sadOn the episode about eating in China, he ended up visiting the forbidden palace where they serve a really authentic banquet based on dishes from hundreds/thousands of years ago. My mom and grandmother will be heading to china for a vacation within the year and I thought it would have been spiffy to get them a reservation for the thing. After all, it's not like they get a chance to make this sort of trip very often and it would have been something special. Hell, I'm not even sure I could have afforded what would have no doubt been an incredibly pricey meal. It turns out that neither of them had any interest. For them, it's all about getting to eat the plain stall food and the like that they remember from when they were younger. Going to China is more like a nostalgia trip than what most of us would think of as a normal vacation.
Actually, I got a little sidetracked there. I originally made this entry to talk about a different episode of the show where he went to Ecuador. There, they eat tons of guinea pigs. It was really sort of disturbing. The restaurant owner was raising them in a giant dumpster and just like a lobster tank, you got to go and pick the one you wanted to munch on. I couldn't help but think of the guniea pig I had when I was a kid. I only had it for like a day or so. I took him outside and was playing with him on the grass when he vanished. To this day I have no clue what happened to that guinea pig. I guess it was possible he all of a sudden sprinted away while my head was turned, but I've always preferred the theory that a hawk swooped down and carried him off. Poor guinea pig.
