Cycle 5 – Item 272
4 (Sat) October 2014
Char Koay Teow
3.0
at La Cafe
(Laguna Hotel)
-Waigini, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea-
with CAL
Mission to Papua New Guinea (Day 2)
- Day 1 (5.271 Beef Caldereta)
- Day 2 (5.272 Char Koay Teow)
- Day 3 (5.273 Beefs Burger)
- Day 4 (5.274 Steak & Chips)
- Day 5 (5.275 Tofu with Vegetables in Clay Pot)
- Day 6 (5.276 Tuna Sashimi)
- Day 7 (5.277 Local Lunch!)
- Day 8 (5.278 Local Lunch Again!)
In Port Moresby. Here to provide technical/legal support to the National Department of Health in updating their tobacco legislation, which hasn’t been touched since 1987 – nice work if you can get it. Uncertain, however, about dining prospects for the week.
HOTEL
We’re staying at Laguna Hotel.
It just opened a few months ago. Very modern and swanky. Quiet – too quiet.
The internet at the hotel is absurdly expensive. After 50 MB free per day, additional data costs 1 PGK (1 Papua New Guinean kina = about 40 cents) per 1 MB. To put that into perspective, in this day of graphic-heavy interfaces, 50 MB (about 20 USD) allows for perusal of maybe 1 website and 2 emails.
Ordinarily, spending extra time in a new country would be a good thing.
In Papua New Guinea, however, due to security concerns, official policy prohibits us from traveling anywhere unless in a WHO or UN vehicle. High inflation, high unemployment, low police enforcement = high crime rate, much of it violent. WHO staff members in the country office, all victims of incidents at one point or another, pay $50,000 or more a year to live in buildings with armed guards. They’re also granted R&R leave every 3 months. Upon arrival, CAL and I were given walkie-talkies, each assigned a call number (mine is “Hotel 92” – everyone from WHO gets “H/otel” for “health”), and briefed on how to call in a UN security team in the event, say, of getting carjacked or mobbed. PNG is the only country in our Region with such protocols; in other Regions, the protocols apply to countries like Afghanistan and Syria.
The point is that we can’t explore the country in our spare time.
Second, the restaurants here, at least any restaurant where an expat/tourist could reasonably/safely be expected to go, such as restaurants in hotels/malls, generally tend not to serve local cuisine. The sole restaurant at Laguna Hotel offers Euro/American and Malaysian dishes only (for whatever reason, Malaysians own a lot of businesses in the country).
DINNER
The food at La Cafe was okay, fortunately. I anticipate many meals here.
One difference between Singaporean and Malaysian char kway/koay /kuay teow, other than spelling, would seem to be that the former involves cooking the sprouts during the stir-fry process, while the latter adds the sprouts raw at the end – or maybe that’s just here.
(See also BOOZE)
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)
(See also RESTAURANTS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA)
