McDonald's: An Observation

We've made our way down to the southern coast of Thailand, and have managed to buy a working camera! But now that leaves us with the daunting task of sorting through hundreds of pictures taken blindly while pointing the camera in the general direction of the object and hoping that it was zoomed appropriately- even more pictures than we would normally take because sometimes we took the same pictures from multiple angles in the hopes that one of them would come out. And to make the sorting even more difficult, we don't have a computer on which to do it. So you'll have to wait a bit longer for a post containing pictures, and since I know many of you only look at the pretty pictures anyways, I'll save writing more about our destinations until there are pictures to accompany it.

However, in the meantime, for you die-hard blog fans that are actually willing to read some text (if you've made it this far, congratulations! You're one of them!), I have prepared a discourse discussing one thing the whole world has in common: McDonald's.

We began to notice the phenomenon in Canada. There, the golden arches feature tiny red maple leaves at the center. We chalked this up to Canadian pride- there are maple leaves on everything up there. But as we've encountered more and more good ol' Mickey D's on our trip, we've discovered one of the reasons McDonald's is so successful worldwide: they tailor their menu to the country.

In the maritime provinces of Canada, it was the McLobster. This makes sense, they are called the maritimes, after all. In New Zealand, it was the "Serious Lamb Burger", complete with tongue-in-cheek billboard: "Mary had a little lamb... fries and a coke." Once again, a logical choice; New Zealand has enough sheep to build a sheep tower to the moon. But in Thailand, we haven't quite figured out the reason for this particular customization. It's not McPad Thai, as funny as that would be; it's not even McNoodles. It's McDelivery. That's right folks, McDonald's delivers in Thailand! We have yet to try this, although if the unhappy gurgling of my stomach this morning gets the best of me, we might, just to eat something our stomachs are a bit more accustomed to.

And that's my rant on McDonald's! Any other great country-specific items to share?