At night 10-20 tricycle based food stands suddenly appear and line the sidewalks outside the dormitory gates. For less than half a dollar you can get a serving of either fried joazi, fried noodles, grilled vegetables and meat, squid on a stick, popcorn, sticky rice, stinky tofu, an egg concoction that sort of resemble a really thin omelet and other things that I cannot recognize and/or describe.
When Paula and I were tourists in ’04 we were warned about eating street food and I have generally heeded that warning but the smells and the low, low prices were just too good too pass up anymore. We had to walk by the various tricycle restaurants a couple of times to figure out which ones we would be brave enough to try. I have fallen in love with a pita type sandwich with grilled chicken, garlic shoots, romaine lettuce and a great brown paste slathered onto the bread. Other than the live snail that Andrea found in her lettuce – we haven’t seen anything else or experienced any ill-effects that would encourage us to curtail our street food love affair.
Side Note: Major depression – Government Officials have been hanging out at the West Gate for the last 4 nights so the Street Food Vendors have been hiding out at another college. I am missing my Chicken thingy. Students have told me the govn. officials will go away at some point in time and the tricycles will return, but I am not the most patient person in the world when it comes to food.
