hot pot

Last night I ate a Mongolian Hot Pot, which was one of the goals I had for this trip. Now you non-gastrophiles and odd folks who are okay with cereal for dinner may not appreciate my excitement, but I wanted to chow down on a Hot Pot something fierce, and I did. For a brief moment I bridged the gap between Genghis Kahn and Anthony Bourdain. It was a quasi-spiritual moment.

Hot Pots were created by Mr. Genghis seven hundred years ago. Instead of taking hours to cook large hunks of meat, he wanted his meat sliced into thin pieces so he could cook it in boiling water in seconds. He needed to get back to the killin' and taking over the known world. In a literal way, this is Mongolian fast food, though the drive through came many years later.

We ate lamb and beef, along with two types of noodles, leafy veggies, firm tofu, sweet potatoes, a couple types of mushrooms, and more. You'd cook it for a few minutes, then dip it in peanut sauce that was so good you'd want to slap Genghis' momma. Our guide Tom showed us the correct way to do all this and it was a lot of fun.

hungry Juddster 

our guide Tom and the Hot Pot 

A couple of random, totally unrelated thoughts and pics of Judd:

Judd is doing very well with his Chicken Pox. He has no symptoms other than twenty bumps, so he is fine. We were concerned they wouldn't let us leave Hohhot, but it seems okay now.

I get stared at. True story. And I don't mean a glance from the corner of your eye. People lock eyes on me, look me up and down, and turn around as I walk past to stare some more. One guy last night literally almost ran into a bike as he was staring at me. Our guide says that not many foreigners come to Inner Mongolia (wow... really?), and the fact that an eight-foot tall dude is carrying around an Asian kid is somewhat noticeable.

Chinese TV is something that is impossible to put into words. The soap operas are some of the funniest, most over-the-top things I've ever seen. We've seen CCTV versions of American Idol, America's Got Talent and The Voice. I'd love to hear what Simon Cowell would say about these strange people dressed in masks and singing in a high-pitched shrill. And every host looks like they fell out of the 80s. The hair is Flock of Seagulls circa 83 and the clothes are CC Deville (from Poison fame) circa 89. It's strange to watch.

Today we plan to leave for Guangzhou in south China, starting the second phase of our trip. We hope to pick up the passport in a little over an hour, but won't believe it until the plane leaves the ground. It seems once a day we find a problem and wonder if we'll be able to leave Hohhot. So we are itchin' to head south to Guangzhou.

We'll blog again then, Lord willing. Here are the random pics I promised...

-Chris