HaiKou this week

A bench sheltered by a faithful old tree. A textured column.

More texture. And a beautiful resorty entrance to my meeting place.

New tastebuds in Haikou

Those 窝窝头really surprised me! When it first came in the woven tray, i thot

'whoa, these coffee-looking buns are actually so-so, i wonder why it was so costly on the menu...'

Until one of my colleague lifted one up and turn it upside down then i realised that it has a dip on the underside!!!! WOW. and that little dip, like a dimple on our faces, was meant for us to put our fillings inside. So cute!!!! I started immediately taking photos like some mountain turtle from kusu island. The diners must be thinking i must be real damn suaku.

Actually not only those buns caught my attention, there were those huge claypots outside the restaurant which caught my eye as well! First thot was they were mere decorations like big vases in china. Until the chef opened the lid and used a metal hook and hooked out another mininature claypot out like a rabbit pulled out from a magician's hat! WAA!

Then our colleague explained to us that those individual pots were designed to boil and keep their famous claypot soups hot. And they only boil a few pots a day, once they are sold they are gone for that day.

And wj thot it was keeping vinegar!!! MUAHAHAHA ...now who is the mountain turtle man!

okie, so much for foodie in 海口 folks! Next time i shall try their famous 文昌鸡 and tell u all about it! Hopefully i get to go to 海南岛 again soon!

ps: they even sell packed WenChang chicken in the airport! But wj and i thot we rather eat the fresh ones first.

海南岛

Nostalgic
Last weekend, wj and i caught a glimpse (a glimpse as we were in the clients' car and i only wound my window down to take some photos) of Haikou city's famous 老街 after a long meeting at the clients' office.

simply put. It was dreadful.

No, not the old street. But the meeting. It was held early in the morning and I was like a vase the whole time. Why, becos they were speaking in a dialect which i didn't understand at all. The jokes that they made, i didnt even bother laughing. What for? When i dun even understand a word u are saying mister. Okay i did try my best to listen to what they were saying and pick out certain words which sounded like mandarin. But it was tough and i end up losing my concentration. At least i didn't pout. Hmm, then again i may have done so not knowingly.

Rite, back to sightseeing...It was a very long stretch of old shophouses, dilapidated and run-down. Electricity was generated in big kettle drums at junctions of roads. i think back home, nobody would want live in these sort of slum-like places anymore, it reminded me of those squatter housing which i saw in my history textbooks when i was young. However the street was bustling with activites, it was very much alived and not abandoned; an old man pulling a wheel cart packed with cardboards and recycleable products, women with pointed straw hats riding on bicycles and lots of roadside hawkers selling WenChang Chicken. Suddenly i felt that i was wheeled back in time to the 40s.

maybe next time if we both ever come back here again,

we should really pay wj's relatives a visit.