I found a Thai restaurant. Did I mention this before? It's located at the very northern end of the clubbing district in Nanjing, which is called 1912. It's really quite nice, supposed to be kind of an upper-class restaurant, but of course I do my very best to cheapen the place as much as I can.
They do have pad thai there, which is typically called "Thai shi" or written like this: 泰式(炒虾). The characters I put in parenthesis, "chao xia," means "fried shrimp," which is the variety that they have on the menu. Of course, I really dislike shrimp, so I asked them if they could replace it with chicken. When I tried this same maneuver in Shanghai with Hokwan, it worked perfectly fine.
I didn't know it would be a problem, though. One of the waitresses was quite insistent that they could not do it. This seemed ridiculous to me. They have chicken on the menu. They can take that chicken, and put it into this food. It's simple mathematics, really. Anyway, on the first night I went there, I ended up getting something that I thought was beef pad thai, which doesn't really exist, and of course I was very wrong.
This time I had a better excuse (or so I thought). I told them that I wanted that, but that I was allergic to shrimp, so could I replace it with chicken? They didn't seem to understand me when I said the Chinese word for chicken, so I tried it again more forcefully, and the waitress seemed to understand. But then the forceful young waitress from last time approached the table and said it was impossible. So I just had it with no chicken and no shrimp.
Like I said, I do my best to cheapen the place, but tonight I made some mistakes. Really, they made the mistakes, though. They put an appetizer on my table basically without asking, which is a very cheap thing in general so I assumed that probably it was free if you ordered an actual entree. They also put a wet towel on the table, also without asking, which I never touched.
When I left, they charged me an extra 5R for the appetizer and 2R for the towel. They also didn't reduce the price at all for not including the shrimp. I know that the amount of money involved is very small, but it seemed like an especially dick move to pull that on someone who didn't speak your language. I was pretty angry at them, but what could I do? I guess bitch about them on the internet. Oh, well.
//
Remember Taj Mahal? Well, I noticed another sign that had the character 泰 in it on our street today. I was on my way back to the school when I noticed it across the street and thought to myself, ooohhhh, that's the red and yellow sign they meant! After stopping in the Suguo (Nanjing's awful version of Wawa), I headed down there to check it out.
As I approached, a family sitting in a room right outside what appeared to be the entrance noticed me, and the woman came out, probably about 50 years old. She asked me what I was doing in Chinese, which I didn't really understand. I stumbled through my explanation, because I hadn't been prepared for this. "I don't know how to say this in Chinese. Oh, um.... Thailand restaurant??" They spoke, and also pantomimed sleeping. I got the picture and said, "Oh, okay. I saw 'tai'." And another woman responded in Chinese, "No, hong tai." Which means, of course, hotel or motel.
Peace out.
They do have pad thai there, which is typically called "Thai shi" or written like this: 泰式(炒虾). The characters I put in parenthesis, "chao xia," means "fried shrimp," which is the variety that they have on the menu. Of course, I really dislike shrimp, so I asked them if they could replace it with chicken. When I tried this same maneuver in Shanghai with Hokwan, it worked perfectly fine.
I didn't know it would be a problem, though. One of the waitresses was quite insistent that they could not do it. This seemed ridiculous to me. They have chicken on the menu. They can take that chicken, and put it into this food. It's simple mathematics, really. Anyway, on the first night I went there, I ended up getting something that I thought was beef pad thai, which doesn't really exist, and of course I was very wrong.
This time I had a better excuse (or so I thought). I told them that I wanted that, but that I was allergic to shrimp, so could I replace it with chicken? They didn't seem to understand me when I said the Chinese word for chicken, so I tried it again more forcefully, and the waitress seemed to understand. But then the forceful young waitress from last time approached the table and said it was impossible. So I just had it with no chicken and no shrimp.
Like I said, I do my best to cheapen the place, but tonight I made some mistakes. Really, they made the mistakes, though. They put an appetizer on my table basically without asking, which is a very cheap thing in general so I assumed that probably it was free if you ordered an actual entree. They also put a wet towel on the table, also without asking, which I never touched.
When I left, they charged me an extra 5R for the appetizer and 2R for the towel. They also didn't reduce the price at all for not including the shrimp. I know that the amount of money involved is very small, but it seemed like an especially dick move to pull that on someone who didn't speak your language. I was pretty angry at them, but what could I do? I guess bitch about them on the internet. Oh, well.
//
Remember Taj Mahal? Well, I noticed another sign that had the character 泰 in it on our street today. I was on my way back to the school when I noticed it across the street and thought to myself, ooohhhh, that's the red and yellow sign they meant! After stopping in the Suguo (Nanjing's awful version of Wawa), I headed down there to check it out.
As I approached, a family sitting in a room right outside what appeared to be the entrance noticed me, and the woman came out, probably about 50 years old. She asked me what I was doing in Chinese, which I didn't really understand. I stumbled through my explanation, because I hadn't been prepared for this. "I don't know how to say this in Chinese. Oh, um.... Thailand restaurant??" They spoke, and also pantomimed sleeping. I got the picture and said, "Oh, okay. I saw 'tai'." And another woman responded in Chinese, "No, hong tai." Which means, of course, hotel or motel.
Peace out.
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