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Traveling back down memory lane. In Hong Kong in '72, I went with a bunch of guys to the "Yaqui Restaurant." It may the one you mentioned above. It was in the ladder street section of Hong Kong. All the streets were like stair cases. We went down, what I remember, as alleys that were like walking on steps and then up a wooden stair on the side of a building and through a door into this really cool Chinese restaurant. The "Yaqui." It was reviewed by Playboy. I think that is how one of the guys knew about it. We ate, or tried to eat, a 10 course Chinese dinner and they only had chop sticks to eat with. I was having a heck of a time eating. It was around the fifth course when they served some little shrimp things that were curled and I could stick the chop stick in the middle to pick it up and eat it. They also served us these eggs that had been allow to set out until the got really bad looking. They looked like boiled eggs but the yolk was green and the what should have been the white was a translucent yellow and they smelled rotten. It was a great restaurant but I almost didn't get any thing to eat. Lucky, they had not had a ton of fried rice.
It wasn't too long after that, like a true American, I found a place called the San Francisco Steak House in Kowloon. That became my place to eat -American style steaks and very well cooked. I guess I could have continued to sample the local the "exotic" foods, but I needed something that I was familiar with.
I have spurts of memory. Some things I remember well (sober) and other things I can't really pin down (drunk). I wish I had spent more time sober. I would have a lot of really cool memories now. I do remember my most exciting liberty boat ride in Hong Kong, this also happened in '72. I was riding a Chinese launch back from the China Fleet Club to the ship. It was night, raining, windy and choppy. The boat must have been about 30 feet long with a wooden pilot house and the back was covered with canvas stretched over a metal tube frame. It was full of drunk and half drunk Long Beach sailors. We were all standing and holding an over head bar and that little boat was rolling over until water splashed over the sides and under the canvas. Rain blew in through the openings in the canvas and the wind kept blowing the canvas open. It was a wild ride. It had a few naked electric lights, that provide just enough light to see by. The boat was rolling the sailors were laughing and shifting back and forth to try to keep the boat level and the Chinese captain, who probably weighed 90 pounds, was sitting on a stool steering with his feet and smoking a cigarette. I was near the front and could look into the pilot house and see the Captain and the mate; who was cranking a hand driven windshield wiper so they could see out. Looking back it was an accident waiting to happen.