SteamBoat

First, I'm sorry I've been slacking on the picture taking. I'll remedy that sometime soon. Until then, enjoy the pure text bliss of my stories.

Now, I'll tell you about a really good supper that I had on Thursday. My Canadian friend Shawn invited me, Leslie, his friend from Edmonton, and Silvia, an Indonesian we met at New Asia two weeks earlier, out for a nice Indonesian dinner. I knew that there was the risk of peanuts so I e-mailed the restaurant and asked about peanuts/peanut oil. Shawn, being very considerate, phoned and asked as well. I got a response indicating I should stay away form the salad and the Satay. Shawn was told they use vegetable oil.

However, upon arriving at the restaurant, we quickly realized that reality differed slightly. They had a lot of Satay on the menu and they had random things that had peanuts on it. The kicker was that they brought out peanuts as the free “snack” item while people waited to order. I decided the restaurant wasn't safe so we relocated to the Chinese restaurant about 6 feet away. I hope we didn't insult the Indonesians.

The Chinese restaurant we went to was a buffet restaurant. However, this is nothing like buffet in Canada. Buffet simply means that you pay a set price and get as much as you want. However, they still serve it to you. It was also my first experience with “SteamBoat”.

To start a giant bowl of soup is placed in a hollow in the middle of the table - with a burner beneath it. We had two different types of soup - a chicken base and a ludicrously spicy chili soup. Then, they bring you all kinds of raw vegetable, meats, and other delights. You pour the them into the soup and wait for them to cook. It's similar to fondue but you put everything in at once and everybody just fishes out whatever they want. We ate for over 2 hours! People arrived and left before we were even half-way done. In fact, we closed the restaurant. SteamBoat is really good, but it's all about picking the right mix of veggies, meats, and sauces. The spicy chili was good at the start, but after several tears and losing two litres of sweat, we all decided that it was to only receive about a fifth of the food.

That's all for now.

I think I'll be going to Cambodia in the near future. More on that later.