Culture Shocks - Rio, 10-15 September

The world may be getting smaller but there are still things that are just plain strange to me.

Catagorised into: Hits - things I want to import to England RIGHT NOW

Misses - things that make me hum ‘Jerusalem’ under my breath and pine for home.

Maybes - jury’s still out…. I would welcome your thoughts…

Hits

- Cachaca is cheaper than sugar

- Public toilets, even on buses are clean, have toilet paper, and smell sweet even at the end of the journey

- Long bus journeys come with lunch breaks at roadside cafes selling REAL food. And they have free drinking water on board

- Everyone in Brazil can dance. Properly. And not just big fish little fish…

- Everyone is so lovely and welcoming of foreigners here. How many English do you see on the bus chatting in a foreign language to someone who looks lost, then helping them to find their connection the other end?

- Every teeny tiny little bar in town has live bands playing at least at the weekends

- All you can eat meat restaurants (Charrascaria Rodizios). Nuff said

- Itty bitty monkies swinging around the trees instead of squirrels

- Pure Acai juice. Better than hairy lemon

- Real bananas. If you’ve been here you’ll know what I mean

- Using your mobile on the underground

- Havaianas for £2

Misses

- Having to spend 20 mins applying sun cream and/or mozzie repellent before you get up and go to bed. And it often makes diddly-squat difference.

- Ham and cheese sandwiches on white bread for breakfast EVERY DAY. Please make it stop

- Going to tourist attractions. The only place you’ll be made to feel like a stoopid tourist and talked back to in English when you're trying to practise your Portuguese.

- Tiny turnstiles on buses I can't fit through. Backpacker. Clue's in the title

- I don't much care if dancing Forro gives you a hardon or not, but to dance so close I can feel it is just plain wrong.

- Not being able to go out at night in Rio alone/with a bag/wearing any jewellery/with a camera

- Wholemeal bread? or Pasta? would it be so hard?

- SOS please send red cross parcel of earl grey, alpro light and a kettle asap. I am GAGGING for a real cup of tea. They just don't UNDERSTAND tea here. One of the few countries in the world not to have some kind of tea culture. boo.

- I am so over having to buy all my water when I drink 3-5 litres a day

- Everything made of milk tastes rancid

- No shops have any change, ever. ATMs please stop giving me R$100 notes

- ATMs closing for the night.

- Everyone wears sandals 1 size too small. Toes over the edge. It's a good look.

Maybes

- The bar-tab-card thing. When you go to a bar, you get a card with your name on. When you buy a drink, this is marked on your card, and at the end of the night you pay the cashier your tab. Pros: You only have to handle money once, drinks service is quicker, you can kinda see how much you've drunk by the number of ticks next to the word 'Caiprinha'. Cons: if you lose your card, the fines I've seen range from paying for one of every drink at the bar, to a flat fee of R$200 (about £70). And you have to make sure you have enough money to pay at the end of the night.

- It always costs half as much for women to get into a club as for men. Yet there are still hordes of wench-less leeches at the edge of the dance floor ready to cuddle up to any stray woman who makes the mistake of catching their eye. Also see 'Forro dancing', above

- Buying your dinner by the kilo. Buffet style load-up-your-plate, then take to the scales and collect your receipt to pay later. Cue lengthy discussions about how to get best nutritional value for your money. Sure, lettuce is light, but it's mostly water, right? Watermelon- don't even go there.

- Room sharing in hostels. The friendships, the snoring, the cameraderie, the waking you up at 2am when they get home. then 3am when the next one gets home. Then 4.... you get the picture. Actually this is swiftly slipping towards 'Miss'

- Brazilian bikinis. The timmy mallet song is not far off. I know I feel totally over-dressed in my tankini but just can't quite bear to bare yet. I can't.

While I'm in the mood for lists, cool things I've been up to in Rio this week:

- Watching sunset from sugar loaf mountain

- sitting on Ipanema beach singing 'the Girl from Ipanema'

- sitting in the bar where 'The girl from Ipanema' was written, also singing 'the Girl from Ipanema'

- Going to a Feijoada party, eating Feijoada completa then singing and dancing along with hundreds of Brazilians to a samba circle strutting their stuff

- hanging on to the side of a tram (don't worry mum - the locals all do it....) up to Santa Teresa

- guided tour through the biggest favela in Rio, Rocinha, that started with a hair-raising ride up to the top of the hill on the back of a scooter-taxi. Cheap thrills.

- Going to various other gigs and learning about Brazilian music traditions courtesy of our resident expert, Amy from Canada

- Checking out the Villa Lobos museum, the cone-shaped Cathedral (wrong), the Portuguese architecture in Centro and the gold gilding in the Sao Bento Mosteiro

- Learning how the buses work (flag down something that looks like it's going where you want, then CHECK with the driver as the signs are often wrong, pay the conductor, as him to let you know when you get where you're going (in Portuguese) negotiate the turnstile, and pray to whatever god you choose that you can get to a seat before it sets off. Most of the bus drivers seem to be living out their formula 1 fantasies round the one-way multi-lane streets of the city)

- Getting bitten TO DEATH by goodness knows what. OK this isn't cool, but it has been, and continues to be, a feature of my stay. One helpful guy who works in the hostel suggested the red blobs of rashes might be some kind of disease, not bites at all (thanks). Someone else helpfully suggested bed bugs (again thanks). Can't find any evidence, but there are definitely some bites that stay small and round and some that spread into and icky red eczema-y rash around the weeping bite, itch like ca-razy and take much longer to disappear. Yay. James G if you're reading this, I'd welcome any suggestions. Get your House hat on. For now, scratcharama.

Coming up on Debinabox - will I find my fortune at Ouro Preto (trans: black gold)? and how is my 80 litres faring?