She's baaaaaack

Hi everyone,
well, I got back from Guam yesterday, which was ... interesting. Firstly, as you may or may not be aware, Guam is US territory with a significant portion of the island devoted to military bases. Very exciting. Even less exciting is that the majority of the tourist areas around where we, and as it seems all outsiders, stay in Tumon Bay was made up of American franchises and designer shops.

Having said that, it was somehow comforting to be surrounded by english speakers, english street signs and, bless, something other than Japanese cuisine or a very pale imitation of "western" foods such as pasta... I don't want to talk about it. In Japan, very curiously, even though garlic is readily available, they don't use it in Italian cooking!

Anyway, the food was very nice, but I am in no doubt now as to the reason the US has such a massive (no pun intended) obesity problem. We, being used to Japanese portions (bordering on miserly), ordered mains and side dishes everytime (not, we didn't learn after the first experience), only to be faced with a veritable mountain of food everytime. One lunch we had Mexican and after stuffing ourselves with corona, fajitas, salad and tacos, Stu made the rather unfortunate decision to also order dessert, Normally when you order cheesecake, you get a slice right? Not so at Marty's, 5, yes, 5 small cheesecakes were presented to Stu. We thought there must have been some mistake, but apparently this was the norm. Stu did his best to down them, but could only make it through 3 and a half. He looked quite green afterwards. I'm not surprised, he's not exactly a large man.

Apart from gross quantities of food, for which my regimen will be paying a high price over the next few weeks, we shopped, swam, and even hired a car to go around the island. More on this later. Love Mez