Thursday, March 31, 2011

you live, you learn 6

-Thai Airways has the largest airplane bathrooms I've ever seen!
-The bus from the Thailand-Cambodia border to Siem Riep had the driver's seat on the right-hand side of the vehicle, even though in Cambodia they drive on the right-hand side of the road.
- Angkor Wat is the largest temple in world. It was constructed using 300 million tones of stone.
- Crickets don't taste like chicken. They don't taste like beef either. They taste like... cricket :)
- S21, a jail in Phnom Penh that was used during the genocide in the 1970s, had VIP rooms for government officials to be interrogated and tortured in.
- The young girls selling trinkets on the beach in Sihanoukville offered threading (i.e. hair removal) as a value-added bonus on any purchase to try to entice you.
- A second 3-digit luggage lock combination randomly reset one morning, while securing my luggage.
- At the hotel in Chau Doc, there was a price list for the room inventory items (i.e. bed, TV, remote, fridge, etc.) but no price list for the in-room items that were actually for sale (i.e. water, chips, etc.).
- Some of the "fixed price" stalls at the market in Ho Chi Minh City will actually negotiate on pricing.
- Facebook is blocked in Vietnam.
- Morning glory, a green vegetable commonly served in restaurants over here, is grown in fields with sewage.
- Vietnamese people eat pho for breakfast.
- It's worth going first class on trains in Vietnam (not because it's cushy, just because it's cleaner).
- While waiting to use the shower by the hotel pool in Nha Trang after we'd checked out, I saw two men wash their hands before, but not after, going into the urinal area.
- Some of the roundabouts in Nha Trang look like intersections except instead of having lights, they have a small post in the middle of it with arrows to direct traffic flow around it.
- Monks in Cambodia wear orange all the time. Monks in Vietnam only wear orange on special occasions.
- It takes about 3-4 hours for a one-armed woman to make a bamboo hat. It costs about $1.50 US to buy one.
- During monsoon season, people can fish in the rice fields in Vietnam.
- Sixty-two percent of the scientists in Vietnam live in Hanoi.
- Despite his desire to be cremated, Ho Chi Minh's body has been preserved since his death in 1969 and is on display in a mausoleum.
- In Luang Prabang, the experience of cleaning an elephant costs more than riding one.
- As a result of too many tourist accidents, it's illegal to rent motorbikes in Laos.
- The concept of possession doesn't exist within Lao culture. The word for "mine" and "yours" is the same.
- Everything closes by 11:30 pm in Laos because there's a government curfew that requires everyone to be home by midnight.
- In Laos, as a foreigner, you can only legally have sex with a local if you marry them.
- In Bangkok, apparently it costs 3000 Baht (about one hundred bucks) to get someone shot dead. My expat tour guide only gives his Thai wife 2500 Baht at a time... just in case ;)

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