Tag Archives: peanut

Doggy Mama

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The past couple weeks have been crazy with my dance show, final exams and projects, and finally packing up and coming home for the break! I’ve been in sunny California for a few days now, never changing out of my pajamas. Perfect.

cookie-cutters

One of the things I miss most about home when I’m away, besides In N Out, is my dogs. Living in a house with no dogs feel so lonely! I made these the other day as an extra special treat for my puppies.

doggy-biscuits

Peanut Butter Banana Dog Biscuits
Makes about 3 dozen.

Ingredients
1 C peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
1 ripe banana, mashed
1 egg
3/4 C milk
1 Tbsp dried parsley (for doggies with fresh breath!)
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 3/4 C flour

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 325F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix peanut butter, banana, egg, and milk.
3. Stir in parsley and baking powder. Gradually add flour, mixing until a thick dough forms.
4. Roll out dough to about 1/4″ thick. Cut as desired.
5. Bake for 20 min, flip over, then bake another 15 min.
6. Let cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

munchkin

I think they were a hit!

Dumb Blondies

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My cookies from last week’s post made it to Foodgawker!! I am so excited – this is my first time getting a submission approved. Of course, this week’s photos are awful so I’m not even going to try, but it’s okay. In a week I got 138 favorites on Foodgawker, and a bunch of new Pins, which I think is quite an accomplishment.

Sunday night I went to a friend’s place to watch the Tony Awards. Neil Patrick Harris was hilarious… as usual.

Once I got the invite, I quickly whipped up some yummy baked goods to share. Unfortunately I didn’t get very good photos since I literally walked out the door as soon as these came out of the oven. But I promise, they were delicious. More than half the pan was gone by the time the awards were over, and there was only a handful of us eating!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Blondies
Original recipe here.

Ingredients
1 stick butter
1 C sugar
1 C brown sugar
1/2 C peanut butter (I used chunky)
2 1/2 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp canola oil
3 Tbsp water
1/2 C chocolate chips, divided

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9×13 pan with foil.
2. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add sugars and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter.
3. While the pb mixture cools, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. Add eggs one at a time, then vanilla.
4. Pour in pb mixture, oil, and water, and stir until a thick batter forms. (It will be very very thick!) Fold in 1/4 C chocolate chips.
5. Pour into pan and top with remaining chocolate chips. Bake 25 minutes until set. Cool, cut, and serve.

I Don’t Speak Cantonese

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My very last trip was to a small town called Zhaoqing 肇庆 in Guangdong province, just a few hours’ drive from Hong Kong. It was a three day field trip for a class I took on Confucianism. I knew I wouldn’t know anyone else on the trip, so that was okay. What I didn’t know, however, was that the field trip would be conducted entirely in Cantonese. Even though the class was taught in English. Great.

We went to some pretty cool places, but since I didn’t understand any of the explanation and no one was nice enough to translate for me, I really couldn’t learn anything more than what I could see.

We went to an old Hakka village, which was pretty cool to look at, but honestly I have no idea if the place had any historical significance.

Also a couple of temples: one Confucian temple that used to double as a school, and one for the Dragon Mother, a goddess in a local folk religion. Or something like that.

We also took a boat tour around the lake at the Seven Star Crags park, which was gorgeous…

…and hiked to a very beautiful waterfall in Dinghushan.

We had a bit of free time each day, so I got to do some people-watching, too.

It was definitely cool to see a part of China that wasn’t a huge city completely overrun by tourists like Beijing is. That being said, I don’t feel like I really got anything out of the trip. We saw so many beautiful things, but I never knew what I was looking at. I wish I had known beforehand about the language issue – I still don’t understand why they didn’t tell me. I would have rather gone on another trip with friends instead.

Scorpions Taste Like Bacon

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Today was the last day of my Chinese class. For whatever reason, it ends three weeks before all the rest of my classes, so now I have five day weekends. For the oral portion of my final, I had to choose a topic and talk for two minutes – I decided to talk about my trip to Beijing! Here’s my script, in case you’re curious:

上个星期我去了北京旅行。我的朋友都不会说汉语，所以我跟北京人说了很多普通话。我们在北京玩儿得非常好！我们参观了前门，天安门，故宫，天坛，还有 颐和园 。颐和园的风景最漂亮。那儿有一个很大的湖，可以坐船。我们在金山岭长城走了四个多小时。走完以后，我们太累了！我们也去了王府井小吃街。那个地方有很多好吃的菜。我吃了冰糖葫芦，羊肉串儿，煎饼果子，还有麻团儿。这些东西都很好吃！还有，我吃蝎子了，吃得坏！我很害怕！

Of course, now I have to tell you that same story but in English, but I really don’t know where to begin. I had an amazing five days in Beijing. I was with a couple Americans and a ton of Danes, and I was the only one who knows (well, sort of knows) Chinese, so naturally I got quite a bit of practice in! Sure, I was speaking in broken sentences the whole time, but it was great to talk to real people outside of a classroom.

Our hostel was right by 前门 Qianmen, so the first day we mostly walked around there. Qianmen means “front gate,” meaning that was the southernmost gate on the wall that used to surround Beijing. A ton of places in the city end in 门 “men” because they used to be gates!

In addition to the actual gate, Qianmen has shopping (regular and market-style) and tons of food.

My first meal in Beijing! The best thing about being in restaurants was speaking Chinese to the waiter/waitress. I can’t tell you how many times I asked 您有没有英文菜单？Do you have an English menu? First thing I noticed right of the bat was that restaurants serve a lot more vegetables than the ones in Hong Kong. The one on the right was my food – chicken with peanuts, cucumbers, bell peppers, carrots, and onions. I miss veggies! The little cakes in the center are fried pumpkin with a bit of red bean inside.

Beijing street food is generally amazing, but especially in Qianmen. Everywhere you turn there’s a little counter selling all sorts of cakes, buns, fried tofu, hot dogs, and corn on the cob. One of my favorite things was 冰糖葫芦 bingtanghulu, skewers of candied haw berries. They have just haws, haws covered in sesame seeds, or haws cut in half with orange slices in the middle, and even skewers of candied strawberries, grapes, pineapple, or kiwi. I like the plain haws the best, but you have to look for ones with cuts down the middle – that means they’ve taken out the seeds, which can be pretty painful if you bite down on one accidentally. It’s a bit more expensive when you get it that way, but even then it’s only about 8元 max. The ones with seeds are a cheap as 1元.

On the second day, we got up bright and early, left the hostel around 6am for 金山岭长城, the Great Wall at Jinshanling. It’s a couple hours northeast of the city, but I’d say it’s definitely worthwhile to make the trek all the way out there rather than going to the 八达岭 Badaling section which is much closer. There’s nothing I hate more than pictures with people in them, and once you’re all the way out there it’s pretty easy to get some gorgeous shots of the wall without any tourists, whereas Badaling is super crowded. That also means it isn’t as well restored in some places, but that can be good, too. We walked for around four hours; I didn’t realize it would be so steep in some places!

It was the perfect day for the Wall. Pretty cold in the morning, but once we got walking we warmed up quite a bit, and it was the least hazy of all the days we were there. You really could see on forever, mountains behind mountains behind mountains.

After a long day, we finally made it back to the city and went to 鬼街 Guijie, Ghost Street, for dinner, near 东直门 Dongzhimen. It’s a couple blocks of all restaurants, and at night people will set up little tables where they try to sell you overpriced souvenir crap.

We were in need of some delicious 烤鸭 roast duck, so we got some of that as well as something called 杂粮包 zaliangbao. I’m not sure if it has a real English name, but Google Translate tells me that means “cereal package.” So I’ll just stick with zaliangbao.

It’s little bowls of steamed bread, with veggies and meat that you put inside! I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before. Such an interesting change from the usual noodles and rice.

Friday we headed first to 天安门 Tian’anmen Square and 故宫 The Forbidden City, both of which were walking distance from the hostel. I couldn’t believe how crowded these places were. There were tons of tour groups – 20 or so little old Chinese ladies all wearing the same bright orange baseball cap, following some guy with a big flag and a megaphone. In the Forbidden City, you can look inside the buildings but you can’t go into most of them, and wherever there was an open spot to look people were pushing and shoving! After awhile, I just decided it wasn’t even worth it to fight my way through. The buildings themselves are already gorgeous, not to mention the gardens, so who really cares whether or not you get to see the Emperor’s favorite concubine’s dressing room?

After that, we made our way over to 西单 Xidan for some 火锅 hotpot! I had a recommendation for a place called 海底捞 Haidilao, and it was soooo delicious, and very inexpensive. They have a few locations, and apparently they’re pretty popular – you should have seen the size of the waiting area.

Then we went to 天坛 Temple of Heaven. We got there after the actual temple was closed, but it’s a huge park, so it was still nice to walk around. There were so many trees! That’s one thing Hong Kong could definitely use more of. We also did a bit of market shopping.

Finally, the thing I had been waiting for: 王府井小吃街 Wangfujing Snack Street, a little alley off of 王府井大街 Wangfujing Street that sells tons of crazy street food. There was some normal food, of course, but I was most interested in the crazy When-In-China type food. They really do eat anything and everything in China, and in Wangfujing you can get it all, usually on a stick.

From top to bottom, left to right, that’s pidgeon; sea urchin; squid tentacles; scorpions, starfish, and seahorses; lizards and more seahorses; quail eggs; 羊肉串儿 yangrou chaur (lamb kebabs); mini lobsters (who knew they came that small?). I kept pretty tame with my choices: a corn on the cob, lamb, squid, and some chicken dumplings. I did, however, do something a little crazy. I ate 蝎子 xiezi. Scorpion. A big, huge, deep-fried black one.

Gonna be honest, I screamed a little, but who wouldn’t? It really did taste like bacon though. Disgusting bacon, but bacon nonetheless. No amount of peer pressure could get me anywhere near the grasshoppers or centipedes though. Nuh uh, no way. The scorpion was immediately washed down with some delicious haw berries.

On Saturday we headed northwest of the city toward 圆明园 Yuanmingyuan (the Old Summer Palace) and 颐和园 the Summer Palace. Yuanmingyuan was the Summer Palace for the Qing dynasty emperors until it was burned down during the Second Opium War in 1860. That’s where the newer Summer Palace comes in.

Three-quarters of the park is a huge manmade lake. Really, you see this thing and you’re just blown away. Definitely the best scenery of the trip (which I said in my Chinese final! 颐和园的风景最漂亮!)

Then we made our way back to the city, stopped by the 雍和宫 Yonghegong Lama Temple, and then 798 艺术区 Art District, basically the hipster-central of Beijing. Tons of interesting art galleries, cute little boutiques, and small coffee shops. We also went to the Olympic Park, where the games were in 2008; the stadiums were beautifully lit at night. Finally, we ended the night with cocktails at 什刹海酒吧 Shichahai Bar Street in 后海 Houhai. We found a place called the Lotus Blue that had a live reggae band! In the middle of Beijing, of all places.

Finally, it was our last day in Beijing. I really wanted to make it to the Ming Tombs, but that’s a bit outside the city and I was afraid we wouldn’t make it back in time for our flight. Instead we stopped by 孔庙 Temple of Confucius and did a bit of last minute shopping at the clothing market in 三里屯 Sanlitun. And got some more street food, of course.

The one on the top left is called 麻团儿 matuar in Beijing and other parts of northern China, but I usually call it 煎堆 jiandui. It’s fried glutinous rice flour covered in sesame seeds, usually with lotus paste inside. My favorite is when it has red bean, so I was a little disappointed to bite into the lotus paste, but I kept eating and found that there was red bean INSIDE the lotus paste! The top right is a crunchy, eggy pastry. Bottom left is a chewy cake-type thing with red beans, and the bottom right is a flakey, buttery bun. Outside of Qianmen, most street food comes from the back of someone’s bicycle. They attach a box of food to the back and just hang around somewhere. People sell fruit, roasted chestnuts, and my personal favorite, baked sweet potatoes.

Outside the Confucian temple, we got stopped by these adorable guys from Beijing University. They were all holding cameras, so at first I thought they wanted pictures of us (that happens when you walk around with blonde people in China), but instead they asked if they could each have a conversation with us and film it. It was homework for an English class. It was seriously the cutest thing that’s ever happened to me! They were all obviously very nervous, and kept checking their scripts whenever they forgot what they were supposed to say.

My last meal in Beijing. It was good, nothing special, but what I really liked was the English translation on the menu: eggplant face. The word for noodle, 面 mian, has several meanings, one of which is face. I laughed so hard when I saw that!

My five days in Beijing were definitely some of the most memorable yet. Honestly, I wish I could have stayed longer! Being able to practice my Chinese with real people was so great, too. I’m really sad I won’t have time to make it to Shanghai during my stay here in Asia, but I guess that just gives me a great excuse to come back.

Hung Sweet Hom

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I had a really traumatic incident yesterday. I was at the grocery store, casually looking at some apples, when a fish committed suicide. It somehow knocked the top off of the tank and jumped out onto the floor. It was a pretty huge fish, too. I really wonder how often it happens, because the workers really had no idea what to do, but they weren’t exactly scared, either. I, on the other hand, was screaming bloody murder. It flopped around pretty violently on the floor for at least three minutes before the people could catch it, and by that time it was dead. So depressing.

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system… I took it pretty easy this past weekend. I had a couple of midterms this week, in networks and Chinese, so not tons of free time. On Saturday I walked around the goldfish market in Mong Kok, which was pretty cool. It’s a full block of shops selling fish and turtles and any of your other aquarium needs. A lot of the fish are in tanks, but there were also racks and racks of bags of fish! I felt pretty bad for them, but hopefully the ones in bags are the ones that sell quickly. Those fish shouldn’t be cooped up like that for so long.

On Sunday I went to the Kowloon Walled City Park, which was very beautiful. Kowloon used to be a fort, and the park sits where that used to be. The original south gate of the fort is there, which is pretty cool. Going there just made me wish we had parks like that at home…

Tonight, I went out for dinner with a friend, and then we stopped at a bubble pancake place. I’ve had those a few times, but this time I decided to get a “Hong Kong Style Waffle.” It was heavenly. The waffle was really eggy and soft, freshly made. They fold it in half and in the inside they put peanut butter, condensed milk, margarine, and sugar. Talk about sweet! It was seriously to die for, and so cheap. I’m gonna have to try really hard not to go back there all the time.

That’s pretty much it for this week. Since I didn’t do much, I thought I’d explain a little more about the area where I live, Hung Hom, and just Hong Kong in general. Here are some differences between Hong Kong and home.

Cars
There are two kinds of buses here: the regular public buses, which are all double-deckers, and the “light” buses, which are teeny and only seat 16 people. The light buses usually cost more, but since there are fewer people they stop less often and usually get you where you want to go much faster.

Hong Kong is too crowded for cars. Besides buses, you really only see taxis, delivery trucks, and expensive cars. Seriously, almost everyone who drives has a Mercedes or a BMW. Bentleys and Maseratis aren’t uncommon either. You do see some more affordable makes, too, like Toyota, but they’re all within a couple of years old. No ’98 Camrys here. And definitely no Karmann Ghias.

Exchange rate
The exchange rate confuses me. It’s approximately 1 US dollar to 8 Hong Kong dollars, but you can’t buy anything for a dollar here. In a cheap market, you can get clothes for like $50, but in a real mall they cost anywhere from $200 to $1000, and stores like H&M are a little more expensive here than they are at home. At the same time, a pair of Nikes will only run you about $500-600. A cheap dinner will cost $30-$40, and dinner at a nicer place will be at least over $100. A drink at Starbucks is maybe $35, but you can get a giant flavored milk tea with boba for $15. It’s really strange how some things are much, much cheaper, but other things cost more.

Eating
Another thing about restaurants: a lot of the time, I eat in a mall food court on the walk back from school or one of the infinitely many hole-in-the-wall places nearby. None of those places give paper napkins; you have to bring your own. If you want free napkins, you have to go either to an American fast food chain or a real restaurant with a hostess and everything. Not necessarily a fancy restaurant, just a real one. I haven’t been anywhere with cloth napkins, either. Plus, you never ever tip the waiters.

Food is different here. I don’t just mean the types of dishes, but just how they describe it. Whatever you read on the menu is EXACTLY what you get. If it says “rice and beef,” you get white rice with beef. Never expect vegetables unless they are explicitly mentioned, because 9 times out of 10 you will be disappointed.

Cellphone picture of "fried noodles with mushrooms" from the school canteen. How many mushrooms do you see? Because I only see one. This was a bad dinner.

Things are a little different at supermarkets too. You know how lots of foods at home say things like “added blahblahblah” or “great for blahblahblah”? Like, how the blue orange juice carton is always “plus calcium and vitamin D”? They don’t put any of that stuff, and black it out with Sharpie on the imported items. I have no idea why, but I can usually read what it says through the marker anyway.

Nutrition facts are different, too. It will still tell you what the serving size is, but the calorie counts and everything else is all based on 100g. So, that means, even if there’s only 40g in the package, it will trick you into thinking you’ve just eaten 750 calories because that’s how many are in 100g. Plus, sometimes they’ll randomly put it in kilojoules instead of calories. Who knows what a kilojoule is? I sure don’t. It’s all very confusing. Speaking of strange units, fruit is priced by the pound, but everything else is metric.

Pretty much everywhere, but especially in Hung Hom, there are little corner markets for fruit. You can get fruit at the big supermarkets too, of course, but it seems like the locals go to these little places more often. They have a very farmers’ market feel, until you see the stickers on the fruit saying they’re all grown in California or Florida. New Zealand, sometimes, too. But they’ve got all sorts of fruits – regular ones like apples, bananas, grapes, and oranges, but also dragon fruit, starfruit, and pomelo. They usually sell chestnuts, too.

The picture on the left is sort of a dry goods store – I don’t know what else to call it. They usually have a sign that says 茶, tea, so my guess is they’ve got loose tea in some of those huge crates. They also have lots of nuts and dried beans and that sort of thing. These are everywhere.

Shopping
Most clothes here are one size only, and you can’t try anything on. Only real stores have dressing rooms, and by that I mean they have an actual cash register instead of a calculator and an envelope, and the clothes have tags on them, sometimes even with barcodes. Sometimes. The one-size clothes stores only keep one of each thing out, and if you want to buy it, they run into the back closet and come out with a little plastic baggy with your shirt or whatever inside. Can you believe that? All the clothes are packaged, like when you order them online. I don’t know why they keep it packaged that way, but it’s always strange to unwrap my clothes from a little plastic bag.

Also, every subway station is a shopping mall. I don’t know how else to explain it. Most of them are in the basement of a multistory mall, and the ones that aren’t still have tons of stores and are probably within a 2 minute walk from a mall. Hong Kong has more malls than anywhere I’ve ever been in my entire life.

Backpacks
Girls don’t wear backpacks here. I showed up on the first day of school with my Google backpack, feelin’ supafly, and people are staring at me like I’ve got my pants on backwards.

Me on the first day of school.

The girls always either hold their books or put them in some gigantic “purse” that really has no business being so large. A lot of guys even carry messenger bags! I felt pretty stupid until I got to my computer networks class, where my backpack gave me the instant cool factor. I am always the coolest geek in the room.

66 Degrees Fahrenheit

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That’s the lowest temperature ever recorded in Singapore. That is also the #1 reason I am moving to Singapore.

I had such an amazing weekend! We did so much in two and a half days. It was me and one of the girls who went with me to Malaysia, which was really nice. Even though we arrived late Thursday night, we got to an early start on Friday so we could do as much as possible. We planned it out so that we spent most of our time around the downtown area, that way we could enjoy the nice weather and walk from place to place. First stop: Chinatown.

All of the buildings are super adorable in a cheesy Disneyland sort of way, and every shop just has tables full of useless crap – exactly what we all know and love about Chinatown. The best were all of the t-shirts listing all the strange things that are illegal in Singapore, like chewing gum and dancing in public without a permit.

By 11:30 we were already hungry for lunch, since our lavish breakfast at the hostel was just white bread and Nutella. There was a street full of food carts, which we were really excited about, but even by noon none of them were open! Instead we sat down at a little place with tons of different types of fruit juice and some snack food. That’s a huge difference between Hong Kong and Singapore – juice. Real juice is so difficult to find here, but there’s an abundance of “juice drink.” Anything that says “orange juice” is really a lot closer to Sunny D than anything else, and the only way to guarantee it’s actual OJ is to get the ones imported from Florida that are super expensive.

My friend got lime juice, which was more like limeade and really refreshing, and I got a coconut. Literally, a coconut chopped open. You can’t get fresher than that. They also had watermelon, papaya, guava, mango, dragon fruit, and even sugar cane. We weren’t really sure how you get juice from a sugar cane, which in case you’re unfamiliar looks like a big stick, but someone ordered it while we were eating. They have a machine that literally just squishes the sugar cane and you hold a cup underneath to collect all the juice that comes out. Afterward you’re left with a big pulpy thing that used to be the sugar cane, and a big glass of juice! We also got a platter of chicken, beef, pork, and lamb satay with deliiiicious peanut sauce – one of the things I loved eating as a kid. I don’t think I had ever had lamb before, either, but it just tasted like beef to me. That peanut sauce was amazing though, with just the right amount of spice to it. After we finished I started dipping the cucumber garnish into it just to eat more!

Next stop was Marina Bay. From there you can see the beautiful skyline, the Marina Bay Sands hotel (it’s like three buildings with a boat on top, very strange), the big Durian building, and most importantly, the Merlion.

They are obsessed with this Merlion thing. It’s literally a lion mermaid. The one in Marina Bay is the original, but there are several other statues around Singapore, and more souvenirs than you could ever want. Apparently the meaning behind it is that Singapore means “lion city” in Malay, but it started as a fishing village, so the statue combines those two ideas in a kind of cheesy way. Also at Marina Bay is the Singapore Flyer, a huuuuge Ferris wheel, but we wanted to wait until nighttime for that.

We walked to an area called Kampong Glam, which is like a Malay/Muslim version of Chinatown. A woman pointed us down one of the roads, Haji Lane, saying there were “tons of cute little boutiques down there” – that was the beginning of our good luck that day.

Every store on that street became a struggle for me not to spend tons of money. A lot of the stores reminded me of Anthropologie, and they were almost all Singaporean designers. So many buildings were covered in gorgeous graffiti murals, too. Seriously, favorite street ever!

After that, we were hungry for another snack, so we walked by a Moroccan restaurant nearby. There was an older couple sitting outside, and a woman told us the food was really great and suggested we eat there. She was very interested in where we were from, why we were visiting, etc; she said she had moved from Texas to Singapore, so she loved meeting American tourists. Can you believe that?! Moving from Texas, to Singapore? We were so surprised!

We ordered a chickpea dish in a tomato sauce and baba ghanoush. Moroccan food is very interesting – they have the same dishes I’ve eaten a million times but they’re a little different. For example, this baba ghanoush had tons of cilantro in it, which I had never seen before, but was absolutely delicious! The Texan lady was right, the food there was really good. When she finished her food, she said goodbye to us, and a few minutes later the woman running the restaurant told us she had paid for our food. Literally, our mouths were wide open in shock. That’s definitely one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me! That was our second round of good luck for the day.

After that, we decided to head back toward the Flyer, but we had a stop to make first: Kenko Foot Reflexology and Fish Spa. Yes, that’s right. I paid money to put my feet in a fish tank for twenty minutes and let the fish eat off my dead skin.

Honestly, it tickled more than anything. The fish are so small, and when they nibble on you it feels like a little vibration. I couldn’t keep my feet in there for longer than about a minute at a time because it just tickled way too much.

By the time we were done getting eaten, it was raining too hard for the Flyer to fly. It looked like it was letting up a little though, so we walked back to Marina bay to the Helix Bridge. It’s actually a DNA double helix! There are even little lights along the ground that say “a,” “t,” “c,” and “g,” but I couldn’t find if it’s actually the sequence for anything.

Finally, the Flyer was back up and running. You can see all of Marina Bay from the top! I am so glad we waited until nighttime, because all the lights were absolutely beautiful.

By now, it’s like nine o’clock. We’ve been going going going all day nonstop for about twelve hours, and we’re hungry. We take the train over to Newton Food Centre, which is described online as a “food orgy,” and that’s exactly what it was. Tons and tons of food. Everywhere. You can’t walk three feet without someone shoving a menu in your face telling you that their chili crab is “the best.” Funny, because almost every place uses the exact same pictures on their menu! We found the one with the cheapest chili crab, $3.50 for 100g, and sat down.

This is where we had good luck numbers 3 and 4. A couple leaving right as we sat down suggested we order the “fried dough,” which was really great for sopping up all the chili sauce from the crab, and the guy who sat down after them gave us pretty good instructions on how to break open the crab. This was the messiest meal I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

The picture on the bottom right is stingray. My friend really wanted to try it, but I was pretty scared. I mean, before this trip, I hadn’t eaten meat in almost nine years, and now you’re asking me to eat a stingray?! I said I would taste it. Just a little bit. Wow, I ate way more than a little bit. It was delicious! We were expecting it to be sort of chewy or something, but it was more just like a really dense fish, and not a really fishy flavor, either. It’s grilled, with a spicy chili sauce on top, plus you squeeze lime juice all over it. I had never eaten a crab before either, so this day was full of new adventures in food! Plus, we got to try sugar cane juice. It wasn’t as sweet as I expected, actually, and had a bit of a vegetable flavor, if that makes any sense.

We had sufficiently worked our way into food comas and were ready for bed. After navigating the bus system back (every bus stop lists every stop for all the buses that go there – so useful!!) we stopped in the bar under our hostel for a Singapore Sling. It’s pretty much the tourist drink of choice there. It looks nice and girly, but it was pretty strong, and I didn’t finish it. Also, I’m not sure how close this bar sticks to the original recipe – I guess everywhere does it a little differently – but here is the original from the Raffles Hotel in case you want to try it for yourself. Wikipedia says that should be a pineapple, not a lemon wedge, and it shouldn’t have any ice, so honestly who knows what I was drinking.

On Saturday we got up early again and made our way to Sentosa. It’s a super touristy resort island – they even have a Universal Studios – but we just went for the beach.

It’s all manmade, but still gorgeous. The sand is so soft and the water was ridiculously warm. One of the beaches, Palawan, has a bridge to a teeny little island that is apparently the southernmost point in continental Asia, which was kind of cool. I fell asleep on the beach and got a nice tan. Just to make all of you in Pittsburgh jealous.

We went to a food court for lunch and I got “fried carrot cake.” I knew it obviously wasn’t carrot cake in the way we think about it; the picture looked like an omelet. This is what I got:

It was DELICIOUS. There was a bunch of egg underneath, so the photo wasn’t a complete lie at least. There was definitely no carrots in here, though. I thought it was just rice noodles or something, but Wikipedia says it’s actually made from radishes, and it has the name “carrot cake” because the word for radish can also refer to carrots. Also, the Wiki picture looks like what I had, so whatever picture they were using at this place is just completely wrong I guess.

Saturday night we went to the Night Safari. It’s a separate section of the zoo that’s only open from 7:30pm to midnight. Some places you can walk around, including a room full of bats that fly right by you oh my god I was screaming, but most of the animals you can only see from the tram ride. Animals like elephants, tigers, and hyenas are in a contained area, but all the different types of deer and cattle are pretty much free roaming. There were even a couple of Malayan tapirs grazing just a couple feet away from where I was sitting on the tram!

Finally on Sunday morning, before we had to go to the airport, we borrowed a couple of bikes from the hostel and rode around East Coast Park. There’s a pier where tons of people camp out to fish, and we even saw a guy catch a couple of stingrays. The bike ride was a really nice, relaxing way to end the weekend.

We stopped at a cute ice cream shop by the bus stop, Ice Cream Chefs. They had such interesting flavors, like milk tea, creme brulee, passion kiwi, durian, and adzuki (red) bean. I got pandan flavor with some cookie crumbs mixed into it. I’m definitely going to keep some of these flavors in mind when I bust out my ice cream maker again next summer – I bet milk tea wouldn’t be too difficult to make.

Overall, I had a really wonderful time in Singapore, but one thing was nagging me the entire time: it’s so not Asian there. Everyone speaks English first, unlike Hong Kong where people always try Cantonese with me, and especially in the downtown area everyone is white. Besides the weather and coconut trees, if you had said to me I was in the US, I would have believed you. I thought Hong Kong was pretty westernized, but it’s nothing compared to Singapore. Maybe it’s different if you’re outside of the really touristy areas, but I honestly felt like I left Asia for the weekend.

Leap of Faith

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We all survived the typhoon, hurray! The rain wasn’t even that bad, it just got really windy. A couple of trees near the dorm fell over, but that’s all. Another one is supposed to be coming, I think, but I think it’s going to stay even farther away from Hong Kong than the last one did.

On Friday, after all the typhoon business blew over (hahaha) I went hiking on MacLehose trail, near Sai Kung. It was a perfect day for hiking: warm, but a little cloudy so the sun wasn’t beating down on us. We got caught in a bit of rain toward the end, but it was okay. The trail is over in New Territories, and has some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen.

It takes a little over an hour to get to Sai Wan beach, but the trail is super easy – just like the last time I went hiking, it’s a paved sidewalk almost the whole way. Sai Wan is also beautiful, and split in two parts by a big section of rocks. It’s pretty strange – one side is very clean, but the other side has trash all over the sand. It probably washes up there from other beaches or people dumping from boats… really sad.

After the beach, we veered off the path to get to what we were really looking for: Sheung Luk Stream. It’s got a couple pools, but the one at the very top is both the cleanest and the deepest.

If you climb up to the top of the rocks, the jump is about 20 feet. It took me a bit of convincing, but eventually I mustered up the courage to do it. Oh my god, it was amazing. The water was cool and refreshing, and I got such an adrenaline rush from the jump! Afterward I just kept saying over and over again, “I can’t believe I just jumped off a cliff.” Then I did it again.

To cancel out all of that physical activity, I had plenty of desserts this weekend. On Saturday, I went for dumplings with a local friend, and then afterward we got dessert. He went for grass jelly with fruit, while I chose what translates to “ice flower.” It’s sort of like halfway between ice cream and shave ice. So light and refreshing! I got strawberry, but they also had mango, chocolate, durian, and Yakult. The place was right by school, so I will definitely be going back.

After that – FIREWORKS. October 1st is China’s National Day, and Hong Kong had the most amazing fireworks display I’ve ever seen in Victoria Harbor. Seriously, the entire sky was filled with fireworks for 20 minutes straight. I’ve never seen anything like it! They even had fireworks that formed the characters 中国 (China), but I couldn’t get a good picture. Apparently they spent something like $8,000,000HKD on the whole thing. Crazy. Also, the whole area by the water was PACKED. Seriously, the sidewalks were completely full and they even closed down the streets so we could stand there, it was insane!

Have you ever heard of rice pizza? Me neither. Today I went with a friend to a mall in Sha Tin and we had rice pizza for dinner. It’s literally just pizza but with rice instead of crust. She had been there before, but I had no idea what I was in store for. It was really good! One of the most interesting things I’ve ever eaten. And not nearly as filling or fatty as regular pizza, either. We got one with salmon and mushrooms, and one with chicken and mango. The salmon one was kind of cheesy, but I don’t think the chicken one had any cheese at all! I liked that one better. Mostly just because I love anything with mango. I couldn’t figure out how they get the rice to stay like that, though, because it’s not super sticky or crunchy or anything. Food mysteries.

After we stuffed our faces with the rice pizza, we walked around the mall until we were hungry again for dessert! We went to Honeymoon (not the same one as last time) and it was soooo delicious. I think other people had the same idea as us, because that place was hoppin. Seriously, the rest of the mall was pretty empty by that time, but Honeymoon was packed. Everyone wants dessert!

We got a “mango pancake,” which was a little dumpling-type thing with fresh mango and whipped cream inside, an icy sago soup with fresh mango, bananas, lychee jelly, and green tea ice cream (I love their green tea ice cream!!), and warm peanut/sesame tangyuan in black sesame and walnut soups. In the picture on the menu, the bowl is split diagonally with half black sesame soup and half walnut. I think they were rushing a little in the kitchen since it was so busy, so unfortunately our soup came a little bit mixed together. It still tasted great, but I really wanted to taste the walnut soup on its own! There’s always next time, I guess – makes for a great excuse to get more dessert!

I’m gonna come home super fat if I don’t slow it down with these desserts. Seriously.