What's On The Menu?

Select items from a coffee shop menu at the Linyi, China airport.

Breakfast:
Wash that dried dork flake walffle down with a little love juice:
More drinks:
Appetizing appetizer:
Some main courses:
Who doesn't enjoy a hot, steamy plate of small rice farmers?
Finish it with the Hawaii coffee below.
Yum, characteristics of lubricants. A full-bodied brew in the style of Pennzoil perhaps?

And one that I can get behind:

结束

As Found In Chinese Airports

Over two days I traveled through three Chinese airports. Here is some of the more interesting stuff that caught my eye.

Shanghai Pudong Aiport Terminal 2 primarily handles domestic flights and is architecturally quite stunning. Quite expansive and with a wavy wood-planked roof gracefully supported by steel columns.
At an otherwise typical airport convenience store was this cooler...
...open it up if you'd like a chilled crab snack.
Another shop had tasty bagged duck parts...
...as well as something that wholly unpronounceable. By me at least:
Sure is tempting. As are the rubbery chicken feet.
Linyi has a very modern and seemingly oversize airport.
I was told that it has only been open for a week. And found, fresh on the shelves were items such as Bag o' duck:
Chinese PBR:
A gift box of bottled frog eggs:
Bottled scorpions:
yep, scorpions:
A ¥9800 (US $1471) ginseng root...
...but at least it has a certificate of authenticity. The shopkeeper told the guy that I was traveling with that it takes over 20 years for a specimen such as this to grow and that the serial number and certificate made this a highly sought-after root. Oh, and that it cures all too. But that was nothing compared to the deer parts he was also selling. Like a ¥2320 (US $348) antler:
...and an ¥1896 (US $284) deer penis:
Is that a good price for deer penis? I'm sure I could have talked him down to ¥1500 if pressed.

Finally, I was able to experience the joys of pull-tab beer cans in Linyi.
Mmm... lukewarm Chinese beer. This style of can had long been banished from the States before I was old enough to even think about drinking beer.

Shanhai Pudong Terminal 1 was also massive with soaring architecture.
Geared more towards the international traveler, I found these wares on the shelves. Such as Pocky and Pretz in popular flavors such as duck, panda, crab, green tea, unidentifiable brown stuff and mystery fruit:
A ¥780,000 (US $117,090!!) carving:
And a toy urinating dog:
Fill it up with real pee and laugh at your friends.

At a Taipei high speed rail station 7-11, one can buy disposable nuthuggers:
And finally, a couple of random signs:

结束

Taiwan II - Food

I was very curious to try authentic Chinese food. I love the westernized version and was hoping to find similar dishes on the island of Formosa (Taiwan).

For the most part the meals were pretty good. I had a number of good fried noodle dishes, and my chopstick skills definitely improved after a week.

Bubble Tea (aka Boba Tea) was a cool find. Even though it's available in the States, I had never heard of it. The pearl milk tea pictured above (in mega-gulp size) has tea, milk, ice sugar and brown balls of semi-sweet tapioca settled at the bottom of the glass. You're given a wide-gauge straw and suck these balls of chewy goodness in with every gulp. A drink you can chew. Or swallow - some went right on down the pipe.

There was one meal that disappointed me - hot pots or Chinese fondue.

We went to a hip hot pot restaurant one night for dinner. While the concept is cool - everyone sits around a large pot sitting on a gas burner, the food wasn't to my tastes. The soups pictured above were done as a split as one of us was a vegetarian while I rarely eat meat (and don't eat beef or pork). The red soup has a duck blood base and had all sorts of organ bits in it while the white side was the veggie side - it tasted like water and cabbage, no flavor.

You order up plates of veggies and or meat/seafood to cook (like a fondue) and sit around and converse while your food is cooked. Josh (the vegetarian) and I added tofu, corn on the cob, broccoli and some mystery veggies to our soup. Still it had virtually no flavor. And sadly they didn't have any hot sauce. A bottle of sriracha would have gone a long way. Or at least some salt. Still we were troopers and chowed down.

Upon returning to our hotel later that night, Josh and I were still hungry so we made an American-style beeline to the McDonalds (ugh) adjacent to our hotel. Yeah, that was lame but we were hungry for some carbs.

Josh eating his third hot pot in two days. When the vendors learned that he was a vegetarian, they'd go ahead and order it for him. Don't get him started on mushrooms, he probably ate a year's worth over the course of five days.

I think a westernized version of the hot pot could be cool. Give me a stronger base and more options of veggies to mix in.

One interesting meal that was given to me after a vendor asked me if I ate fish - a Filet 'o Fish and fries. Josh's veggie fried noodles looked pretty good to me that day. I also had some spaghetti at a small cafe, the first time I've seen octopus in spaghetti. At least it had a good tomato base.

By the end of the trip I was craving some good Mexican food and pizza.