Don't Eat From The Toilet

Every day I walk by a giant plush pink poo mascot waving wildly and beckoning people to the latest rage restaurant called “Modern Toilet”. Apparently this restaurant has been featured on CNN, Food Network, etc. After a few weeks of his beguiling, the magical pink poo and his mystical poopie powers managed to hypnotize me into thinking I should try it too. So you know as soon as I had a friend in town I had to try it. I mean it is too stupid to pass up right?

You all can file this one under “duh”!!! But I can tell you that you should NEVER eat at a toilet themed restaurant. Now for those who are asking “whatever possessed you to do such a thing? “ I can only defend myself by saying that curiosity can occasionally get the best of me. What follows is essentially a modern fable of kitsch gone horribly wrong!

Poo is popular

For those of you who are unaware many Asian cultures have a pop culture obsession with poop – poop is cute, natural and nothing to be ashamed of. There are whole comic books devoted to poop, poop charms for your cell phone and finally a whole toilet themed restaurant thanks to two Taiwanese entrepreneurs.

The whole place is fitted out with commodes and sinks, shower heads and pipes line the walls. For added ambience, every ten minutes or so, the sickly Cantonese pop music is interrupted by a loud flushing noise. Sounds totally appetizing right?

Okay if you are not grossed out enough yet maybe having your beverage served in a mini urinal is only slightly less distasteful then having your meal arrive in a bathtub or a toilet. And to follow it up a large “soft serve” chocolate ice cream- plopped ever so artfully in a squat toilet.

This would have all been hilarious if the following weren’t also true:

1. The food and service were incredibly “crappy” - what did I expect?!

2. They don’t serve alcohol of any variety – which makes the whole thing a lot less amusing.

3. My friend Jeffrey on his way to the restroom accidently entered the kitchen where he was abruptly sent to the real restroom (outside the restaurant- the frickin’ place doesn’t even have an actual restroom- what the “?*&$@!*”). He was then told by the bitchy waitress that the signs on the door “aren’t just for decoration you know”.

4. When he opened the door to the real restroom he was greeted by a broken toilet and a bucket (the irony here is painful).

5. Within 20 minutes of leaving “Modern Toilet” BOTH of us were praying that we could get home to my old fashioned toilet – without being too graphic, eating at this place was like someone pulled the fire alarm in our bellies and it was “everybody get out now”. Wow nothing like overpriced diarrhea to end your trip with -sorry Jeffrey.

So the moral of this tale is that eating from the toilet is never in good taste no matter how cute the pink poo-poo may be!

Oh a side note – we ate at a very local cafe in the heart of Kowloon, I don't know what it was really called but we have lovingly nicknamed it the “Blade Runner Café” and didn’t- uh yeah let me emphasize - DID NOT get sick at all… go figure. And the cook there was practically naked while cooking noodles in a hubcap. F*** You Moden Toilet! I want my dignity and my money back!

Go Big or Go Home

This week I welcomed my very first HK houseguests with open arms and in the nick of time too!

Last week I was just really struggling – the newness had worn way off and my exhaustion, at an all time extreme was getting the best of me. Sure it looks like I am just on one adventure after another but in reality, just living here is amazingly hard work – and the work (as in the employment side of it) is just insane.

There are no pictures of my 14 hour work days, no funny stories about two hour conference calls that start at 10 p.m. in the evening.  There is not a way to really describe how one can really truly miss something as mundane as a baked potato, let alone something as crucial as your spouse. And in the days of TARP my friend, the era of expat extravagance is way long gone (crap- another golden age I missed out on).

Having said all this, you might wonder if I am really doing okay here by myself in the wackiness that is Hong Kong. The answer is that depending on the day it can be really wonderful or really hateful – it just depends. But every day I wake up and remind myself that I signed up for this so it’s time to be a big girl (and not in the Sasquatch way of last week) and get on with it. This after all is not a town for wussies!

Just in case you were wondering, sleep and the occasionally dirty martini can work wonders- those things AND a good belly laugh, thank God for my dear friend Jeffrey, who made sure I got all three! Jeffrey showed up just as wide eyed as I was about a month or so ago. Seeing everything through his eyes, it helped me realize that Hong Kong is just so big in so many ways. It  is  pretty easy to get overwhelmed but the best thing to do is fight the weariness and jump back in, with both big feet!

First on the list of big ole Hong Kong attractions was the Big Buddha. It certainly lives up to its name at 110ft tall. The Buddha is so big he must rest his king size rump on atop a high hill, you need to ride these crazy trams across the harbor and up the side of the island just to get to it. These trams, referred to as “Crystal Cabins” have a see through floor- so if you are iffy about heights I wouldn’t recommend this mode of transportation for you.

 If you are a lazy sort you can be satisfied with seeing the Buddha from afar (on a clear day you can see it from Macau). But, if you really want to work those buns and thighs on the way to spiritual enlightenment go ahead and climb the 268 steps to get to get a better view of “His Bigness”.

 And speaking of enlightenment it was tough to get in touch with ancient ways when you have to walk through an “authentic shopping village” – a.k.a. tacky souvenir mall gussied up to look a sound stage from “Kung Fu Panda”.  I wasn't really surprised,  after all the big Buddha was only built in 1993- I have shoes in my closet older than that. Okay do I sound jaded? Maybe I am, just a  wee bit, but it was still pretty cool and the views up there are pretty incredible.

By the way there are other big things we saw on our day out

Really scary big spider

Big drinks make your hands look smaller...they also make you look crazy!