourists come to enjoy the beachlife it's better. They've got people walking along the beach to pick up trash but where the yellow sand ends you can find plenty of trash which nobody cares about. Even hotel and restaurant owners don't bother to clean up the litter which is lying around their property and someone should tell them that the smell of shit does not increase my appetite. It´s not like it costs much to get someone to clean up this mess in a country where the minimum wage could hardly buy a Big Mac meal in Iceland. This does not only apply to India but also Bangladesh, Vietnam and other places but it´s most visible in India and Bangladesh.

There is still hope because some states in India have banned the use of plastic bags and some tourist parks don't allow you to bring in plastic bottles or plastic bags. But the Indians don't get the whole concept and keep on dumping their trash wherever. Was this sometimes like this in Iceland/Germany/England/US? Did people once just throw their stuff on the ground without thinking or have the westerners had a sence for these things since the early days. I remember a slogan when I was a kid and it said "Hrein torg, fögur borg" which means "clean squares, beautiful city". Maybe then we were as the indians, dumping our stuff everywhere but then we got wise. I´ll give them a few years and then we´ll see how the situation is.

Well that´s all about this negative part of India. We were reading over our old blog posts and it´s funny how everything was upbeat in the beginning but our last posts have all been about something negative. I don´t know if it´s just us getting tired or if there are just more negative things about Bangladesh/India than about China and SE Asia. At least this has been a valuable experience and hopefully when I look back, I´ll think to myself "why the hell were you so negative, why didn´t you just laugh about it all and enjoy the time you were there".

Well I´m going down to the beach to enjoy myself today but hopefully I won´t step in one of the piles of oil that are on the beach. Apparantly a ship sank here not so long ago and the oil from the ship has piled up on the beach and parts of the beach are black. At first I just thought that the sand was just black like in Iceland and the piles of oil were actually piles of cowshit but no. There I go again, being negative.

Bis bald

Valli