steamboat on a wintry night…

yes, winter. that’s what we call it here, although normally winter will conjure up images of snow, and snow is certainly not gonna start falling in dubai anytime soon! it’s just that the weather has changed to be very nice and cool, with the temperature of most nights to be around 20 - 24 deg C and daytime temperature at around 27 - 28 deg C. of course, i don’t have a thermometer, so this is according to yahoo! weather forecast. heck, even my apartment air-cond temperature (28 deg C) is higher than the temperature outside! when i step outside at 8am in the morning, even with the sun blazing, the air feels like a big giant air-cond has been switched on somewhere!


anyway, as we just received our monthly salary and seeing that tomorrow is a public holiday (UAE 39th national day), my colleague (a chinese national) and i decided to go for some chinese steamboat (or “hot pot” as they call it here). my colleague brought me to this restaurant near the creek (seems like all the chinese restaurants are concentrated near the creek area, huh?) called xiaowei yang, assuring me that it’s the most authentic chinese steamboat that she’s tried in sandland so far. all their waiters and waitresses are chinese nationals, and the kitchen staff too (i made sure to take a peek in their kitchen).

yun-yeong (yin and yang) hot pot with spicy chicken… yun-yeong, you ask? wait lar, read the story further…

first, we ate the chicken straight from the pot and ignore the white soup next to it. it was cooked in dried chilly and was damn spicy! below the chicken are a bed of bamboo shoots and some black fungus. spicy, but sedap!

see the round dark brown thing at the bottom? that’s the little round chilly (dried) that they used to cook the chicken!

after we can’t eat anymore chicken, the waitress came to scoop out the chicken from the pot onto a plate. then she added some red and brown powder mixture into the pot and poured in the soup.

now this baru considered yun-yeong, right? :P i’ve never tasted both the soups before. the cheng-tong (clear soup) is just like some watery bone soup, while the spicy soup is just… spicy! i can’t even make out its taste. i guess the best steamboats are still in malaysia!

the dishes that we ordered for our steamboat… quite big portions!

in the end, we didn’t finish the food and had to ta-pao (pack home) the leftovers. initially there were supposed to be 5 of us, but 3 of my colleagues had to work late. anyway, seeing that i just got my first full salary (last month was just partial due to my joining date), i decided to treat my colleague, who’s actually the graphics artist under me. total bill came up to 149 dirhams.

on our way to catch a cab home, we passed by this open park right next to the creek.

people in chinese costumes doing tai-chi! at 11.30pm! in dubai!

that guy in white was actually doing some moves with a fake chinese sword. all around the park, there were a lot of pinoys playing badminton, indians/pakistanis sitting or standing around, arabs having picnics on mats on the grass and right in the middle of it all, a group of chinese doing tai-chi! it was a rare sight indeed… :)