August 17th, 2010

I'm currently sitting in 'Lei Cafe' in Beijing airport, being distracted from my nightmarish trip to Korea by possibly the most bizarre 'fruit salad' I've ever had the questionable fortune of eating.

Having been held up so long at Chinese immigration that I missed my connecting flight to Seoul and thus my connecting bus to my university orientation in Jeonju, I thought I would take the time to sit down, and drown my sorrows with a nice cup of coffee and a nice bit of fruit salad.

The fruit salad comes out and it looks incredible. A huge bowl topped with bright red watermelon and a red oval thing. I'm quite excited when I see the red oval thing as I think it must be one of these crazy exotic asian fruits that you always hear about. I eat it first because I'm so excited... It's a tomato.

My brain is struggling to function as it's the equivalent of 4:15am for me and I've been awake for the last 22 hours. But it's definitely a raw tomato. But ok, I think, technically they are within their rights to include a tomato in a fruit salad. It is a fruit after all. So I put this to one side for now and dig into the rest to the bowl.

The topping of watermelon is deliciously crunchy and sweet. My confidence is restored. As I spy the next layer I start to get excited again. It seems to be made up of dragon fruit (or is it kiwi) and mango. I don't know how much the 18RMT I've just paid for this salad is but suddenly it seems like a bargin. I start to think that perhaps I've misjudged this country. Maybe China isn't so bad after all.

Then I start to eat. Firstly the mango isn't mango. I don't know what it is. It's too crunchy to be mango, too tasteless and dense to be pineapple (melon?). I'm left slightly puzzled, but quite frankly, that is the least of my worries. My main concern is that the entire bowl underneath the watermelon and tomato layer, is swimming in what I believe to be salad cream.

I'm practically delirious with fatigue . I turn to the waitress with a look of desperation. She looks at me smiling and nodding, obviously happy with my progress so far. I look back at my bowl of salad cream then back to the waitress. She's still nodding and smiling. Now slightly hysterical, I nod back and start laughing uncontrollably. I stab a salad cream drenched yellow cuboid and stuff it into my mouth. Most of it dribbles out of the side of my mouth as I'm laughing so hard.

The waitress disappears probably to compliment the chef on his fine work. I leave feeling decidedly more upbeat, confident that, I'm ready for whatever Korea can throw at me.