Eric Vs. Beijing - Round 2 - Breakfast

我饿了. That means: "I'm hungry." This was my thought this morning.

Actually, that's not really true. My first thought was "why is the light still on?" Yup, I passed out last night dressed and with the lights still on. Unfortunately, it was only four in the morning local time so I went back to sleep for a couple more hours.

Then I woke up and was very hungry. Granted, I had a bit of left over dinner, a scallion pancake thing, but that hardly held me. So I gathered up my courage to go foraging. Sunny had shown me a market by my hotel, like an honest to God grocery store. I passed by but it looked quite closed so I decided to go back to the shopping area I'd found the day prior.

Find it I did. I also found this big market in a huge warehouse. I wandered around, getting a lot of stares, looking for something that looked ready to eat. It looked like everything was in its raw form so after a few rounds I decided to make my exit. I'll say this: the market had all manner of fresh groceries as well as an ample "stuff" section and nothing quite smells like a Chinese fish market.

I realized that I'm still too nervous to try and get vendor food from this place. There was TONS of food and even more people trying to buy it. I couldn't identify it and didn't want to hold up the line. Fucking Laowai (foreigner).

I made my way back towards my hotel and saw a line forming outside of the grocers so I figured it would open soon. That's when I noticed the cafe. A cafe that served coffee. Score. I went in and simply ordered "coffee" and the woman at the cash register gave me a menu. I saw that they had  hazelnut coffee, one of my favorite things, and pointed at that. Hell, it was the same price as the plain coffee (eight yuan) so why not. The waitress pulled out a calculator and entered "8." I gave her a hundred yuan note (the smallest thing I have other than three singles) and got change.

My coffee and I went to the grocery store next door which was already very full and very loud. Seriously, I walked in and took the escalator upstairs and found myself in the produce/ butcher. Everyone was shouting. The butcher, the bakers, the customers, the stocking clerks. And again:  nothing here looked ready to eat except some of the bakery stuff. There was a huge line and I didn't want to interfere so I made my way down stairs to the dry goods, stuff, and refridgerated sections. Again, nothing that looked good to eat right away so I snuck out the "Exit, No Purchase" line.

I continued wandering, long since out of coffee, until I finally settled on a street vendor. Despite the warnings of my travel guide to avoid vendors I did the quick check: everything looked clean, a fair few people stopped to place their order before going into the market it was outside of, and the food looked fresh. Also: there was no meat so that was one big risk factor avoided. I stood there and she just started making the... Whatever it was. It was a layer of batter cooked very thin, then en egg cracked in the middle and spread over the whole thing, flipped over, smeared with three of these brownish pastes. She asked if I wanted the red one which looked very, very spicy so I declined. Then a toss of two herbs, one was a mystery, the other was cilantro, some lettuce, and two crispy wontons. Then the whole thing was folded up burrito style. Four yuan. 

If you've been keeping track: that's eight for coffee, four for my crepe-omelet-burrito, and then three for the grape fruit tea I bought from the newspaper stand outside my hotel. A delicious, light, breakfast all for fifteen yuan. Less than three dollars. I see why so many people eat out.

Todays agenda: apartment hunting. Still waiting to hear from the guy who's supposed to lead that excursion so I guess I'll just keep wandering.

Here goes nothing.