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I am pretty over the food situation at the moment. It’s just such a pain in the ass to get food. I am over having to explain my food allergies, over trying to gauge if they understand, over having to start the whole process again when I have to walk away from someone who doesn’t understand, over getting food that isn’t ok for me to eat & over often getting food that tastes truly awful when it is ok for me to eat.

We rarely eat out at home because it’s just too hard to organise it, and I can converse in a language I am comfortable with there. To be eating out everyday for many months, several times a day is getting a little wearisome, yeah there are no dishes & stuff, but it’s so not worth it, at least not for me. It’s causing me quite a lot of stress & to be honest I am forever feeling hungry.

I have had countless close calls, and some pretty crappy food. I might have had lots of veggies in Mongolia, but no spice & I did have an anaphylactic reaction, which I should have gone to hospital for & didn’t - I can self medicate. China no-one spoke English & to be fair, I did have some good food there, but they use a lot of extra sauces and stuff, all the soy sauce contained wheat, so I had to steer clear of anything with flavour other than chili (or so it seemed at the time). Laos wasn’t too bad, but when I had my allergies translated by some of the locals (had it done 3 times) I was suddenly allergic to all field vegetables, rice & beans - that took a lot of explaining. Cambodia wasn’t too bad, except people thought that I was allergic to bay leaves, rice and coconut.

A lot of the translation mistakes are to be expected when you have people who know a little English translate your allergies & I don’t know that it would necessarily be any better if I had a professional translator write out my allergies, at least the locals use words that are familiar in their area. A piece of paper can only convey so much & when you write down all my food allergies (Milk (all dairy), Wheat, Rye, Oats, Barley, Eggs & Peanuts) on paper, it takes up a lot of room, (although Rye gets bumped off the list a bit, they don’t know what is in Asia). You can’t have anything written down that is so long that people lose interest before they even start to read it. Of course when you do that, you miss things too & then there is usually some clarification needed & without knowing the language well enough it makes it hard.

Food is important in life, you need to it survive, and as much as that is true for me, it is also my enemy. I can live or die by eating it & most people have trouble grasping the idea that if I eat or even touch some things that I am allergic to, it can kill me. The chocolate cake incident of 2002, when I only touched the cake still gets wide eyed expressions of awe, as does the pina colada incident last year, when some idiot thought that adding dairy cream to my drink would be ok - 2 epi-pens were used & I stopped breathing & went blue. You can’t convey all that on a little piece of paper.

I would love to have my own kitchen, none of the hostels or hotels have any sort of cooking facilities in them, which is a pain in the arse. In the past when we have been traveling, we have managed to cook most of the way, but this time, not so much. The closest that we have come to cooking anything, is when we have gotten some hot water & made up potato soup (we got some flaked potato, which you make into a soup with hot water) or vermicelli soup (vermicelli with hot water & some veggies) - funnily enough, I only ate that in China.

Finding places to actually get food to cook realistically isn’t an easy feat either, especially if you move around a lot, you usually get it all sorted (know where to go for what) & then you move onto the next place. It seems to take at least a couple of days to get it sorted, but you can do it.

If we did this again, I would get an electric hot plate, (all the places we have stayed have had at least one powerpoint & most have fridges too) & cook myself. At least then I know exactly what is in my food. I am sure that I could ditch some of the stuff that I am carrying, like my mattress (which I haven’t used at all) & bring a smaller sleeping bag to allow for more space to carry food supplies.

So after Buddah Park, we headed back through the markets again to take a look at the cameras that we had seen earlier in the day, we didn’t think that we would buy a camera for Geoff, but there was a little canon camera that I had played with earlier, which I didn’t mind, so we went back to have a look.

It didn’t go very well, no-one had the manuals for the camera that I was interested in & they weren’t very willing to negotiate very much on the price. The cameras weren’t really that new, so I didn’t feel like paying too high a price.

We decided to walk back the long way to where we were staying DD Hotel & checked out the large city gate on the way (apparently it is very similar to one in Paris, Arc de Triomphe). On the way we saw a Canon billboard & decided to look, just incase there was a shop, it was. It was an actual genuine Canon shop, selling photocopiers, printers & even cameras - wohoo!!! There was a girl who spoke a little English (much better than our Lao) and she came to help with communication between us & the actual girl who looked after the camera section.

They tend to wrap everything in plastic, I had seen it with books & this shop had all the cameras shrink wrapped in plastic too which was a little weird. They happily let us have a play with the cameras, even unwrapped them (me Canon Powershot A3100 IS & Geoff Canon EOS 550D), which we both enjoyed doing.

It’s been a great combination of cameras actually - Geoff with a digital SLR & me with a little point & shoot, we get to use both of them at different times in our travels & they both allow us to do different things. I love macro photography, we do have a lense which we can use with the SLR, but not with us, so I just use a little one to take the shots that I like, plus Geoff Hogs the SLR. Nah, he doesn’t really hog it, he carries it, so he uses it more often. The last few days have been awful without any cameras.

Anyhow, we tried to negotiate down the price a bit & in the end decided to leave & think about it, we could always try to buy one in Bangkok. We went towards the night markets (wow what a disappointment they were), chatting along the way about the cameras & what we were going to do. In the end we decided that w could try to get the cameras in Bangkok, but then we would be wasting more time, trying to find where to get one & then all the negotiating as well. Laos isn’t exactly where we had in mind to buy cameras, but they did have pretty much what we wanted (without us reading any reviews on them - which was a little weird to do), so we decided to go back to the shop & try to negotiate some more & get the whole thing over and done with.

The original price was 10,465,000 Kip, but in the end we bought the cameras for  9,500,000 Kip, but they converted the amount to USD (about 1,161.00). Good to have some cameras again, Geoff enjoyed snapping a few shots on the long way back to our hotel, will be nice for both of us to have some cameras again.

We had a fantastic day today.

One of the sights that we wanted to see was Buddah Park, here in Vientiane. At first we didn’t know where it was, we had a postcard of the place, but we couldn’t find it described in the lonely planet book. Whilst on the subject of Lonely Planet, they really have proven to be a bit hit & miss with their information, either things no longer exist (and didn’t for a while) or they write good reviews about things that don’t deserve it & lame ones for things that should really be higher on the list of things to see for people.

The Buddah park, goes by a couple of names & the review that they wrote wasn’t really all that inspiring. If not for the fact that we had seen a postcard of the place, we probably wouldn’t have gone. I would really like to see more guide books with pictures, for the visually aware such as myself. If you aren’t going to have pictures then get someone to write some reviews on places that isn’t getting kick-backs & has no sense of writing style what-so-ever, I think that might be a bit of a task for them to achieve, so perhaps pictures would solve some issues.

Ok, now that I have said that I can get on with this post.

Buddah park was awesome, a photographers delight. Too bad all that we had to take photos with was my OLD shitty canon point & shoot (its so old that is all that you can literally do with it), although it was better to have that than nothing at all. We wandered up to to the bus station, which was near the (day) markets, stopping in to look at some of the wares for sale, namely cameras. Most cameras were pretty old, the newest SLR that they had was a 500D (Kiss X3), I found my old camera (the one that was stuffed in the jungle) for sale, but it was 2nd hand & had, had a bit of a hard life. They didn’t have any of the newer models (which are also now getting older in OZ, like the A3100 IS Powershot.

After wasting a bit of time there we decided that it was best to catch a bus. We found some nice looking waffles, which Geoff bought to eat on the way - thus was yet another example of when you shouldn’t buy something that looks western. The waffles were made from a sweet batter, but had pieces of corn inside …….. some days I really like having allergies.

The bus (#14) was pretty easy to find, we had a local tuk-tuk driver latch onto us as soon as we walked into the bus station. I was pretty suspicious of him at first & then he seemed to be being genuinely helpful. I was starting to think how pessimistic I had become whilst traveling, always thinking that someone is trying to sell you something & how I should reconsider, when he told us that he had a tuk-tuk & that he could drive us to Buddah park for 140,000 kip (I am assuming that was one way too, not return). I must say though that there is a little bit of touting that happens here in Laos, but it is nothing like China. Most times that we have thought “oh shit, we are about to get ripped off”, here in Laos, we haven’t. Man, if I found China “interesting” India is going to be awful.

Public buses are interesting, and definitely something to experience, the minibus that we were on had seats for 23 people & we would have had about 40 people crammed into it. I shared a double seat with 2 other girls & had a mans ass literally within 2″ of my face at one stage. I did get to sit the whole ride, which was nice, even with an ass in my face & being whacked in the head several times (with bags, arms, elbows etc.). The Friendship Bridge, which joins Laos to Thailand was one of the stops along the way, which we didn’t know when we embarked on our journey. I must admit that I was a little nervous as we turned up the road leading to the bridge, thinking oh crap, they changed the bus that goes to Buddah Park & at the same time thinking, oh well, at least I have my passport. Turns out that it was just a stop along the way to drop off people catching buses or other modes of transport over the border & picking up those coming back or into Laos …. phew!

The drive to Buddah park took about 1hr. The signs for the park were not HUGE, & we really had no idea where we were going, but a local saw the postcard that we had & understood that was where we wanted to go (see, don’t underestimate the power of a picture) & told us where to get off. It cost us 10,000 kip for both of us to get there & 10,000 kip entry (for 2), so all up in AUD it was $4.20 to get there, see the park & leave.

They had a nice noodle soup with pork & veggies that we sampled at the little eatery at the back of the park & they did really well with my allergies, which was encouraging.

It really is a must see whilst in Vientiane if you have time.

We did our trip out to Shilin to see the Stone Forest, today.

There was a slight delay in getting ourselves on our way, we had to check out, put our baggage in storage, try to find a bank to get some more money (which was a bit of a task), then try to find some food. We found a bakery with some weird Chinese style western breads & Chinese style too, Geoff bought a Yaks meat Danish (which didn’t look like a Danish & the Yaks meat was probably just cheese), Buckwheat cakes (fruit filled - like cookies/ biscuits that you get with fruit inside), Blueberry Caterpillar fun (a bun with squiggly lines on the outside, which was cut in half & had some blueberry spread inside, then put back together again). We found some fruit for me at another shop, mango & nashi fruit + we bought a bottle of juice & some chips. Again we had read that the food at the Stone Forest was expensive, which was partly why we bought some before we left, but mostly because of my allergies, you get food supplies where you can.

With us staying at Cloudland Youth Hostel, we caught the #22 bus to the Eastern Bus Station (not far from the hostel & the shops that we went to) & then another bus to Shilin, which stops near the Stone Forest. For some reason we didn’t seem to get harassed by the touts as much on this trip, which was nice. We got off the bus & wandered down to the stone forest area, through the market stalls.

The Stone Forest is nice, but NOT worth Y175 per person. We had 4 bus trips (2x #22 buses to & from the Eastern Bus Station @ Y2 each way = Y4 + 2x buses to & from Eastern Bus station to Shilin & vice-versa 1x Y50 & 1x Y52 = Y110 each) which didn’t cost as much. We did see some people (foreigners) using photo ID cards, (which were drivers licenses) to get a cheaper price, saying that they were student IDs & they got Y45 off so from Y175 it went down to Y130, still an obscene price, but it would have been better than paying the Y175.

The park was nice, but like every other place, full of Chinese tourists, which is fine, it’s just that there are so many people about, which can make finding a quiet spot interesting. We did manage to find a few places that weren’t as busy & once you do, it makes it so much more enjoyable.

I managed to have an allergic reaction to a plant that I touched in the park, which made the day interesting. I was trying to look at one of their signs, which had a plant that had overgrown in front of it, so I could read the map. At first my arms were a little itchy & then all of a sudden I had a red rash that covered my arms. We washed them with a bit of water we were carrying & then I put some Paw-paw ointment on my arm - wow that stuff really works well. It took a while for it to completely go away, infact I still have some spots on my arm now, but at least it isn’t as bad as it was.

We got some videos in Auslan about the park from a place called Sword Peak Pond, which was a lovely spot to chill out for a while & not too many tourists there, although most people stopped to have a stare whilst I was signing, which was a little off-putting.

I am used to people staring when I am signing, but this is a different stare & it doesn’t just happen when I sign here, it happens all the time. The women are the worst, they stare & give you filthy looks & when that happens dozens upon dozens of times each & every day it gets a bit much. The staring is done in a really rude way. Every once in a while I do something back, like hold my hands in front of my face like I am a caged animal being gawked at or Geoff and I have had staring competitions with each other (which does actually turn them off, you gotta stick with it for a while though) or you just stare back, but I find the later one really hard to do & I can’t do it with the same menace & rudeness that they do. Not saying that every Chinese person stares at us, but there are soooo many that do.

We walked around the outside loop of the park towards the end of the day, which was nice, well worth it if you can, not only are you away from the crowds (you just have the odd group of tourists in their little buggies being driven around) but it is really quite nice scenery there too. We got back to the car-park around 6pm & had a little trouble finding the bus. We did eventually find one, there are a couple of ways into the main carpark area (both with boom gates), one has a dude next to it, who lets out buses and cars, the other has a building, which is a bus ticket office (when you are in the carpark, facing in the direction of the Stone Forest, it is on the right side). We bought our ticket & waited for the bus, we had heard that the last bus was at 6.30pm (18:30) but our bus, which I think was the last one, didn’t leave until 18:50. The trip back was quite fast, only about an hour & we were back at our hostel by 9pm (it’s about 45 min from the eastern bus station to the stop closest to Cloudland, Zhong Xia).

When we were at the Eastern Bus station (on our way back), we saw a Deaf couple which was cool, but as we were waiting for our bus & they were obviously in a hurry to get somewhere. Not sure where they were from, but not Chinese, they had a home-made Phrase book, that they flipped through to converse with people, pointing to different phrases, it was quite cool.

Anyhow, its time for dinner & we have laundry to do (about 2 loads - their washing machines are small) better go & see if I can have anything to eat here. Tomorrow wee head off, will go to the post office to post some stuff back to Canada, try not to spend too much on postage like last time & then we head off down south towards Laos, we will probably catch the bus to Jinghong.

Wow, what a nice afternoon/ evening we had.

Jojo came to meet us at Sweet Tooth & we caught the bus to their home. Molly didn’t finish work until 5.30, so we had a bit of time. We dropped off our bags & chatted for a while. Jojo is studying medicine, which I think that we both found amusing, we have so many friends that are doctors.

Jojo gave us some tips for India, which was cool - Don’t eat any food from the locals on the trains, buses or planes. If someone tells you that their aunt or wife (etc) made this special food, don’t trust them - they will drug you and rob you, leaving you naked. He also mentioned that you should use pre-paid taxi’s, so that you don’t get ripped off, which was quite good to know. Most people know some English there too, so it shouldn’t be too hard to communicate (not any worse than China, I can imagine).

After a little while, we went out to meet up with Jojo’s friends, Donbor & Subhasish near the university. It was really cool to see the University, they have about 3,000 students that attend that campus. It’s interesting that the foreigners are screwed across the board - there is this expectation that because you are not Chinese, you obviously have money & they try to get it out of you any way that they can. The dorms are crowded & no-one is allowed to cook, you have to buy food from the canteen/ local shops & there are extra fee’s for anyone who is not native to do different things - which kinda sums up our trip so far. Jojo couldn’t live on-site in a 4 person dorm room, which is why he lives off-site, although he still has to pay for his share of the dorm room, apparently he isn’t the only one to have left either.

As Jojo has a place with a kitchen his friends come over when they can to enjoy some Indian food & yesterday was a day off from Uni, so it was that day that everyone came together. Donbor, Subhasish, Jojo & us did a little shopping. We went to the markets & bought some food. Jojo bought some veggies and mutton (yum), we didn’t see scorpions, but we did see a dog, poor little guy all caged up, waiting to be eaten (not that he probably knew what is in store for him). He was a beautiful dog too, quite sad actually. I knew that it happens, but it was a shock to actually see a dog that was to be eaten sometime in the not too distant future.

Our next stop, Wal-Mart, to buy some wine. It was quite funny seeing a Wal-Mart, which is a mix of department store & supermarket. Subhasish went off to another shop to buy some more plates, whilst we were at Wal-Mart & then we all met up & caught the bus back to Jojo’s & Molly’s.

Molly had arrived home by that time & Jojo’s other friends were here too, Avijit & Swarnendu (5 doctors in total). Geoff, Donbor & Molly went out to get some Dali beer, around the corner, as it was much cheaper than buying it at Wal-Mart - 12 bottles (600ml each) for Y36 (AUD $6)  - VERY cheap. It is actually cheaper to drink beer than water here, it was the same in Mongolia & Korea too.

The company & food was amazing.  We started with Onion Pokora (Bean flour, Onion, Salt, Chilli, Cumin, Water) - which I love, I have had it once before when my Uncle came over to Australia & we went to the Sunshine Coast. The main meal was mutton liver, which was awesome, never had liver that tasted so good - it didn’t taste like it was liver, mutton curry, rice (but it was a special indian rice) + some Chinese dishes (Cucumber salad, with vinegar) + more. 

It was such a great night & we made some great friends. It was actually really nice for us, as we have heard a lot of horror stories about India, so really nice to meet some great people. The hospitality has been amazing, I just hope that we do the same for everyone some day. I wish that we could stay here much longer, but alas, our Chinese visa expires on the 15th (6 days) & we have to get over the border into Laos before that happens, which is a shame. We anticipate that it will be at least 2 days bus ride to the border, but not really 100% sure either.

As I have mentioned in another post we have been frequenting The Sweet Tooth shop every day that we have been in Old Dali. Molly who works there, has been very hospitable, yesterday we went there to await our bus’s departure & sat in the Cafe (rather than staying at the guesthouse, much better vibe at the cafe). As I can’t eat the sweets (due to my allergies) Molly asked if I would like to have a rice noodle soup, I was happy to come with her to another shop, but she insisted that I wait there. Wow, that was the biggest bowl of noodle soup with pork I have ever seen - it was really yummy, although a little too much chili in it for me, I actually didn’t finish it (which was a shame), must have taken me about an hour to eat the 1/4 of the bowl that I did. At first I really wasn’t too sure how I was going to eat even that much, but after scooping out much of the chili paste that had been put on-top, I coped a little bit better.

Anyhow, as I was eating the soup, Molly approached us & invited us to come & stay with her & her boyfriend, Jojo. Unfortunately, we are running out of time with our first visa stay for China, so we weren’t sure that we could stay + we had already booked & paid for our bus to Kunming & organised accommodation, so we sadly refused.

Wow, the look of disappointment on Molly’s face was heart-wrenching, so we decided to have a re-think. It isn’ very often that you meet people who invite you so willingly into their home & she appeared genuinely upset that we could not spend some time with her & Jojo. It is experiences like this, where you are invited by the locals to stay that often bring about the best experiences & great friendships come about as well, traveling is all about this sort of thing really.

The place that we had booked the bus with, was 2 doors down, so Geoff wandered over & asked if we could cancel our tickets & how much it would cost, it was 50% (about $20AUD) & we adjusted our accommodation booking fairly easily. As Geoff put it, if you can’t afford to adjust your schedule so that you can enjoy experiences like this, then that’s pretty sad.

Jojo is from India, so we are having an Indian Curry tonight - yum!!! Will be a nice change from fried rice, altough I did have a beef and ginger stir fry today, which was nice. It appears that not all the meat here is coated in flour and egg, like it is up north.

o let me pay & then invited us to stay, so for Molly was very disappointed & to be honest, so were we, it felt as though we had broken her heart by refusing, so we had a bit of a discussion & decided that we would see if we could perhaps cancel our bus ticket & change our accommodation booking. We lost 50% of our bus fares ( which = $20AUD), & managed to change our booking without any real worries.

One of the reasons that we came to Dali was that I had read in the Lonely Planet book about a place called The Sweet Tooth. It is owned by a Deaf woman, Gao & serves sweets. She went to the USA to learn how to make the desserts that she serves & although I cannot sample the food because it’s made from everything that I am allergic to, it is apparently very yummy. I wish that I could sample it, not only does it get good reviews from other travelers, but we have been there several times already to indulge Geoff’s sweet tooth.

Gao seems to be doing reasonably well with her coffee shop, but wow does she have some battles to face. If you are Deaf and Chinese, you cannot get a drivers license over here. Owning a shop, she needs to get supplies all the time, so she has some hearing staff, who have a license that can pick up stuff. Traveling overseas is a task & a half too. Oh & Interpreters, well they are very rare here, Deaf people rely on passing notes, no-one can afford an interpreter. When I was speaking to Gao, she said that she was quite lucky, as some of her staff are hearing, she uses them as interpreters, when needed, which saves her some money.

She had the idea of opening the shop, so that she could employ other Deaf & she has a great relationship with the massage place up the street, which employs Deaf masseurs (5).

There are about 50 Deaf people that live in the Dali (Old City) area. So it’s a bit like Lismore in size.  Most people are outside the city, but I have to say that I have seen quite a few Deaf people on the streets here, probably about a dozen or more, it’s been so cool.

I am picking up more Chinese sign & getting to practice my International sign too, with the occasional Auslan sign, which is cool. It is so nice to be traveling & able to communicate with Deaf people so easily. Don’t get me wrong there are still times when I struggle with some signs & have to ask for clarification, but my conversations in SL are much better than my spoken Chinese.

Gao & all the other Deaf people that I have met at the massage place seemed suitably impressed that I was able to remember their sign names (I don’t know their written names) so well, which was a nice compliment. I feel like I am adapting reasonably well with my SL too, interpreting for Geoff & other hearing people who want to follow any conversations has been to keep my skills up.

When we first went to the massage place, there were 2 Italians that were having foot massages who were very interested in following our conversation & managed to get a bit of an education about Deaf Culture in the process, which I think was a very valuable experience. It was quite interesting to see their reactions when they realised that there were different types of SL around the world, but we could still communicate so well with each other. They managed to learn a little bit of Chinese SL too & tried to use it, which was really nice.

If you get a chance to go to the massage place - it is a must see, it’s on the opposite side of the road from Sweet Tooth, down a little bit, near Foreigners Street. The massage is awesome too!!

After having a rather long day out & about & with my knee acting up, we decided to stop & get some food for dinner. WOW, what an experience that turned out to be - one that we won’t be forgetting any time soon.

As most people know, I have several life threatening food allergies (Milk - all dairy, Wheat, Rye, Oats, Barley, Eggs & Peanuts). It really does make finding food a rather tiring and wearing exercise, I never really start to relax until dinner is over & am on my way, without needing to use any epi-pens or having to call an ambulance. I love to eat, so whilst I am somewhat used to the whole exercise, it does shit me.

I have a couple of translations of my allergies in Chinese (Mandarin) which I have been using. Yesterday it took them about 30 minutes to work out what I could eat, but thank goodness they had a menu with pictures, so I was able to gauge if they understood my allergies. It is always nice when you see something like Pork Buns or Won-Tons & they say NO (meaning you can’t have this) on the menu, it gives you some confidence that they at least seem to somewhat grasp what you are allergic to. I probably give people a little bit of time to work it out too, as it is a bit of a list to get through. Too often I have seen something on a menu that I am so obviously allergic to & been told, “Yes, you can have this” - Crap, get me outta here quick!

Anyhow, we were welcomed into a rather happening looking restaurant & ushered to a table near the door. They gave us menu’s, which were written in Chinese script only (no pictures), so we knew straight away that this was probably going to be interesting. I showed them my piece of paper with my allergies written on it, which was passed around to pretty much most of the staff, a few people laughed (fair enough, not often that you might see someone with that many allergies) and once that was over with we set about working out what to eat, with the aid of a phrasebook (good for some sentences - but normally pretty shit for trying to convey anything to do with food) + a English/ Mandarin - Mandarin/ English Dictionary we also used some pointing (at food) & making animal noises, much to the amusement of people there.

We started out pointing to things in the dictionary (Mandarin/ English) the head waiter actually looked after us the whole night, although it felt like he was more there to make sure that we didn’t embarrass him bu eating in a culturally inappropriate way (which I think that we still managed to do). He asked if I could eat Rice, Mutton, Beef, Wings (I clucked like a chicken) & he managed a smile & nodded, so we figured he meant Chicken wings, Cabbage, Potato ….., it went on for a while, there were a few characters that he pointed to in the dictionary, which were parts of other words, which I didn’t understand, so I just said no to them. Geoff noticed some people having Hot Pot behind us, so we thought that we might just order that, with meat, which we did.

We ordered drinks, Geoff got a beer (which so far have been HUGE through the parts of Asia we have seen - Seoul, Mongolia & China & very cheap) & I ordered a juice, which came in a bottle about 1/6th of the size of Geoff’s beer (I was feeling a little ripped there). They brought out the big Hot Pot (which was a big dish of boiling water (with a burner) with chilli, ginger, garlic etc in the water to flavour + the sesame based sauce that you dribble over all the meats that you cook.

The sesame sauce was a bit of a heart stopper, as we first thought that it was peanut based, a really nice sauce though, which you mixed chilli, & other spices into yourself - YUM!

There were several different meats, some sort of octopus, beef, pork & lamb (lots of meat), which was all cut quite finely so that it cooked quickly in the broth (hot pot). Then we started to get other dishes, like chicken wings on a stick, rice, & several cabbage dishes. The table was filling up, we were happy to eat at a leisurely pace, but then the head waiter decided to help us out & started to cook the meat for the hot pot, at first we thought that perhaps it was due to us not cooking it the right way, but as soon as he had cleared a few of the plates that had contained bits for the hot pot they were replaced with more plates of food - Holy Shit!!

We finally worked out that he had not been collating a list of food that I could eat at the start to workout what we could eat on the menu, we had in fact ordered at least one or more dishes with those ingredients in them (cabbage, chicken wings etc) - in total there were 13 different dishes of food. Not only did we have a full table of food, but we also had a trolley next to the table with more food on it (the greens for the hot pot). We had to tell them no more, we were full (they still had more dishes coming apparently - holy crap!!!). The leftover food didn’t all go to waste though, we took a lot of it back with us to eat over the next couple of days.

That has to be one of the funniest experiences that we have ever had, it was nice to have so much Chinese food, I actually feel like I got to sample a decent amount of Chinese food (it seemed like the whole menu), which is nice, as I love Chinese, but my allergies can be somewhat restricting. Good to end up with that much food over here too, it ended up costing us $30, it would have easily been about $200 - $300 in OZ.

Well Korea has been a good way to get used to Asia again. The flight over was good, although I think that I started to de-stress, which is why I am now sick. My nose was running constantly (must have used 1-2 boxes of tissues on the flight) & generally felt miserable. Before we got on the flight, we checked into my meal & managed to change it to a fruit platter (after much negotiation), which was pretty cool.

Unfortunately we didn’t have our own individual entertainment systems, so we had to try to watch what we could on a screen that was about 8 rows ahead & off to the side. As we were flying with Korean Air, language was a bit of an issue. Anything that was subtitled in English was pretty hard to read as the English was tiny (even smaller than the Korean subtitles). It was funny to hear the announcements on the plane, the Koreans obviously knew a lot more about what was happening, than anyone who spoke English. There was a little bit of turbulence on the flight, so getting food and drink service was dragged out both times that they came out to serve everyone.

It was 23C when we arrived & “Cloudy” (otherwise known as SMOG). As we are only here in Korea for a couple of days & we have been fairly busy with getting stuff sorted before we left, we neglected to learn any phrases in Korean (to be fair though, we haven’t even learned any phrases in Mongolian or Chinese - where we are spending a vast majority of our time), something that we wished we had done. Quite a few people speak a bit of English. Those who don’t have been amused with a lot of mime & gesture (and some actual sign language) that I have used & sometimes it actually works. Trying to convey that we needed to go Banana Backpackers was interesting….

We caught the bus into Seoul, it was only $9 each. We had a few taxi drivers that tried to convince us that the buses weren’t running & that we couldn’t take any luggage on them, despite the fact that we were at the bus stop area & there were about a dozen buses parked there loading peoples luggage on them. The bus trip was cool, they had the news on & guess what, they had a (male) Korean Sign Language interpreter doing the news - how cool. We got some video, which we will try to upload to you tube, however, we were at the back of the bus, so the quality is questionable.

We met up with Geoff’s brother, he met us at the bus stop at Anguk & we walked to Banana Backpackers, where we dumped our bags (in our double room with shower & toilet). I did get a little excited about having a flush toilet & used it, putting the toilet paper in the bowl & flushing as per normal, it wasn’t flushing. I called out to Geoff & Steve & Steve asked if there was a bin next to the toilet & I found out that you are not supposed to flush anything down the loo. Luckily I had only had a pee, so retrieving the toilet paper from the bowl was not as disgusting as it could have been, but still, once you do that, I don’t think that you readily forget that quickly. At least it isn’t a squat toilet, you can even drink the water here, which is pretty cool too.

Steve had made friends with Ivano, from Italy earlier in the day, so were were introduced & all four of us went to dinner. We found a girl that spoke pretty good English & explained my allergies (as I forgot the translation that we had done by Richard, who worked with Geoff (US office)). We kinda freaked her out, she was really helpful, but it was very obvious that she was soooo scared that I was going to die. She checked up on my regularly & triple checked ingredients in everything, she even came to make sure that we were ok before she went home. I tried some Kim Chi, which was ok, I liked it, but I couldn’t eat a big bowl of it.

Yesterday, we went on the DMZ tour with Korridor tour group. They had free internet access at the USO office (where the tour leaves from) & they even had a printer, so I managed to print out my allergy translation (from Richard) & freak out a few people through the day, it was great to have it though. The DMZ tour was interesting, it was a full day tour, full of propaganda & confusion. On the propaganda side, everything was the North Koreans fault, honestly it was laughable after a while. I am sure that the South Koreans are conveyed similarly by the North Koreans. Our tour guide was very confusing, she could speak some English, but not quite well enough. For example, we were told “leave your passports on the bus, but you need them” - how confusing, that was just the start. Then I explained my allergies & showed my piece of paper & she had no idea - she told me that I could look at the meals & workout what I can eat - USELESS!!

The argument about food continued at lunch, when I showed my piece of paper. She still insisted that if I look at the food I can see what’s in it & can eat it. The argument went on for a few minutes & I ended up walking off, either that or she was going to get punched. There were quite a few people from the tour that tried to help out & explain, but she just didn’t get it. Geoff was really good though, when he got his food, he got some nice fresh cherry tomatoes & plain rice that I could eat. After Steve & Geoff finished their lunch, we went to the “gift shop” that was just a food shop really & I tried to find some food, after several tries with my piece of paper & bringing up various things, I found an Anchovies & Almonds mix, which was actually quite nice - the smell was pretty awful, but it tasted pretty good, the Green Tea drink was awful though.

After the tour we went to the Korean War Museum, which was interesting, although after a big day of touring & with me feeling a little ill I spent more time sitting on any seat I came across. We got some nice pictures of some of the statues there in the garden. From the war museum we took the subway back to the area that we needed to go, we found out from a local (who spoke VERY good English) that Korea was playing Argentina, so the subway was VERY packed, I think I have a better understanding for the saying about being packed in like sardines. Literally if the door had opened on our side of the subway, we would have fallen out.

On the walk back we found a 7eleven & got some snacks, which turned out to be our dinner. I found some sushi & at 500Won each piece worked out to be only 0.50C each - cheap as. For dessert & my breakfast this morning we found some weird ass fruit that tasted like a cross between a cucumber & a melon, actually really yummy & very filling. The sushi was interesting I had one with Kin Chi in it, another with Octopus & Kim Chi, some Beef thing & something with beef and flavoured rice.

Today we are off to get some more food (7eleven sushi for me) & wander around a bit before we fly out to Mongolia this afternoon.

What a night. I decided to cook one of our favourite meals tonight - Corned Beef with Mashed Potato and Red Cabbage & steamed beans, but unfortunately everything didn’t quite go to plan.

I started cooking the Red Cabbage earlier in the day, as it tastes best when it has had time to cook down & stew - I put it on to cook before I went to a job & it stewed for about 9hrs + in the end.

Geoff went to his game (touch football) & I had a chat to a friend on Skype & then I put the Roast Beef on, when Geoff got home from his game of touch (they won by the way - 2 weeks in a row, which was pretty cool, and very rare). I was feeling a little tired & managed to get Geoff to put the potatoes on & then fell asleep. I must admit that when I woke up I was a little grumpy (not a very happy camper when I wake up at the best of times). Everything was still on the stove - DOH! So I got up and decided to pull it off - Geoff followed & said that he could do it, but me being me, I had to do it myself.

The big pot that the corned beef was in, had one of the handles break off (Geoff reckons that the handle is around, but I am sure that it is long gone - so I picked up the pot by the one handle that was still attached & used a tea towel to hold onto the other side of the pot. I only needed to move it about 1.5m from the stove top to sink area so that the corned beef could be removed from the pot of boiling water safely (the last time I tried to cook it, I managed to get the corned beef out of the pot, then it dropped back in & splashed onto my hand, burning me, so I thought that this was the way to go). Geoff was kinda in the way, insisting on helping & me ignoring & then when I thought that I had reached the counter, I soon realised I hadn’t. Within seconds, the pot full of boiling water was all over the front of me. At first I said nothing, then I started screaming & ripping off my pants (track pants) & then I threw myself on the couch - screaming in pain. Geoff didn’t know what the hell was going on & looked at my leg & convinced me to go upstairs & into the shower.

I only lasted about 10 min under the shower, I was finding that the shower was causing a lot more pain - probably because it’s practically a waterfall when it comes out of the shower head - ok when you want a decent shower, but when the water is actually causing more of the skin to peel off - PAINFUL!!!

After only lasting 10 min under the shower, Geoff convinced me yet again to get in the bath - he ran a cold one, but I swear it wasn’t that cold, any movement of the water just caused more pain, but that was done every once in a while. I was in the bath for about 2.5 hrs. I went into shock & I do recall banging my head against the wall & my fists on the bath, trying to cause more pain in other areas to distract myself. I really didn’t want to go to hospital, but in the end we decided that it was the best thing to do. I insisted on wearing undies & fortunately I had my wrap around (100 different ways to wear) silk skirt that I used to kinda cover myself, which I wore with my Atari t-shirt and a beanie, as I my torso was extremely COLD. It was a bad look, looking back, but I didn’t really give a shit, at least I was covered.

We headed to Robina Hospital Emergency Dept & I joined the masses (there wasn’t really that may people, but there was a bit of a delay). I couldn’t sit down due to the burn & trying to maintain some level of decency, so had to tough it out, fortunately I didn’t faint, but boy did I want to.

They did hurry my through apparently, but once I was in & they got me onto a bed, they certainly weren’t making a lot of effort to get to me any time soon, someone had anaphylaxis and there was a sick baby as well as heaps of other patients. Boy was I happy that I had taken some pain killers. A nurse happened across me almost an hour after we had been there & was a little curious as to why I was there & why no-one had seen me, I think that if I hadn’t had any pain killers and was screaming my lungs out then I might have been seen earlier. The pain was still quite intense, but it was a good idea to take something after the length of time that expired. In the end they just slapped some silver cream on me & put on a rough bandage & told me to come again tomorrow. I received a medical certificate to cover me from now until Monday 7th, but I don’t really want to cancel any jobs that I have.