Out Of The Loop

Y'know, sometimes living in a country where you don't speak the language can really make you feel out of the loop. For example, tonight we decided to have supper at a BBQ restaurant that we'd seen up the road. Easy enough. We went in and got seated but noticed that there was no prices on the menu. No problem, we knew we wanted to BBQ some beef and have rice and veggies on the side. We figured that couldn't cost too much, so we ordered it. Then the waitress told us we had to order a hot pot soup too. We really didn't want a soup, but we ordered it anyway to appease our waitress. After we were finished with our beef the waitress came back to ask us what we wanted to eat next. At this point she either thought we were really hungry, rich or this was some kind of buffet restaurant. With a bit of miming we got her to explain that the whole menu was "one price" and promptly ordered about 6 more dishes! If we could read Chinese the buffet feature of this restaurant probably would have been pretty obvious (for all I know the word "buffet" is in the store name), but alas we remained out of the loop.

So after supper, we waddled down the street to a park a few minutes away from our apartment, where we had heard some action going down earlier in the evening. Talk about being out of the loop- I have no idea what was going on at the park! There were two stages on either side of the park. On one stage was a bunch of monks chanting while sitting like they were waiting to take your phone call donation on some kind of telethon. The monks were throwing something (food, I think) and some people in the crowd had upside down umbrellas to catch as much as possible. Greedy!

Monk video.


On the other stage was this hot number (above)... a possible tranny (?) performing traditional music with another woman. The two stages were so close together that the noises coming from both was pretty much indistinguishable. We spent our time watching the tranny.


In between the two stages there were enough card tables to put a flea market to shame. There were people walking around with insense (and they weren't hippies!), there were paper dragons and boats everywhere, and ladies were splashing each other with water. The card tables were covered in food.

Some of the food was pretty fresh and jolly looking.


Then a guy hopped on the table and started cutting it up.

After we got home I hit up google to try and connect the dots on this mystery, but I'm still not sure what was being celebrated at the park. I think it might have something to do with a moon festival, but that shouldn't be for another few weeks, though some of the celebrations seem similar. Whatever it was... it was pretty cool. Supper was awesome and the park was... interesting so I guess tonight goes to show that you don't really have to be in the loop to have fun.

Please enjoy some beautiful music:

UPDATE: These events have been confirmed by our neighbors as being a celebration of the last day of Ghost Month. We can pack up the Mystery Machine and cancel our appointments with Jessica Fletcher now.