It felt very nice not to have to go grocery shopping for those five weeks, but then other difficulties manifested themselves in its place. Now it was not so much the knowledge of needing to eat but where to go and what to get. From Vietnam to China to South Korea, eating places look progressively less appealing and thus it would take me more time to finally choose a place and then came the issue of deciding what to eat because just as places appearances, food presentation, in my opinion, got worst from place to place. I grew increasingly more dubious of where to go and what to eat and I started to compare and contrast places, something I hadn’t, consciously, done before. After deciding for a place I tended to criticize everything much more than I usually do, which made me feel somewhat uncomfortable because usually not very many people shared my opinion.

I found myself under a great amount of pressure due to the native’s behavior toward food in most of the countries we visited. Vietnam was the easiest place to be at since I didn’t constantly had the feeling that I could insult someone with the way I inquire about the different plates and tended not to finish my meal if it didn’t please me. There I was more concerned about my ability in eating with chopsticks and if my manners could insult someone.

In both China and South Korea the pressure was even greater because I am more knowledgeable about their culture. It is well known that in China having food left over is a sign that the person didn’t like the meal. So I often found myself in situations where I had decided to eat at a certain restaurant, hadn’t like the meal but had to finish it because I didn’t want to offend or insult anyone.

It was a good experience to find out my reaction at being pushed to my limits. I went from enjoying my meals a great deal to eating McDonalds’ twice a day to not eating at all. I grew ever more and more hesitant over whether I should go find a place to eat or not when I was hungry. By the end of the trip I refused to eat at any place that was not western.

Product: Food appearance has a great influence in my decision; I tend to eat what appeals to my sight. In my opinion, the local places that we visited in all three countries don’t do a very good in presenting their product. Food is not presented in any fashion as to provoke your curiosity and your senses, but they just give you food on a plate. Food promotion ties in very closely here.

Price: Both Vietnam and China have very inexpensive food which is appealing to us as students and gives us more choices too. Prices also tended to be the almost the same in all the restaurants. South Korea is almost as expensive as the United States. This limited our options which in turn made the decision process a little faster.

Place: Restaurants in Asia, just like restrooms, are a little shocking. To me, most of them looked like dirty little places where I would never dare to eat. It took a great deal of effort on my part to bring myself to eat in most of the local places. However, not all the places were that bad. You could find really nice places where you could go in and have a nice meal. You just had to spend more time looking for a place to eat.

Promotion: Usually done by the person at the front desk. They tried to explain what they had the best possible taking into account the difficulties due to language differences. Language wasn’t such a big problem in Vietnam because mostly everyone speaks English, but both in China and South Korea we were very much dependent upon nonverbal communication.