A Hearty Hike

It's Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai to all our Chinese friends! Because Chinese are the majority on our island, there is lots of celebrating going on today. We hear lots of firecrackers and see lots of red lanterns hanging outside houses and shops. The boys have the day off from school so Kris and I decided we should go on a hike today. The good news is, we could begin our jungle hike right from our very own neighborhood! We had the idea last night and ended up with a group of about 17 by 9 O'clock this morning. It's a pretty good hike up and over the hill behind our neighborhood. When there was a break in the jungle, we could see the city and the ocean. Beautiful! We ended up at the Botanical Gardens about two hours later. Thankfully, one from our group had the foresight to get the guys to drive several cars up to the gardens and park them so we could drive home. The final part of the hike was about 1,100 steps, so you can imagine we were not interested in hiking back home!

Here's the view of the city and ocean from the trail.

Hiking a STEEP part of the trail.

Made it to the Botanical Gardens!

And here we have a two gray monkeys.

Back In Asia

We made it back to Asia! Hello toes, I’ve missed seeing you, since you’ve been all wrapped up in socks and closed-in shoes for months. First order of business: paint toenails and find flip flops. The breeze is wonderful and the weather not too hot and definitely not too cold. It IS humid though, and mildew has attacked some of our furniture and the closets smell musty. No problem, wipe it all down and it’s good as new. Feeling great! Feeling happy! Feeling … feeling… feeeeeeeliiiiing tired … zzzzzzzzzzz (jet lag).

Friends here on our new island stocked our cabinets with food and invited us for meals. So nice. Made mental note to do the same for others when they are just moving in, especially when…jet lagging…zzzzzzzzz. We were invited for dinner! That’s great news, I don’t have to cook. I ask if I can bring anything. I get a text message, “Bring rice.” OK, no problem, I have a rice cooker. But we are two big families so I better make a lot. An hour before dinner I make a big pot of rice. When we arrive our hostess looks at my rice cooker oddly. “Did I say ‘rice’ or ‘ice’?” Oops. And I can’t even blame the auto correct because her message totally says “ice”. Well, we did not have cold drinks that night but we did have plenty of rice.

While eating dinner, I mention that instead of Australian Top Sirloin (which is very expensive beef), I found that I could order “Bombay Beef” for much cheaper. “That’s not beef,” says our host, “That’s water buffalo!”

“Are you sure? Because she said it was beef.”

“Think about it, Jana. It’s Bombay beef. Cows are considered holy in India.”

Oh great, I just bought 2 kilos of water buffalo to cook for our first lunch guests the next day. All I can think about is a large lumbering work animal pulling a plow through the rice paddies before it drops dead and the innovative farmer cuts him up and sells it to the shop owner who…well, sells it to me. Gray, wrinkly skin; tough chewy gristle. Guests coming at noon tomorrow and I have water buffalo stew. Awesome.

The next day I try to cook it anyway. It’s not a good idea. Kris and I taste test and I can literally hear Kris crunch, like it’s a bag of potato chips. Yuk. But I just used two (count  them, two) envelopes of American stew mix. I wonder if I can rinse the flavoring off the nasty buffalo meat to recycle with some actual beef. A little brain gnome is in my head jumping up and down with a red flag screaming, “Bad idea Jana!” And thankfully, I listen. I end up making ground beef (from a cow) soup instead. But that works out ok because I have a large pot of leftover rice to go with it.