The second part of dementedchris’ food adventures in Beijing. Crazy eats! Reward her for finishing everything. Support her story, A Kind of Flotsam, by casting your vote for it in the Philippine Graphic Fiction People’s Choice Awards. Who knows, we might be able to persuade her to eat crazier things if she wins!

“You have to try some silkworms,” my friend John Rae urged, as we made our way back from the Great Wall. Not that I really needed much urging at that point; I was determined to try something out of the ordinary. And Donghuamen Night Market’s Snack Street, a colorful row of food stalls to the left of Wangfujing, is anything but ordinary.

Here, the everyday meets the exotic. Bowls of steaming noodles sits beside stalls selling sea snakes and sheep penises. When my friends and I were there last summer, it was early evening, and the string of stalls was slowly filling up with people — local teenagers pulling each other in search of a snack, foreigners eager for a taste of adventure. I noticed that a good number carefully watched what everyone else was trying first, in what I would suppose passed for calculated deliberation (or another version of eeny-meeny-miny-moe) in a circumstance like this. Snack Street has plenty for everyone, something you’ll discover as you stroll down the brightly-lit stalls and catch bits of the vendors’ enthusiastic sales talk. Most of the vendors can speak a little English, but the prices are printed on huge boards atop the stalls if you’re not in the mood to negotiate. Even if you end up not trying anything, the experience is an interesting way of spending an evening in Beijing.
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Despite the earlier trip, December had me back in Singapore. Ready to do all the food things I missed out on in October (find Bickford’s Sarsaparilla, eat at Din Tai Fung), I found it a bit funny that my first meal was at Mc Donald’s.

Yes, after basking mostly in Singaporean food during my previous trips, I actually found myself in a fastfood chain that’s all over Manila. Of course, after biting into their Spicy Chicken Sandwich, I readily ate my words. It was yummy! Flavorful, crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside—why can’t McD’s here do fastfood sandwiches as good as this?
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Usually, the first post of the year (or maybe the last one) is dedicated to recaps. A tribute to the milestones that marked the passing year. Unfortunately, thanks to my super large backlog, I think the wiser recourse is for me to try and tame it. So, join me as I go back and revisit 2009’s Singapore vacations.

October 2009 found me walking along the streets of Tiong Bahru. Quaint and a bit quiet, it didn’t have the frenetic pace I associate with Singapore. I felt a little lost—where was the MRT station?—but along with Jane, Kate, Jonel and Jen, I set off on foot, hoping to stumble upon the local Hawker Center. As we hit the Tiong Bahru Hawker Center, I zeroed in on a Roast Duck stall, following my favorite rule for dining in unfamiliar places, “Buy food where the locals queue.”

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Beijing isn’t in my immediate places-to-visit list. So, when dementedchris mentioned that food tripping was on the agenda during her Beijing vacation, I demanded asked her to guest blog. This is the first in a series of three posts. I’ve a feeling her adventures will convince you to visit Beijing. I know I was.

To go food-tripping in a foreign country can be a challenge to any tongue, both because the dishes might be far from what your palate is used to or because, well, their names are just too hard to pronounce. My friend Oz and I survived dining in Beijing during our four-day trip, thanks to the presence of English menus, photos we could identify, and the ability to imagine what strung-up words on paper would taste like.

DAY 1
We arrived in Beijing at around 11:15 am, still a little full from breakfast on the plane. But we knew we had to have something more in our tummies if we wanted to take on the Forbidden City. We needed food, fast.

Oz and I headed towards Wangfujing Street, one of Beijing’s shopping districts and just a block away from Days Inn Forbidden City, where we were staying. There, we saw small snack carts peddling native delicacies sitting next to large commercial centers with their fast food restaurants. I zeroed in on KFC.

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