User Comments - lostinasia
lostinasia
Posted on: All You Can Eat and Drink
February 2, 2008 at 9:02 AMOh, 김밥 (kimbap)--absolutely fantastic. I miss that a lot from when I lived in Korea. All kinds of different stuff wrapped up in a sushi-like roll. Okinomiyaki... I've eaten that in Taiwan, and in one restaurant it's called 和民風廣島燒, although the 和民 is just the name of the restaurant chain. This link... http://www.watami.com.tw/0601menu_e.htm ... has the menu, and the okinomiyaki is towards the bottom right corner. A couple of these things are different in Taiwan. Many of the all-you-can-eat places are called 吃到飽. Tuna is 鮪魚 (wei3yu2) , and salmon is 鮭魚 (gui1yu2). 鐵板燒 / tiěbǎnshāo is I believe the Japanese style of cooking, teppanyaki... I think that's a name many people in the west know. Where you sit at a long counter and the chefs cook the food on the metal heated part of the counter, right in front of you.
Posted on: Group Photo
January 28, 2008 at 4:29 PMWhat makes me laugh are the photos where the V-gesture is the other way around--with the palm facing in, the fist facing out. All these cute Asian kids are giving (substantial parts of) the world the finger but they don't even know it. (Didn't Bush Senior get in trouble for this once in Australia?) COOL link longdehua. I had no idea. What I like is how the Japanese for "peace" sounds a great deal like "pis* *ff". I don't know if anyone here has had the "pleasure" of looking through a group trip photo album in Asia... you'll see dozens of photos of the whole group of 30 people (company, class, whatever) in front of famous spot A, then famous spot B, then famous spot C. Or there'll be 10 copies of basically the same picture, with a different person missing each time--whoever kept rotating in and out to take pictures. Such photo albums may even be worse then the posed family shots from my childhood visits to Disneyland and Europe and the like, and I didn't think that was possible. Then again, many of my Asian friends think my photography is boring because there aren't enough pictures of me in front of famous places D, E, and F.
Posted on: The Non-Chinese Speaking Tourist and Toilets
January 14, 2008 at 2:24 PMToilets, (not) washing, and cooking: there's a very good reason some cultures use only the right hand to eat! It's not just a community-forming prohibition. Another dilemma: you've done your business, and you go to the sink to wash your hands. The tap/ faucet is yucky, and the soap is hanging in a filthy mesh bag. You know you could wash your hands, but then, you'd have to touch that tap again to turn the water off. What do you do?
Posted on: Lost Cell Phone
January 13, 2008 at 1:37 AMSebire, think about what you want to do with the phone--if it's purely to send messages to let your parents know you're safe, you can do that with text messages, and those are cheap enough that you may just want to use your own phone from home. Then again, when you're in the English-speaking countries you may want to use the phone to make calls ahead for reservations. I guess I suggest making sure that international text messages are reasonable on your current plan, and that your phone can be used in any country (most non-American and non-Japanese are ok worldwide, I believe, but this tech changes so fast). If the texting's cheap, just go and see what happens. If you keep wanting to CALL, buy a local SIM card. If you never want to, and texting is enough, you're fine. Oh, on India: SIM cards there are kind of a pain, or were recently--they may only be good in one region, so if you're travelling around a lot, you may discover the Delhi-purchased SIM card suddenly isn't working in Rajasthan. But my Taiwan-bought SIM card worked [at a price] everywhere! And enjoy the trip!
Posted on: The Non-Chinese Speaking Tourist and Toilets
January 13, 2008 at 1:26 AMThe bucket in the water tank: that's often for flushing the toilet (as well as, yes, washing your bottom.) You just keep dumping water in the toilet until your business is done. In general putting your own hands (or anything else) in the big tank is considered very bad form. (I'm speaking mainly from experience in Indonesia, so I guess things could be different in China.) Depending on the nature of the bathroom, that water tank and bucket could also be for your shower. A reminder: often water systems can't handle toilet paper, so any tissue you use should be put in a garbage can that's (god willing) beside the toilet. Or else you're dooming the next visitor to a serious mess. If there's no garbage can... you've got a dilemma. Use no toilet paper and clean yourself using water? Put tissue in the toilet anyway and hope for the best? Take the tissue with you as you would when walking the dog?
Posted on: The Non-Chinese Speaking Tourist and Toilets
January 12, 2008 at 7:06 AMI once walked into a bus stop toilet in the Philippines (Baguio, to be precise), needing #2, and the squat toilets were on chest-height pedestals, in the middle of the filthy room, with no cubicle walls. [Panicked] mind over matter... I suddenly didn't need #2, and didn't for a few days! That was by far the worst toilet I've ever had to deal with. You get used to the squatting after a while--it does use different muscles, and they'll develop. At one point in my life I was comfortable squatting while waiting for a bus, like RJBerki mentioned above. I freaked my brother out when I visited him in Canada, and squatted while waiting for the train downtown. "Everyone's looking at you!" he shouted. Tips: don't wear flip-flops; shorts make things easier; watch out for what's in your pockets; and be really careful about any jacket that may hang down and get, er, in the way (that tip, thankfully, is not from personal experience). As for the aim... well, the lower you can squat, and the more "docile" your stomach, the easier. As others have mentioned, there are quite a few countries where squat toilets are what you WANT--skin contact with the toilet would be a bad thing indeed. No one's yet gotten into the toilet paper-less countries like India...
Posted on: Ordering Chinese Take-out
January 5, 2008 at 10:43 AM空心菜 is one of the main green vegetables in Taiwan. (Where, yes, 青菜 is often just used generically for green vegetables, I think--unless I'm misusing terms, which happens far too often). 空心菜 is sometimes translated as, according to Wikipedia, "water spinach, swamp cabbage, water convolvulus, water morning-glory", and so on. It does taste a bit like spinach, although the leaves are smaller and you'll eat more of the (quite tasty!) stems. If a menu in Taiwan has English, they'll usually say "hollow vegetable", although "empty heart" has a nice poetic end-of-relationship ring to it. On hot pot: many Chinese/ English dictionaries translate 火鍋 as "chafing dish", and I always tell my students it sounds silly. I realize that IS a dish but I hear that name and I wonder what kind of a dish needs talcum powder as a remedy, and there goes the appetite.
Posted on: The Final Jizhou Pieces
January 5, 2008 at 1:49 AMOnly he was paying attention? And it was a pre-arranged signal? Or he's got super dog-like hearing?
Posted on: Getting Water Delivered
January 4, 2008 at 2:29 PMAh the convenience of Taiwan, and how it hinders my Chinese... delivery services like water and gas have my own cell phone number on their phones, so when I call them, I don't even get a chance to practice my Chinese--their phones probably flash "dumb foreigner, 5 bottles, xxxxx address". They just say "Ok, very good, coming sir!" and hang up.
Posted on: All You Can Eat and Drink
February 2, 2008 at 3:05 PMHannahim, 我在韓國的時候住在大田 - Taejon/ Daejon/ Daejhong. I had an absolute blast and I really should get back to Korea for a visit. Would it be sacrilege on this site to admit that I prefer Korean, Indian, and Tex-Mex to Chinese food? Don't get me wrong--Chinese is still superior to generic North American or European!