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Today, we braved rain and wind and trekked out to Sha Tin in the New Territories. We visited the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery, a peaceful retreat with bamboo groves, pagodas, and pavilions to which people bring food for their ancestors to enjoy in the afterlife.

Walking around the compound, I saw that many of the offerings that been ransacked, with plates and half-eaten food all over the ground. Vagabonds? Bandits? How disrepectful, I thought.

The answer came face to face with me once I turned a corner. A wild monkey was sitting outside one of the pavilions, munching on a pink bun. We stared at each other for a few minutes, me in awe and him stuffing his face. Then his friend appeared, as if telling him, Psst...let's wait 'till these humans are gone, then come back. The two disppeared over the roof of the pavilion.

Sure enough, once we pretended to walk away, the monkeys came back and took some more food before retreating back onto the roof.

I recounted the story to my relatives over dinner. "Oh yeah, Monkey Mountain is just behind the Monastery," my aunt said matter-of-factly. "They're probably stealing food because it's too cold to forage."

Well, I guess monkeys need to eat too.

And apparently wild monkeys sightings in Hong Kong are quite commonplace, like in this photo (scroll about 1/3 down).

 

Talk about fusion. Since we couldn't get turkey in Beijing, we celebrated Thanksgiving with another bird that's easier to find here.

We ate at Bianyifang in Chongwen District and ordered a roast duck that came with different condiments than usual. Instead of the usual pancakes we got carrot and celery flavored ones. Instead of scallions and cucumber we got sprouts and radish leaves. Maybe they should have renamed it California-style duck. At least the hoisin sauce was the same.

Bianyifang Roast Duck Restaurant
2A Chongwenmenwai Dajie
Chongwen District, Beijing

On our way to buy subway passes yesterday, Jacob and I passed a woman making jiān bǐng, one of Beijing's many common snacks sold on the street. Not hungry but unable to resist the aroma, we stopped and bought one for 2.50 yuan (35 cents US).

Jiān bǐng is a crepe-like snack typically found only in the north. The jiān-bǐng-maker first pours small amount of batter onto a hot griddle, and smoothes it out with a metal spatula. She then adds egg and scallions, flips it over, brushes on hoisin sauce and chili paste, and folds it up. Most vendors, like the one we bought from yesterday, will also add a large piece of fried dough in the middle. Crispy, savory, and warm - all good qualities for a cold weather road-side snack.

As promised, the video of the big fried balloon-like puffs at Zhongshan's Shiqi Lao. Bonus: a fish flopping out of a bucket.

Hong Kong recently introduced plastic currency in an effort to make bills more durable. For now they only have plastic $10 bills ($1.29 USD at the current exchange rate), but they're fun to play with and are even see-through.

Shanghai's Yuyuan Bazaar is best known as a marketplace for all the souvenirs and tsotchkes you could want. It is also a haven for street food: soup dumplings, sweets, even birds-on-a-stick. Weekends are especially crowded, when even neighborhood grannies and little kids jostle with tourists to be next in line.

Our journey from New York began on July 31st. After spending a frenzied month packing, giving away 90% of our possessions, and saying good-bye to friends and family in New York and Boston, we hopped on a train bound for Florida, the first destination in our passage to China.

The decision to leave was not an easy one. After all, we had only been in our nice new apartment for 10 months, just settling in. Better professional opportunities were beginning to present themselves. New York was home. So, then, why leave?

The dilemma we faced is a common one shared by many 20- and 30-somethings who are "still young": to settle into a niche that is comfortable, or to abandon comfort in favor of an exciting, though terrifyingly uncertain path.

Plenty of people lead wonderfully rich lives without ever living abroad. I was already in an ever-changing and ever-surprisingly city. A city full of amazing people, culture, and food, and enough material for any budding writer to fill up a lifetime's worth of books. The fear that haunted me for over a year was that if I left, I would miss out on New York.

Then another realization fought back, and won. If I stayed in New York, I would miss out on the rest of the world.

And so the adventure begins.

On Jacob's to-do list before we left New York was to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island, the world's oldest wooden roller coaster. (Get there quick, kids. The Cyclone will still be up after they tear down Astroland, but riding in against the backdrop of luxury condos will be kind of lame.)

The sea of people on the ground were there for M.I.A. at the Siren Music Festival.

A month ago while visiting Scandinavia, we took a two day detour to Lübeck, Germany, a stop on many bike tour maps. Jacob, ever-restless, began hopping over bike racks. No bikes were harmed in the filming of this piece.

To go from Lübeck, Germany to Copenhagen, we took a train that had to cross water. Being naïve, we thought that either there be a bridge, or passengers would disembark the train and get on a ferry. Little did we know the entire train would just roll onto the ferry. The Europeans onboard gave us a look that read, "Vat? How elz do you get a train over vater if you don't put it on ze boat?"