Friday is a late day for class - I finish around 6 pm, but I don't start till 2:30, so nothing to complain about there. After class I had a few minutes to run home and change before we went to dinner with Jason, Charlotte and another teacher at the school. Many restaurants have a hot pot...imagine a hot plate with a pot of water. On the table are several veggies and you order your meat at the front of the restaurant. The most interesting thing was the snake. In the front of the restaurant are several small cages on the floor filled with snakes. So your dinner is rather...uh...fresh.
I didn't watch the snake being prepared, but what they do is cut of the head using scissors. Then they skin it. Then they filet the meat. While this is happening, the snake's tail is still moving around. When they bring the meat into the room, it is on several small plates and you add that to the hot pot. It seems that a lot of food here is boiled. A little plain tasting in my opinion, but what the hell, right? Anyways, we all had some snake (except Charlotte - she is from the Philippines and said that she won't eat it because she had to kill one once). Jason even ate some of the skin after it had been boiled. Because it was boiled, I didn't think there was much taste to it...I think it is less tasty than chicken. But apparently it is rather expensive. After the snake cooks for a bit, in goes the chicken. I'm used to chicken being de-boned, but here they don't really remove bones. I'm not a fan of having to spit out bones, so I try my best to pull some of the chicken from the bone using chopsticks. People must think I'm mad.
After dinner, we headed over to a small pub called the Empty Bottle - much like the Sidebar in Hess. Kinda small, but we sat on the patio. Some other people joined us for drinks there. Many people here do not like cold drinks...they prefer room temp for water, most juices and beer. But most places will have a few cold beers around. Two small dishes were served at this pub. One was cucumbers in spices - very tasty. The second was jellyfish. There were spices in that dish, but the jellyfish has an oddly crunchy texture. I only had two bites.
I didn't watch the snake being prepared, but what they do is cut of the head using scissors. Then they skin it. Then they filet the meat. While this is happening, the snake's tail is still moving around. When they bring the meat into the room, it is on several small plates and you add that to the hot pot. It seems that a lot of food here is boiled. A little plain tasting in my opinion, but what the hell, right? Anyways, we all had some snake (except Charlotte - she is from the Philippines and said that she won't eat it because she had to kill one once). Jason even ate some of the skin after it had been boiled. Because it was boiled, I didn't think there was much taste to it...I think it is less tasty than chicken. But apparently it is rather expensive. After the snake cooks for a bit, in goes the chicken. I'm used to chicken being de-boned, but here they don't really remove bones. I'm not a fan of having to spit out bones, so I try my best to pull some of the chicken from the bone using chopsticks. People must think I'm mad.
After dinner, we headed over to a small pub called the Empty Bottle - much like the Sidebar in Hess. Kinda small, but we sat on the patio. Some other people joined us for drinks there. Many people here do not like cold drinks...they prefer room temp for water, most juices and beer. But most places will have a few cold beers around. Two small dishes were served at this pub. One was cucumbers in spices - very tasty. The second was jellyfish. There were spices in that dish, but the jellyfish has an oddly crunchy texture. I only had two bites. Today (Saturday afternoon) Charlotte took me to another end of the city for a massage. Apparently this man works at the Zhangzhou hotel and is the best in the city. I don't know his name, but he is blind. From what I understand, many blind people give massages, as their is little opportunity for them to take up other work. Anyways, this is the best massage I've ever had (sorry Regina, it was better than the lady in Mexico). I didn't even know how many pressure points I had until today.
I wonder what strange food I will be eating tonight???
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