Dingle Speaks

A while ago I blogged about my typical breakfast in Shanghai, healthily fried onion cakes and pumpkin cakes, probably in used Castrol GTX. Well, at last I’ve found some place near my office to get a healthy breakfast!

I noticed it a couple of weeks ago and noted the queues getting steadily bigger every day, then one day one of the drivers treated me to one, it was delicious. Basically they’re baozi but these ones are really really good (much better than the places near my apartment) and they’re steamed (= double healthy), I’ve been eating them for breakfast AND lunch lately.

Mixed meat (according to my colleague), which probably means it’s got the gubbins and everything continue reading…

Where do I start on this:

A – it’s a restaurant, not a hotel

B – it’s tacky to the extreme

C – can you patent interior design? It would have to be pretty special and unique (it was neither)

D – all the elements of the restaurant (including the poorly reproduced sistine chapel ceiling and moulded grandfather clocks) are copied from something else.

E – I forgot to take any pictures inside the restaurant to support D

F – This is pretty poor isn’t it, there must be something better to post about

G – Did I mention that I once met Lionel Ritchie’s ex personal shopper?

H – Oh, and once I waved to Prince Charles (along with the rest of my school) as he drove down the A34 (at speed), presumably the witches nuns thought he slowed down every time he passed a crowd of primary school children waving union jacks.

I’m still in Bangkok but yet to eat really good Thai food (a theme for all my trips out here), at lunchtime yesterday it was an international buffet (reasonable sushi though) and the night before we ate at the No Weapons bar in the previous post (where we ordered the most thai of the dishes, it was pretty good).

Yesterday we dropped hints to our customer all day, at the buffet we were saying things like “hmm this is nice but I’m looking forward to trying some real thai food tonight” etc etc. As the seminar finished and we left for the restaurant I said to the customer “so now we will go for thai food?” “yes, yes” he says. We got beers at first and chatted about the day, then the food started arriving, ducks tongue, qingcai etc, “errr, these are very nice” I said, “very similar to Chinese food”, “oh yes” he said, “this is a chinese restaurant”.

The same thing happened on one of my previous trips, I was here for a day and it transpired that my hotel was in Chinatown, not a thai restaurant in sight, I got a taxi out to a “thai” restaurant and was presented with a menu which had the usual omelette, steak and chips, burger etc (although on a subsequent trip we went to the same restaurant and they gave my customer a completely different menu with all the thai food on, it seems like they instantly assume that foreigners can’t take thai food and give them a foreign menu).

The next day on the trip I met my distributor and we travelled to Khon Kaen, I explained my predicament, “don’t worry” he said, “I know an excellent restaurant there which serves local food”, “GREAT” I said. We met the customer, things went very well and he insisted on taking us to dinner, sure enough when we arrived it was called something like “American Cafe”.

Yesterday we did have a little free time so I got in a taxi with my colleague (her first time in Thailand) and went off to the Grand Palace:

The Grand Palace, Bangkok

Guards at the Palace, childishly ignoring me

If we’d taken the guide I would probably know something interesting about these

Tall Guard Dudes

Blond Amibition

Male building, replete with antlers

To be honest, I’ve been to temples in Bangkok before (Wat Pho etc) and once you’ve seen a couple you’ve seen them all, it was nice like, but ultimately really boring, they need to spice these places up a bit, you know, living statues, those mirrors that make you look an odd shape, water slides, bumper cars, that kind of thing, a laser show maybe?

Anyway, we took the boat back to the hotel, the best way to travel in Bangkok. They run a bit like buses, you wait at the pier (having completely ignored the touts who tell you that you need to buy tickets at the “special stand” which cost about 5 quid each), jump on a boat, pay the conductor about 30p and hop off when you think you’re somewhere close to where you need to be (or, in our case, about 10 stops too early).

At the pier there’s a large food market, as per usual this is where I had the best food of the trip, actually, thinking about it, street food is normally the culinary highlight of any trip in Asia:

Spicy Fried Chicken, kind of Thai KFC but without the pointy beard and white suit. 17p a stick

Too much selection at this stall, I spent 5 minutes deciding and left with nothing, let this be a lesson to them!

Minced Pork Cakes – 17p a go

Dessert!

Sticky coconut rice with banana centre – free! (my colleague bought two and gave me one)

Actually, last night, we did eventually get some thai food, after a few hints we finally received a steaming bowl of Tom Yum Goong. It was delicious but so hot that I got hiccups after the first mouthful. I had 4 bowls… Sure enough I was on the throne at 5:30am this morning (and again at 5:45, 6:00, 6:15 etc etc), I don’t want to go into much detail, but lets say they were lava-hot and in a big rush to get in the water, thankfully the pyrocrastic flow subsided by 8 am (check out time).

One of my colleagues once asked me if I was proud to be British

“Yes, of course” I replied, “are you proud to be Chinese?”

“Yes” he said, “why are you proud to be British?”

“I’m not sure” I said, “why are you proud to be Chinese?”

“Because we have the atom bomb”

I’ve been looked at apartments for the last few nights, I’ve been in the same place for 3 years and I figure it’s time for a change. Anyway, I made an appointment to meet an English speaking property agent who was going to help me find my new home.

I met her at the gates of my apartment complex, a 20 something plump girl from Harbin with large bows on her blouse (what is this obsession with bows over here???).

Her opening line was “Ooooh, you are very fat, you should go on a diet!!” (she should have seen me before the Professor Dingle Weekend Hangover Diet™)

Later, when I humbly described myself as a handsome guy she looked at me closely and replied “Oh, I don’t think so”

She got a little more random later, between apartments she informed that “I look like I own a lot of books”.

Luckily for me I knew her game, she was trying to “neg” me in an attempt to secure my hand in marriage, the little minx.

She’s going to show me some more apartments tomorrow night, I reckon she’s going to up the negging stakes, probably vomit as soon as she sees me and then hold her nose, frantically wafting the air in front of her, every time I speak

EDIT: just viewed some more apartments, no vomit but she did tell me “you know, some men like other men, are  you a gay?” “errrrr no” “oh, I had a client once, he was a gay”

Hmm, another no photo post, I’ll be shedding readers like Swiss James sheds hair at this rate (actually I heard that he just moults for the summer and grows back a huge ginger mott in the Autumn).

Anyway, here’s a few questions I’ve been asked by the Chinee over the years. I’ll add some more when I remember them.

• So which side of the pavement do you have to walk on in the UK?
• Err, you can walk anywhere you want
• (In awe) Such Freedom!!

• Oh, we think you really enjoyed yourself when you went back home at Christmas
• Why is that?
• Because when you came back you are much fatter

• Is it true that Westerners always sleep on the side of their heads?
• What?
• At school we were told that Westerners always sleep on their sides, that is why the back of their head is round, Chinese always sleep on their backs so their head is flat.
• I sleep standing up

• How many times a day do Westerners go to McDonalds?
• Why do you ask that?
• Oh, at school our teachers told us that Westerners go to McDonalds several times every day.
• Yes, at least several

Edit: Ok, I can post 1 pic with a tenuous link to the last one!!! This is how McDonalds on Tianyaoqiao Lu (24 hour) looks at 6am, basically it’s completely packed out but nobody is eating, a lot of people sleeping on laptop bags etc so I’m assuming they stay there for the whole night.

McDonalds Hostel on Tianyaoqiao Lu, Five Michelin Stars!

I’ve taken several sets of Chinese lessons and both times I was stunned by what I was taught. It was all ordering food, telling taxi drivers to drop you off just before the corner and asking strangers if they have any brothers or sisters, now, all of these can be handled perfectly well by pointing and making random noises (with the exception of the last one which is a bit redundant in a country with a one child policy) so this is all just meaningless waffle. Anyway, this is all well and good until you’re actually turned loose on the street and can’t even tell the bag-watch man to “shit off” or the kids handing out travel agency cards to imbibe your excretia.

Here’s a few things I’ve learn’t since I’ve been here, I’ll keep updating this: Apologies for the poor pinyin, i’m sort of making it up as I go along to fit the sounds.

Oh, by the way, people go on about tones being important, I don’t know about all that but I know that when you’re swearing you just need to look a bit angry, shout it and add something like “aaah” at the end for authenticity

Sha Gua - idiot (gang du in shanghainese)

zhu tou san – pig head

Er Bai Wu – “250″ – stupid

Shi San Dien - “13 points” – stupid, normally for a girl

Bun Dan - stupid

Shen Jin Bing - stupid

Shi – shit

Bee Shi - nose shit

Fong Pi - fart

Da Bien – big relief – a “long toilet visit”

Xiao Bien – little relief – a wee

Niu Niu – wee wee

Ta Ma De – errr I forgot

Pao Niu - hunting for girls (wo qu pao niu - i’m going hunting for girls)

Sha Bee - stupid “womans area”

Qu Si Ba - go to your death

Qu Ni Ma De – go to your mother

Da Fae Ji - “shoot the plane” – the good old five knuckle shuffle

Biao Zi - bitch / whore

Ji Nu – whore

Xiao Di Di – “little brother”

Pi Gu - arse

Gang Men - arsehole

Ni Gan Ma? – what are you doing? (rudely)

Ni Zhe Shi Gan Shen Me – what the hell are you doing?

Shao Nin – farmer / peasant (in shanghainese), very derogatory

Tong Zi – ‘comrade’, a gentleman who prefers the company of other gentleman

Nu Tong Zi – the ‘lady’ in the above arrangement