Smells of Asia

I thought I would tell you about the smells here, it struck me when I was walking back to the hotel tonight. There was that smell of the Thai cooking, the fresh herbs mixed with the chilli, the pleasant smell that drags you into that restaurant. And then there is the smell of the dried squid. The man comes around with a trolley with all this dried squid hanging from it, I think they eat it like a beer snack (like the crickets, spiders and various other deep fried bugs) and well it stinks to be honest.

Then there is the wall that doubles as a urinal in HCM City, no prizes for guessing how offensive that is.

Down by the river or the canal, depending on where I am, there is a vague smell of fishy stuff, and the constant rubbish in the river doesn't make it all pleasing to the eye.

Bangkok and most of the other cities are full of pollution too. So there is the constant smell of bus, tuk-tuk and car fumes. Then there is the people, I swear that some of these tourists are taking the blending into Thai culture a little too far...is deodorant too expensive?

Finally, the temples, you know when you get within a few hundred metres of the temples because the smell of incense immediately assaults the nostrils and can be overpowering as they burn alot of it. Which reminds me about the guy at Angkor Thom who literally shoves 3 sticks of incense in front of you as you walk past and expects you to take it and pray to Buddha and then pay for the priviledge. The thing is that he gets all the Koreans, they give him money and then he uses the same incense stick for the next person and the next until it is too far burnt down to sell anymore. He probably makes better money than the tour guides we have.