These things that we have taken for granted are either hard to find or ridiculously expensive…

Frozen food in general.

Cheese pizza: pizzas have to have LOTs of toppings. Tried to teach a
server at an Italian restaurant how to make cheese pizza and they came back with crust and cheese and nothing else.

Strawberry milk: we saw apple milk & even fruit milk. No luck finding low fat or no fat milk.

Cucumber: only saw small cucumbers with no visible seeds, like English cucumbers only much smaller.

Carrots that are peeled and washed; people are not as lazy… I think…

Pancakes and waffles in some fancy restaurants, especially pancakes with syrup at McDs were a big hit with my kids, but syrup seems to be a rare find: if you can have honey or jam why would you want “thickened sugar water”?

Sliced American cheese. Fancy French cheese yes. Mundane sliced American Cheese, say what?

Cream cheese: surprised to see bagels @ several restaurants, and there is even a New York Bagel Shop. But big tubs of cream cheese are not sold at stores. Naturally.

Ice cream: not difficult to find all sorts of fancy ice cream shops, and the more common ones too, in Taipei, including Cold Stone Creamery now. But our sticker shock in Beijing – 90 rmb ($15) for a tiny tub of B&J’s prompted me to splurge on 3 @ 2 for $7 just now.

The small things in life…