A Letter to my Gut.

A letter to my gastrointestinal tract:

The havoc that is about to befall you, is one that I would not wish upon my greatest enemy.

I fear that the next nine months or so, will be the most gruesome and unpleasant days of all of your time within my body.  Let me apologize.  Perhaps this letter of warning will enable you to mentally prepare for the misery that is to come.

It is likely that, through my careless actions, you will be exposed to some, lets say, new, varieties of foods that will leave you feeling like you’ve been repeatedly beaten with nun chucks while sliding down a sandpaper chute into a bucket of rubbing alcohol.  Indeed, it could certainly get much worse than that; only time will tell.  As a voracious and fearless foreign food enthusiast,  I regret to inform you that you will encounter some very strange foods that, had you been born to a different body, you would never otherwise be expected to attempt digesting.  Again, I apologize, but I fear there is nothing I will not eat.   And unfortunately for you, Kambucha and other trendy pro-biotics aren’t so trendy over here.  

I am now 6,000 miles from home, which you might have assumed by the 18-hour plane ride where I fed you overcooked duck medallions and other cardboard-enriched airplane foods.  And over here in Asia, you are going to come across some highly bellicose microbes, for which diplomacy is futile.   I can already tell you are starting to launch a defensive, as you’ve sensed the doom that is upon you in your new environment.

Your best bet at peaceful survival is to adapt as quickly as possible to the foul-smelling, under-cooked  superhot chilies that will no doubt burn from the inside as they pass through you.   I imagine this will take a couple of months, and my reckless uninformed use of corrosive antibiotics will surely make the adjustment even harder for you.   

Let me assure you, if you try to fight back by attempting to land me on the toilet for days with spray-bottle-consistency excretions, I am prepared to annielate you with suppositories, anti-nausea pills, and an unhealthy plethora of antibiotics. 

Best of luck to you and your microbial communities.
Yours truly,
Anoush

“Spicy" Shrimp, I think

Pictured above is my first ever true Asian dining experience.  And what an experience it was.  As my stomach is churning, trying to manage the intensity of the chilies, and my lips remain burning, I am satisfied with my first-ever, real Chinese meal.

As I looked through the menu, the waitress at the little restaurant I went into stood over me, waiting, as I turned each page.  It was quickly getting awkward.  I felt like I had to make a decision.  I pointed to the first thing I saw with shrimp in it, and was bravely indifferent to the fact that it said “spicy.”

When the dish came out, I noticed at first glance that it was full of red chilies.  I dove right in. It burned.  My, how it burned.  But it burned so good!  God it was good. And the pork dumplings were incredible.  The sauce that, in America, you dip the dumplings into, was inside the dumpling.  Oh my lord, they were the best dumplings I’ve ever eaten.  I thought about my dad.  He would LOVE these.

As I devoured my food, trying very deliberatrly to use the chopsticks properly, I looked up and realized that everyone was staring at me as I ate the shrimp.  I had been getting my hands covered in oily spicy ridiculousness, as I tried to peel the shrimp from their exoskeletons.  I realized that this behavior was being studied closely by the other patrons, and looked around me to see if anyone else was eating shrimp.  I could feel my cheeks turning red.  Yeah, I look weird.  The couple beside me were eating whole shrimp corpses like it was no big deal.

So much for being a fearless eater,  I mocked myself.  Stupid.  Peeling shrimp.  Just eat it.  Yuck.

The black eyeballs are surprisingly crunchy.

The smells that engulfed me sent my olfactory system whirling. Everyone seemed to stop eating and talking and looked over at me standing in the door with my backpack. All the tables were filled; there were only 5 tables. A woman came up to me and motioned for me to sit, next to a family, eating some things I had never seen before. Well, this entry won’t go into the food aspect of this journey, see the next entry for that. The point is, I again wandered into a strange situation. After sitting there for a half-hour or so, lips on fire from the chili and fruit vinegar that I was given to drink, a hoard of men in black suits with cigarettes alit came into the restaurant. They all hung around the door, talking loudly and vibrantly. A couple of them walked past me, through a little door, and didn’t come back out. I didn’t really know what was going on. I thought I was in the middle of nowhere?

The little girl next to me wouldn’t stop staring at me. For reasons touched upon in the next entry, I was starting to get used to people staring at me. But her reasons for staring were different, I found out. As one of the men tried to talk to me, in Chinese, she butted in in English,

“Are you here for the games?”

“What?” I said, “Uhm, no? What games? I don’t know, I just wanted food…”

“Are you ready to pay? I will get the waitress for you.” She glanced back at the men, and then back at me before getting up to get the waitress.

Games? What the hell?

The waitress came out, and saw the men. She then looked at me, and hurried over to the counter to add up my total bill, $50 yen. I got the impression that it was important for me to leave. Now. I paid, and left.

Weird.

I walked back to where I had gotten off the bus, and waited. And waited. No buses were coming. I had enough money for a cab back to the airport, but the bus had only been $3 on the way here, and I didn’t want to spend a fortune on a cab ride. Then I saw a man walk into a parked airport shuttle bus. I approached the bus, and went to his window.

“Hi there!” I said, gaining his attention. I was starting to wish I had a Chinese phrasebook or something.  ”When is the next bus to the airport?” I was praying he spoke English. He apparently understood me, as a look of concern came across his face.

“7 am.” He said, curtly. No! I needed to get on a bus at the latest by 4 am.

“Oh man.” I said, beginning to walk away.

“Wait,” he said. “No ticket. Come.”

What? I climbed the steps and boarded the empty bus. Chinese pop-music was blaring through the speakers.

“What terminal?”

“Uhm, Air China?” I said, feeling foolish for not knowing the terminal number.

“International. Terminal three. Cigarette?” he said, as I put my stuff on the seat behind him.

“No, thank you.” I replied.

We drove the hour and a half to the airport. I’m not sure why he did this for me. When he let me off at terminal three, he wouldn’t accept any money, and not another word was exchanged. I walked back through the terminal doors, again feeling empowered by the goodness in other people.  I hadn’t exchanged enough money to pay for a taxi, so had this man not helped me out, I would have been stranded in Beijing center city.

Now, its time to smarten-up and get my big-girl-traveling-the-world-alone-pants on. Beijing treated me kindly, but I don’t want to run out my luck too fast.