Food Glorious Food

I think this is a better time than any to write my long over due blog post.
This has been an interesting week. I've basically been filling my tummy with amazing delicious food with lots of friends and new people.

Last week my friend Chris arrived in Beijing with his girlfriend Lulu and Mike. We went to 2 restaurants, one next to the Lama temple which I guess is famous for being really big and also a place famous for making Peking Duck big in Beijing.


Both were pretty good places to eat but the duck place is catered for tourists since they're well known so one peking duck was 300 kuai so very much on the pricey side. I'll admit that its the best that I've had while in Beijing but for the price, i could go for a slightly not so crunchy duck.

Another amazing must have food while in China is hot pot, I didn't take any pictures because I was busy devouring boiled meat and vegetables, but the idea is that you sit down at a table with a hole cut in the middle and there's a gas or electric burner there in the hole, they bring you a pot of broth, you can have half plain and half spicy. Then they just bring you raw ingredients: pork, beef, lettuce, mushrooms, whatever. And then you cook it yourself and dip the delicious items in whatever sauce you choose. My favorite is a bowl of sesamie oil with shredded raw garlic, cilantro, and green onion. Kind of different sauce than i'm used to back at home but still delicious. Its really nice to get hot pot with a bunch of people because sometimes everybody is indecisive about which restaurant to go to, but if you go to hotpot everybody can order what they want and its really cheap. I've gone twice this week and its averaged about 35 kuai, 5 bucks a person.

The restaurant I want to stress and make a huge deal about is the all you can eat all you can drink sushi place. Aaron proposed the idea of going last Sunday and we went as a group of 8. The cost was 58 kuai per person and we could order almost anything off their normal menu, salmon sashimi, fried pork cutlet, california rolls, and grilled eel to name a few. You can also drink as much beer, pepsi, or 7 up.

This deal is just so awesome because what place in the US can you eat all the sushi you want for 8 bucks? So we ate till we were full and wanted to do this again, I asked a few people, Aaron asked a few people and soon the word spread and we showed up at the Sushi place once again but this time with 28 people.

We got there at around 8pm and didn't leave till 12. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet more people and to eat good food too. I swear it was like a an informal UN meeting, we had people from the US, Mexico, Canada, Hong Kong, England, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Korea, and I think one person from China.

Total bottles of beer drunk were about 80 bottles. And the total bill for that night was around $230. Where back home can you feed 30 people for $230 bucks?

It is the dragon boat festival today and I'm meeting up with my mom's relatives for dinner. I kind of got to the destination 45 minutes early so I found an internet cafe to go to. Kind of feel like I need to disinfect myself once I leave just because its dark and dirty and everything I touch is sticky *shudders*

I won't reflect on my trip just yet because I don't want to start missing Beijing when I haven't even left yet but I'm planning on starting to pack tonight so I can get a good idea of how much crap I've spend my money on. I might have to either buy a new suitcase and deal with the $150 surcharge for having a 3rd suitcase or I might check into DHL's rates and mail back my clothes and other heavy not so important items.