Monday, June 5, 2017

No, it ain't all roses!

Ted. I was recently asked whether everything we have seen over the past four months was good. Well, most of what we saw was truly wonderful. However, on a few occasions, my initial reaction was decidedly negative. These impressions may not be correct but they still linger.  I’ll just list a few examples.

In several cities, such as Vancouver, Sydney and Auckland, I couldn’t believe the large number of Chinese tourists and Chinese financed construction projects I saw.

There appear to be an awful lot of poor Maori people in New Zealand.

Malaysia’s policy of “bumiputera,” which created a special class of Muslim Malaysian citizens seems pretty discriminatory.

In Indonesia, calls to prayer were blasted out on loudspeakers five times a day but I never saw anyone praying, entering or leaving the many mosques we passed.

Zimbabwe looked to be a country of beggars.

No pun intended, but I was shocked to see electric fences at the tops of the walls that surround most houses we saw in white neighborhoods in South Africa.

We were warned about “Mafia taxis” in Bulgaria. This is in an EU country in 2017!

I was really surprised to see that credit cards are still not widely used in Germany. Most restaurants, cafes, taxis and small shops still take only cash or debit cards.


Judy and I would be interested in any questions or comments that you may have about this or any of our other posts. Just shoot us an email at losingshore@gmail.com.

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