The Kuwait Diaries - Part Three Iraqi Kebobs & Hummus

The next day Dan picked up my field pass from KOC. KOC also explained that it would take too long to get Basel his security pass, so Napesco put Basel on a plane flight back to Jordan. Politics. Sigh! It’s too bad, he was a great guy, I liked him. I was really looking forward to working with Basel. I’d love to work with him someday.

Hookah pipe

Basel and I spent the afternoon before he left shopping for trinkets to take home. I bought some gold necklaces and bracelets for my mom, sister, daughter and little nieces. When we were done, we went to this little cafe in the al Kout shopping center.  We had coffee/hot chocolate and they served shisha as well. Shisha is a syrupy tobacco mix smoked in a hookah pipe. They have all different flavors of shisha: orange, apple, grape, guava, lemon, mint as well as some strange ones like white gummy bear (that’s a little racist, no black gummy bear flavor?). Basel smoked the grape flavor. They bring you a couple of plastic tip covers so you can share, Basel asked me if I wanted to give it a go, but I explained I couldn’t. It would be like him eating pork.  However, if I’d known then that there was gummy bear flavor I would have had to try it. Ignorance apparently is a good thing. 

al Kout at sunset

The café proprietor brought the hookah over, covered the pipe bowl, which is loaded with the grape shisha, with a small piece of aluminum foil with five perforations. He returned a few minutes later carrying a basket with hot coals.  Carefully with tongs, he picked up lit coals, which he then placed on the foil above the five holes, which allows the tobacco to heat to the proper temperature without burning. The smoke travels through the cool water in the base, where it filtered out the impurities before it reached Basel.

Al Kout at night

The al Kout shopping center is two wings separated by a huge series of pools that have fountains that play along with music. The restaurants and cafés along the pools have outdoor seating to sit and enjoy the beauty of the music and fountains as they drink their coffee and smoke their shisha.

As it was Basel’s last night in Kuwait, we decided to go out for Basel’s favorite food. We thought to try a promising restaurant we found from a post card that fell out of the newspaper. We flagged down a taxi outside the hotel, but the taxi driver said he knew of a better place and dropped us off at a little hole-in-the-wall place in Fahaheel that had white crenellations like a castle on top. We went in and they put us in a booth where we reclined on the carpet propped up with a couple of big pillows. We ordered a couple of Pepsis (pop in Kuwait comes in these cute little Red Bull-sized cans) and hummus to start, with some kind of a family platter for the main dish. The waiter brought a plastic drop sheet to lie down between us and then brought the hummus and some flatbread. I asked Basel what they called their flatbread over there. Basel just looked at me funny and said, “Flat bread”. I know that sounds like a stupid question, but the Greeks have their pita, the Indians have roti and naan bread, so what the Arabic equivalent? Apparently, khoubz is the Arabic word for bread.

From al Kout looking west

The hummus had olive oil drizzled all over it. We took the flatbread, ripped off a chunk, dipped it into the hummus and olive oil and ate it. Now, I’ve had hummus many times before and wasn’t impressed. It was grainy, dull, rather tasteless and usually a little bitter. I had never liked it before. However, this stuff was amazing. It was delicious, light and airy and not a hint of bitterness. It was so smooth it was like butter. I couldn’t stop eating it.

Next, they brought the platter out. It had Iraqi kebabs, chicken and lamb tikka, grilled chicken, racks of lamb, tomatoes and onions and even some French fries thrown in for some reason. Maybe they thought I needed something that looked like regular food to me. The meal was accompanied by a funny yogurt dip I didn’t like very much and some odd pickles that I think were made with beets and squash, maybe zucchini.

the musical fountains

I asked about the kebab thing, isn’t kebab chunks of meat on a skewer? The Iraqi waiter was quite indignant. “NO! Kebab is kebab; meat on a skewer is tikka! They don’t know what they are talking about. Kebab is our word.” I looked it up, kebab comes from an old Sumerian word that means to burn or cook. They make up this delectable ground beef and lamb mixture that you form around wide skewers that almost look like swords. The fat in the ground lamb becomes liquid in the grilling process, drips off and leaves air pockets that make the kebabs light and fluffy. We broke off pieces of the flatbread, break off a chunk of kebab and then dredge the two in the hummus. It was so delicious. The lamb and chicken tikka was quite good as well. I ate until I was so stuffed I couldn’t move. They packaged the rest up for us and I ate for a couple of days on the remaining food.

Kebab family platter

  
I was so impressed with the kebabs in Kuwait that as soon as I got home, I was searching for recipes. I found one in particular I wanted to try, but finding ground lamb in Edmonton was nearly impossible. I finally found some at Hajar’s Halal Meats on the corner of 113A Street and 134 Avenue. He ground me up some lamb while I waited and then sold me some of his own kebab meat as well. He said next time to give him a call first and he would whip up his special recipe for me that was better than what he had on hand. 


Iraqi Kebabs

Ingredients
2 pounds ground beef
1 pound ground lamb
1 large onion, grated fine
2 small Roma-type tomatoes, chopped fine
½ cup flour
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
3 garlic cloves, minced or 1 Tablespoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sumac

Directions
1. Combine ingredients together. Mix well, cover with plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator for 3 hours.
2. Divide the mixture into 12 portions, and slide each portion onto an inch-wide metal skewer. With moistened hands, press the meat until it is about 8 inches long; make small dents in the meat by pressing between the thumb and index finger.
3. Place skewered meat about 3 inches above the coals. Grill for about 10 minutes, turning to brown on both sides, and fanning most of the time to prevent the fire from flaring and burning the meat. 
4. Once meat is done, remove from grill and sprinkle kebab with sumac. Serve!

*Don't worry about the fat in the meat. The fat particles melt and drip during grilling, leaving behind small cavities, which give kebab its characteristic light texture.

*Alternatively, if you don’t have flat metal skewers, you can also shape the meat into flattened torpedoes and cook right over the grill grid for about 5 minutes per side. If you use an instant-read thermometer to check doneness, the temperature should read 140°F. Remove from the grill and serve immediately.

*If using metal skewers, make sure they are dry and cold before pressing meat onto them. I like using metal skewers with wooden handles because the metal gets very hot. Do not oil the metal skewers, as this will prevent the meat from attaching.

*Keep your hands wet when handling the kebab mixture beef and it will not stick to your hands

*Sumac is a very interesting and exotic spice originating from Turkey. If you are having trouble finding it, you can find it at the Bulk Barn (5 locations in Edmonton). When mixed with water it can be used for the same purposes as lime juice, but will tint everything, including your teeth, purple! I wish I'd know about this in school. It would have made for some great pranks! Triple 0 gelatin capsules, check... sumac, check... inserting the filled capsules inside my sister's showerhead, check...

Hummus

Ingredients

1 16 oz can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans)

¼ to ½ cup plain yogurt

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

¼ cup tahini (sesame seed puree)

2 cloves garlic, crushed

½ teaspoons sea salt

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 Tablespoons tamari (soy sauce)

pinch of paprika

1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley

Directions

1. Drain chickpeas and rinse.

2. Combine chickpeas and remaining ingredients in blender or food processor. Blend for 3-5 minutes on low until thoroughly mixed and smooth.

3. Place in serving bowl, and create a shallow well in the center of the hummus.

4. Add a small amount (1-2 tablespoons) of olive oil in the well. Garnish with paprika and minced fresh parsley.

5. Serve immediately with fresh, warm or toasted flat bread, or cover and refrigerate.

*For a spicier hummus, add a sliced red chile or a dash of cayenne pepper.

The Kuwait - Diaries Part Two The Story of Om Ali

Basel smoking the hookah

Basel, my roommate and Senior Operator flew in from Jordan. We got acquainted and got to visit a little bit.  He lives in a city in northern Jordan, not far from the Syrian border but works as a slickline supervisor for al-Mansoori (which is a huge engineering firm in the middle east) in Abu Dhabi.  He works a 35 day on/35 day off schedule and was coming in on his days off to give Napesco a hand.  The United Arab Emirates is a coalition of seven emirates, or kingdoms that banded together when the British cut them loose in 1971.  The two largest and richest emirates are Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And that's a little confusing because they are not only provinces in the U.A.E., but capitol cities as well. And Abu Dhabi is also the capitol of the Emirates as well.  Because of their oil deposits, the Emirates are one of the richest places on earth and Basel runs a slickline crew out in the desert of Abu Dhabi.

In the oilfield in Canada and probably in the U.S. as well, we have this hurry-up, get-it-done attitude.  The job is paramount and we don't let anything get in the way.  Rick, my first boss in the 'patch used to call me up part way through a job and say, "Hurry, you're late!"  How can I be late?  I haven't finished this job yet!  "It doesn't matter, I told the rig you had already left."  I used to cuss him out something fierce in my head.  Stop doing that!  What if something goes wrong on this job.  It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings.  Then tell me I've got another job.

Things in the middle east operate on a completely different time scale.  Maybe it's the heat.  You can't push people or machinery too hard in those kind of temperatures and not expect some breakdowns.  However, I think the big difference is in the culture.  Over there what the Quran says is everything.  And according to the Quran, you don't get after people, don't embarrass them or push them. I'm not sure of the scripture, but from what I was told, how folks deal with each other is laid down pretty strict.  Consequently, things are pretty laid back.

Starbucks on the beach

Dan, Basel and I were ready to see the big Kahunas at the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) first thing Sunday morning (As Saturday is the sabbath, Sunday is the first business day of the week).  But for whatever reason, we got the brushoff for two days before we finally got into KOC.  We would have an appointment to see a Mr. al Holi at 9 AM, but get pushed off until afternoon or the next day.

So we would either go back to Dan's office or to the Starbucks on the beach, sit on the patio outside in the sun and drink coffee (and me and my hot chocolate).  Yeah, I know.  It seems a little insane to be sitting in the sun on a deck in 46 degree C weather (115 deg F). But they've got these cool three-foot-wide fans (literally cool) that have a mister in them, so you have this cool mist spraying on you as you sit in the sun.  It had to be the most strangely enjoyable sensation I've ever felt.  Drinking a hot beverage, sitting in the sun and being so completely cool at the same time.  In the words of Will Smith in the movie Independence Day, "I have got to get me one of these!"  They are awesome!

The boys at KOC sure took their sweet time getting around to things.  They blew us off for two-and-a-half days before we finally got in to see them. Finally, Tuesday afternoon, we were able to arrange an interview with Mr. al Holi, who I think was the head of production, Mr. Bohanna their in-house slickline guru and another big-wig who I'm not sure who he was (but he had the hardest-to-answer questions). I was peppered for about an hour with difficult questions about how I would attend to this or that problem in the field.  I then had to write a written test and was graded my Mr. Bohanna and finally told that I passed.  I was told that I could pick up my field pass in the morning.

Basel and Dan entering Napesco's head office

Basel went through a similar interview process, but was finally told that because he was from Jordan, he would not be given permission to go to the field.  I had high hopes that he would eventually be working with us as we had some high-level Kuwaitis involved in his behalf, but after another day or two of negotiations, he was eventually denied access and Napesco flew him home the next day.  The whole thing was a bit dumb because Napesco and other service companies have Jordanians on staff, but because Jordan is/was friendly to the Palestinians, any Jordanians have to go through an intensive screening process with the police to determine that they are not a threat and it takes several weeks for the screening, so he wouldn't get his field pass until after we were finished. The Kuwaiti people have a long memory and the fact that the Palestinians sided with Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War and Jordan is or was friendly with them meant that we weren't able to utilize Basel's skillset.

Monday we went to GDMC's yard to check out the truck that we would be using.  It was a Canadian-built slickline truck built by Dyna-Winch in Calgary with .108" slickline and 7/32" braided swab line on a split-drum and a four-speed hydraulic system.  Other than the two huge air conditioners on the roof instead on a little Coleman, it was virtually identical to what I've run in the past. Michel, the Slickline Manager at GDMC who was supplying the truck and equipment says they usually start at 5 AM to beat the heat and KOC won't let them work past noon.

There are some cool customs over there.  Most places you go, as soon as the plane takes off, when you arrive at the front desk of your hotel or at a restaurant, they offer you warm, moist towels to wash your hands, face and neck.  And you need it.  Walking around in 45 degree heat, I was sticky and it is was unbelievably refreshing to wipe all that sweat and grime off of you.  

Everywhere we went, every office has "tea boys".  They are grown men, some of them in their 60s and their job is to bring you tea, coffee or water and that's all they do.  The old tea boy in Dan's office would watch out the window and see us pull up in the parking lot and have a hot coffee on Dan's desk and a cold glass of water for me by my chair before we even got up to Dan's office.

Om Ali

I sampled the most amazing dessert I have ever had while in Kuwait.  It's an Egyptian dessert called Om Ali.  It's like a bread pudding but so much better.  It's made with puff pastry or phyllo dough, cooked in a custard with almond slices, pecans, pistachios, tiny green sultana raisins and flaked coconut.  Holy cow, it's the most amazing thing I have ever tasted!  There are two legends associated with the dessert.  One has it that Om Ali was the first wife of the Sultan Ezz El Din Aybek. When the sultan died, his second wife had a dispute with Om Ali, resulting in the second wife's death. To celebrate, Om Ali made this dessert and distributed it among the people of the land.  There's nothing like a dessert-to-die-for to celebrate murdering your political rival!

The second story is that the Sultan of Egypt was out touring his land and was suddenly famished.  He stopped at the nearest village and demanded some nourishment.  The people of the village turned to their best cook, Um Ali (literally translated as the mother of Ali) and she took what she had on hand. Which turned out to be some stale bread, some milk, sugar and some nuts and raisins. She made a custard and soaked the bread in it and added nuts and sultanas and cooked it in the village oven.  The sultan was so delighted with it, he asked for it every time he was in the area.

I was so enamored with the recipe, I had it nearly every night I was in Kuwait. As soon as I arrived back home in Canada, I looked it up and bought the ingredients. On the second Sunday of every month, all of our family in Edmonton gets together for a giant potluck dinner and we all sit around for hours visiting. I got back just in time for July's potluck, and Om Ali was the belle of the ball.

Om Ali

Ingredients

1 500g (17.5 oz.) package frozen phyllo dough, thawed
2/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup chopped pistachios
1/2 cup sultana raisins (golden)
1/2 cup flaked coconut
1-1/4 cups white sugar, divided
6 cups whole milk (I used goat milk, but homogenized is fine)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch of Cardamom
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
500mL (pint) whipping cream

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Butter a 9x13 baking dish.
2. Melt the 2/3 cup of butter in the microwave. Unroll the phyllo dough and cut the dough into smaller pieces.  With a pastry brush, paint each side of the sheets of phyllo dough with butter and drop onto a cookie sheet like wet rags.
3. Place the cookie sheets in the oven and bake at 350 degrees until the pastry turns a nice golden brown, about 20 minutes.
4. While the buttered dough is cooking, combine the milk, 3/4 cup of the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamon in a large pot and heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture comes to a boil.
5. While the milk is heating, in a mixing bowl, combine the almonds, pecans, pistachios, raisins and coconut together.
6. Whip the whipping cream and 1/2 cup of sugar together until they form stiff peaks.
7. While the milk is heating, crumble some of the baked phyllo sheets into the  baking dish. Once the bottom of the dish is covered with crumbled pastry, cover the pastry with a layer of nut mix.  Cover that with another layer of crumbled phyllo, then another layer of nut mix until all the ingredients have been used.
8. Once the milk has come to a boil, add the vanilla extract.  Then slowly pour the milk over the layered ingredients.
9. Preheat the oven up to 500 degree F.
10. Top the mixture with a layer of whipping cream.  Sprinkle with nutmeg
11. Bake at 500 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes until the top turns a deep golden brown.
12. Serve hot.

Note: This is the fixed version of the recipe. The version we had in July didn't have enough milk, so I added more. We had several people attending who were allergic to the pecans and pistachios, so we nixed them from the recipe for that gathering. And the original recipe had us using only half of the pint of whip cream and it definitely needed more. The phyllo dough wasn't quite right either. So I did some research, and I think this set of instructions will make it come out closer to what I experienced overseas. When you've tasted perfection, it's hard to tolerate anything else.

*Pistachios, for me at least, have to be the second funniest nut.  All I can think about every time I see a pistachio is Willie the Giant from Mickey and the Beanstalk (Fun and Fancy Free, 1947), "Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell... pot roast! Chocolate pot roast! ...with tispachio... dismashme... mismashme... with green gravy!"

The funniest nut in the whole world is, of course, the kukui nut. The state tree of Hawaii produces a nut also referred to as a candlenut as you can burn it like a candle. The kukui not only sounds funny, but ingested, is the world's most powerful natural laxative. They have a saying in Hawaii. You eat one kukui nut: you walk. Two kukui nuts: you run.  And three: Alooooha!

The Kuwait Diaries - Part One

The Safir at night

Back in April, I got a call from a recruiter in Aberdeen, Scotland just after I was laid off from Kodiak, and he asked me if I was interested in a job in Kuwait.  I told him, "Hell, yeah!"  It took a couple of months of wrangling around to get things set up, but I flew to Kuwait the last week in June.  Napesco (National Petroleum Service Company), the only Kuwaiti-owned oilfield service company in Kuwait, wanted to bid on Slickline services with the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC). But, they had to show they could do the work, and perhaps more importantly, follow KOC's safety protocols during the competency phase of the bid process. Essentially, KOC was weeding out the riff-raff by requiring anyone who wanted to bid to prove they could do the work, follow the rules, understand and run things according to KOC's strict safety policies.

Safir's rooftop pool

The 15-hour non-stop flight from Seattle to Dubai was a beast.  I learned I can't sleep in a sitting position, even with a CPAP machine (I have sleep apnea).  Once my boss Dan picked me up from the airport, we went for coffee (I had a hot chocolate) on the way to the hotel and at 12:30 at night, it was still 108 degrees Fahrenheit.  We sat outside on the patio with the other patrons who were enjoying what I am sure for them was a pleasant evening, sipping coffee/hot chocolate and discussing the upcoming project.  I think Dan was attempting to acclimatize me to the heat. Wow, good luck with that!  It seemed so odd to be sitting outside in the hottest weather I had ever experienced sipping scalding hot chocolate.  It only drops to 31 degrees Celsius (90 deg F) at night in the summer in Kuwait.  Then Dan booked me into the Safir Hotel & Residences, an incredible 5-star hotel that is located in Fintas, a suburb on the southeast side of Kuwait City on the Persian Gulf.  It has an open-air pool and an enclosed workout area on the roof, its own beach and a spacious beach garden, with big, grassed areas with wicker chairs and couches and a beach bar that serves ice cream and shisha, or hookah pipes.

Safir's Flavors restaurant

Security is tight over there. There is a guard shack as you pull into the parking lot and you have to wait for the guard to walk around your car with a mirror on the end of a pole, checking for car bombs underneath.  It looked like he was walking around with a giant version of a dentist's mirror.  Then, I had to pass through a metal detector before entering the lobby and another security guard took a quick look through any open bags.

Flavors buffet

Exhausted and jet-lagged, I slept until ten the next morning.  I went down to the Flavors restaurant (one of six on the hotel grounds) after waking up and had some yogurt and fruit.  The idea was to get some of the local gut bacteria in my system (my friend Steve's suggestion). As well as an à la carte menu, Flavors has the most amazing buffet I've ever experienced, over a dozen different breakfast delicacies in stainless steel chafing dishes in one wing, culminating in a live cooking station with the special of the day (one day they had Belgian waffles as the special, my favorite!).  Another wing had a couple of dozen cold middle-eastern breakfast specialties like various pastries, fruit concoctions, a bread station with flat bread, rolls,  six or seven types of bread and a toaster, even a honey station with a dozen different flavors of honey.  In the center of the restaurant is a large round table with various yogurts, an amazing variety of fresh fruit, nuts and dried fruit and cereals. Probably the strangest thing was the beef bacon.  I tried it and it wasn't bad, but definitely not real bacon.

The Safir Hotel & Residences

There is no cold water from the taps.  It was either warm or hot. I like cold water, and always had half a dozen water bottles in the fridge. Almost everyone in Kuwait lives in Kuwait City and its suburbs, which is 3.5 million (or about the size of Montreal metro). Kuwait almost never grants citizenship to foreigners. As as a result there are only about a million citizens and expatriates make up 68% of the population. Only Kuwaitis have citizenship, so there are about 150,000 or so residents who came here 50 years ago or more to work, and didn't fill out the proper paperwork and now they and their descendants are stateless. They called them Bedouns.  Not Bedouin, although many Bedouns are Bedouin. Bedoun in Arabic means 'without'. They have no status, no passports and no homeland.  They can't go to school, can't drive, can't vote, and without forged documentation, can't even get a job legally.

Kuwaiti Towers

It was Saturday, which is the equivalent of Sunday in North America. There is not much going on, certainly not any business. It got up to 47 degrees Celsius (118 degrees F) that first day. Kind of like living in a dry sauna. Or a convection oven. It almost hurt to breathe at first. Fortunately, every store, car and hotel has monster air conditioning. I was a little worried that everything would be hot and the A/C would be set for 28 degrees or something crazy. However, I found that every hotel lobby, coffee shop or store is set at about 20 or 21 degrees C.  It was great. This huge love affair with air conditioning comes at a price as Kuwait is by far the largest user of electricity per capita in the world. There is a constant haze in the air from dust blowing in from the desert. They say that in winter, the air is cleaner, but in June and July, the constant wind picks up the desert sand and keeps it suspended in the air.  It didn't feel dusty or gritty, but the sun was an indistinct, but burning-hot white orb in the sky.  I brought some SPF60 sweatproof/waterproof sunscreen lotion but never had to use it.  I sunburn easily, and I never burned over there.  Too much dust in the air I think.

Dan picked me up Saturday afternoon and we did a little sightseeing.  He drove me all over Kuwait City, pointed out various points of interest, and gave me some background on the country. We saw the Kuwaiti Towers. There's a restaurant and viewing area that turns slowly in one tower and two of the three have water storage. The Iraqis shot the towers up pretty good as they pulled out of Kuwait back in 1990 and the towers had to be repaired when it was over. We didn't get close enough but there are shell holes still in them from the Iraqi occupation.

It's interesting to note that almost every woman in Kuwait (except the westerners) begins wearing a hijab or headscarf as soon as they are a teenager (little girls don't wear anything on their heads). Moreover, many older/married women I saw in public wore an abaya robe with the niqab headscarf that has an eye slit to see out of, and a few wear the burqa that covers everything but the hands and they wore black gloves as well to even cover their hands.  I asked Basel (my roommate whom I'll introduce later) about it, and his take was that as a Muslim man, it was his duty to protect his female family members from the lustful glances of others.  He said the women didn't mind it. To me though, it just seemed unfair to see a man and woman walking down the street in almost 50-degree weather, he was wearing a white dishdasha, and she was wearing all black.  She had to be sweltering inside that burqa.

The ubiquitous McDonald's

I saw many North American restaurants over there. Ranging from fast-food staples like McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, to Pizza Hut, TGI Friday's and Applebee's, Kuwait had pretty much all of my favorites available. I tried to stick with the local cuisine, or Kuwaiti favorites like Dan's favorite Indian place, but half-way through, I saw a Pizza Hut in a mall and broke down and had a deep-dish pepperoni pizza.  I would have gone with Hawaiian, my favorite, but Islamic law prohibits pork, so they substitute beef and pineapple for ham and pineapple. Ick.

I asked several people while I was there to describe typical Kuwaiti cuisine. "Well, they like Lebanese... Indian... they love Chinese food..."

No, I said, what dishes would be a typical Kuwaiti dish?  "Well, Lebanese, Indian, Chinese..."  No, no, no.  Authentic Kuwaiti food.  I got a blank stare.  This happened a couple of times.  Finally, I said, OK.  100 years ago, before this was all here, before the discovery of oil, what would a Kuwaiti be eating?

There was a long pause.  Then what I was asking dawned on the fellow.  "Oh", he said, "Fish...  On a stick...  Over a fire."

I did notice that no matter where I went fish was on the menu.  So, that sounds right.  No wonder they like Lebanese shawarma, Iraqi kebabs, Indian curry and Chinese food.

A public beach not far from the hotel.  Deserted during the day, it comes alive at night, swarmed by families enjoying  the night's respite from the heat.