i know i know i know. but the thing is i like food, like, a LOT. so i think about it a lot. seriously, sometimes I stop and think about how much of my brainspace is spent thinking about food, and I despair, and then I remember that it could be full of trivia about 80s cartoons or something, and I recover a little bit... but only a little bit. anyway what I'm saying is I'm sorry that I think so much about food that even my blog about travel is mostly about food.
but anyway, TODAY, at a classy little japanese seafood place, while I floundered (ha!) my way around the massive menu, I was thinking about how great it is that food here is so cheap. (Note: when I say cheap, I mean for me, with my American dollars. on a semi-regular basis food prices in the Philippines rise to a point that puts serious pressure on the poorer classes of society, so even though the Philippines produces enough food to feed its own population, and foreigners find food prices extremely low, i'm not comfortable calling food cheap without this qualifying note. i mean even with the qualifying note i'm kind of uncomfortable talking about how cheap things are for me here but... well... here i go.)
so there's the obvious benefit, which is the same as the housing being relatively cheap, which is - duh - that my trip is way cheaper than if I were, say, traveling around Australia interviewing activists or something. but there is an unexpected benefit to food being cheap - I don't have to decide what to eat on my own!
Because here's the thing. In my normal life, I am a vegetarian, which usually makes it way easier to pick what to eat at restaurants - find the three or four vegetarian options, choose the least-lame-sounding, done! But here, since I am eating all manner of animals, it's completely overwhelming. The menus are pages and pages of possibilities, half of them completely unknown to me, and I don't know what to do. But I figured it out! I have a strategy! I ask the waiter, "What's best?" And I order that!
Novel, right? Completely astonishing? for me... yes! And totally liberating! Especially since they almost always pick things I would never have chosen myself. Sometimes they pick things not even listed on menus or specialty boards.
Of course, they also almost always pick one of the more expensive items the restaurant serves. But (and i get back to my point) food here is so cheap that, after hemming and hawing, I stop and tell myself, "You know, Camila, you can probably afford to spend $7 on dinner instead of $2." (And yes, I have had really amazing meals here for $2. Not just good - amazing). And while I love me some greasy, grungy low-budget restaurants - and have had some great dinners at those places - I don't just have to stick to the obviously cheap locations, because an expensive meal - i'll say it again - seven dollars. Seriously, as long as I avoid the restaurants catering to foreigners and go where the locals say to eat, I can buy anything on the menu and not even blink.
what I'm saying is that, because food here is absurdly cheap, I can afford to eat out every night. I can afford to eat out every night at the best restaurants in town. I can afford to go to the best restaurants in town and order whatever my waiter identifies as the best dish they make - every. single. night. and despite those pages of menus, i don't have to decide a dang thing, and i always get something amazing.
is... is this what life is like for the filthy rich? because let me tell you what, my life right now is DELICIOUS.
(oh, and at the japanese place? i got some kind of sushi... couldn't tell you what it was except that part of it was purple and the sushimaster dude said something about a shell and that it was "so fresh, ma'am, so fresh." and daaaaang was it good. and then local-catch sashimi. life by the sea!)
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