We wake to a bombass...wait for it...hotel breakfast buffet. But this ain't no "hot breakfast" from the Holiday Inn; it ain't all lukewarm, dense pancakes and overcooked eggs.
There are the hotel buffet cliches, chafing dishes filled with the usual suspects, nasi goreng and mie goreng, but it's also supplemented by a blast of chicken porridge (here they call it bubur ayam. It's a very Chinese dish--what we call xi fan), and chili oils, and a medley of strange fruits (not the Billie Holiday kind): Syzygium samarangense, a.k.a. water apple, etc.
Leaning over my chicken porridge in a feverish ecstasy, I breathlessly share with Eric the fact that I'd been daydreaming of rice porridge only the day before, on the train ride to Surabaya.
His response?
"You are the only person I'd believe was telling the truth if they said that."
I wonder out loud, "Huh?"
"Because I know how much you think about food."
[a beat]
"Why would anyone lie about that?"
We spend the rest of the morning lying in bed and trying to identify a hotel that'll take us for the night, since the Weta is fully booked for the evening. Finally, we land on the Equator Hotel, the name which, on the way there, we find is a previously unknown homograph with the American word that denotes the imaginary line designating the northern and southern hemispheres. Instead of pronounced "ee-kway-ter," it's pronounced "ek-kwa-tore".
Whenever we tell the cabbie to take us back to the Equator Hotel, we're immediately set right with, "oh, you mean Ek-kwa-tore!"
But, of course!
Our arrival is greeted with umbrella'd and flower'd orange drinks in cocktail glasses: it's the classic Indonesian welcome refreshment, orange...Tang.
Like the complimentary cocktails of Tang, our bungalow seems a good idea in its conception if not in its execution. It's adorable, a cozy and cool contrast to the overbearing heat and humidity of the outdoors. There's a darling little sitting room, and a marble niche-y bathroom (where I'll later have quite the adventure--no, not what you're thinking. I wish.), and a king-sized bed.
But it's all fetid with a stench of must and mold, and even though Eric's all panty-twistingly excited, I'm not convinced.
Eric and I head out to the unoccupied hotel pool, momentarily sitting at the empty pool bar, sweeping aside the leaves scattered across the surface of the water, then popping back out for a broil in the sun. When we finally decide we're hungry, I brilliantly decide to have a hamburger. It's a too-salty smear of a patty, more of a pate really, than a patty.
I hop into the bathroom shower upon returning to the room. I've donned the paper room slippers, and when I reach in and turn the shower on, it blasts me in the face and torso, and as I back away from the torrent, I slip and land on my back, crashing into the door with a thump.
Dinner is at Duck King, a shopping mall attempt at classy Chinese (think P.F. Chang's, but better, or Cheesecake Factory).
Maybe it's 'cause I ain't been in China since I was a preteen, but my sense of Chinese food is that there are really only two varieties: Americanized, orange chicken, mu-shu, General Tso Chinese and authentic, rustic Chinese, which can range from hole-in-the-wall joints to places with tablecloths and a 40-gallon tank of fish.
I order: Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, corn soup with crab, Peking duck skin, black pepper duck, and braised beef.
It's aiite.
We cab it back to the "Ek-kwa-tore," and I pass out next to Eric, who's getting sicker by the day, Mission Impossible (the Tom Cruise version) playing in the background.
0 comments:
Post a Comment