We've heard some random things whilst travelling. Here are some of the curious things we've picked up.
France: If you lose your driving license you are still allowed on the road if its to drive to work. But if that's too inconvenient you can drive on the road all the time if you buy a car called the Aixam. Incredibly this car doesn't require a driving license.
France: Public toilets are bad because the French don't like the idea of using a toilet away from home.
Italy: Food is served when its ready and not at the same time as your fellow diners. Gets annoying.
France: When you chink glasses when 'cheers-ing' always make eye contact. They even open their eyes extra wide to emphasise the eye contact. Can be unsettling.
Egypt: In the Western Desert there is one policeman for every 10 people who lives there. None of them do much and most are posted to check-points at 50km intervals found in the middle of nowhere. They are supposed to log car and occupant details as you past through so that if you fail to turn up at the next checkpoint within 2 days they can begin their search for you. But this doesn't happen very often so, when they see a foreigner in the car they get all excited and insist on escorting you to the next checkpoint. 'Escorting' means one of two things. Possibility 1 is a police car (full of officers) following behind, possibility 2 one of these officers getting in the taxi with you for the next 40 minutes of your journey.
Egypt: Back on the driving theme, hardly anyone does a driving test is Cairo. They're bought illegally for a few £ in most cases.
India: The 'most dubious brand name of the year' award goes to the bottled water manufacturer Golden Stream.
India: Having your photo taken. Indians love taking your photo. 1 in every 10 photos will be taken with your permission. Degrees of blatancy range from “Chloe, he's lined his mate up in the photo so he can get us in the background” (this becomes quite funny if you're moving because their mate will also move with the camera desperately trying to keep up the pretense) to walking down the beach and a camera pointing right at you. I like to pretend that I'm on a HELLO! photo shoot for these ones.
Australia: Aboriginals have better than 20:20 vision. A great lie, surely?
Hong Kong: Taxi drivers open your door at your destination by pressing a button from where they are sitting. Amazing.
Egypt: Egyptians have a way of counting to 99 using their hands. And its so much more impressive than our 1-10.
New Zealand: North islanders love corrugated iron
Costa Rica: This one is ridiculous. In San Jose, even though the roads are in a simple to use grid system, taxi drivers can only find their destination by landmarks e.g. 500 metres east of the Toyota garage. As you can imagine, this doesn't work well for tourists. Last night we had to take a 200m taxi ride from restaurant to hostel (because the area was dangerous) that took 10 minutes because he didn't know which road he was on the first place - even pointing at a map is pointless. Astonishing.
The World: Local dishes look awful. I have put a photographic example in the gallery named random for anyone who needs convincing...
