I know, the look on their faces when I asked for it, after that fiasco I went home and googled 'galangal' in Chinese, copied, printed it out and armed with my new found info started my search again, this time when I presented the name written in Chinese I got a lot of "ah soh's," they all said no but try "Wing Kong," when you walk into this store it's like going back in time, one wall is lined with small drawers full of odd herbs, leaves, roots, bats teeth, hair of dog and who knows what else, they weight them on a balance scale with tiny little weights and then crush them in a marble mortar and pestle, all the while chanting softly in Chinese, I can just imagine what he is saying, "Here, drink this tea, white boy," ...fortunately for me they had it already bagged up.
Some times it's a real adventure living here, in several of the stores the Tahitian sales person would tell me to go to the Farmers Market and ask for blue ginger, after many fruitless inquires I finally went there and the very first person I asked said yes, ...and handed me a ginger root??? Went home and googled it and it's galangal, but, ...I would have to slice, dry it and then grind it into powder. LOL
Gene
