A Sweet and Sour Exit

I leave in two days! Whoa.

That aside I'm feeling much better. The malaria is pretty much dealt with and I'm back to enjoying Nairobi. I bought some cool Congolese and Cameroonian masks to take home with me. Hopes are that when I finally have kids I'll have one room filled with cool masks that the youngin's will be too afraid to go into (planning peace and quiet seems to be important). Saw The Simpsons Movie yesterday (average, but entertaining) and I'm off to see Transformers today. Life is back on track.

Anyhow, where was I. Ah yes, Chinese food. I liked the bold headline last time for the malaria thing, let's use that again. It's very official looking. It's amazing what thicker letters can do, eh?

Chinese Food Abroad: Breaking Kosher in the Name of Science

Before the reviews come I'd like to go over my technique and mission. The purpose of this project is not to find "real" or "authentic" style cuisine. That couldn't be further from the truth. The bar against which all this is measured is really, really, really good Chinese take-out (you know, the kind in little folded boxes with dragons on them). With this in mind the plan became clear. One Sweet and Sour Chicken, two Veggie Spring Rolls and Steamed Rice would be sampled at each resto in order to create an even picture, with all other dishes sampled being treated as side-evidence (all foods capitalized for emphasis, we can't always use bold you know). What I looked for went as follows:

Spring Rolls: Overfried? Greasy? Crispy/flakey or bready? What was in it? What kind of sauce came with it?

Chicken: Was the chicken fried? Too fried? Crispy? Sizeable pieces? Was there pineapple and bell pepper? Sauce quality? Sweet? Sour? (Chicken?)

Rice: Honestly, anyone that messed up rice was written off immediately.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, the reviews.

The Good:
Fang Fang (Kampala, Uganda): Likely the most famous resto I visited, Fang Fang's decor was gorgeous. A flowing lawn, with garden, giving way to the patio where you're seated. Very, very soothing if you have being walking the insane streets of Kampala for more than twenty minutes. The presence of a giant Chinese buisness convention was probably a good sign of quality as well (Dro still thinks it was a mob meeting). Here I actually goofed. Ashley got the sweet and sour and I got veggie lo mein. Her chicken (I tried some) was fantastic. Sweet, sour, chicken-y, crispy, packed with veggies and deliciousness. Spring rolls were a close to take-out as you get. Round, flakey, packed with shredded veggie goodness and coated in a thin layer of grease. Mmmmmmmm. Fluffy rice, good tea and excellent service. My noodles were thick and filling. Good veggies and big servings. Fang Fang lives up to the hype as a solid backpacker splurge.
Rating: 4 stars (out of four)

Schezuan (something I can't recall that began with "z") Chinese Restaurant (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania): Having been unable to find the resto recommended to me by the Lonely Planet I stumbled across this place about 2 blocks from the hotel. Go figure. Mike, the Canadian I had met at the hotel, had veggies and prawns he said was amazing (I dared not try) and I had the usual. The spring rolls were by far the best I've had in Africa. Super-thin shells, with plentiful, steaming veggies inside. Plus, instead of ordering them individually they came in plates of three (cheaper!). The sauce, while not very thick, was as close to duck sauce (it wasn't very close) as you'll get here. The chicken was a masterpiece. Huge chunks of perfectly crispified white meat, tossed with veggies and massive pineapple wedges piled high from the table to well over my head (exaggeration!). The rice was...uh...steamed. The only negative was the fact that they took an hour to take our order and another 45 minutes to serve. Oh African time...
Rating: 4 stars

Dong Fang (Bujumbura, Burundi): Following the trend of "Fang" restaurants being great, Dong Fang (giggle) was a tasty surprise to find in a city that was 5 months removed from civil war. My friends were less impressed with their fried rice and cashew chicken than I was with my s&s goodness, but this stuff was delish. The spring rolls were a little small and the casing a little thick, but the crispness was spot-on and the pili-pili (uber-chili) sauce they came with almost necessitated a nasal cavity transplant (awesome). The chicken was plentiful (huuuuge plate), the sauce perfect and the level of frying outstanding. The inclusion of red AND green bell peppers alongside massive chunks of pineapple added a nice finishing touch to an excellent meal. As an aside, the cashew chicken Ashley had was also pretty good.
Rating: 3.5 stars

Mandarin Chinese Restaurant (Jerusalem, Israel): Certainly posher than anything in Africa (but still not Kosher!), Mandarin got bonus points for being a family diner. Everyone else seemed quite pleased with their food, but honestly I was too wrapped up in my chicken to notice. Small portions (not in Africa), but tasty chicken done right. The addition of San Pellegrino was a fantastic touch. The spring rolls, while not memorable, were tasty. Well done Holy Land.
Rating: 3.5 stars

Macau Portuguese Cultural Centre (Lilongwe, Malawi): I know what you're thinking "Macau what?" I swear this is a Chinese food place. There's three pages of Chinese food offered and about 3 Portuguese options. Very surreal place. Anyhow, the food was pretty damn good. The spring rolls rivaled those of Dar es Salaam, but the sauce was a little cloudy and had the colour of a cherry slushy. Eww. The chicken came in small pieces, but the veggies were good and the sauce was incredible. Cassie (one of three friends in attendance) had the same as me and concurred that the food was good, but not great. Jess's veggie noodles were tasty, while Gur looked pretty sad about his "Ants in the Tree" (lettuce wraps). It wasn't great Chinese food, but hey...it's in a Portuguese cultural centre, what were you expecting?

Bonus: Great fortune cookie message: "It will happen, in good company." Brilliant.

Rating: 2.5/3 stars

The Restaurant of China (Kigali, Rwanda): This was kind of a wash, literally. The resto is perched on the roof of a two story office building and is open air. Perhaps a bad design move in a city high up the moutains that has two rainy seasons. The spring rolls and rice came first and they were pretty average, but the sauce was great. Disappointing since the food in Kigali is normally so good, but all things considered they weren't bad appetizers. Then, the rain came. Pouring, freezing cold, pounding rain. Shit. I never got to taste the chicken, but the kitchen smelled great so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. The food on other tables looked fantastic before it got drenched. I headed to meet some friends at a great non-Chinese resto New Cactus, where I had amazing 5 cheese pizza and garlic bread. Not a bad way to end the evening, but I left Kigali feeling incomplete. Buy some umbrellas for the tables you idiots.
Rating: 2.5 stars

China Plate (Stone Town, Zanzibar): Here's an odd place. With a balcony overlooking the Indian Ocean to the west (prime sunsetting spot), China Plate has a serious feel of neglect to it. The bad Chinese TV shows are a little too loud. The paint is peeling and the table cloths have some holes in them. It's an old joke that there is no word for "maintenance" in Kiswahili, apparently the Chinese owners caught that bug. The spring rolls were...chewable. Good filling, but the casing was a bit too burned and a bit too bouncy to be called tasty. The s&s was, on the other hand, fantastic. Did it taste like sweet and sour chicken? No. Did it look like it? No. Was it delicious? Absolutely. I have no idea what it was that I ate, but I know I enjoyed it. The second visit was less impressive, when the lemon chicken came with no lemon sauce or lemons. "Sorry sir, we have no lemons. Here is chicken." They eventually made some bland, mystery sauce to make the chicken a little more exciting, but the damage to their rating was done. Get it together China Plate, y'all got potential.
Rating: 2.5 stars

The Bad:
Chinese Gardens Restaurant (Nairobi, Kenya): Nice decor, good view of the city (it's on the 5th floor of an office building) and friendly staff. The spring rolls were decent enough, though the pili-pili was lacking, but far too small. The chicken was greasy, which leaked into the sauce and made the veggies (green peppers and onions) soggy. The sauce was super-sweet (no trace of sour to be found) and almost runny. Coating the chicken with it was hard and soaking the rice with it just messed up the rice. It wasn't a total train wreck, but it wasn't delicious by any means.
Rating: 2 stars

Yaya Centre Food Court (Nairobi, Kenya): Like Chinese Gardens, this was hardly terrible. It tasted great after three months of no Chinese food in CFSIA, but in hindsight it was not all that and a bag of fortune cookies. This, as the first resto, did not follow normal procedure so no s&s was consumed. The Hot and Sour soup was way more hot than sour, and too big to finish (Christilyn and Stacey helped with that). Nice veggies inside, but definitely not your usual hot and sour treat. My veggie lo mein was greasy, but could have been greasier. Take out lo mein should be thick and greasy! The tea was alright, but the company was fantastic. Food aside it's a meal I still think about with a smile on my face.
Rating: 2 stars

Pagoda Chinese Restaraunt (Stone Town, Zanzibar): The decor is wonderful and the adverts make it clear that it beats out China Plate for the almighty tourist dollar/euro/pound, but I would avoid the Pagoda if I were you. Bones in the s&s is an unforgivable Chinese take-out sin, and having a sauce hinting to BBQ flavouring (it's sweet and sour, not Colonel Sanders!!!!) is a bit embarassing. The spring rolls fell to the common problem of overfrying and overbattering, though well sized and filled. The rice was...uh, rice. Mmm rice. Zanzibar is hardly a Chinese food haven, but if you must sample it head to China Plate.
Rating: 1.5 stars

The Ugly:
Hong Kong Restaurant (Blantyre, Malawi): Not in a capitol city and not really China (ooooh political statement!), Hong Kong is all show and no substance. Great decor and a rentable "special" rooms, the resto looks great. The food? Not so much. The spring rolls were burned and tiny and the sauce runny. The s&s was plentiful, but fried to a crisp and served in the same sauce as the spring rolls with no veggies. Boo. I returned with some Brits and sampled the veggie lo mein, which tasted like nothing (and soy sauce) and hit my stomach like an atom bomb. I suffered for this review people. Ugh
Rating: 1 stars

Sarit Centre Food Court (Nairobi, Kenya): This shit was radioactive and unfinishable. Paging Tiki Ming/Manchu Wok we need you in African malls!!!!
Rating: Unstarable

So there it is, my life's work. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did (well, most of it anyways). This is likely the last travel update, so I hope this has been interesting to read for those who had the energy to keep up with me (not sure how many of y'all that is, haha). The trip, on the whole, has been incredible and incredibly exhausting. I'll look forward to seeing y'all back at home.

Cheers,

-Dave

Malarity Ensues

Ending with a bang? Oh dear. Not to worry anyone back home, but I've been under the weather for the past few days with a wicked case of malaria. I probably got it by being an idiot and staying at cheap hotels that didn't have mosquito nets over the beds, but hey...who knows? Malaria, simply put, is awful. A lot of tourists here want to get it just to say "I went to Africa and got Malaria!" but I heavily advise against doing this. Malaria is awful. I've been steadily improving on a cocktail of quinine (no, I don't mean gin and tonic) and coartem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coartem), but I've still got about 5 days to go before I'm all better. Malaria, awful as it may be, is not all bad though. It is with this in mind that I proudly present to you "The Pros and Cons of Having Malaria"

The Pros and Cons of Having Malaria

Pro: Great conversation starter with the ladies. Simpathetic responses tend to include back massages.

Con: Having a mouth smelling of vomit and quinine has to be one of the least attractive things on the planet.

Pro: It's a great diet!

Con: Solid food is actually pretty awesome.

Pro: It made an excellent excuse to book a few nights at the nicest hotel in Malawi.

Con: The bar is unusable.

Pro: You get to watch TV all day.

Con: BBC World is crap. Really, really crap. I mean honestly, the "Top Stories" repeat every ten minutes! There has to be more going on in the world than this.

Pro: Simpathy from Malawians gets me comfy seats on minibuses.

Con: "Comfort" in a vehicle designed to hold 8 people that has been filled with 20 people, 10 chickens and luggage is a relative term.

Granted, there are other cons (see: symptoms), but I just want to illustrate that all is not lost.

Infectious disease aside, Malawi has proven to be a great spot to relax for three weeks. My time in Nkhata Bay (which was supposed to last 2 days, but got extended to a week) was fantastic, until Malaria hit. I slept late, enjoyed excellent food, excellent views, excellent company and a most excellent lakeside trampoline. I didn't swim much, but apparently there was excellent snorkelling too.

Last I checked Malawi was ranked as one of the 5 poorest coutries in the world, but you would never know that being here. It's really easy to see places as mixtures of news items and statistics, but the reality here contradicted most of my expectations. Yes, people are very impoverished and there are likely a slew of serious challenges facing the country, but looking at the people you'd hardly notice. Blantyre and Lilongwe (the two largest cities), are clean and bustling (if astonishingly dull). These are just broad observations made by a guy who has only been here 3 weeks doing absolutely nothing, but Malawi in person is a million times better than it sounds on paper.

Anyhow, I'm out of here the day after tomorrow to Nairobi (I'm just going now to pick up my ticket). By September 3 I'll be back in Montreal. The coming home fiesta will likely have to be postponned a few days (drinking on an injured liver is hardly intelligent), but it will be a pleasure to see y'all soon.

Cheers,

-Dave

12 days and counting

Seriously, I'm counting. Smoked meat! Canadian beer! Patati Patata! Hockey! Uh...you guys? My trip to Malawi is nearing it's end, meaning it's time to try to traverse 3 countries in 10 days this Wednesday. I'm currently in Nkhata Bay (google it or something, I'm not even that sure where I am anymore), and I'll be headed from here to Mzuzu, Mzuzu to Karonga, then into Tanzania via Mbeya, Mbeya to Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, Nairobi to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Dorval. Sounds exciting doesn't it? Nothing says good times like transit.

Malawi seems to be set on finishing with a bang. Lilongwe's dullness was replaced by Blantyre's less dull dullness, which made for a few notable occasions. The only brewery in Malawi (foreign owened, of course) was visited with a South African-German, five Japanese, two Irish, a Brit and three Malawians. The tour itself was awesome, with the highlight easily being the the machine that puts the labels on beer bottles. Seriously, whoever came up with this thing better have won some engineering award. From the little buckets of bubbling glue getting sucked into some invisible tank, to the paintbrushes slapping the labels on tightly, to the little laser beams that make sure everything goes on straight, this thing is amazing. Honestly, someone actually sat there for several months to a year thinking "hmm, it's really hard to put labels on beer by hand. If only there were a much more complicated way to do it that involved a 13-tonne machine..." Kudos to you "beer laber machine engineer." You're ridiculous.

Blantyre was also home to some truly terrible Chinese food. Chinese food so bad I was sick for hours after eating it. Don't say I've never suffered for my craft. I've got one more place in Dar es Salaam to check out, then I'll get to reviewin'. Don't expect Blantyre to rate too highly.

The last highlight was...well... a long story. Here goes.

My last day in Blantyre I woke around 4:30 AM to drunk Brits stumbling home from the clubs. After about an hour of them shouting I was able to get back to bed, only to have my alarm wake me up around 7. See, I was trying to catch an early bus to Mzuzu so I could connect to Nkhata Bay in one afternoon, but (alas) the only bus leaving for Mzuzu was leaving at 5:30, so my early rise was for naught. After plodding about the city for a while I managed to find a reggae show playing at "The Warehouse" that afternoon, and figured I'd check it out before the busride. The show was amazing. Playing were some of the bigger names in Malawian reggae (The Black Missionaries, Sally Nyundo and Gift Fumulani). People danced like madmen, the most impressive dancer being a man stricken with polio managing to breakdance on his crutches. Craziness. I left early to catch my bus, which began boarding at 5, a little tipsy from some rasta-borne gifts, but feeling good.

As soon as the bus left things began to change...

Side note: before we get to the interesting stuff I'd like to have a word about Malawi in general. The people here are amazing, polite, nice, kind hearted and generally always laughing about something (usually me). However, all isn't well in the country politically. It's now August and the governement still hasn't passed the budget for 2007. The reason being is Section 65. Section 65 states that any Malawian politician that switches parties while in office must give up their seat until by-elections are held to see if the people are ok with the switch (take that Belinda!). Unfortunately, prior to the passing of the budget this year the president crossed the floor. His old party wants elections before the budget, and his new party wants the opposite and neither want to budge. So as it stands, the government is spending money illegally to fund schools, hospitals, civil servants and the like, and because it's all outside the budget no one really knows who's getting what or how much is being spent. There's no end to this in sight, but the rest of the story makes a little more sense in this context.

So where were we? Oh yeah, I'm on a bus. Right, so the bus has been cruising along for about 3 hours when my asthma kicks in. No big deal, I'll just find my ventolin and get some sleep. Shit. Where's the ventolin? It suddenly occurs to me that I lent it to a Brit I'd been hanging out with that morning, and that he likely accidentally pocketed it. No worries though, things should improve if I just relax my breathing and chill out.

Not so much with that working.

At 5 hours into the bus ride I can't breathe. I non-chalantly ask the guy sitting next to me (who can't fall asleep due to my weezing), where the nearest clinic or pharmacy is. He doesn't know, but goes to ask the driver for me. Keep in mind it's around 10:30 PM at this point. About 45 minutes later (11:00-ish) we pull up to a public hospital (the name of which escapes me) and I'm ushered out of the bus. I wait for my bags to come out, but they don't. I don't really care at this point though, I just need some drugs. The doctor sees me immediately, but says that due to budget problems (i.e.: inept, power hungry MPs) they have no inhalors or nebulizers handy. Shit. Shit. Shit.

The next thing I know my shirt is off and they're desperately searching for something that will work. Five minutes later I'm hooked up to some mystery I.V. and feeling much better. I get some salbutamol pills (yum!) and in about twenty minutes I'm right as rain. I have the whole procedure documented in my notebook (my "prescription"), so any medical professionals (read: Mom) that want to know details beyond "mystery I.V." can get them when I'm back. The doc is a UN volunteer from Kenya, so we speak some Swahili and in the end I pay for my visit in ball-point pens (it's public hospital so they can't take money, but they had no pens. It was more of a gift than a payment). To my amazement, the bus is still outside. 45-passengers have been sitting outside in the dark while the engine idled for around an hour. Whoa. Malawians are nice.

I jump back on expecting some dirty looks, but everyone is asking me how I'm feeling and offering me hugs/water/herbal something or other/good wishes. This is surreal. I sit back down, thank the bus for waiting and we're off again.

I can't sleep due to a mixture of "big guy" next to me, "compulsive chair lean-backer" in front of me and "baby who kicks" behind me, but I don't really care since I'm breathing normally again. At about 4:30 AM there's an announcement that we're stopping in Nkhata Bay before Mzuzu (sweet), so I hop out and try to find a taxi. There's no taxi. There are, however, a series of thugs insisting that they "help" with my bags. 30 seconds later I'm back on the bus (thanks baggage attendant-guy!). My bags intact I'm dropped off at a police roadblock 30 minutes outside of town, where I sit from 5:00- 6:30 talking to the Zambian and Malawian officers about the CN Tower and hockey vs. football until a minibus arrives.

I (finally) arrive at the hotel at 7 AM, after having been awake for almost 40-something hours, bouncing from reggae shows, to hospitals, to police stations. I meet my friends, get a quick backrub (mmm) and tell my tale of transit. Sleep happens shortly thereafter.

Whew. What a trip.

So the moral of the story is: always pack a spare ventolin and don't trust the British!

Alls well that ends well.

Cheers,

-Dave

Note!

I finally figured out how to enable comments (thanks to the internet cafe staff who speak Afrikans)/. Send me love! (please?)

Cheers,

-Dave

Malawi Wowee!

Honestly, that's the best title I could come up with. The trip from Zanzibar was rocky, as I was hungover and the seas were rough, but it was apparent that I was up for a return to travel. Deciding that Dar es Salaam qualified as "extremely dull" I decided to quickly move on. First, however, I met a nice Canadian who had been working in Zambia. We shared a hotel room (making it cheaperz) and got our obligatory Chinese food (don't worry, the update is coming sooooooon). The next afternoon after a traditional French Breakfast (sans porc) at a tourist place I was off on a 24-hour train ride across the country that would wind up taking 29 hours due to breakdowns and "wet tracks" (ominous, eh?). There was no food, no water (which meant no flushing toilets) and not much doing as far as amenities (there was a bar, but I did not use it). The saving grace was my company. Two hilarious Zambians named Uliya and Twiza. They had an additional 24 hours of training to get to Zambia, but for my leg of the ride we shouted at people out the windows, talked about how annoying it was to learn Swahili and about how odd it was that the Chinese built everything on the TAZARA railway. We scrounged for food by buying fried something or others through the windows, getting chips (crisps!) from the bar and eating some atrocious coctail of wannabe sardines and chili sauce. In the end, good times were had and I bid the Zambians adieu at Mbeya, Tanzania.

At the station I met a group of three UKers (who were actually from Kenya and Zimbabwe) and we were off to find a hotel. Despite Mbeya's appearance as a sleeping little town, a group of Swiss tourists had apparently booked the whole town so we went through 8 hotels (and one punctured tire) before settling at the Princess View Inn at around 8:30 PM. The rooms were lovely, some with Superman sheets, others with odd posters of blonde, white people in swimsuits, but most importantly the showers were hot (a must after 29 hours of transit + 2 hours of hotel hopping).

The next day we hopped a mini-bus with some Germans to a village near the border, grabbed some bicycle taxis to immigration, exchanged Tanzanian Shillings to Malawian Kwacha, and went on our way.

A note: NEW MOST WORTHLESS PIECE OF CURRENCY!!!! One Malawian Tambala. One hundred Tambala make one Kwacha and one hundred and forty Kwacha is one US dollar. Math time.

1 Tambala=.001 Kwacha=.0000714 USD. 1/14,000th of a dollar. Jeebus.

Anyhow, after securing a cheap taxi to Karonga (a road dotted with Police checkpoints where officers would usher us out of the car, dance with us to the music on the radio and tell us to have a nice trip) we were off to Chitemba. A lovely lunch was had a local resto owned by "King Elijah", who was probably the first
real Rastafarian I'd met so far in Africa ("no scissors, no brush, no meat, no drink, no smoke unless it's the herb, no violence") and a lovely evening was spent on the beach trying to make our own constellations in the sky (lots of stars, like whoa).

Then it was off to Mzuzu where we stayed at Mozoozoozoo, a place owned by some friends of the UKers' parents. A huge poker game was had (the pot: 5,000 Tambala) thrice and sleep was enjoyed in the chilly/rainy/greyness that is Mzuzu (are we still in Africa? We don't need sweaters in Africa!). From there it was a night of insanity in Nkhata Bay, two nights with the UKers, cake, and my Israeli friend Gur (met in Zanzibar) in Kande Beach and then it was off to Lilongwe (the capitol).

Although Gur has left early to head home to Israel (:sad face:), Lilongwe has been essentially comprised of the consumption of baked goods (i.e.: cake, croissants, eclairs, cream puffs, etc), wandering, eating Chinese food (!!!) and sleeping in the dirty, pest-infested office of a local dive bar-resto called Annie's. It's much more fun than it sounds like it is. That being said, it is an excellent description of what there is to do in Malawi if you don't have a job: nothing. You can do nothing on the beach, do nothing looking at animals in a park, do nothing in the village and do nothing in the cities. Chilled out. Anyhow, I'm off to Blantyre tomorrow-ish (it's the commercial capitol in the southern tip of Malawi), and then back to Nkhata Bay with some lovely new UKers I've met who are based in Lilongwe (Old UKers: Ryan, Lucy and Emilie, New UKers: Jess, Cassie).

So there it is. I'll be in Malawi until around August 24th-ish, then a few nights in Dar, then a few more in Nairobi, then I'm home. 19 days till I'm on a plane, 20 until I land.

Chinese update coming soon. (ANTICIPATION!!!!!!)

Cheers,

-Dave

Exodus from the Zanz

Whoa, a month and a half flies by in paradise, doesn't it? I booked into the noon fast ferry (1st class!) to Dar es Salaam tomorrow, and it may be years before I see Stone Town again. I rarely get choked up about leaving a place that doesn't rhyme with Zontreal, but I'm pretty shook up about leaving Zanzibar. My hotel/apartment, while small (really, really small) was beginning to feel like home, with breakfast (fruits! eggs! coffee!) outside on the balcony every morning. Work at ZIORI, while very mundane, was really interesting. I got to skim articles that seemed to tickle my brain, talk to the random academics that came to visit Prof. Sheriff (I got TWO buisness cards and an invite to info for scholarships to Oxford!). Plus my enormous lunch break left me with time to take Swahili lessons, so my Kiswahili has been upgraded from "utterly painful" to "passable" in most personal interactions. Plus I've got a steady group of friends (I nice mix of locals, Canucks, Brits and Yanks), which is always nice.

So yeah, wistful pensiveness aside life has been good. Food every night at the market, followed every now and then by drinks on the beach. I've spent another weekend Nungwi with my two Canadian ladies and attended the thoroughly insane Full Moon Party in Kendwa last weekend. Try to imaging about 1000 people dancing to techno and reggae (odd mix, I know) in a giant tiki hut on the beach (for the Peskinds, it was at Kendwa Rocks where we had lunch). Aviva (who I met in Kenya) came up for a few and we had a fairly chilled out time in Kendwa and Stone Town. Aside from that it's really just been a relaxing few weeks since we last spoke. For the first time this trip I had a routine, one that gave me enough responsibility to not get bored, but not so much that I couldn't relax when I wanted to. So yeah, I'll be back in Zanzibar one day. Mark my words.

In Dar tomorrow I'll sample the penultimate Chinese food sampling of my journey (wait for the upcoming Bujumbura/Kigali/Nairobi/Jerusalem/Kampala/Zanzibar/Dar es Salaam/Lilongwe Sweet and Sour Chicken Showdown! Bated breath, while not required, is recommended), fill up my passport with new pages (I hope), buy me a train ticket to Mbeya and move on to Malawi.

Also, I had a new Fanta. It was Apple and it tasted like really sweet cider. Mmmmm.

Also, Alexander, I found a coin more worthless than the 10 Tanzanian Shilling Coin. It's the 5 Tanzanian Shilling coin. $0.0039. Seriously. I swear this thing exists.

Cheers,

-Dave