10 April 1999 – Once we checked into our hotel around 7 p.m., Jim and I headed for the night market and ran into our translator Mr. Yuan and invited him to join us for dinner. We ate noodle soup and steamed rice. The soup was the spiciest we’ve had to date and I loved the flavor, but the noodles were the first in my life that I didn’t like. They tasted like chewy seaweed. I ate a few but ended up dumping the liquid from my soup into the rice. We drank bing pijoo (cold beer), which was superb since it was the first really cold beer we’d had in weeks.