moving on

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that's it, I'm done with this blogging site. Smiling in Shanghai part 2

Here's the bit that somehow got cut off the Smiling in Shanghai post


Next on the street we sample steamed buns (bao), fried dumplings and soups, then at the Imperial Noodle House we have hand pulled noodles with scallion oil, and bamboo tofu with peppers.

steamed bao - how many can you eat?

pan fried dumplings - yum

bamboo tofu with green peppers

By now we are groaning and our bellies are straining, but wait - there's more! The Jin'an Bakery serves Sweetheart Cakes which I have no trouble refusing - heavy pastry wasn't going to sit well at this point. 

By this time it was 12.30 so that's some long breakfast.  I didn't eat for the rest of the day. true story.

this is the pork noodle soup I made at home after the sad failure of my dumpling dough - kind of a deconstructed dumpling - it was delicious.

Smiling in Shanghai

As you know, good food makes me happy - making it, eating it, sharing it.  And I'm an omnivore with a willingness to try most things, though I draw the line at anything animal that's still alive, like monkey brains or goldfish.

I've just been in Shanghai for a week of eating and faced a challenge or two but am here to tell the story.

It's lunchtime after a big morning at the Shanghai Museum so I've wandered down South Yunnan Street, a street famous for its restaurants and food.  Boldly I point to what someone else is eating, pay $6.00 and wait. I know it’s got soup and noodles and I’m thinking beef and veggies. Here’s hoping!  

I have no idea what I just ate. Fantastic soup, great noodles, a bit of bok choy, all good. Some small bits of what I’m pretty sure was chicken, and something I tried hard to convince myself was some sort of exotic mushroom. But I know in my heart of hearts, not to mention my gag reflex, that it was something animal that I wouldn’t usually eat. It remains a mystery. 

Before leaving home I book a couple of foodie experiences - a breakfast walking tour and a dumpling making class. I want to know how to get the soup into a soup dumpling.

how do they get that dang soup in there?

 It turns out it's not soup when it goes in. My dumpling making master, Cici, shows how its done.  The short story is you simmer pig skin in stock for a couple of hours to create a gelatinised mixture. This is then strained, cooled and it sets. You mix it through your dumpling filling and when you cook the dumpling the  stock melts and hey presto! soup in a dumpling. 

Cici ready to teach me

Pork gelatine/soup

I am marvellously successful when working with Cici. We make both mushroom and pork xaiolongbao (soup dumplings) and I manage to produce some traditionally shaped, not-too-ugly results.  Sadly, when I try this at home it doesn't work out so well.

ok, ok I know you can tell mine are in the front steamer

Cici also shows me how to make the traditional leaf shaped dumplings from her village  

Clearly the mis-shapen beasts on the right are the ones I folded

The Street Eats Breakfast tour is a real winner.  Six of us meet our guide at a park in the French Concession area of Shanghai. I get there early and watch the tai chi, dancing, exercise groups and general gatherings that always seem to happen in Asian parks in the mornings.

Our guide meets us at 9.00am and we are off to be introduced to the delights of various Shanghai breakfast foods. First stop Xiang Cai Ren Breakfast Pop-Up where we crowd into a tiny restaurant with 6 tables and are introduced to the poetically named Four Warriors of Shanghai breakfast food: soy milk, savoury soy soup with spring onions - aka scallions, pickled vegetables and sesame oil (and chilli if you want); fried dough (kind of like  Spanish churros) deliciously crisp on the outside and light and soft on the inside; glutinous rice balls stuffed with a bit of fried dough, boiled egg, pork floss, pickled vegetables; and sesame pastry.  

Dipping the dough into the savoury soup was delicious!  You wouldn't typically eat ALL of these things for breakfast and as we have lots more to come we try to restrain ourselves.

Soy milk, chinese fried dough and savoury soy soup

Next stop is another pop up breakfast spot making jianbing, an amazing dish starting with a dough spread out thinly on a crepe style flat plate, an egg broken and spread over it, a sprinkling of pickled vegetables and spring onions. she then folds it in half, spreads on some bean paste and chilli paste then, the stroke of genius: crisp fried wonton skins and laid on it and it's all folded like and envelope, cut in half and like everything else takeaway in china, put in a plastic bag and you eat.

our jiangbing cook

 (Here's a short video I took - hope it plays)

Our guide tells us this woman hires this space from 5.00am to 10.00am then packs up and goes home and someone else will take over the spot for a pop up lunch time session. 

Next on the street we sample steamed buns (bao), fried dumplings and soups, then at the Imperial Noodle House we have hand pulled noodles with scallion oil, and bamboo tofu with peppers.

steamed bao - how many can you eat?

pan fried dumplings - yum

bamboo tofu with green peppers

By now we are groaning and our bellies are straining, but wait - there's more! The Jin'an Bakery serves Sweetheart Cakes which I have no trouble refusing - heavy pastry wasn't going to sit well at this point. 

By this time it was 12.30 so that's some long breakfast.  I didn't eat for the rest of the day. true story.

this is the pork noodle soup I made at home after the sad failure of my dumpling dough - kind of a deconstructed dumpling - it was delicious.

What’s Québec if not Poutine?

It’s pronounced Putin, as in Vladimir.  And when they write about Vladimir in the media, it's written as Vladimir Poutine.

And for some inexplicable reason Québécois love it - poutine, not Putin. It originated here in the 1950s and the is dish part of their cultural heritage, which does make you wonder.  

The basic components are three of the hunter-gatherer’s favourite things, so it could be appealing: fries, cheese, gravy.  Sadly, poutine layers these three things together. Traditionally it’s fries topped with cheese curds (squeaky cheese) and covered with brown gravy.  It looks just like it sounds. 

As luck would have it, Poutineville -yes that is the name of the establishment- is on the ground floor of the building where I’m going to language school. I didn’t say it was good luck.

I'd rather go to Margaritaville

I give in and try it, to give an informed opinion if nothing else.  Poutinevillle only serves poutine, but in a bewildering number of combinations.

so many options, and none of them good

I switched it up by adding roasted peppers and bacon.  It didn't help. No matter how you look at it, putting gravy on fries is only going to make them soggy- what’s the point?

I don’t need to eat it again.  Ever. 

Tastes as good as it looks

Fortunately there's more to Québec than poutine, such as great cities like Montreal and Québec City, and the chance to practise your French, though this is not French as you learned it at school, it's Québécois.

Among other things, Montreal is famous for Leonard Cohen and Schwartz's.  You are probably familiar with Leonard and the city is so proud of its son it has a massive mural to prove it.  I was in the Montreal Art Museum (fabulous) when I looked out the window and there it was - much larger than life, looming over the rooftops. 

 Now Schwartz's Deli is world (they say) famous as the home of smoked meat. The deli has been there since 1928 and they marinate the brisket in secret herbs and spices - sound familiar? - for 10 days before smoking it daily and adding no preservatives.  It seems it is extremely famous in North America.  I met people who were buying pounds of smoked brisket and flying home with it in their hand luggage - that cabin must smell amazing. 

The queue to get in to the restaurant was metres down the street so I decided to get take out - the queue to get take out was metres down the shop.  Those boys were slicing like demons to keep up with the play - it was artistry.

And was it worth the wait?  Depends on how much you like smoked meat I guess, but it was pretty tasty.  I'll tell you this much - it was a whole lot better poutine.

The $9.95 smoked meat sandwich - I didn't need dinner

Fall in Canada - that's Autumn to us

Some of you will know the reason for my lack of blog posts while travelling in Canada and the States last October and November. For those who don't, it's a long story involving an iPad left at home,  Canadian Thanksgiving, inept courier services and a waste of money - enough said.

So, highlights of Eastern Canada.

You already know I went to the ice hockey in Toronto, a cool and very walkable city with a very high tower (for 32 years the highest in the world until the Burj Khalifa came along and spoilt it) and a very interesting shoe museum - you've gotta love a shoe museum.

At the top of the CN tower there's a glass floor which can hold 3.5 Orcas, though I struggle to see why they'd want to go up the tower.

Or many, many selfie takers, some of whom must think they weigh more than 3.5 Orcas because they approach the glass so tentatively.

What else to do in Toronto?  

The really great Art Gallery of Ontario, where I saw a beautiful photographic exhibition called Anthropocene, which according to the blurb, dramatically illustrates how we, individually and collectively, are leaving a human signature on our world. I can't recommend it highly enough if it tours near you - stunning photos of really ugly things.

Liquid waste from leached heavy metals from a copper mine in Arizona

You can also visit a fabulous castle, the Casa Loma, built by entrepreneur and man ahead of his time Sir Henry Pellatt in the early 1900s. Poor Sir Henry brought hydro electricity to Canada and thereby made his fortune, until a campaigning legislator took against tycoons like Henry and lobbied for electricity to be "free as air".  He was successful and this initiated the end of Henry's fortunes and pretty much drove him bankrupt.  

Maybe he should have invented Bitcoin - I was in a coffee shop where you can trade Bitcoin while you have your coffee - yes, an ATM where you can buy and sell.  I just had coffee.

gamble your future here

And the Bata shoe museum   - you don't want to miss this.  Thanks to Mrs. Bata there is a collection of 13,000 pairs of shoes - eat your heart out Imelda Marcos - spanning 4,500 years.  Even if you don't like shoes, the stories evident in design and materials show the changing lifestyles, cultures and customs across the world and through time. There's everything from ancient Greek sandals through to Manolo Blahniks.

Papal footwear

Not so papal Manolo Blahniks

Thanks Mrs Bata, this was fantastically interesting

Still in Ontario, I have a short stay in Kingston, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario at the beginning of the St Lawrence River .  As an historical note,  in 1841 Kingston was named the first capital of the United Province of Canada.  From a tourism perspective, it is better known as the departure for the Thousand Islands, really 1,864 islands that straddle the border between the US and Canada. The border tends to be an invisible line down the lake, so it would be darn hard to build a wall, if anyone wanted to.  

I take a boat trip and the scenery is spectacular, especially as the colours of the leaves are changing. The islands range in size from a small rock, to those the size barely supporting a house, on up to 100 sq kms. To qualify as one of the Thousand islands, Wikipedia tells me,  it has to be at least  one sq foot of land above water all year round and support at least two living trees.

A house and an island of your own

one of the reasons I came in Autumn

And so I leave Ontario and take the train to Montreal, Quebec.

What’s Canada, if not hockey?

I’m in Toronto and there’s a hockey game: ice hockey of course, and the grammatically challenged Toronto Maple Leafs are playing the Ottawa Senators.  

 I buy my ticket on line before I leave home, take a screen shot of it and front up at the Scotiabank Arena.  I stand in a loooong line to get in, and “Sorry Ma’am, we need to see your ticket”

This is my ticket 

“This is a PDF and we don’t accept PDFs.  You need to go see someone in a green T-shirt”

Long story short, it takes 30 minutes to get in, and the young lad in the green T-shirt feels so bad he takes my seat number and later brings me a bag of Maple Leaf memorabilia, including a First Game certificate.  If anyone has been hanging out for a Toronto Maple Leafs (sic) lanyard, let me know. 

My seat is in the nosebleed section and I need a Sherpa to carry my beer. 

You think New Zealanders get passionate about the All Blacks. You haven’t been to ice hockey. 

The guy next to me is unfailingly patient in explaining what’s happening in the ice.  

Much like American Football, the clock stops frequently - three 20 minute periods take two hours. Two hours of fast and furious action, a particular strain of rock music, hot dogs, beers and cries of Go Leafs Go. 

The Senators won 5-3. 

P.S. I’ve tried adding photos but it’s not working- this is why I need my iPad. Which is apparently in Toronto at DHL ‘on hold’. 

Australia - Darwin to Broome - final part: the Horizontal Falls

What? I hear you say. By definition falls are vertical not horizontal.  Well this is Australia and the unusual is not unusual.

Way, way up where the roads don't go, there are two narrow, natural breaks in the McLarty Ranges.  One about 25 metres wide and the other much narrower, at 7-10 metres.   I have already mentioned the very high tides along the northern coast of Australia, and it is the ebb and flow of these tides that create the falls as the water builds faster on one side than the other.  On a Spring tide the waterfall can be five metres.

outgoing tide at the Horizontal Falls

The Falls are dubbed "one of the greatest wonders of the natural world" by no less a wonder of the natural world than David Attenborough.  We found ourselves similarly gob-smacked.  An hour's flight from Broome took us to the tour operator's base on Talbot Bay, from where they run the boats to the Falls and other surrounding inlets.  Very big bucks have been invested in this operation.  

Permanent pontoons - four boats, two or three seaplanes, a couple of helicopters, overnight accommodation

We need all 4 x 300 horsepower engines - the h-g is very impressed

And it's slick.  We are on a seaplane from Broome at 6.00am and land on Talbot Bay an hour or so later.  We have coffee - at least that's what they said it was -  listen a spiel about the falls, put on life jackets and board the boats to ride the falls.  Understatement alert - this is fantastic fun.

I can't describe the surge and power of the tide other than to suggest you check out how many big ass outboards there are on the boats, and figure why so much horsepower is needed.  On our trip the tide is running at about two metres.  It's hard and fast enough we only breach the first level as it's too dangerous to shoot the narrower gap - damn.

Through the first gap

There's a reason they give us breakfast after the boat trip. 

And then there's the sharks. Yes, we thought crocodiles were enough to worry about.  It takes all of no time to decide I don't want to get in the cage to watch the sharks being fed.  I can see perfectly well from here.  There are several sharks and they have very snappy mouths and they inhale the food with enthusiasm.

shark feeding - such fun

 All this, another tour up Talbot Bay then back on the plane and we're home by lunchtime. 

The flight back over the Buccaneer Archipelago, King Sound and Cape Leveque is quite beautiful.  Thousands of tidal islands dot the sea and feature miles of white sandy beaches which, I suggest, are hiding many, many sun bathing crocs.  It's easy to see why cruises along this coastline are popular, although swimming would take on the mantle of a death defying feat.

Flying back over Cape Leveque

Dampier Peninsula  -from Cape Leveque to Broome

We're talking here - an hour by seaplane from Broome (hidden by Search for a place or an address)

Back in Broome we fall in love with the small town.  Long white sandy beaches where, apparently, it is safe to swim; a pearl industry; interesting history and more fascinating (and largely unknown) stories about the experiences in WW2.  Several Australians we meet tell us they never learnt any of the history of the Japanese bombing of Northern Australia at school. It comes as quite a surprise to them.

The town has a relaxed, holiday feel about it, due largely to the many "grey nomads" who head north to escape the winters of Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Sydney.  

Tide out at Broome, town side of the peninsula. The other side is one long white beach

Same spot, tide in.

Oysters and wine - how civilised

And so ends our all too brief trip.  So much to see but on the other hand, a vast emptiness.  This has left us wanting to explore it more, and that is a surprise.

Australia Darwin to Broome: Part Three - Bungle Bungles to Broome

promises promises - we see one (live)wallaby and lots of roadkill

The landscape changes very little unless it's the size colour and number of termite mounds.  The bush is sparse and at times the roadside is charred where planned burn-offs have taken place.  Our new travel game, one point for any feature we haven't seen before, fails to get lift off.

Our singular excitement is driving through a roadside fire just before Halls Creek - no photos as the h-g didn't have a camera ready and I wasn't about to stop in the middle of a raging conflagration no matter how loud he shouted - I wasn't keen to be roasted alive, nor would blistered paint work in our favour when returning the rental car. The police closed the road shortly after we went through.

Halls Creek is fascinating in its nothingness - and that it's the only town for 600kms.  As with all these small settlements in the middle of nowhere it's a sad place. There are few shops, any there are have shutters or wire gates protecting them from break-ins after hours, there's usually two or three big petrol stations, a caravan park/camp ground or two, and a reasonably large supermarket to service travellers and anyone living within several hundred kilometres.

We'd been told about the China Wall just out of town so made that pilgrimage.  Despite looking as if a talented stonemason had had a flight of fancy in the wilderness, it's a natural white quartz wall rising out of the limestone, which must have eroded around it.  It runs 15 kms into nowhere.

China Wall outside Halls Creek, not the Great Wall of China

There's not much to engage us on the road from Halls Creek through Fitzroy Crossing to Derby then on to Broome.  The detour to Derby takes us to a sensationally large 1500 year old boab tree.  As they age the trees hollow out in the middle, and just out of Derby there's the Prison Tree - now, various stories abound as to whether this was a holding place for aboriginal prisoners, or a staging place for those engaged in trafficking aboriginal slave labour.  As I've researched a bit more about it, it seems these stories are myths and the tree was never used as a lock up.  However it's a handy history for the town to promulgate as there's not much else to recommend Derby.  More about the tree's history here if you are interested.

the famous 'prison tree'

It is clear there's social problems in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Alcohol abuse, and the violence, crime, and social disenfranchisement that accompanies it, is visible in every town.  In every small town shop windows are barred and security gates locked after closing. 

Rules abound for how you can buy and consume alcohol - a set of rules applied after the proverbial horse had bolted. In bars we couldn't buy a double shot of anything. In bottle stores, if you want two bottles of wine, there must be two people with ID to make the purchase.  At a drive through bottle store (yes, there is irony at every turn) it's a "no car, no service" policy, ostensibly to prevent walk-ins (code for aboriginals) purchasing alcohol. 

It seems that for every Aborigine owned or co-owned business we see on this trip, such as cafes, Art Galleries, River trips, and other tourism ventures, there’s a greater number of very black people sitting in groups under trees, lounging outside supermarkets or sitting in bars with cans of beer.

It’s hard to challenge stereotypes when they’re constantly reinforced.

In Darwin we waited for the bottle store to open at 10.00am to get some beers for that night after our drive. The only person who beat us through the door was an aboriginal woman buying a bottle of rum and two litres of coke. 

At Fitzroy Crossing, about 500kms east of Broome, we detour to check out the Fitzroy Crossing Inn, said to be the oldest in the Kimberleys.  We anticipate a charming old homestead with a shady garden bar where we’d enjoy lunch and an ale or two. We find a concrete block reeking of urine and disinfectant; we’re the only white people there aside from the barman, a traveller from South America.  About 15 to 20 Aboriginal people sit with cans of beer looking like they’d been there since opening and wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. They ignore us. The atmosphere seeps lethargy. 

We’ve met French, Estonian, Chilean, Argentinian, Welsh and a host of others working here through the dry season. They work in camp grounds, coffee shops, restaurants, anywhere there’s a service role. At the supermarket in Kununurra there was one Aboriginal woman on checkout. It seems unless they start their own businesses, there’s no employment for them. 

Do they not want to work? Or do businesses not want to employ them? Anyone I ask says it’s a combination of both. I’m told that if an aboriginal wants a job they get it and the Government pays, or at least subsidises. I don’t know if this is true.  Given it wasn't until 1962 indigenous Australians got the right to vote in Federal elections, and it took a referendum in 1967 to include Aboriginal Australians in determinations of population", there's a lot of catching up to do.

I promise the next, and final, Darwin to Broome instalment will be more uplifting!

Tides out at Derby