China

Lord of the ringtones

We haven¡¯t had the opportunity to update the website and are glad to find an internetcafe round the corner from our hotel. But then the computer have no diskdrive and we still can¡¯t update the site.

Mmmmh… bummer. Lot¡¯s of internet cafe¡¯s are just build to play games and are not made for travellers, the owner explains in broken english. We head into town and hope to find an other internetcafe. Everywhere we look, everything seems to be different. Every signpost is, ofcourse, in Chinese and it all looks like abacadabra and like art at the same time.

After half an hour we find another netcafe and this time we are lucky as it has one computer with a floppydrive. We update the site, check the loads of mail and reply them all. When elles is busy with her e-mail a man sits next to her using one of the computers to download karaoke music. He searches the internet for his favourite song and when he finds the beloved song, he starts singing his lungs out. Naammm jaaaaa jjaaaaaa sjingggggg laaaaa laaaaaaaa

¡°he doesn¡¯t know it¡± elles whispers……

¡°what do you mean?¡±, i ask laughing out loud

¡°headphones….he doesn¡¯t hear himself!¡±

We keep laughing and the man continous for about half an hour. When we are finished with the website we continue our trip through Kashgar. We enter a supermarket just to see what they have. All… and we mean all products are different then in holland. Either differently packed or just things we don¡¯t have at all. We find the weirdest stuff and spent about an hour browsing around.

In the eve we end up at the same restaurant of the night before. This time we order small meals. Under supervision of the other customers we eat our meal as good as nice as we can. But the chinese here have another way of eating.

Smikkel smikkel slurp slurp burp. And believe us they burp out loud. Even the waiters burp standing at your table! Every tablemanner we have learned doesn¡¯t count here. We have difficulties not to laugh. Ringtones are popular in the restaurant and it seems everyone wants to show of with them. Everybody seems to have another funky one but we notice that Titanic of Celine Dion is mighty popular. One guy listens to all his ringtones and nobody in the restaurant seems to be disturbed. This guy definetely deserves the titel ¡®Lord of the Ringtones¡¯ !!

After dinner we go for a beer with some fellow travellers we meet near the hotel. They have found an excuisite spot as all tourist places in town are already closed. End of the season seems to be the reason. The place we end up in is a small room of a local joint with just a table and a couple of chairs. The floor is covered in sunflowerseeds and just alcohol is served. It¡¯s been a while since we all had a beer and within no-time the room is filled with laughter. Everybody tells their stories and enjoy the night. Let¡¯s hope we don¡¯t end with a chinese hangover!