moon cakes

Recently the mid-autumn full moon festival happened. I unfortunately missed it by a week when I was in Shanghai. However, I did partake in the gearing up for the full moon festival, which all really started for me when I was at the Starbucks in Bangkok a few weeks back. There, at the checkout counter, were moon cakes for sale with the Starbucks logo imprinted on top (usually, they have a pretty floral design or some other symbol that I am too ignorant to know the significance of). My instinct was to purchase the moon cake and consume it happily, but was taken aback by how expensive one pastry was (100 baht. When one is accustomed to spending 30 baht for lunch, that ~$3 is like sticker shock). Had I known that the moon cake actually weighs something in the order of two pounds, I would have reconsidered. Luckily for me, I went straight to the source (China) and bought a shoebox load and gleefully brought them back to Thailand for all my coworkers to enjoy. Unfortunately, the one I ate from China wasn't all that (booo!) so I went straight to Tesco and bought the most expensive one. Why was it so expensive? Because it was Durian moon cake. Only in Thailand. Unfortunately again, my moon cake did not live up to my expectation. In case you don't know, Durian is a peculiar fruit which half the population love and half hate. I'm in the latter camp, and that is because it smells like fart and tastes like fart. And when I eat it, I wretch, and then I break out in hives and my throat starts to close shut. I should have just bought the Starbucks moon cake. There's always next year....

(moon cakes are filled with a paste like yummy filling, and a hard boiled egg yolk)

bugs and polio dog

here in a place somewhere in b----, bugs are the size of my hand...



and there are dogs with polio.


the cardboard box is his bed. people throw trash in it. i tried to take him home with me, and when i went back to find him, they said he left. i'm not quite sure where he could have gone with his wobbly legs.

china

A village that we visited to practice sampling and pre-testing of a health survey near china