Thai Flushes and Hot Pots

Just another day at the office! Today instead of bringing my lunch, I had a traditional hot pot meal. I have seen these restaurants around the city with round tables and a pot of boiling food in the center. Liza has been twice to one of these dinners and says you pick out all kinds of different meats and cook them at the table. It is a social event as well as a meal and generally happens in the winter. Since we were at school, the teachers tossed bean sprouts, cilantro, lettuce and greens, carrots, corn on the cob, sausage, fish balls, and all kinds of strange meat filled dumplings to the boiling pot we plugged into an outlet in the classroom where we eat lunch. They know I tend to not go for the meat, so they were piling my bowl with the veggies. Can you imagine trying to eat chunks of corn on the cob with chopsticks?! I guess you could roughly compare it to having a Low Country Boil food around a table, the way you would have fondue. The local teachers L-O-V-E hot pot, and it was a lot of fun joining in with their enthusiasm.


An experience I had today you might find interesting was my encounter with a “Thai flush”. I went to the restroom (which here is referred to only as “toilet” or “water closet”) and found nothing happened when I pushed the flush lever. Turns out the large bucket and exposed water spigot in the stall are there for such occasions as this. Just fill it up and pour it in!


On the subject of toilets—Tripp and I headed to do Christmas shopping in the mainland this past weekend (if you think Harbison after Thanksgiving is crowded… just wait till I get you to Shenzhen with the Christmas frenzy added onto the already chaotic atmosphere!) and there were no public toilets. At least not the kind you are used to. We headed to the old reliable golden arches of McDonald’s to use theirs, and the look on his face after he came out of the restroom could only mean one thing—squatties! These ceramic holes in the floor still gross me out—yet another luxury at home I took for granted!