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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chlidonias" data-source="post: 2885486" data-attributes="member: 64468">So I am in Malaysia now. The country has got even more relaxed about immigration since last time I was here. Now you don't even fill out an arrival card or declaration or anything. You just head off the plane to Immigration, they stamp your passport and wave you through (this is if you're a New Zealander, possibly different for other nationalities because Malaysia likes us), you collect your bag from the luggage belt and then walk through Customs without a glance. Easy-peasy.A bit of a round-up of the trip so far: a few hours at Hong Kong airport at the start, followed by a fairly rubbish visit to South Korea, followed by an even more rubbish visit to Russia, then a brilliant time was had in Mongolia, and then the mixed bag that was China. That didn't start out well but it picked up very well indeed once I got to Sichuan. I think it was partly because China takes a few weeks to “get into” because it is so different to everywhere else you've been, and then after that while you don't really get used to it, all the oddities just seem more normal. Also Sichuan is just the best province for wildlife, and it really did seem a different place to the rest of China.I really did like China a lot. I probably won't get to go back but I would like to. There are still so many animals left to see there – I mean, just how does one go about finding a giant salamander?!  Pretty much everybody in the country was exceptionally nice, if often baffling (and probably baffled), and unlike most of the countries I've been to in southeast Asia there was almost literally no scamming or anything of that nature. There were a few minor instances but I think that was probably more due to me misunderstanding things than actual scams. And unlike, say, Thailand or Malaysia, I was quite happy leaving my bags sitting on a seat in a bus station while I went off to the toilet because I knew full well they would be there when I got back. It's just that sort of country.I love the fashion in China too! Everyone is an individual and nobody else cares. Or at least it seems like nobody else cares. In the West people are so stuck up that if someone isn't wearing “normal” or “fashionable” clothes the cool people look down upon them and make snide remarks. I have wondered if it is the same in China (or Japan come to that) or if everyone is just fine with everything. I saw a mid-twenties lady shopping in the supermarket in Beijing, wearing high heels and a pair of exceptionally neatly-pressed pyjamas with cartoon elephants on them. I saw another lady somewhere else wearing pyjamas as well. And there's the girls and lads who look like their wardrobes vomited the clothes over them and they just went with whatever landed in the right place. I think it is great because everyone should be an individual and not a conformist. Do what makes you happy and not what other people say you “should” do.One thing I didn't like, and this is going to sound odd, was the food! I actually prefer the westernised take-away Chinese food such as I eat in New Zealand. Part of that probably comes from my inability to read a Chinese menu. In the tourist spots (say, in Chengdu or Songpan) there are English-language menus or menus with pictures, but most of the places I was at didn't have those of course. Instead I would go in the kitchen and point at things. And this was where things would get weird. I would point at some pork, an onion, a tomato, some green vegetables, make the sign for “just mix all that up together” and then they would bring me out three full meals: say, one made of pork and onions, one pork and tomato, and one a soup of vegetables and tomatoes. It didn't seem to matter that I was one person and most of the food would go to waste (although I can eat a lot!). And I never knew the price of anything when I did that so often I got a nasty surprise when the bill came. Sometimes I had good food in China (the donkey meat dish I had in Beijing was a stand-out) but they do have a liking for serving dishes swimming in pools of oil or grease, and frying everything where-ever possible. And then there's the soups made up of hunks of fat; no meat, just repulsive great globs of fat and nothing else. Yeah, the food is not good in China.Another funny thing stemming from me not speaking Chinese, was when I didn't understand someone (which was always) they would often write out what they had said in Chinese characters for me. I sort of get that, because some people can read a language without being able to speak it properly, but if I plainly can't understand a single word they are saying should they really expect me to understand an entire paragraph of symbols?Anyway, China is done. Malaysia is now. I'm considering a mystery country next for just a few weeks, before I head to Thailand.</blockquote>

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