As always health warnings. These are observations from a 2 week visit and may be just wrong.

• No town centre really. The high street (Pearl street) is a pedestrian zone and has lots of hippy shops and outdoor shops but it hasn’t any real shops. These are all around the town in out of town shopping areas.
• No bars!  I expected lots but saw very few.
• No cafes at beauty spots, how can the states miss such a commercial opportunity.  Every car park has a compost toilet but not a cafe/kiosk.
• Polite and talkative, everyone asks you how your day is going and if you answer, you get into a conversation.
• Pedestrian friendly, yes it really is, wide pavements and cars stop at crossings.
• Slow speed limits.  65 was the highest I saw but normally it was about 35, driving is calm and polite.
• All the road signs are words not pictures. It must be  hard if English isn’t your first language.
• Constant traffic lights.
• Toilets, they pull the contents out before releasing the clean water into the pan, it’s s siphon system that cleans the toilets better than our flush but is prone to blockages.
• Toilet cubicles in the ladies (I didn’t go into the gents) don’t shut with overlapping doors/door post, the result is you have about 2cm gap where the doors close and you can see right into the cubicle at the woman sat doing her stuff.  The door’s cubicles also start at knee height.  Makes it hard to know where to look when you join the queue.
• No plugs in kitchen sinks.  This is the third place matt has stopped in and none have had plugs.  We are one of the few countries that wash up in a bowl of (dirty) water, everyone else uses running water
• No draining board in the kitchen sink.  
• The goods trains are really huge.  3 engines at the front and 3 at the back, it takes a train about 10 mins to pass.