A Very Foreign Language: i still smell like hot pot...

as promised, i went to eat chinese hotpot today with josh & his friends lei lei from china and christopher from sweden.

i also thought i would start taking more pictures of everyday singapore.

these two pictures were taken on my 2 minute walk to the bus stop.

and this one i took from the bus, just because i thought it was a cute construction sign. note how we are on the wrong side of the road.

i really wanted to take a picture of the no durian sign plastered on nearly every bus in singapore, but the bus was really crowded & i figured that would be the ultimate giveaway that screams "I AM A FOREIGNER HERE." which may actually have been a good thing... i pass for a local, or at least chinese, quite well. everywhere i go people speak to me in mandarin and get confused when i just stare and awkwardly smile instead. today, someone actually asked me for directions. uh...

so anyways, here is a picture of what your typical mrt (their subway system) looks like. kind of like

on every door they have these odd public announcements with the scary man in the afro saying things in english that don't really make sense... if you're lucky enough, you can catch him on the mrt tv singing a little (or rather long...) jingle about mrt etiquette.

so here we are at the chinese hotpot restaurant that lei lei took us to. for 20$ a person, you could literally just stay in the restaurant the whole day and eat and eat without anyone saying anything to you. they just keep refilling your broth for you over and over again...

basically you get a pot full of boiling broth (one side is spicy, the other side mild) and you just dump things into the pot to your heart's content. vegetables, shellfish, meat, noodles, fishcakes...

then you create a dipping sauce with ingredients of your choice from things like chili paste, capsicum oil, sesame oil, salt, powdered msg.... -_-

of the three meat options, we chose to have mutton and beef.

a prayer table outside the restaurant...

afterwards, josh was determined to try durian so we settled on getting durian pancakes for dessert. basically a durian pancake is a pancake with a lump of durian inside.

note the skepticism on our faces as we document the first bite...

each time i try durian or durian flavored things, i tell myself that one day i might like it... but i really don't. in fact, 5 hours later, the taste is still lingering in my mouth... gross.

durian cakes found later in the day...