China
China is the only country I've been to without knowing I was there. I went to Hong Kong on my trip around the world about 6 years ago and I thought it was its own country. I had no interest in going there but Christian who I went with wanted to see it so I followed along.
This was the first country that I had ever been to outside of Europe and it sure was different than I was used to, not in a good way though. The city was so polluted that they had to pretend it was a fog so that tourist wouldn't mind, but it's strange how it's a constant fog everyday in Hong Kong then. I bought a surgical mask to try and fit in, and to avoid all the fumes. At least I thought that was why they wore them, but I later found out it was only sick people who wore them to prevent the virus to spread.
Since I'm almost 2 metres long and got freckles and red hair you can say I stood out amongst the crowd in Hong Kong, but even more so when I went to the famous Temple Street Market and bought some shirts with Chinese symbols. An old Chinese woman got mad at me when I wore one of them, and she punched me and yelled something in Chinese. I couldn't understand why, but later on I learned that my T-shirt said something like "look at me, and I will knock you out". And when I left Hong Kong the customs laughed at my other T-shirt and asked if I knew what I was wearing. Apparently it was based on a funny YouTube episode and they wouldn't tell me more, I just had to see it they said. But since I can't Google with Chinese symbols I never found it.
Everybody tried to sell me stuff wherever I went, and it was funny how every seller said "special price for you my friend" to everybody who went by. And as soon as you stopped for 5 seconds someone showed up and said "you want to buy this and this and this?" but no I didn't want to buy some fake brands like Calvin Hilfiger. Maybe they can at least try hard enough so they don't mess up the brands they are trying to copy. I hate when I can't walk the streets without being bothered by people so walking down the market streets of Hong Kong is a true nightmare for me, but that was all my friend wanted to do.
They worship money as a religion in Hong Kong and that's another thing that I had a hard time to understand. Someone there told me that on New Year's Eve they don't say happy new year, they say something like "may you get a lot of cash this year". That capitalism together with how they treat their animals, slaughtered animals hanging from the stores on the streets, made me feel ill.
When I finally got Christian to go outside of the markets we went down to the harbour to see the Avenue Of Stars to get the feel of almost being at the Walk Of Fame in Los Angeles. But since I knew none of the names except for Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee it wasn't that interesting.
So we went on a day trip to see the gigantic Buddah statue on top of a mountain that you get to by cable railway. At least if you're a tourist, the true hardcore buddhists hikes the way for 3 or 4 hours by foot. On the bus to the cable railway I saw a sign that said "Chinese people, please don't spit on the floor" and I remember it sounded racist, because at that point I didn't even know I was in China. The cable railway ride itself was both amazing and scaring since I suffer from vertigo and it was quite windy, and Christian was even more scared which made it worse. When we got to the top of the mountain I didn't get the impression of a quiet peaceful place for Buddhists since the first things that greeted us were souvenir shops and fast food restaurants like Subway.
Christian is taking a picture of me and another tourist on the cable railway
The statue called Tian Tan Buddha was amazing, it's the largest sitting bronze Buddha outside in the world but my eyes almost popped out like in the cartoons when I saw a gigantic swastika on his chest.
A Nazi Buddha was something new to me. I soon realized that it was the sun symbol that was on the chest and not the Nazi swastika. Hitler stole the sun symbol and twerked it a bit to make the Nazi swastika so it wasn't a racist Buddha after all. Inside the Buddha you could tell that capitalism is even a part of Buddhism in Hong Kong, since people paid to get their names engraved in the statue. So maybe it's not a Nazi Buddhist but it sure as hell is a capitalist Buddha!
* Most mediocre thing about China – The Avenue Of Stars for Asian people is probably what the Walk Of Fame in Los Angeles means to me, but since I knew almost none of the names it wasn't that interesting
* Worst things about China – the sellers at the market who pretends to be everyone's best friend to sell fake brands, the polluting fumes and the stench from slaughtered animals hanging around the streets
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. Andorra
2. Cyprus
3. Greece
4. Italy
5. Iceland
6. Denmark
7. Ireland
8. Belgium
9. Estonia
10. Finland
11. France
12. Bulgaria
13. China
14. Bosnia And Herzegovina
15. Albania
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