National Monuments... International Style!

Everybody probably knows, or a least suspects the availability of cheap brand knock-offs throughout Asia.  As one of our "easy rider" tour guides pointed out to us in Vietnam,  there is really no enforcement of copyright law of any sort here.  We have seen this manifest in multitudinous ways, and sometimes they can can be quite confusing.  For example, we wanted to stay at a hotel in Varanasi, India called "Shanti Guest House."  We asked our tuk-tuk driver to take us there, and we ended up in a hotel called "Shanti Rest House."  We didn't really understand until a few days later why the place was so crummy when we figured out that the tuk-tuk drivers were being paid by the imposter "Shanti" to shuttle passengers there.  We got away clean though, and have since learned that it is a common tactic for businesses to copy each others' names in many of the countries we have traveled in.  It has kept us on our toes.  Sometimes, the names don't differ at all.  I guess it can all be summed up in the most famous regional saying that we've heard repeatedly through Thailand, Cambodia, and now Vietnam, "Same same, but different."

One of the more confusing examples of this "Asian freedom" to use whatever means necessary to get a customer is in the name brand product knock-offs that don't even bother to use the actual brand name.  Take the following picture:

Calvin Klenin

At first, I thought this Cambodian fellow was just wearing a fashionable shirt, proudly displaying his love for a brand that has always been famous for flaunting its name right on its products.  On closer inspection, I thought maybe it looked more like a typo.  Maybe he was just a Vietnamese tourist in Cambodia, and it is easier to pass of brand names if they look like they are linked to the communist father of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin?  Nice try buddy!  Capitalommunism?

This next one is less impressive, but solidifies the point:

Dolce Gabba

It looks like Dolce did just fine, but Gabbana got the the short end of the stick.  Neither of these is quite as interesting as the Harley Devidson gang is, but then again, the people that wear these aren't the moto-riding roughnecks we've come to know and love.