Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
against the wall of a promising-looking restaurant and walked tentatively inside.
We'd been hoping for a cheap noodle-house, but the moment we went through the
door we saw that it was way too plush for such as ourselves. The chairs were up-
holstered and the tables even had place settings! We began to back out, but a wait-
ress appeared and urged us towards a table. I resisted for a moment, but quickly
gave in. We were starving and only two weeks from home. With a quick grin we let
the waitress usher us to a table. We'd been living on a shoestring budget of three
or four dollars a day for most of the past year, so why shouldn't we spoil ourselves
now? Tim grabbed one of the unintelligible menus and quickly perused the Chinese
characters painted across the page. He broke into a beaming smile.
'I'm going to have the second from the top on the right hand side of page three!
How about you, mate?'
'Yeah!' I laughed. 'I'll have the one two below that then. What the hell!'
We tried to order by pointing at our choices but the waitress frowned and took
the menu. She disappeared then returned a moment later with a pad of paper and a
pen. 'Hallo,' she wrote. 'My name is Adeline. Welcome to China.'
Wow, she could write English. I grabbed the pen and we quickly scribbled down
an introductory conversation. Then to the serious business: it was time to eat.
Adeline shook her head disapprovingly when we reached again for the menu.
Carefully she formed some English words on the pad instead. 'What will you eat?'
she wrote, then pushed the pen back towards us.
'Something with beef,' I wrote on the notepaper, hoping for a delicious stir-fry.
'Something with fish,' Tim added, and I grinned wryly. How could I have for-
gotten? He'd been reminding me about how much he missed his seafood for most
of the past year.
'And rice,' I added, as an afterthought. I pushed the pad back to Tim.
'And tea.'
Fifteen minutes later, we could only stare open-mouthed as our meals emerged
from the kitchen on two huge carving trays. Adeline had apparently not understood
the words 'something' or 'with'. One of the trays contained a huge leg of beef - a
couple of kilograms at least - and the other held a gigantic steamed fish!
Was this really their perception of westerners: big, fat, meat-munching ma-
chines? I looked at Tim and we burst out laughing. It was going to cost more than
we'd planned to spend, but then, what the heck? We thanked Adeline with a quick
scribble - 'thank you' - then happily carved in.
