Well, it was a pretty uneventful Thanksgiving, as Thanksgiving is wont to be in Taiwan. It isn’t particularly celebrated, although the Taiwanese do have a name for it: [hanzi]æ„Ÿæ©èŠ‚[/hanzi] (gÇŽnÄ“njié).
If you have been reading the Taipei Times, you may know that the Kaohsiung Ambassador Hotel, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, was holding an American Food Festival. Here’s the clipping from the paper:
We managed to convince Miss Expatriate’s parents to try it out. It was quite expensive at about NT$650/person for the buffet (A little more than US$22), but there was a nice selection. It wasn’t particularly American. There was turkey and roast beef. There was also pumpkin pie. The rest, however, seemed oddly normal. Steamed shrimp, Sushi/sushi rolls, Italian noodles, french deserts, etc etc. All in all, it was way too expensive for quite mediocre food.
It was, however, festive. The hotel was quite patriotic, as you can see from the coasters:
The waitresses, as you can see in the ad, were also very patriotic. Yes, they really did wear American flag bandannas and red cowboy hats with sheriff stars on them.
Overall, I wasn’t impressed. The pumpkin pie did, however, more than make up for it. For a few minutes, it almost felt like being home.
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