Where am I?

I'll give you three guess as to where I took this photo?  Did you guess the US?  Well you'd be wrong.  I took this picture at the new mall just around the corner from our place in Chengdu.  The new Wangfujing mall is only one of the dozens of new malls opening in Chengdu all the time.  In the year and a half since I've been here I can think of at least three new malls that I have been to.  I don't know how many more are out there that I just haven't been to yet (and probably will not get to).  Although strangely enough, many of them are almost always empty. 

I took this picture in the Bellagio restaurant.  It is inside the Wangfujing mall.  When we first arrived we walked up to this place trying to find the restaurant because it's fabulous, but the mall was completely gutted.  Both the mall and the Bellagio opened during Chinese New Year so we took the opportunity this weekend to go check them out.  The Bellagio was fantastic!  We liked everything we tried and would go back there again.  It wasn't dirt cheap, but the atmosphere and the food were well presented. 

Homesick

Yesterday we went into Danshui to stroll about and have some lunch while the weather was somewhat nice. Danshui is a suburb/city of Taipei about thirty minutes north of us. It's got a cute little river walk and some random British colonial stuff (a fort, a boat dock, some missionary missions). It also has a Mexican restaurant. Now we've passed this place before a couple of times, it's just off the main drag so it's easy to spot from the road. I thought nothing of it, other than OOH Mexican food. But since we are in Asia I thought it would be horrible (I know what you are thinking, how can you mess up Mexican food it's just rice and beans with some peppers thrown in, but OH it can be BAD!). But Vlad had it on good authority that it was good, so we went in.
From the start I knew that we were in for a treat, the restaurant was packed with, what I think were, Latin Americans (which is weird to say about a group of people in Taiwan, but they were speaking a combination of Spanish and English in a way that is unique to certain parts of the US). The restaurant itself had a very Californian Mexican restaurant feel. There were Mexican flags on the wall and lots of pastel. The feeling was enhanced by the waitress who had a VERY strong American accent.
Now, I have been to many a Mexican restaurant in Asia and, let me just tell you, they were not good. Maybe it's the ingredients they use, or just that the technique is so foreign, whatever the reason the food is no good. But this restaurant was great. The salsa was chopped fresh and had just the right balance of onion and tomato, the chips were crispy and salted just right. I had a beef and a chicken Enchilada both of which were perfectly seasoned and not gloopy or oversauced at all. It all left me feeling like we would walk out the door onto a California beach, and when we left (and didn't walk out onto a beach) I was sad. BUT I think I will be going back again soon!
(pics of fish tacos and enchiladas)

Date night!

So Saturday night we left Babes with a baby sitter and headed out for a night on the town. (Although when I say "night" I mean evening or maybe mere three hours) And since we are leaving Azerbaijan soon (Wooo HOOO!) we decided to forgo the normal, well I guess this could be Italian food if you squint with one eye and hop on one foot cuisine and headed out to a place that served Azeri food. One of the better places to go in Baku is the Beh Beh club (I wonder what that means). We hit the one just out of town that kind of looks like a traditional house and has live performers. The building itself was very neat, I guess a traditional house looks a little like a ski lodge with a garden, all wooden and sloping roofs. Inside it was modestly decorated with candles and various kinds of Azeri copperware, dolls in native dress, and candles.
The musicians weren't bad even though they played elevator jazz (although I have to admit, that I do like elevator jazz). However, the belly dancer was... well, here's the thing. I think, I have never seen it live, that belly dancing can be sensuous and a very unique art. HOWEVER, most places when they boast having a belly dancer usually mean a stripper who is not taking off her clothes, but wearing a belly dancing costume. I keep going because I keep hoping to see tastefully done belly dancing.... but no. If I was going to have a belly dancer in a restaurant I would find someone who could dance, then have her only accompanied by a drum, a wind instrument of some kind, and maybe a tambourine. But I guess that's harder to find, it is easier to find a young woman, put her in a costume and tell her to shake her stuff to Russia's Madonna equivalent. But that's neither here nor there.
The other interesting thing was that we were there at the same time as a birthday party. There was the general feasting, and then as the night progressed some dancing. I've only seen it once before, but this is the first place I've been that has it's own unique form of dancing. Most clubs that I've been to all over the world have about the same booty shaking dances that the US has. But here the women give their wrists and hands a little flick as they stick out alternating feet with a little hop. There's almost no booty shaking going on at all. The men do something similar, except that their hands do not flick and they usually tap their foot against another male partner's foot. I wish I was better at describing or I could think of what it reminds me of. It's very interesting and looks pretty cool, and is one of the truly unique things that they have going on for them here.