So China can be an odd place.  i went to hong Kong to the Thunderbird Super Tuesday Alumni thing and I'll admit being in hong Kong can be kin of heady and it made me want to maybe get a job in Hong Kong or somewhere else, it's sort of like when I would go into San Francisco when I was college and wanted to live there, the whole being in the bright city lights etc etc.  So of course that got me thinking about my future and that got me slightly down, not knowing what Im going to do, not being able to remain forever young...FOREVER YOUNG(to the tune of forever young) and listening to a poignant, sad, and ironic song and walking back to my apartment and then I saw a man and woman(I think a married couple) with a street rigged hibachi, the people that sell meat on a stick but on their tray of food to choose from I saw an eggplant, which I have been wanting to cook more of because they are everywhere here and they are just these beautiful shades of purple and so cheap. Anyways, so I chose that and they grilled it and then added chives, garlic, a little oil and some ground chili and then gave it to me in a horrible earth ruining styrofoam container to take home.  it was really really good.  So while I cannot replicate this particularfood because of my lack of bbq, and I don't think it would turn out quite as good on a hot plate as on a grill I thought I would share the food, though I'm sure people may have thought of this before it is still something you should try.  When the skin cracks then slice it almost in half so it is basically butteflying it and cut off the green stem then brush it with some chili and or chili oil, some garlic and green onions and ground chili and then leave it for another minute or so and voila.  Of course if it doesn't turn out well with the eggplant almost mushy on the inside  and gushy and delicious then it isn't my fault it's china!

Well, it happened last night, it was my next door teacher friends birthday and Satan used ice skates to get to work.  For dinner we went out to dinner at the all you can eat sushi restaurant.  The thing is I had gone to that place on Wednesday and then on Friday I went to an all you can eat tepenyaki place that also included sashimi.  That place was really really good, it included sake, asahi beer, lamb chops, salmon, and steak.  So after last night I am amazingly sushi-ed out for the moment.  I'm not sure how long that will be but for the moment I am sushi free.  
Secondly, I went to a new bar last night after dinner with him and some other friends.  The bar is called Galleon and it is located at the top of the Intercontinental Hotel at Overseas Chinese Town(which is the actual chinese name of the neighbourhood or OTC)  Anyways, the place is okay and it has a microbrewery with the name Blanca.  The hotel is spanish themed supposedly though I couldn't really see it, but the menu proudly proclaimed that the beer was named for a spanish word for blonde.  The palce was pretty nice, all the waiters and waitresses were in pirate attire.  Lots of restaurants that feature ethnic or foreign or themed foods have costumes which is kind of funny, especially taco bell grande where they all wear large concial sombreroes.  Anyways, it was the usual mix of Chinese couples, perhaps a bit more western men with younger chinese women, and a few foreign couples.  They also had a live samba band which was fun.  The beer on tap was pretty good, though we prdered two different types that they had and they only brought us one but it was nice.  Oh, almost forgot, the bar itself is an actual ship, or at least the outside of a wooden galleon on the roof of the building.  I'm not sure why they chose this but it was funny and fun and I'm not sure if you can get up to the deck of the ship as the hold, or where the hold would be is where the bar is, but I think they also serve food earlier in the night so maybe then you can eat up there.

Road Trip and Rollerblade Ninjas

So this is something I have seen a couple of times over the past couple of months, teenagers walking around twirling nunchucks, and then different sets of teenagers setting up small traffic cones and rollerblade around them at night.  but last week as I was on my way back from Latin, an all you can eat brazilian bbq place(it was good, and pretty cheap but not as cheap as the all you can eat sushi place I go to which is sushi, so no contest)  Anyways, so on the way home from Latin I was riding past one of the many billboards of Deng Xiaoping and in the little plaza around it I saw a group of these rollerblade kids skating around only this time they were all twirling nunchucks.  That's it, thats the story, no real moral or point just thought it was interesting.
Number two, roadtrip, the more Ive been thinking about coming back to the US, the more I am again coming to the conclusion I'm not sure what I am going to do when I get back.  Anyways, as the prospect of a job job is coming to look clearer I am thinking of all the things that I want to do that are difficult to do with a job job.  One of them is a road trip, not just a small one but a big one, specifically I have been thinking about Route 66.  Chicago to LA, so I've been looking into that some, and it seems doable but a knotty problem about the trip is how to get me and a car to one of the starting places, either way if I drive from Phoenix to LA or Chicago I would then have to backtrack most of the way, which I'm not sure would be bad or good.  So with that preamble, anyone that may read this is invited to PLEASE help me think of a solution!

Tomatoes Tomatoes Tomatoes
Here in China they do not have salad, I mean they have the necessary ingredients but unless you go out to a more expensive restaurant that actually has western food you have to make it yourself.  This was made easier by the discovery of salad dressing in certain supermarkets western sections, in particular a sesame dressing which is very good, not as good as the miso dressing at home but still good, especially considering the only other salad dressings they have are thousand island for the most part.
Anyways, I digress, back to tomatoes.  So cucumbers I can always get and it is actually fairly easy to find romaine hearts as well.  But tomatoes are easy to find, or at least chinese tomatoes.  Now I don't mean that these are a new variety of tomatoes from here in China or anything, in fact a fairly common dish is chopped tomateos and eggs which is pretty good.  But by Chinese tomatoes I mean that they aren't very good, no real flavor, all very faded red, not entirely ripe but what can you do right?
Wrong, you see there are also lots of fruit stands, or to be more precise fruit vans that set up everywhere and until then I hadn't really frequented them unless I was walking by the and was hugry at that moment.  BUT then I saw cherry tomatoes at the stand near one of my friends house.  So I bought a kilo of them and ate them in like two days, they were amazing, juicy flavorful and ripe, really red, all the more so because of the alternative.  So now I can finally have good tomatoes with my salads.  But I have to be honest, I have not actually had them on a salad yet, both times I bought them i finished them before I could have them on a salad.

So Thailand was nice enough I guess, I really didn't get a feel for the country as a whole just Thailand and a few days on an island but I have to say that Cambodia was alot alot alot of fun. That country was really nice! Especially after how crowded and busy Bangkok was it was nice to go to a country that was alot more laid back and not as crowded. I only went to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap but both were really nice. Phnom Penh, even though it is the capital isn't really that developed relative to Bangkok or Shenzhen. It has something of an expat district along part of the river but it is really small. It was also pretty hot, I cannot imagine what it must be like in this region come summer, at least Phoenix is a dry heat. Siem Reap was alot of fun even if it was really touristy, but it wasn't in an obnoxious way and the Cambodian people were all very friendly as well. We rented bicycles to explore Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom etc and that was alot of fun. The food was good, even though I don't normally eat bread every day and especially not in China I had forgotten how good french bread was until I hit Cambodia, where it was everywhere. They make this really good sandwhich with cucumber, green onion, cambodian fish sauce, and what I think was condensed milk which they use alot, along with some sort of meat but the meat didnt really add anything to the taste. I have taken an ungodly amount of pictures it will be at least 500 or so by the time this trip is done. Digital cameras and large memory cards have unleashed the inner artsy photog snob in all of us. I need to go to Laos at some point but not this trip, and have to go back to Thailand but after the end of this trip I think I can cross off Cambodia and Vietnam of places to be visited.

Maybe a correction

Okay so i am now not sure if the papaya salad was papaya or mango. it was a light green fruit about the size of an avacodo that was shredded and was a lighter green on the inside but it has been called into question as to what it actually was...if anyone knows and would like to enlighten us please feel free!

Thailand

So I have now officially added thailand to the places Ive been, but at most it is a hollow achievement. I am only here for 8 days and i will not get to see much of the country, which to me is the whole point of going to a country. Anyone can go see 12 countries in 12 days in Europe or jsut travel to the capital of a place but that doesn't seem any fun. So I have to come back and do Thailand properly, maybe take a few weeks or a month at some point though I have no idea when. It is also depressing because even though I am living in China and traveling through Southeast Asia for a month i am constantly meeting people who are traveling for a year. Now I am having a great time but still, it would be alot of fun to travel for a year. I met a girl who had come to thailand via China and the Trans-Siberian Railroad and another who had just arrived to start her travels and she had quit her job at an aquarium.
Anyways, on to the travel update. bangkok is alot of fun, very big and crowded but the Skytrain makes it relatively easy to get around. Everything is cheap but that just means that you spend alot of small amounts of money that add up to a large amount of money(relatively speaking). Also everyone thinks I am a pervert and ask if I want adult DVD because I am a foreigner. I did walk by several go go bars that lie along the night market, nothing really special that i saw, just a large amount of thai women in bikinis sort of half dancing on stage. Eh. Also did a cooking class that was alot of fun. It was 4 hours and only had me and one other woman from Canada and we made fresh curry paste, a very nice mint salad, pad thai, a really good soup and then a dessert called rubies in coconut milk. I have all the recipes so I can make them when I get back. I also went to the old Siam capital and that was cool, lots of ruins and what not, took alot of pictures. Anyways, then I went to ko Chang which is an island and that was really laid back and relaxing even though we were only there for two days but that beach was really nice, kinda made me wiosh I was traveling with a girl but c'est la vie.
Finally, the food is amazing! Street food is so good and they need to have it in the states, maybe thatll be the theme of the restaurant I open, all street food, which includes alot of different thigns, from pad thai to meeat on a stick to papaya salad(Which was incredibly good!!!!). Anyways, on to Phnom Penh and Cambodia so i will let you know what comes next!