Our Haka-style Lunch

What I know about Haka is very little. I just thought it was some kind of dance performed at rugby games. Which it is.



It's also apparently a type of food. Or at least that's what I was told by my supervisor when we went to celebrate the (mostly) successful completion of graduation. 

The restaurant was out in the middle of the jungle, way out in the boonies and fairly close to a dam.

I thought the ambiance was amazing.

This was the very front of the restaurant, taken from the street.

I am in love with this entry sign. Don't really know why.

They had these cool hanging pig sculptures, of which I epically failed to replicate. Craig had no problem, but I was struggling. And with the gaggle of Asians we went to lunch with standing and staring at me, I kept my attempts to a minimum.

Poor Corina, she'd been in Taiwan less than 24 hours when she was dragged out of bed to come to lunch with us. Having been on the other side of that jet lag, (I slept 14 hours straight my first night here) I felt so bad she couldn't sleep longer. Craig and I had no intentions of waking her, but our bosses had different plans.

Craig had to walk back to the apartment from our school to wake her up. I did my best to dissuade Stanley of the need for Corina's presence, but he was not having it.

Rubbing Buddha's head and belly. Rubbing one means good fortune and the other means wealth. I can never remember which is which, but since I could use more of both, I'm not too worried about it.

This stuff on my chop sticks is ground up cooked rice rolled in peanut dust. It tasted like a ginormous spoon of peanut butter, which was fine until the peanut taste was gone and you had to chew on the cold, gelatinous lump of mashed rice.

I also apparently took a massive piece, which I didn't realize until after it was in my mouth and the proprietor was waving his hands saying, "Big! Big!" Thanks pal, news I could have used before shoving it all in my mouth.

Chicken.

Self-serve rice.

The middle platter had crab, sausage, pig intestine and something else. The Asians ate the pig intestine so fast, it was hardly on the plate for a few seconds.

This fish was in a chafing dish to keep it hot. The steam kept making the tail move and creeped me out for a solid 10 minutes. I felt like it was going to flop on the table and mouth at me "Why!?" with its split mouth. Yech.

The roast pork was the best thing about lunch, with a little barbeque sauce it would have made for a killer pulled pork sandwich.

Not entirely sure what kind of vegetable that was, but I've never been a fan of raw eggs, but hey, that's just my hang up.

Craig and Corina.

Riaan (Ryan) is a teacher at Stanford and our new housemate. He's from South Africa and is a pretty funny guy when you can understand what he's saying.

Anyway, our hosts wanted to make a toast with tea. I don't drink tea so this was a little awkward.  I just raised my glass and didn't drink. Riaan drank all of his and then the Asians wanted to make another toast, but it cup was empty. So I tried  to pour some of my tea in his glass but he moved it and I ended up pouring a bunch of tea in his pants. I was super embarrassed. I was turning red and laughing hysterically at the same time.

Later Riaan accidentlly spit food on my lap and arm, so I considered us even. Until he did it 2 more times.

We kind of  got in a laughing fit. It was ridiculous, I could not stop.

For real, though. We laughed for like 5 minutes straight. It was fun and I finally tried shrimp after 23 years of being slightly terrified of it. Don't shrimp just look a little scary?