Don't Trust the Chicken - Tre

    I guess I'm supposed to write on this blog. I'm not really sure what to say, because we haven't really done anything worth noting yet. 

    In the past three days, I have spent about 24 hours on planes. We've been traveling at odd hours: getting up early to catch planes and not getting back until late. And that's not even mentioning the time differences. 

    Right now we're on the island of Tahiti, part of a tropical country called French Polynesia. A lot of people have heard of Tahiti, but it's not really what I expected. I thought it was going to be pretty touristy, and it is in some ways, but it also shows a different side of island life that I'm not used to seeing. The place we're in right now, Papeete, is dirtier than I expected. There's trash in the gutters, and lots of tin-roofed sheds.

    We landed in Tahiti the night of December 30th, and we are leaving around noon on New Year's eve. So of course, I don't have the most accurate picture of Tahiti. But from what I've seen so far, Tahiti has a few expensive enclaves full of tourists and hotels. These tourism-based resorts are surrounded by places like where we are now. 

    I'll try to give you an accurate picture of Tahiti in as few words as possible: We'll start with Hawaii, because it's a tropical place many of the people reading will be familiar with. Now, make it dirtier, not as perfect and pristine. Gather all the tourists into a few gigantic seaside resorts. Now make it 85 degrees outside. Fahrenheit, because I'm assuming everyone reading is a weird American, who refuses to use any unit of measurement that isn't totally arbitrary and different from the measurements of the rest of the world. And lastly, make everyone speak French. Yes, I'm serious. 15,895 miles from France, on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific, they speak French. You would think that I might've realized since it's called French Polynesia.

    I think that's pretty much everything. Oh, except for the chicken. I nearly forgot. I can't have you leaving before you hear about the chicken.

    Okay, so we landed at seven in the evening. By the time we got settled into our hotel, it was approaching closing time for most of the restaurants in the area. We found a Chinese place a few streets over that hadn't closed yet. It seemed pretty nice, the tables weren't sticky and the waitress spoke some English. So we ordered, trying to keep to pretty normal food, because you never know what you'll get on a tiny island. My mom, sister, and I got some wontons, which were edible. My dad ordered a chicken dish with a ginger scallion sauce, which seemed like a pretty safe bet. Ginger scallion sauce is like the most common sauce ever, and how can you mess up chicken? 

    When the food came to the table, the waitress placed a giant plate of chicken in front of my dad. It was an enormous pile of chicken. And it wasn't chicken breasts. Or wings. Or legs. Actually, I didn't know what it was. It looked like someone had cooked a chicken whole and cut it into slices. If you poked at it, you could find skin, bones, tendons, white meat, dark meat, and everything in between. He was a pretty good sport about it, and he picked at some of the more edible pieces. I'm pretty sure he pulled out a beak at one point. 

    Anyways, there you have it. We've taken some very long plane rides, gone to San Francisco for a day (It was a little bit disappointing, and we never saw the Golden Gate Bridge because it was overcast and pouring rain the whole time. Luckily it was just a layover), and we had a disastrous attempt at chicken dinner. 

See you all later, 

-Tre Peterson 

***Update: After our time in Vietnam, I've seen a lot of random cuts and cooking techniques, and I have determined that you may now be able to trust the chicken. You just have to look it in the eye (because the eye may very well be on the plate) and see if it seems trustworthy. There is actually a Singaporean dish where the chicken is served skin on, and they go for a gelatinous layer of fat between the skin and meat. If that sounds appetizing to anyone, text me and I'll ship you some. Hopefully the postal workers aren't hungry.