by Adam Jones-Kelley

“Don’t worry – it’s a local delicacy.”

When I hear those words I know I’m going to suffer.

While traveling abroad it’s impolite not to try the local fare when offered, especially in a business setting, and Asian cultures in particular see a refusal as disrespectful. This is usually not a problem as I’m rather fond of Asian food. Occasionally, however, “being respectful” and “overwhelming gag reflex” meet and battle it out for supremacy. Tonight was one such night.

On the way to dinner with friends I heard the dreaded phrase. I smiled, assured my hosts I was eager to try their famous dish, and silently prayed to the Gods of Food for mercy.

Once at the restaurant we were seated at a table with an open flame cooking area in the center, much like you’d find at a fondue place. This was looking up! I like fondue! How bad could this be? I was quickly relaxing, enthusiastic and ready for a great new discovery.

As I chatted with my friends the waiter began to place food on the table. All seemed to be in order. We had a beef dish, a pork dish, some veggies, and a dark pile of fat wiggling slugs.

What the holy crap!?!

I stared aghast as my plans for a torture-free evening crumbled around me. What was I looking at, why was it moving, and why was I the only one bothered by this?

It’s rare that I worry whether my dinner could take me in a fight. Tonight I wasn’t so sure.

Tonight’s local delicacy, to my great horror, turns out to be live cicada larvae. Let me say this again; LIVE CICADA LARVAE. To eat them you take your chopsticks, hold their 3-inch thick, wiggling bodies over a flame (not to kill them – just to get ‘em warm and angry), then pop them in your mouth, squish out the juice and innards, and spit the shell on your plate.

I know it sounds disgusting.

It’s so much worse.

I wish I could equate the taste to something you could identify, but until you’ve actually had one you simply can’t imagine. Perhaps strolling down Bourbon Street the morning after Fat Tuesday and then licking the bottom of your shoe would get you close. Eating just one of these things took all I could muster. Not wanting to appear disrespectful, I had three.

It took me thirty minutes and three cans of Coke to down three live cicada larvae. I even managed to smile during the process.

That wasn’t the end of my horror. Whilst I was busily congratulating myself for successfully ingesting live bugs, the next course was brought to my table, and presented for inspection.

This time I was certain my food would wind up eating me. Staring me in the face and hissing was a very-angry 6-foot long snake. I never found out what kind.

I was encouraged to hold my still-alive meal to be as the waiter cut out its pancreas and popped it in my mouth. (My friends assured me this would help my vision. It did not.)

You might think nights like these are your biggest culinary concern in China.

Not so much.

Though China works hard to suppress news damaging to its image, do a little research and you’ll learn that the biggest health threat in Chinese eateries is “gutter oil,” which, believe it or not, is even fouler than it sounds.

Cooking oil is like gold in China, where virtually every recipe requires a wok full of it, and goes for a premium. In recent years an entire industry trafficking in filthy used and sometimes fatal oil has emerged. Black market villains dredge up used oil from gutters and sewers around restaurants, selling the putrid but still useable product back to restaurants, who happily buy it dirt-cheap (pun intended here.)

The Wall Street Journal reported that police broke up a criminal network operating in 14 Chinese provinces last month, arresting 32 people and seizing 100 tons of gutter oil. Li Xiang, a prominent Chinese journalist known as “The Gutter Oil Reporter,” was stabbed to death just after the crackdown in what police term “mysterious” circumstances.

The 100 tons seized by authorities didn’t even put a dent in the industry.

It’s estimated that two million tons of thepotentially toxic mix are consumed by unwitting Chinese diners annually, and gutter oil probably accounts for at least one-tenth of all cooking oil used by restaurants. (The actual figure is presumed to be much higher, but isn’t actually known. Chinese officials admit privately that detecting gutter oil can be tricky.)

I was so disgusted I determined to eat only raw food the rest of the trip.

So, unsurprisingly, my colleagues took me out for a special treat that night: Chinese “hot pot,” a tradition where food is actually cooked in a pot of bubbling oil right at your table. It’s the Chinese answer to fondue, and I was utterly convinced that the sludge had been scraped off the streets and brought directly to my table.

My friends thought I was turning green over the blood tofu (literally squares of congealed blood) or the ox intestines. In truth I was just trying to hide my panic over consuming anything fried in their country. But I sucked it up – literally and figuratively — and while Soo fought down vomit I chucked back mouthful after mouthful of tasty but terrifying tidbits, which I assumed would presently kill me.

I survived, but I’m planning to get some shots as soon as I’m home. I don’t even care what shots. I just want my doctor to stick needles in me and tell me everything will be ok.

I may also need a hug.

This is really a tragedy. I’m a big fan of Chinese food, both the authentic stuff and what passes for it in America. But now it’s going to be difficult to eat the real stuff with gusto. The Chinese may well be the most industrious people on earth, but sometimes their very industriousness, when untempered by morality or decency, can be disastrous. The culture has been thus for a millennium, and is unlikely to change anytime soon, so best be careful what you eat.

I wish I could tell you that I was able to distract myself by going to see the Christmas lights around the magnificent city of Shanghai. But the Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas, not even a little. The Koreans, Thai and Japanese celebrate to varying degrees, most centering around commerce and catering to Western tourists, but not so China.

They’re gearing up for the New Year’s celebration – theirs, not the one most of the world celebrates with champagne and fireworks at midnight on December 31. 

The New Year, or Spring Festival, is the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar, and the dates for it change each year (it started in February this year, and next year, the Year of the Dragon, begins January 23.)

Celebrations in mainland China last a week, during which friends and family travel great distances to be together, exchange gifts and hang jillions of brightly lit paper lanterns. It’s totally alien to our holiday celebrations, yet somehow familiar. And ever so much more fun than eating bugs and snakes.

 

 

A couple of years ago Joan Firstenberg wrote an intriguing article suggesting that “Americans are fickle consumers of religion”, noting that about half of Americans change their religion at some point in their life.

It might rightly be said that the entire nation of Turkey is a fickle consumer of religion, having changed the state-approved deity more than a few times in its turbulent history.

1700 years ago the city we now know as Istanbul was called Byzantium. At the time the locals worshiped a handful of pagan gods, but Christianity was growing in popularity, so one day during a battle General Constantine (Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus for all you Latin scholars) claimed to see a cross in the sky, and used this as the basis for formally embracing Christianity.

Constantine is remembered as the first Christian Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, but there’s no evidence that he ever actually converted. He made Christianity the state religion as a political move to unify and reassert the Eastern Empire’s authority, and it worked out pretty well for him.

Christianity remained the city’s official religion for a thousand years, until the Ottoman Turks conquered Istanbul around 1453. They were Muslim, so the official religion became, of course, Islam, and many of the city’s gorgeous old churches, including the Hagia Sophia, were outfitted with minarets and turned into mosques.

During the 1900s, in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey was called “the sick man of Europe”. Russia, ever in search of a warm water port, had designs on the Bosporus, the French were in Syria and the Brits were in Iraq, all sniffing around for more colonial territory. They picked apart what was left of the empire after WWI, each introducing their own ideas of which gods should be served.

In 1919 General Mustafa Kemal Atatürk led a military coup, and in 1922 officially founded the current Turkish republic. Ataturk had seen the destructive influence religion could have on a nation, and determined to protect his fledgling country from such by law. Though a Muslim, Ataturk amended the constitution in 1924, removing the provision declaring that the “Religion of the State is Islam”, and making it illegal for women to wear burkas and veils in public, or for men to wear a fez.  He was determined that Turkey be a totally secular nation.

It has been the “duty” of the army ever since to maintain and guard separation of the government from the mosques, and Turkey remains today an officially secular state. But the lines are being blurred, and there are unsettling signs that the government under Prime Minister Erdoğan is aligning the nation ever more closely with Islam. (Turkey’s top military commanders resigned en masse last month in protest over the persecution and the perceived Islamization of Turkey. Asli Aydintasbas, a columnist for the Turkish daily newspaper Milliyet, told the New York Times, “This is the symbolic moment where the first Turkish republic ends and the second republic begins.”).

Not good. I’m glad I got to see this magnificent country so rich in history when I did. I might not be as welcome in the future.

While Prime Minister Erdoğan has enjoyed an uptick in popularity lately by villifying Isreal, there is also a noticeable anti-European attitude developing throughout Turkey. This is rather shocking, as Turkey has in recent years worked hard to promote the idea that it’s a European country, and has been actively pursuing membership in the EU since 1987.

But Turkey has changed a lot since then, and today sits as the 16^th largest economy in the world, and would rank 6^th among the 27 EU nations. Turks I spoke with were, to a person, convinced that the EU now needs Turkey far more then Turkey needs the EU. Several people told me that they feared losing some of their identity if the EU ever accepted them as a member, while others are convinced that the EU is intentionally dragging their feet because they didn’t want a large Muslim nation in the EU.

While that may be true, there is that slight problem of Islam’s continued subjugation of women not quite jiving with the EU’s stance on human rights.

One woman I spoke with extensively bragged about how moderate and modern Turkey is, and how Turkey’s brand of Islam was far more tolerant than much of what we see in the news. I asked her if it bothered her that women were still 2^nd class citizens, and pointed to the “woman’s corner” in The Blue Mosque as an example.

Here she hesitated a moment before assuring me that the separation of men and women in mosques made all the sense in the world. She explained (and seemed very much to be making this up as she went along) that because Muslims get down on their knees to pray with their butts in the air, that it simply wouldn’t do to have a woman on her knees with a man right behind her. Too much “temptation,” she said.

Temptation?? Ok, I’ll give you that one, if the women were gorgeous, wearing a mini-skirt and had decided to visit Victoria Secret’s on the way to pray. But in a burka? Women in mosques are not permitted to show thighs, shoulder or the tops of their arms. Where’s the temptation?

I suggested to our new friend that if you dressed a man in a burka and had him pray next to a woman in a burka, the people behind him wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

This didn’t go over well.

Sensing we were done with our chat I moved on to explore the city’s other historical relics like the Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace.

The Hagia Sophia is a perfect example of this city’s evolving allegiance to its gods. Originally built as Greek Orthodox Cathedral, it was briefly converted to a Roman Catholic Cathedral, from 1204-1261, before reverting to its Greek masters.  Thus it remained until 1453, when Sultan Mehmed conquered Constantinople and ordered the city converted to Islam. The ancient church got a facelift with its new god, and was renamed the Aya Sofya Mosque.

That’s a lot of religion for one building. If the locals had any sense of humor at all they’d renovate the place again, covering the exterior walls with paintings and sculptures depicting a host of deities brawling, each hollering in juvenile petulance, “Mine!”

Sultan Ahmed I, after having his clock cleaned in a war with Persia, decided to build a massive mosque to celebrate, and situated it directly across the street from the Hagia Sophia, the message clearly being “my mosque is better than yours!”

And the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, known as the Blue Mosque because of the tiles covering is interior, is stunning. Having it across the street from the Hagia Sophia is handy, making it easy to explore both on a brisk afternoon.

The Blue Mosque, even though it’s now one of Turkey’s most popular tourist spots, is still a functioning mosque, so tourist can only visit at certain times, and must observe the proper etiquette, like removing your shoes. This can cause a bit of a headache when you exit since your non-descript tennis shoes will have been dumped alongside a couple of hundred pair of shoes through which you must dig for your own. 

A few miles from the Blue Mosque you’ll find the Topkapi Palace which for four centuries served as the primary residence of the Ottoman Sultans. In 1924 the palace was transformed by government decree into a museum, and today exhibits a large collection of Ottoman treasures and jewels, porcelain, robes, weapons, shields, armor, and manuscripts, and it’s sort of a must-see while in Istanbul. As palaces go it’s a bit blah, not on a scale with so many others throughout Europe and Asia, but worth seeing.

And the local citizenry, whether at major monuments or local eateries, were almost always friendly and welcoming. One can only hope that tolerance and openness doesn’t fade as religion tightens its grip on modern Turkey.

Founded nearly 900 years ago, Munich, or München, is Germany’s third largest city and annually ranks as one of the world’s most livable cities.

Munich has a long, rich and often turbulent history. Just in the last 100 years Munich has been home to Lenin before his rise to power in Russia, was the birthplace of the Nazi party and played host to the 1972 Summer Olympic Games, which endured the worst terrorist attack on athletes in Olympic history.

Marienplatz, which means “St. Mary’s Square”, is Munich’s cultural and historical center. We decided to see absolutely everything in the limited time available to us. We started by walking around the 300-yr-old Column of St. Mary and the 259-foot tall gothic “new” Town Hall. The “new” town hall was constructed in 1867 to replace the “old” town hall, which was built in 1470. The coolest feature of the New Town Hall is the Glockenspiel, a revolving sort of a merry-go-round show in the center of the tower featuring figurines and mock knights on horses. During the entire show old-style Bavarian music echoes throughout the square. It’s fascinating.

Munich is also home to the original Oktoberfest, which is conveniently held mere blocks from Marienplatz.

Over the decades Oktoberfest has come to be celebrated and enjoyed the world over, mostly as an excuse to party and drink beer. Munich, Germany, however, is the only city which can lay claim to having the original Oktoberfest, and boy do they do it right! It’s by far the largest in the world, and from what I’ve experienced, absolutely the most fun.

I wanted to entitle this article “Germans behaving badly,” because I thought that would be cute, but the fact of the matter is that’s just not true. (If a fight breaks out at Oktoberfest it’s far more likely to involve Italians.) The Germans can be found in the beer halls drinking from sun-up to sundown and gorging themselves on traditional Bavarian foods like bratwurst, frankfurters, wiener schnitzel and pork knuckles. They spend all day listening to bands playing traditional Bavarian music whilst singing and dancing on the tables. They’re unabashedly happy, boisterous, and eager to welcome new friends from far and wide. (They will wonder out loud about your sanity if you’re not wearing traditional Bavarian garb, but they’ll still drink with you.)

Oktoberfest began in Munich way back in 1810 to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The festival was so popular that they did it again the following year, right down to the hugely popular horse-races, which ran until 1960. The modern Oktoberfest is held for 16 days, ending on the 1^st Sunday in October, and attracts about 6 million visitors, 2/3 of which are from Bavaria.

Germans, and especially Bavarians, take their beer seriously. Germany even has Federal laws dictating how beer must be prepared. And if Oktoberfest is about anything, it’s about beer. Local breweries brew a special beer for Oktoberfest which is slightly darker and stronger in taste and alcohol. The six Oktoberfest breweries are Spaten, Augustiner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, and Löwenbräu. They each have their own massive tents on festival grounds housing long tables full of drunk and happy revelers.

To get a seat at these tables you either have to be extremely lucky or plan well in advance. Many locals reserve their places months ahead of time, and arrive at 7:00am to secure their seats and begin their drinking.

They’re serious about their beer here.

Soo and I, not big on arriving anywhere at 7:00am, opted for the “get lucky” approach. Happily, we did.

We had actually planned to enjoy the huge Sunday breakfast buffet in the Westin at 9:30, then go straight to the festival grounds. We even had the hotel give us an early-morn wake-up call.

While I admire my optimism, I’m not sure what I was thinking; That I actually believed, even for a moment, I’d get out of bed for any reason at that hour on a Sunday is laughable. We made it to Oktoberfest around lunch.

We wandered the grounds for an hour or so while Soo gawked at the pure spectacle of it, eventually making our way into one of the beer halls. Soo’s eyes were almost as wide as her mouth, which stayed open in a half-stunned, half-delighted grin nearly all day.

The beer hall was, predictably, packed, with not an open seat anywhere. We walked straight through and out the back door. Soo found it a bit claustrophobic and stuffy, so we decided to try to find seats at one of the tents with outside benches. I told her with great confidence that our chances of finding some were about as good as David Spade’s chances of winning an Oscar.

So of course we found some in about 30 seconds.

Soo suggested that perhaps I should have a clue as to what I’m talking about next time I speak with such confidence.

We sat down with a group of German grad students who all spoke English and, as happens at Oktoberfest, decided immediately we were their friends.

We spent the entire afternoon and early evening drinking and laughing with our new friends, unhappily tearing ourselves away while we were still able to walk. It was an extraordinary experience.

Oktoberfest 2011 closed with some fascinating facts. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Brawls are common enough that police only record the ones that involve someone having a beer stein smashed into his head. There were 58 this year.

• The Italians are considered the biggest troublemakers, the Germans and Russians the most likely to break into song.

• There were 48 children lost during Oktoberfest this year, but all were eventually found. It’s not true that many of these were simply traded for beer when their parents ran out of money.

• There were nine tents offering special areas for smokers, and one serving wine.

• Coca Cola is the most popular soft-drink served at the festival, though the locals will look at you strangely if you order one.

• Among the nearly 5,000 items turned into lost and found were one set of dentures, 390 cell phones, 1045 passports and one sticky vibrator. Some unlucky tourist is presumably stranded and unable to …

• Revelers swayed to the music in the oompah bands in the big beer tents, devouring 118 oxen and 53 cows. The chickens had the most to fear, with hundreds of thousands of their brethren being consumed.

• Organizers spent 3.3 Euro to host the event (about $4.5 million), and Oktoberfest generated more than 450 million Euro.

So much for economic woes!

It’s probably not the best place for recovering alcoholics, agoraphobes or those with loose dentures, but all in all it seems most people had a raucous good time.

 

 

Cancun’s miles of white sandy beaches are glorious, which is more remarkable than most people realize.  You see, Hurricane Wilma, the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Caribbean, devastated Cancun in 2005, and quite literally washed the beaches out to sea.

The Mexican government expended wads of money and effort rebuilding the beaches, dredging up sand from nearby islands to restore the coast. Until recently the results were a tad mixed.

When I visited Cancun last November the beaches had departed again, the newly imported sand washed back out to sea. The 50-yard wide swath of beach gone, we could only lay around by the pool watching the waves crash against the hotel’s walls.

I’m pleased to report that the engineers tasked with fixing Cancun’s beaches seem to have finally been successful, and Cancun is once again the tropical paradise legions of spring breakers have come to love. The pristine white sandy beaches are magnificent, the tequila abundant, and I am a very happy man.

Mexico and tequila and are two things that just naturally go together, sorta like West Virginia and incest.

My friend Jeremy remarked that my little group consumed more tequila in our five days in Cancun than he’d managed since moving here eight years ago.

I don’t think he was kidding.

There’s a lot to love about Cancun, far more than I could ever fit into one blog, and the local tequila surely makes the list. When the hotel waiter on the beach asks you if you want the “good stuff,” however, say no, emphatically, unless $25 shots are in your budget.

These connoisseur tequilas aren’t in my budget, though this failed to occur to me until after we’d downed several rounds.

Ouch.

I’ll stick to cheap tequila, which is, thankfully, plentiful around here (and after a few shots, it all tastes the same anyway!)

Just as all sparkling wine called Champagne must come from the Champagne region of France, all authentic tequila comes from a town named Santiago de Tequila, in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

The red rock in the soil around Santiago de Tequila is ideal for growing the blue agave used to make tequila. In the 1600s Spanish Conquistadors and Franciscan Monks, having run out of brandy, began distilling it in earnest, having looted the idea from the indigenous people, along with everything else they had. Today more than 300 million blue agave plants are harvested from the region around the little town.

There is a magnificent avenue in the Yucatecan capital of Merida which is the palatial rival of many grand boulevards in Europe. The wide and elegant street is lined with mansions of stunning size and opulence, all built by guys who owned yucca and agave plantations and became essentially “tequila millionaires” around the turn of the last century. Not bad for what is essentially a plain old cactus.

One final note: If it ain’t made with 100 percent blue agave, it’s not real tequila. You’ll see labels that say “100 percent agave,” but that could be any scraggly old version of the plant. The real stuff is from pure blue agave.

We felt it our duty to sample as much of the real stuff as possible.

We also determined early on that we wanted to get outside the touristy areas, away from the glittering high-rises in the Hotel Zone, and get a feel for the real Cancun.

Of course, truth be told, there is no “real” Cancun. It’s an invented city, an artificial place like Canberra or Brasilia or Islamabad. A mere 40 years ago Cancun was little more than an empty stretch of sand along pristine blue waters. The area had three permanent residents, and was frequented more by fisherman from the nearby village of Puerto Juarez than by tequila-swilling beach-goers.

Some enterprising chap in the Mexican government figured they might attract vacationing Americans, and their much-desired dollars, if they threw up a few hotels along the long, wide and spectacular beach, and Cancun as we now know it was born.

Hysterically, investors were so leery of this wild idea that none would participate. The Mexican government ultimately had to fund development of the first nine hotels directly. I think it’s fair to say they recouped their investment, although, since it’s Mexico, the money probably went into the pockets of government officials rather than back into the treasury.

Our friend Lidia was eager to help introduce us to the non-touristy Cancun, which happily included loads and loads of authentic, spicy Mexican food.

On our way to the Mayan ruins of Tulum we stopped at Taqueria El Arbolito, which means “The Little Tree.” It’s a very fancy name for a not fancy place. This wood and metal roadside shack had a scattering of plastic chairs and tables, no running water, and some of the best food any of us have ever had. We scarfed down things I’d probably never order for myself — cactus, onion & cream tacos, spicy chorizo & potato tacos and egg & spinach tacos – then went back for more.

Being a local place, it was also dirt cheap. Five of us ate, and drank, for $14.

Bellies full, we proceeded on to the ancient Mayan ruins at Tulum, which I’ve seen before, but never fail to amaze, and to Xel Ha, which served as a major port for the Mayans two thousand years ago and remains today as a stunning aquatic natural theme park. (Don’t be too impressed by the “major port” thing – the Maya were not a seafaring people. In fact, Tulum is considered an odd-ball Mayan city because it’s actually located on the ocean.)

Xel Ha (pronounced “shell-HAH”) is a place of almost unimaginable natural beauty, offering just about anything giddy tourists could want: snorkeling, cliff-jumping, tubing down natural-spring rivers flowing out of underground cenotes, swimming with dolphins and all-inclusive access to food and drink, especially tequila.

I’ve been to Xel-Ha many times, and have always loved it. It’s one of the most naturally beautiful places on earth, a shallow-water inlet where an underground spring flows out into the sea. But recently it seems that Xel Ha is trying to be too many things to too many people, trying to attract the adventure-sport crowd with unimpressive zip-line contraptions and mid-level cliffs from which you can jump into crystal-clear waters. They’re also catering to families with lots of kids, and tacky, Disney-esque playgrounds now litter the beautiful grounds.

That’s a shame. Nature did a fine job of creating Xel-Ha. Maybe the developers should stop trying so hard to improve it.

Stunning beaches, ancient Mayan ruins and spectacular snorkeling were just the beginning of what Cancun had to offer.

Turns out that an area of ocean about 20 miles off the Cancun coast is known for occasionally having the largest congregation of whale sharks ever witnessed on earth. Schools of more than 400 have been sighted in this area, gorging themselves on the abundance of tiny eggs from a fish called the “little tunny”, an Atlantic species of tuna. A school of 400 fish may not sound overwhelming but when the fish are whale sharks, the largest species of fish on earth, believe me when I tell you it’s like nothing you can even imagine.

The sharks start showing up off Cancun in early May, peak in numbers between late July and mid-August, then are gone by mid-September. Kinda like most tourists.

My friend Jeremy organized a boat to take ten of us out; my group of five from Atlanta, Jeremy and his wife Lucia, their friend Sonny, a fast-rising star in the Mexican soccer league, Lidia and a friend of hers, whose name I was told half a dozen times and still can’t remember.

The ship’s captain, Nacho (seriously – I couldn’t make that up) insisted we arrive by 8:15 for the hour-long cruise out to the sharks’ feeding grounds.

I’m not apt to like anything that begins at 8am on a Sunday.

On vacation.

Still recovering from the previous night’s tequila sampling.

But this was worth it 100 times over.

When we arrived at the designated area we found a couple of dozen other boats full of gasping tourists, bug-eyed at the sight of massive and majestic fins breaking the surface in all directions. It was magnificent and terrifying all at once.

Nacho estimated we swam with about 200 whale sharks, but I’ve got to repeat that the mere number doesn’t convey the scene. You have to picture the largest fish one earth, some 30 or 40 feet long and weighing in at maybe thirty or forty tons each. Think semi-trailers with dorsal fins. And mouths as wide as my wife is tall.

I’ve led an incredibly lucky life, and done some pretty remarkable things, but this may top the list. It’s something I’ll remember vividly as long as I live.

We went in groups of three, and Nacho instructed us not to touch the huge fish, saying only “it annoys them.”  I follow instructions poorly, so touched several, and was touched rather harshly by another who plowed serenely into me, bouncing me down his body then casually whacking me with his massive tail.

We spent a couple of hours in the water, snorkeling, diving and playing with the graceful beasts, who seemed largely oblivious to our presence. They’re shocking in their magnificence, awe-inspiring in their enormity.

Even knowing they’re docile, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me nervous whenever we’d glance up to find one bearing down on us with its massive jaws wide open. You’re in their world, and they could easily swallow you whole. They’d vomit you back up, to be sure, but you’d likely drown in the process, so we tried to stay out of their paths. And that little bit of danger served to make the experience that much more exciting.

After a couple of hours in splashing alongside the graceful beasts, frantically trying to insert ourselves into pictures with our plastic, underwater cameras, we packed up our gear to head in.

It was a perfect day, even though it began at 8:00am.

Like what you have read? You can also read Adam at OnSite

Riding the historic Peak Tram to the top of Victoria’s Peak is one of my favorite things to do in Hong Kong.

First built in the 1880s, this rickety rail-car is pulled by cables up the steep incline from Hong Kong’s Central District to Victoria’s Peak, from which you gaze out over stunning panoramic views of Hong Kong Island, Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. I’ve been more than a dozen times, and never tire of the experience.

 

One of my very favorite restaurants on earth, by happy coincidence, is Café Deco, perched atop Victoria’s Peak. The food has always been scrumptious, and I was eager to show off this exquisite and romantic hideaway to Soo.

As usual, the view from Café Deco was extraordinary.

And the food? The kindest thing I can say about the food is that the view was extraordinary.

Since I was last here in 2009 Café Deco has completely revamped their menu, and apparently fired all the chefs who understood that something more than boiling water was required to cook a fine meal. Taking the new restaurant theme to heart, the wait staff, previously exemplary, abandoned all pretense of service, and only occasionally troubled themselves to bring you what you ordered.

We started out well. Their new menu featured American Oysters on the half shell (raw, which means the chef couldn’t boil the flavor out.) This is a favorite of Soo’s, and she was delighted. The waiter, at first, even seemed pleased we were there, going so far as to suggest a new drink special for me.

When it arrived I eagerly took a sip, then fought back the reflex to spit out the vile mixture of flavors which bore a strong resemblance to pear juice, olive oil and chilled urine.

I sent it back, and ordered instead a vodka/sprite.

They brought me a gin and sprite.

I sent it back, and they brought me water, which I’d ordered before the first drink but had never gotten.

I gave up.

In the past I’ve enjoyed the Kobe steak or live Maine lobster at Café Deco, but neither remained on the new menu. They were featuring a Lobster Turmidor dinner special, which sounded excellent, so I ordered that.

Some few minutes later (few, in this case, meaning 15 or 20) the waiter returned and said “We’re out of lobster,” and walked away.

Perhaps he thought I’d be fine with just the water.

Later a different waiter approached and asked if we wanted to order.

“Nah, when she’s finished with her oysters I’ll just lick the shell.”

He failed to detect my sarcasm, and turned to leave.

I screeched after him that of course we wanted to order, and requested the Australian grilled prawns while Soo went with a simple salad.

Sometime later – I believe we dozed off for a bit – the food arrived, cold, and stale, and predictably tasted like crap. I politely asked the waiter how they’d managed to get the shrimp to be just as chewy as squid. He harrumphed and stalked off.

I gather the theory was that after that long a wait we’d eat anything, which was true, but I’m not likely to recommend Café Deco to anyone ever again.

Not all the food we had in Hong Kong was so disappointing. Lunch, at the fabulous Hutong Cantonese restaurant overlooking the harbor from the Kowloon side, was divine. The food was nearly the equal of the view, and the chef knew it, judging by what he charged. But this place was amazing, and I can’t imagine ever visiting Hong Kong again without dining here.

As so often seems to be the case, the cheapest meal we had may have been the best.

Tuesday afternoon, after all my work was done, Soo and I took a tour to Lantau Island, the largest island in Hong Kong, situated at the mouth of the Pearl River.

Lantau Island features the Ngong Ping plateau, home of the Tian Tan Buddha, the world’s largest outdoor bronze Buddha statue. You reach the statue by making a long, winding drive up the mountain, or by taking the Ngong Ping Skyrail, a 25-minute ride on the Ngong Ping cable car up and over 6 kilometers of gorgeous mountains, valleys and bays.

We took the cable car, and spent the half hour ride soaking up the view while wondering if the fool woman sitting across from us, who quite obviously suffered from an intense fear of heights, would survive the journey. She did, but only by burying her head in her hands for much of the time.

The Tian Tan Buddha statue and temple are rather impressive, but I was troubled, as I often am by the money-machine that is religion, by the heavy emphasis on “donations.” Inside the statue residents of Hong Kong are encouraged to purchase small white prayer stones displaying the name and photo of the person or married couple making the donation. The stones are displayed for ten years before the “lease” must be renewed for another ten years.  These white stones are about 6 inches by 3 inches, and can cost as much as 300,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $39,000) for the 10-year lease. Many of those pressed into this purchase to save their souls are peasants, who struggle to pay for heat in the winter, but none the less feel compelled to pay for their tiny white prayer stone.

I found it abhorrent. In my view it was no different from televangelists back home convincing the desperately poor to donate their welfare checks to the church.

(editor’s note: this is a practice carried on by religions throughout history. Reference the sale of relics by the Catholic Church as a means of pardon.)

That aside, it was a fascinating place, as was the Po Lin Monastery which tended the statue, though here, again, I was appalled by their boasts that most of the 25 monks in residence were former lawyers and accountants who ran the “business” of the monastery.

After touring the religious sites we went to Tai O fishing village, one of the oldest fishing villages still operating in the waters around Hong Kong.

Many of the homes in this fishing village, whose history dates back to the Stone Age, are on stilts, and the resident’s families have lived in them for generations. The quaint seaside village offers an excellent glimpse into Hong Kong’s rich history, and it was here that we lucked into the best meal of the trip.

Wandering through the village, barely noticeable amongst the smells of drying fish, we detected the scent of something delicious frying. We were hungry, and followed our noses to a tiny room with a few small tables, a scattering of plastic chairs and a sweaty man in an undershirt ushering us in.

We sat down at a table and Soo managed to order something (we weren’t sure which – she was speaking English to him, he was speaking Chinese to her, and each has no clue what the other was saying.) We chuckled at the rolls of toilet paper on the tables that served as napkins as we waited to see what we got.

We’re still not quite sure what we ate, but it was delicious, and was one-tenth the price of our meal at Café Deco.

Lesson learned! Enjoy the view at the top of the peak; find your food elsewhere.