Isla del Encanto

This past August I went on vacation to Puerto Rico with some of the girls in my sorority. Before setting my foot into the beautiful island, I had plans on eating a lot of food that we don't usually eat in America. The main thing that I go for when I travel is the food.
When I arrived there, we went to a Walmart to buy some stuff to stock up for the villa. We bought a ton of Ramen and spam and eggs. I guess it's an Asian American thing to save up on money and buying easy instant noodles while on vacation. The first thing we found aside from the Ramen was a KFC and then a McDonald's and then a Wendy's. Mind you, this is 4PM and we don't see a single local food place opened. I watch a lot of the travel channel, and anywhere that Andrew Zimmern or Anthony Bourdain went to was impossible to find. I guess what I find normal is seeing a variety of different restaurants on almost every block I walk around in New York City. Also those fast food joints was not any cheaper than stocking up on the ramen. The only "local" food place we found was a small bar called Charlie's Tacos. The tacos there were amazing. It was a soft tortilla shell stuffed with chicken, pork, or beef with mashed potatoes. I had it almost every day of the week that we were there for.

Another thing about PR was that I figured everywhere would be walkable distance. It turns out that we had to road trip everywhere for about 2 hours. One night we went out to Old San Juan, but it was no different than being in Times Square. The only thing different was that the names were in Spanish, like Senor Frogs. Party life was exactly the same as NYC. We somehow came across an Asian Fusion restaurant/lounge, and I felt like I wasn't even in PR at all.

I am native born, but my background is Chinese. Going to PR with 10 other Asian girls and 2 Asian guys made us stand out as a group. I guess maybe people in PR aren't use to seeing that many Asians in one place, but we were always gaped at like zoo animals. And all I heard was "las chinitas" or "los chinos". It was kind of uncomfortable. America is so diverse that running across someone who doesn't share the same ethnic background as you isn't such an unusual thing. But aside from the awkwardness of being stared at, everyone there was really friendly, particularly street vendors.

This lady who crafted handmade leather bracelets was a really welcoming person, and she was really curious about where we're from and all that jazz.
In the picture, the bracelets looked like this before the brown polish and the buttons were added on.




The amazing rainforest, El Yunque








The Bacardi Rum Factory