Feature photo: Phillie Casablanca Photo: permanently scatterbrained

I often hear talk about how travelers made a bold and courageous move to “leave behind the American dream” or “escape from the rat race” to travel abroad. Well, great, I think, but what happens when you go back?

Perhaps in contrast to many travelers and travel bloggers, I’m not sure I see the act of getting temporarily out of the 9-5 grind as inherently courageous or life-changing. Sure, in some contexts it is – but in others, it seems like a vain and pompous way of, well, to put it bluntly, slumming it, playing at poverty and adventure for a certain period of time before settling snugly back into a world of Western plumbing and three dollar lattes.

Photo: colros

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break from work to travel (nor, I should add, is there anything wrong with Western plumbing), and I think escaping daily life for awhile can lead to some perspective-altering experiences, but I just don’t buy that it’s always an act of nobility to leave a cushy job with a pile of savings and hit the road for a bit; I don’t buy the frequent argument that this automatically creates a life or society changing perspective.

But this piece about how adventure travel kills conspicuous consumption changed my mind for a bit. I cringed at the opening line about ditching the American dream, thinking isn’t it the “American dream” that’s allowed you to save up for this whole adventure and to appreciate it from the distinct perspective of someone from the land of plenty?

But the article humbled my cynicism. The author talked about coming home to an overflowing storage unit of stuff she realized she didn’t need. She discusses the changes in her lifestyle in San Fransisco after more than a year traveling around the world, and how she doesn’t feel the need to fix things that aren’t broken. More interestingly, she notes how before resistance to materialism felt contrived, whereas post-trip, it feels natural.

Photo: chopr

Thinking about this, I experienced a full-on surge of travel optimism.

I have my personal opinions about how traveler quests for “authenticity” or “simplicity” often enough end up reinforcing the same dichotomy between noble poor paradise and wicked material wealth, but this article offered an alternative: taking an awareness of the enormous gap between wealthy developed nations and poor developing ones -between the excessive haves of the former and the often desperate lack of the latter – back home and crafting a different lifestyle out of it. Yes. That’s good.

And you, reader? What do you think? Do you think travel abroad -adventure or otherwise- curbs consumption? Share your thoughts below.

Feature Photo: Andrew Currie Photo: akechi

I still remember the sinking feeling I had getting off the train in Guangzhou, China, at 1 a.m. You think that perhaps arriving in the middle of the night in the middle of winter might spare you from the onslaught of shouting pushy people waving laminated fliers, but no.

“Hotel hotel HOTEL HOTEL hotel hotel CHEAP CHEAP good price!!”

The refrain like a cacophony of badly tuned horns, reinforced by jostling elbows and hands grabbing at our coats. These situations require a big deep breath of centered calm. Otherwise, if you’re anything like me, you’re likely to freak out and start running as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

Guangzhou isn’t the only place this happens in the world, of course. At those charged Destinations with a capital D where travelers arrive in swarms with obvious needs to be met (spiritual, commercial, basic, or otherwise) there is inevitably a waiting mass of locals looking to fill those needs, or create them. The Age recently ran a piece about the top cities where you get hassled as a traveler and I can think of many that aren’t on that list.

For me, this is a nasty feeling. I dislike fighting through the crowds, dislike the pulling at my clothes and the shouting, dislike the feeling of being in a full-on, unmasked consumer interaction with a place and it’s people. It’s like pulling that pretty little shear veil of “authenticity” or awe off of a travel experience and a place to reveal the simple, ugly framework of money beneath.

But then again, is it really my place to whine about this? After all, in China or Peru I am taking advantage of the low cost of living and searching out my own version of the authentic (Chinese living in traditional hutongs? Peruvians walking llamas through the Andes?) and there’s no reason the local people need to comply with my vision of an idyllic authentic getaway, right? To many of them, I am a way to make money – perhaps a nice and friendly way to make money or a slightly hostile one, but in any case, a path to the cash. Does this make them bad, cynical, sinister people? Perhaps some, but not all.

From yet another angle, however, one wonders if this sort of unregulated full-on assault throwing all sorts of random goods and services at tourists really benefits the “sellers” or “touts” or “locals” or however you’d classify them in the end – it often creates a popping resentment and hostility between them and visitors, it can end up damaging tourism to the area, and it frequently leads to rampant development in the form of hostels and backpacker joints and, to use a controversial term here, “cultural pollution.”

Yet how do we and they prevent it from happening?

What do you think, readers? Where are the places you’ve been hassled most? How do you deal with it? What do you think could be done about it? Let’s get the discussion going.

Feature Photo: Paul Stevenson Photo: gabyu

There’s plenty of reasoning about why Americans don’t travel abroad. Travel bloggers speculate on whether it’s fear of a big, scary world, or ignorance of other cultures, or short vacation time, or the simple fact that there’s a helluva lot of stuff to do in the U.S alone. It may be all of those factors combined, but that’s not what interests me. What interests me is the assumption behind all this speculation – the assumption that Americans should travel abroad.

At first I wanted to question that assumption, since I’ve met plenty of Americans who could (and happily would) tick off all of the countries they’ve visited, list all of the trials and tribulations and predictable breakthroughs they’ve had, rave about all the artwork and trinkets and objects they’ve bought and swoon over the precious simple authenticity of “the locals,” and I find nothing particularly revolutionary or educational about this at all.

In fact, I think it’s pretty much the same old dynamic between the U.S and the world multiplied once more – simple consumable experiences, the commodification of culture, the seeing-what-we’ve-been-primed-by-the-media-to-see vs. researching-what-is.

But I hope I’m not so cynical or so pompous as to completely disregard the potential of travel abroad – while I don’t see it as the panacea for twisted U.S foreign policy or the distorted views many Americans have of the world, I also think it holds enormous potential to create positive, constructive change. By “change” I mean change in the way Americans think about, say, where their coffee comes from, or change in the way they think about an American food culture that relies on an unhealthy dependence on processed corn and the microwave.

Photo: tiltti

I’ve met plenty of people who have gone through transformations abroad and started, little by little, to see their world and the world overall from different angles. They’ve perhaps started to follow the news about China or Mexico much more carefully and to search out different perspectives. They’ve become aware of the affect of U.S corn subsidies on the people they met and talked to in Southern Mexican villages. They see that wow, I have a lot of stuff in my house and these people, they seem to be doing just fine without having to go to Target every other day for a new something.

This is not, of course, a given. I don’t think anyone has the right to declare what a traveler should or should not learn, should or should not see. But I have met plenty of Americans who have been prying into their own assumptions and accepted ways of understanding the world, taking apart their own cultural perspectives, and coming away with a much more complicated, empathetic understanding of the connections between themselves and the places they’ve visited.

And I think that process, of empathizing with people from vastly different cultural, social and economic perspectives, is at the heart of traveling abroad. That is what often distinguishes travel abroad from domestic travel – travel abroad requires so many more leaps into the unknown.

There are the major unknowns, the unknown languages and cultures and histories, but there are also the smaller unknowns; how rice or sugar cane is made, the herbs people use for medicines, the deserted villages where people have been forced to migrate to other countries. And traveling abroad is the process of excavating these unknowns, of bringing them up to the surface of one’s mind, in the hope of creating some new bridge of empathy and compassion.

So I’m not sure it’s the percentages and the statistics that matter, I’m not sure it’s the act of getting one’s passport stamped – I think it’s the way of seeing and questioning that makes travel abroad different, and that has so many people vehemently defending the act of crossing borders. It’s the push into the unknown, and the coming back humbled, contemplative, vulnerable, and yes, in ways both conscious and vaguely felt, changed.

Community Connection

What do you think, readers? Do you think travel abroad is inherently educational? What have been your experiences overseas? Do you think Americans are afraid of overseas travel?

Feature Photo: stuart_spivack Photo: ldhny

New Orleans’ internationally famous cuisine is decadent and indulgent, mixing the best flavors from its many ethnic influences with the soul of the city.

But in New Orleans, you should leave room for dessert. These seven are among the city’s most famous and most widely available treats.

1. Bread pudding

While not unique to New Orleans, many of the city’s restaurants have perfected their own version of this delicious use for stale bread. At its most basic, the dish involves drizzling melted butter over leftover bread chunks and baking it with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, beaten eggs and raisins. It’s usually served hot and soaked with rum or whiskey sauce.

2. Pralines

You can credit the French for introducing this candy, now ubiquitous in New Orleans. Pecans are suspended in a creamy mixture of sugar and butter that is so rich you probably can’t eat more than one. They’re available, usually wrapped individually, at many gift shops in the city and come in a few varieties like chocolate and rum. If you don’t want to sound like an outsider, say it “praw-leen.”

3. King Cake

Photo: mikebdoss

While king cake is eaten mostly during the Mardi Gras season, you can find it any time of year if you look hard enough. There are many variations with different fillings, but a king cake is essentially a huge cinnamon roll with sprinkles and generally iced in Mardi Gras colors—purple, green and gold.

Most king cakes have a small plastic baby inside, said to represent the baby Jesus, as Mardi Gras is actually rooted in Catholicism.

4. Beignets

It’s pronounced “ben-yay,” which is French for fried dough. This dessert’s charm is in its simplicity, as it’s nothing more than deep-fried dough covered in a mound of powdered sugar. Buy an “order” of three donuts with a cup of café au lait or chocolate milk.

Photo: clamhead

It’s famously available at the bustling French Quarter tent of Café du Monde near the Mississippi River, but there are a few other spots where you can indulge on what many locals call “coffee and donuts.” Just don’t inhale when you take a bite.

5. Doberge cake

No New Orleans birthday is complete without a doberge cake. A New Orleans baker adapted the Hungarian dobos torta and gave it a French-sounding name, and doberge was born. The cake consists of multiple layers of cake and pudding—usually chocolate or lemon—topped with rich icing. Oh, and it’s pronounced “dough-bash.”

6. Snowballs

Snowballs—or snoballs—are definitely not the same as snow cones. Snowballs are like fresh powder, and the juice doesn’t sink to the bottom of the cup like with crunchy snow cones. The New Orleans-invented SnoWizard machines shave down blocks of ice for the perfect consistency.

Around New Orleans in the summer, snowballs stands are packed. Each offers dozens of flavors, from wedding cake to superman to margarita and more. You can get them “stuffed” with soft-serve ice cream or drizzled with condensed milk. Yum.

7. Roman Candy

Roman Candy, a chewy taffy sold in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, has been made and sold by the same family since 1915. You can find the original mule-drawn wagon in random places across the city, but your best bet is the Audubon Zoo. Long, thin sticks of the candy sell for 75c and come wrapped in wax paper.

Photos: author

“Is it a man of a war?” I asked my boyfriend. In an instant, the scalding burn of the sting had progressed into an ache, shooting its way to my groin from the blisters it had left on my ankle.

He scanned the images of jellyfish in the health guide we had brought on our backpacking trip through Ujung Kulon, a remote and untouched swath of rain forest on the western-most tip of Java. A Portuguese Man of War is no Box Jellyfish, I knew, but I recalled that it could send victims into shock and cardiac arrest. The pain was unbearable.

“Is it?” I said again. It was becoming difficult to breathe.

“No,” he looked up, shifting his eyes towards our silent guide who was preparing dinner behind me. There was a kind of tough sorrow in his face. I knew, instinctively, that he was lying; but I also knew that, if only to calm myself, I should try to believe him.

I stared blankly out at the ocean, watching the waves crash against the rocks that surrounded the cove where we had set up camp. Ujung Kulon had a perilous beauty about it, the cliff faces steep, the open clearings between dense forest flat and eerily lifeless like the moon. Since I’d first entered the wilderness, I had been on edge.

But now, lying on the sand in the worst pain I had ever felt, I was terrified. Guides didn’t carry radios in Indonesia. And even if they did, where could one get us? The tiny, dusty village of Tamanjaya at the entry point of the forest didn’t even have a fruit stand, let alone a hospital.

This national park saw few visitors because of it’s location – starting from Jakarta, we had spent eight hours on two different sweltering buses rides, two hours on a motorbike down a deeply-rutted road, and three hours on a boat out to the island of Panaitan where we finally began our hike.

In coming to Indonesia, I had been looking for that thrill of raw experience that only traveling can give you. But here was a sensation I hadn’t quite bargained for: I felt like I was on the edge of the world.

A Moral Holiday

We “need sometimes,” the philosopher George Santayana wrote, “to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment no matter what.” The notion of travel as work may be surprising, but that “moral holiday” is exactly what most intrepid travelers are searching for.

I began my trip through Indonesia with a backpacking trek curious to explore the rain forest, but even more eager to discover the resources dormant within me. I wanted to test myself—to reveal how I’d hold up under the humidity, how my Bahasa would fair with our guide, how well I could maintain 15 mile days on ramen and eggs alone. I wanted to sharpen the parts of myself that had grown dull in the tedium of daily life. I wanted to work.

I took on these endeavors aware of the possible dangers – the chance of rousing a sleeping panther, of crossing paths with a crocodile while wading through a stream. But it is only when we are faced with these actualities that we realize how dim that awareness really is. Only then do we know what it’s like to sense our own smallness in an unfathomable universe, to scan our failures and regrets, to suddenly glimpse both our life and our death.

The Luxury of Recklessness

I spent that evening in the rain forest in panic and pain, listening to the waves crash outside of our tent. But I knew by dawn, as the aching grew quieter, that I was going to be all right.

The order of society – no matter if it is the layout of New York City’s grid or the perfect rows of rice paddies where the wilds of rain forest once stood – provides us with predictable comfort, insulation from the ruthless and indiscriminate movements of nature. I returned to seething Jakarta with a sense of relief, consoled by the traffic, the bartering in the garbage-strewn streets, the call to prayer that sounded reliably throughout the day.

Yet it was really my travels through Indonesia’s cities and villages in the months after that marked me with an unshakable sense of life’s fragility. Weeks later, in a small, ocean side village of north Sulawesi, I paid a fisherman to take me out snorkeling. The water was incredibly clear, and he pointed out from his boat the fish and sea urchins that were poisonous. I passed him my mask at one point, and he laughed, shaking his head.

“Why not?” I asked.

“We are not brave like Americans,” he said, pausing for a moment. “Or crazy.”

It was a luxury, I realized. A luxury to be both admirable and insane.

The “Adventure” of Daily Existence

It is one thing to force hardship upon yourself; it is another to witness the daily, impossible struggle against it. For the next three months, I kept moving: by crowded train in Java, by speedboat through choppy water, in dodgy aircraft where women prayed not just at the beginning of the flight, or the end, but throughout.

On the switchbacks of bus rides, the faces of rickety homes flew by— they had been built precariously on mountainsides, where the shorn land lay vulnerable to mud slides. Leaving Jakarta, the train gave way to endless stretches of shantytowns, heaps of trash baring the evidence of past floods.

All over Java refugees from mudslides, floods, and earthquakes—the constant stuff of life in Indonesia— cling to temporary shelters, waiting for government aid. Hardship, both man-made and nature-driven, is impossible to ignore.

Locals I met throughout Indonesia echoed the fisherman’s confession of timidity: “We do not have adventure like you,” they’d say. And yet, in their daily lives, they were a people unfazed. Children begging in the streets of Jakarta weaved casually through chaotic traffic, vans and motorbikes ungoverned by any real rules of the road. Pedestrians walked indifferently across the paths of speeding cars, in tune with some kind of unspoken choreography.

Baffled, I hung back on street corners, waiting for a moment to jet across. Most Indonesians possessed a balance and grace I could only dream of. I imagined that, for all of their reservations, the locals would fare much better in the rain forest than I had. But why test yourself when the daily trial of existence is enough?

A Death

The Balinese and Torajans are famous for their elaborate funerals, drawing visitors from around the world each year. But around the archipelago, much quieter ceremonies of mourning in the Muslim and Christian tradition are an everyday routine. And as access to health care is scarce for many, the cause of death is often unknown.

In a rural village in Halmahera I visited, a child died of a fever he had been struggling against for several days. Such news travels at lightening speed among villagers, and it came to the yard of a home where I was sharing a meal with a local family that same evening. The teenage girl standing in the doorway of their little home looked out with pleading eyes and asked:

“But why? Why did he die?”

She was looking not at the messenger but at me. I couldn’t answer the question anymore than the other people there. It was a fever; who or what brought that fever I didn’t know. Silence filled the muddy compound where we sat scattered in plastic chairs. The world looked hazy in dusk’s failing light.

“God took him,” a man next to me said. The rest of the group nodded.

Medicine might have other explanations, scientific answers may provide us with the comfort of understanding, but in the end, the question is enduringly, painfully the same: Why did he die? Because she was asking not what had caused the fever, but what we all ask in the face of death: why does it happen with such blatant indifference, such injustice, such frequency? How can life be so tenuous?

I looked around at the family surrounding me. The matriarch wore the same expression that I had seen on many faces throughout my travels in Indonesia– on women heading to family funerals, on men leaving the mosque, in my boyfriend’s face that evening in the rain forest. It was an unlikely mix of defiance and sorrow, a look of prayer in their eyes.

Feature Photo: siddharta Photo : ivanx

It’s the eve of Mexican independence day.

Almost exactly 200 years ago on the 16th of September 1810, priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla gave the famous “grito de dolores” or, as it’s commonly referred to “el grito.” Priest Hidalgo gathered his congregation at his church in Dolores, a small pueblo in Guanajuato, and proceeded to give the sermon credited with kicking off Mexico’s 10-year war for independence.

The sermon culminated with cries of “Death to the illegitimate government! Long live the the glorious pueblo Méxicano!” followed by the emphatic ringing of the church bell.

This grito is replicated each year on the evening of September 15th, in the Zócalo of Mexico City and in plazas, cities, and pueblos around the country. The president and other public figures initiate it with three or more shouts of “Viva México!” followed by a “Viva!” for every Mexican state and for Mexican revolutionary figures. Massive fireworks are set off and the pueblo Méxicano goes nuts in shades of red, white, and green.

In honor of el grito, I give you “Mexico Lindo y Querido,” sung by Mexican singer and actor Javier Solis (1933-1966).

Any mariachi in Mexico will be able to sing this for you. I most recently heard it on a road trip in Ohio, when Jorge gained control of the Ipod and used it to shout, weepy and unabashed, “México lindo y querrrrrido!” out onto the open road.

If you want to follow along, find the lyrics below:

Voz de la guitarra mía,
al despertar la mañana
quiere cantar la alegría
de mi tierra mexicana

Que digan que estoy dormido
y que me traigan aquí
México Lindo y Querido
si muero lejos de ti

Viva México!

Photo above by the author. Feature photo by invisible hour

Way back before Karaoke hit the Western world, where it somehow turned into Carry-O-Key, there weren’t 5 or 6 monitors mounted on the walls of the bars.

There were no videos accompanying the music and no words streaming across the bottom of the screen.

Photo by saotin

Bars were for drinking and singing. TV’s were for watching the news, cartoons, soap operas and cooking classes.

On a 17 year stint of bachelorhood, between wives number two and three I found myself doing a lot of bar-hopping.

At some point during the night, wherever I was, I’d be asked to sing karaoke by whichever charming hostess I was buying drinks for at the time.

“Nah, I don’t sing” was my standard answer and if they kept bugging me, I’d leave, find another bar and fall in love with a different hostess; one who could drink Jack on the Rocks, with me and not be a pain in the ass.

Karaoke, back in those days, consisted of a cassette player, microphone and a book about the size of a bible – you know that thick book hotels leave on coffee tables for you to set your drinks on.

Oh, yeah, the really big karaoke bars had a scoreboard, a big, black board with bright LED numbers.

An applause meter would give each singer a score based on how much noise the crowd made when the song was over.

Just about every karaoke-joint had the same three songs in English, My Way, Sixteen Tons and You Are My Sunshine. Even if I knew how to sing, none of them would have been top-ten list.

Hell, I got kicked out of Boy’s Choir for skipping practice; what was I supposed to know about singing?

Well, one night I hit this bar with dozens of pretty hostesses and just the right amount of Jack Daniels in me to give it a try.

Photo by digo moraes

I’d heard enough Japanese businessmen screw-up My Way. I figured I couldn’t do any worse.

Probably no one in the place knew enough English to understand me, anyway, so, what the hell, when a gal asked me if I could sing, I’d give it my best shot.

Sure enough, before I could finish my first drink, a hostess asked me to sing.

“OK, let me try My Way,” I told her.

I stumbled and fumbled through the song, squinting at the book and trying to make noises along with the music. Frank Sinatra probably rolled over in his grave (or hospital bed, not sure where he was at the time) a few times.

Even half-plastered, I was self conscious; sweat was dripping off my forehead. The song seemed like it was around two hours long.

I belted down the last “my way” nice and loud, set the mic down on the counter, slammed the rest of my drink and looked for the door, in case I had to make a quick exit.

The crowd went wild, the applause meter hit “98”and the owner of the bar brought over a bottle of whiskey half as tall as the girl sitting next to me; my prize for the highest score that night.

I shared the bottle with everyone and soon we were all singing Sixteen Tons and You Are My Sunshine.

Now, I’m a karaokeholic.

Want To Live In Japan?

Check out: How To Get A Job Teaching In Japan

A worshiper being blessed. Note the sheep. All photos by Sarah Vazquez.

From the moment you step off the plane in Kathmandu, you will notice several obvious cultural differences from your home in the Western world.

Perhaps these tips will leave you a little less jolted during your first few days in Nepal, and a little more prepared to dive into a new culture!

Eating with a Baba.

A Bit on ‘Om’

In Nepal, religious practice is not limited to one day a week, but is displayed, practiced and respected every day, all day long.

It is refreshing and intriguing to see a Shiva shrive rather than a Starbucks on every corner.

About 80% of Nepali people are Hindu and the rest are mostly Buddhist with a touch of Christian and Muslim followers.

You will see and hear puja (worship) mostly in the early mornings, when woman are walking to shrines and temples to give daily offerings.

Puja will often include loud noises from blowing into conch shells or from chanting; there will be brief gestures of faith when people touch their heads when passing an image of Shiva or longer gestures when monks sit and recite their dharma for hours on end.

The best time to witness the intricate practice of devotion is to walk around temples early on Saturday mornings, the main day for worship.

Unless you are Hindu, you will not be able to enter the Hindu temples, but you can still be blessed if you bring an offering (money, flowers, or rice are typical gifts).

Life size prayer wheels in Kopan Monastery.

There are several gestures and motions to follow when being blessed or when worshiping; just follow the local example and you should be okay.

You will see religious symbols and references all over Kathmandu and Nepal. There is a subtle difference between religion being over commercialized and simply being omnipresent in daily life.

In Nepal, religion is omnipresent, which is a refreshing difference compared to the West. Take note of the symbols you see, such as “om” and the “swastika.”*

If you can see the effect that worship has on the daily culture in Nepal, religion will become a beautiful part of your visit.

The Clump and Push (vs the Lift and Drop)

Traditionally, Nepalis use their hands to eat their meals. Although you will almost always be offered silverware, you will impress your hosts if you show them you can eat properly with your hands.

This technique will make your culinary experience more authentic and adds a personal connection to meals. However, do not embark on this adventure unprepared.

Most beginners will try the “Lift and Drop” method. They pick up their rice (and fail to pick up their lentils) with their fingers, tilt their head back and drop the food into their mouth, like eating trail mix.

This will undoubtedly result in spilling on your clothes, not capturing the full flavor of your dish and simple embarrassment.

Instead, try the “Clump and Push” method. Use your whole hand to clump all the food together.

Mix the lentils with your rice; throw the meat on top; mush those juicy flavors together! You’re going to have to wash your hand no matter what, so you might as well use the whole palm and all five fingers to really clump it properly.

The food will stick together quite well and you can make a little ball of deliciousness. Then hold this ball of food on top of your thumb (as if you were going to play a game of Marbles or flip a quarter), raise it to your face and gracefully push it into your mouth.

By successfully executing the Clump and Push, you will have no problem leaving your plate clean, your tummy full and your hosts impressed.

Hindu gods dressed for a festival.

Intra-sexual vs Inter-sexual

It is common to see two men walking down the street holding hands or linking arms. Likewise, it is common to see two women showing the same affection.

Intra-sexual relations can be public and quite affectionate and are a sign of friendship and kindness.

However, PDA of any sort between a man and woman is not common. In fact, husband and wife will rarely show affection in public.

These guidelines hold true for rural parts of Nepal and among the older generations throughout the country, although sometimes in cities you will see the youth adapting more modern social guidelines.

No matter where you are, however, sticking to conservative social guidelines is important to avoid offending the locals.

Rawness

If you visit Kathmandu, you will notice a certain quality of rawness.

Traffic is hectic, animals roam the roads with free will, butchers slaughter animals next to corner stores, dogs bark, beggars sit with compelling grief, horns honk, and pujas are preformed loudly and frequently.

Animals are everywhere in Kathmandu!

Shopkeepers pursue you aggressively, dead animals are left on sidewalks, and the dust in the street can add a haze to your day.

Despite these unfamiliar exposures, once you step past the raw edge of Kathmandu, you will notice that it is also an very human place.

Kathmandu is alive. Its pulse is vibrant and its activity is dynamic. With a steady look, you will notice Kathmandu’s rich history and its world-renowned architecture. If you invest some patience you will notice a sincerely approachable city.

Don’t hesitate to initiate a conversation with a neighbor on the microbus and you will soon find that for all its rough edges, Kathmandu is distinctly personable and friendly.

Bathrooms, Showers, and Water

The general state of water will be a new and foreign concept to most travelers sojourning to Asia for the first time.

Nepal suffers from a severe water shortage; there simply isn’t the infrastructure or management to supply enough water for washing, bathing and drinking year-round.

For this reason, water is very scarce and is used with precious mindfulness; the amount of water a family has will often reflect their economic ability to tap into limited sources or collect rainfall during the rainy season.

Bathing with scarce water.

You will immediately notice that the bathroom situation is quite different from the Western norm.

The toilets are Asian style (squat toilets), of course, but in addition, many households will equate “taking a shower” as “taking a bucket shower.”

You should feel free to ask for water to shower with, but know that it is a valued commodity and that you will receive about one cooking pot full of cold water.

If you ask politely, you can have a little extra boiled water to make your bath water warmer. Because of the scarcity of this resource, it is normal for people to shower only once a week.

At first, these bathroom differences can be uncomfortable for travelers, but you will adapt faster than you think.

Electricity

Like water, electricity has a lack of infrastructure and management and therefore is also a precious commodity.

Electricity will typically be available for between four to eight hours of the day. The entire city of Kathmandu is divided into a grid system where each zone receives electricity at different times.

Not a symbol of fascism!

The tricky part of this situation is realizing which shops, houses and offices fall under what zone.

No house or store is invincible to the frequent power shortages; businesses will often casually shoo you away with a flick of their wrist if there is no electricity available (it is wise to note what hours your closest internet café runs on).

Occasionally, houses and shops will have generators that grant them electricity throughout the day. However, sometimes these generators don’t work.

Basically, it is in your best interest to become accustomed to patiently letting go of a strict time schedule and calmly watching how the rest of the country reconciles these inconveniences.

Kathmandu is a dusty, culturally rich and energetic city. It may present inconveniences at first, but it will undoubtedly leave you will a greater sense of patience and a new found appreciation for the vivacity, diversity and culture of Nepal.

Ramro sanga janusna!

* The Swastika is a ancient religious symbol of good luck that predates the Nazi regime.

Going to Nepal?

Get inspired by a photo essay on trekking Langtang, read Andris Bjornson’s classic guide to the Mt. Kangchenjuna circuit and peruse the 5 best treks in Nepal.

Finally, study up on your Nepali language skills with Sarah Vazquez, and get ready for your Himalayan adventure.

Natto photo by jasja_dekker. Feature photo by tamakisono

These are the slimiest, hairiest, chewiest and smelliest foods commonly eaten in Japanese households.

1. Natto

Natto are fermented soybeans notorious for their pungent smell, which reminds some of dirty old socks. These slimy beans are commonly slurped for breakfast with hot rice, with the optional raw egg mixed in for added nutrition.

2. Umeboshi Plums

If you thought Lemon Heads were the sourest food of all, try placing an entire umeboshi plum in your mouth—it’s salty sour flavor will be sure to pucker your face.

Umeboshi photo by tamakisono

The potent red plums are rarely eaten on their own, used instead to season rice, vegetables and meats. I’ve even seen umeboshi flavored potato chips.

The Japanese believe that the umeboshi plums help ease nausea from motion sickness, and some carry around the freeze dried or individually wrapped version for air travel.

3. Mozuku

This stringy and soft seaweed may remind you of the handful of hair accumulated in your shower drain, but mozuku is far more nutritious.

The hairy seaweed has got fucoidan, a polysaccharide touted for its ability to enhance your killer T cell activity, giving your immune system an added boost.

Mozuku is usually served cold in a vinegar sauce to distract you from thinking that it’s the algae growing in the fish tank.

4. Shishamo

Shishamo photo by yomi955

Imagine a skinny little smelt with its entire body cavity crammed with millions of small crunchy eggs. These small fish are grilled and served on a platter with their heads and tails still on.

No chopsticks here – shishamo is finger food. Rip the fish head and tail off and nibble everything in between.

5. Inago

The small brown crickets resemble roaches when viewed from far away, but I assure you that roaches aren’t a part of the Japanese culinary repertoire.

Inago are caught in rice paddies and either fried crisp or cooked in a sugary soy sauce broth and served as a condiment with steamed rice. Everything on the critter is devoured—including its sex organs and puny brain.

6. Dried squid or octopus

Dried squid is the Japanese equivalent to beef jerky snacks, but with more omega 3s and a fishiness that can be smelled from across the room once a package has been opened.

Dried squid photo by sushiboy555

The squid or octopus is seasoned, then dried in shreds or rings. Try the jar of dried baby squid or dried octopus legs made extra chewy with its tentacles.

These dried cephalopods are usually served with some icy Sapporo beer.

7. Mochi

Mochi is a chewy rice cake made by pounding sweet glutinous rice and forming it into discs—commonly served on New Years Day, which is also the day when mochi choking incidents are the highest.

If you’re tired of your regular bubble gum, you can blow and pop bubbles with mochi instead. I find mochi delicious when served as a dessert, stuffed with sweetened azuki beans.

8. Konnyaku

Wobbly and low in calories, this rubbery rectangular lump is loved by dieters. Konnyaku is made from the wild Konnyaku potato. It’s very high in dietary fiber, which gets your system clean while expanding in your tummy and tricking you into feeling full.

You may identify konnyaku immediately in the nabemono (hot pot) because it’s slippery body is very difficult to grasp with chopsticks.

9. Koya dofu (freeze dried tofu)

Destinations

Community Connection to Japan

Koya dofu is tofu which has been freeze dried, and sold in many Japanese supermarkets.

Don’t attempt to eat it uncooked as you may chip your teeth. When cooked in broth, its texture becomes that of a sponge that soaks up flavors—much like your kitchen sponge soaking up sink water.

10. Niboshi (dried anchovies)

When you see a pile of niboshi, it may remind you of a morgue for desiccated small fish. These dried, salted anchovies are used to make dashi, or fish stock commonly used in Japanese cooking.

The crunch of niboshi are also enjoyed as snacks when sold pre-seasoned with a sweet and salty coating.

If you’re going to the movies, they’re available at concession stands, and their crunch is similar to that of popcorn – but fishier.

11. Anko (sweetened azuki bean paste)

Anko and Mochi photo by jim212jim

Most of us are used to eating our beans in savory dishes, and wouldn’t dream of eating them as a dessert.

Let this be an eye opener for you, as anko finds its way into many traditional Japanese sweets, ice-creams, popsicles and bread fillings.

You may forget that anko is made of beans, as the high sugar content often overpowers the bean flavor.

For beginners, visit a Japanese Dunkin Donut shop and have an anko filled doughnut with some coffee.

Want To Live In Japan?

Check out: How To Get A Job Teaching In Japan

Photo: erikrasmussen

There are more laws in existence now than at any other point in history, and often the odd, archaic or stupid ones are easier to leave on the books than to bother voting away.

Did you know, for instance, that in British Columbia it is illegal to kill a Sasquatch?

Laws like this sprinkle the ledgers of the world, a testament to what lawyers will do if you give them too much leash.

The following are some of the more exceptional examples (thinking of making sweet love to a porcupine? Better read this first).

Immortality and Armor

In England it is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armor. This was apparently a problem.

But be careful without your armor, British politicians, because it is also illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament, and if you look sick, you will be quickly ushered out the doors.

One wonders about the legal ramifications that will ensue after death in Parliament. Maybe worried British politicians should move to North Korea where, instead of being slammed with a posthumous lawsuit, they’ll be crowned eternal rulers.

Photo: yeowatzup

Their predecessors can then become military dictators. And pursue nuclear arms programs. And try to solve their country’s hunger crisis by buying giant rabbits from Germany!

One such dictator, President Kim Jong-Il, has enacted legislation making his father, Kim Il-Sung, dead since 1994, the “Eternal President.”

I know the great leader casts a long shadow, Kim, but you’re 68. Time to move out of the basement.

Sex, Mothers-in-Law and Porcupines

Speaking of repressed Oedipus complexes, in a town in Colombia, the first time a woman has sex with her husband, her mother must be present.

The men there must sure be jealous of their counterparts in Wichita, Kansas, where the way a man treats his mother-in-law may not be used as grounds for divorce.

But these weren’t the only legislators with love and marriage in mind. In Argentina, feather beds are illegal. The reason? “Such an indulgence induces and encourages lascivious feelings.”

Whatever. It didn’t stop Mark Sanford.

And apparently nothing stopped the people who set the precedent making it illegal in Massachusetts to have sex with a rodeo clown in the presence of horses. I wish I could have seen the expressions on the couple’s faces when the stampede started…

In Florida it is illegal to have sex with porcupines. (Really?) While In Minnesota fish are off limits, but only to men.

Photo: aliferste

And in Headland, Alabama, no woman dressed in a nightshirt is allowed to be taken for a flight in a private plane.

Finally some place recognizes the deadly powers of the female nightshirt.

Denial is Good: Hot Pink Pants Are Not

Then to Australia, where taxis are required to carry a bale of hay, bars must provide food and water to their customers’ horses, and on Brighton Beach it is illegal to wear hot pink pants on Sunday afternoons.

Also banned is walking the streets in black clothes, felt shoes and black shoe polish. Apparently, these are the tools of a “cat burglar.”

Photo: hawk914

And if you’re Australian, and you’re feeling a little picked on, don’t. In your country it is legal for certain government officers to: treat an event that happened like it didn’t happen; treat an event that didn’t happen like it did happen; treat an event that happened like it happened at a different time; treat an event that happened like it happened at a different place; and treat an event that happened like it happened to a different person.

So, it’s fine. None of this happened. I never wrote this article and you never read it. But if you want some ammunition to fire back with next time you don’t get made fun of in an article that doesn’t exist, check out: dumblaws.com, wierdsexlaws.com, or lawguru.com.

The rest of you: try to set some new precedents, and good luck.

Community Connection

It’s always a good idea to check out the local laws before traveling somewhere. In particular, you might want to know not to flip the bird in Dubai or kiss in Guanajuato. And before you end up making desperate calls to your consulate, check out 12 things you don’t want to be caught doing in foreign lands.

The author and her Nepali host family at home in Kathmandu. All photos courtesy Sarah Vazquez.

Being a minority is one of the most valuable experiences of travel. The sensitivity and awareness we learn from the minority perspective is important to bettering ourselves as global citizens. This is especially true for citizens of the United States.

Our country’s makeup includes many types of people and heritages. To say that there is one, streamlined “American Identity” is simply impossible.

From the earliest days of Manifest Destiny and mass immigration to our current times of hostile neighbor relationships (inside and outside our borders) and unprecedented presidential elections, the story of the American Minority has always been highly relevant.

My digging skills under review.

Foreign Americans

By definition, all Americans are travelers and foreigners.

Connecting with the experience of being a foreigner in a global context is really to relate back to the innate immigrant thread that all Americans share.

Amazingly, our common experience as immigrants does not fracture us into categories, regions and races, but rather weaves through our differences and ties us together as one nation.

Whether or not your (great-great-great-great) grandmother’s house was next to Plymouth Rock, or your family just moved to Queens five years ago, we can all learn what it feels like to be “the only one” in a room by adopting the minority perspective and remembering what the experience of immigration was like for our ancestors.

Maybe you are like many Americans and have ancestry rooted beyond the red, white and blue of our nation, but have simply not yet connected with your heritage. Sadly, many efforts towards assimilation and shared identity have meant losing our own distinctive histories and cultural traditions.

Laughing at me?

Personally, I have experienced much of this internal bi-racial contradiction.

My father is from Mexico, yet for many reasons, I have been raised more or less in a completely “American culture”.

Of course, there is no right or wrong type of heritage, and I’m thankful for the unconditional love and patience my family has given me.

However, in my mind, for better or for worse, “American culture” has sometimes meant a focus on the future at the expense of my heritage.

When I was in Nepal a wave of liberating realizations hit me, subtly and powerfully, over the course of my three months as an oddball foreigner.

I was sometimes, conspicuously, the only female in a room. I was the only one whose skin color didn’t match. I was the only one who couldn’t speak Nepali. I was the only one who couldn’t do the simple task at hand.

In addition, I was often culturally inept. I stepped in the wrong place, I ate the wrong way and I showered poorly.

I was a person I had never been at home in America.

I was a distinct minority.

Celebrating Holi, the Festival of Colors.

I tried to take my failures at cultural assimilation lightly.

I quickly got over being afraid of embarrassment, because embarrassment was simply inevitable.

I learned humility, and many of my pre-conceived notions of “what’s proper” soon disappeared as I watched the everyday tasks accomplished in a new way.

I began to lift my head and look around outside of myself. It occurred to me that the Nepali ways were not foreign. The only thing foreign was myself.

Relating to my Father

Perhaps I could now relate to how my own father, along with many other young immigrants, felt in his first years in America.

My father and I had never connected on this type of level before, because we had always focused on our commonalities, namely our recent past together and the future ahead of us.

Although we still don’t talk much about this now, I feel (and hope) that my new-found sensitivity to the minority perspective has spoken louder than my words ever could.

Just like family.

The Lessons of Being Different

Perhaps one of the most useful things I learned in Nepal was how to treat foreignness as a gift.

I began to take solace in the fact that I was learning what it meant to be “the only one” in the room.

Often times over the course of history, Americans have rejected foreignness in favor of conformity. In Nepal, thousands of miles away from home, I learned that everyone is a foreigner somewhere. We are all foreigners because we are all unique.

We all have differences, and so our position of being different turns into a shared experience.

Most Nepali’s seemed to dismiss the idea that I was “wrong” when I misspoke or made a cultural misstep. They just accepted, with enthusiasm, the fact that I was “different.”

I got laughed at. A lot. By many people.

It took me a while to get used to being in the social spotlight all the time, but the humor of my Nepali hosts was not malicious or antagonistic.

My host-family and their friends laughed simply because my differences amused them. It made me happy to see that I could make people smile simply by being myself and by doing some things my own way.

Working in the wheat field.

I treaded these cultural waters with trepidation at first, expecting to be chastised when I stepped incorrectly. Instead, I was respectfully guided in the more culturally acceptable direction.

Perhaps more amazingly, I was never corrected for the sake of retaliation or enforced conformity. Instead, I was always corrected so that I could become a better Nepali and improve my own experience.

Strength in Difference

I returned to America with a strong belief in the importance of respect and understanding within the global community. We must all be responsible, compassionate global neighbors.

But I also returned with a vision of what it means to be an American today. Our nation’s backbone lies in our shared experience of the minority perspective. Our differences help make us strong.

What do you think about the minority perspective?

Please join the conversation by leaving a comment below.

Feature photos by kalandrakas

Learning such expressions is key not only to picking up the local language, but also to grasping different belief systems and ways of seeing the world.

Think of these expressions as ways to get inside of a particular worldview, and to show the locals that you’ve got an awareness of their cultural values.

Japan photo by tiseb

1. Shoganai (しょうがない), Japan

“It can’t be helped.” Japan is for the most part a very non-confrontational culture. Shoganai epitomizes this tendency because by encouraging people not to complain or try to “fight the power”.

Circumstances can’t be changed, so why get angry or try to avoid the unavoidable?

It’s too hot and you have walk 10 km to the nearest train station? Your boss asks you to work an extra four hours that evening?

Just accept it and move on: shoganai.

2. Mai pen rai (ไม่เป็นไร), Thailand

Thailand photo by mckaysavage

“Thailand is where no matter what happens, you say ‘mai pen rai.’ Never mind. Que sera, sera. Water off my back. And get on with your life.”

- Jerry Hopkins, Thailand Confidential

Whereas in Japan this “never mind” idea encourages one to endure hardships, in Thailand, it implies that life should be lived at a relaxed pace.

This could not be more evident in the idea of “Thai time”: several days late for a gathering of friends? Mai pen rai; it’s no big deal, we can always put things off for another day, a week, a month.

3. Sempre tem jeito, Brazil

“…there’s always a way. Don’t drive yourself crazy over stuff now, there’s always a way to work it out in the end.”

- Thomas Kohstamm, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?

4. Pura vida, Costa Rica

Costa Rica photo by lulumon athletica

If you’ve been reading up on the exploits of one frozen banana stand owner, you should understand the idea of enjoying life in leisurely manner in Costa Rica, pura vida!

Literally meaning “pure life”, the saying is often used as a handy catch phrase and a way of offering greetings and farewells.

5. C’est la vie, France

Apparently the French and Japanese think very much alike in this respect. C’est la vie is often used to describe situations beyond someone’s control in a way of saying “that’s life” or “what can you do?”

6. Insha’allah, Arab nations

“In Egypt, it is an expression that is relied on so utterly, repeated so continually and universally – invoked on the quiet, dusty paths of rural villages and on the crowded streets of Cairo alike – that it is a part of our national character.

For Egyptian Muslims (and many Christians, too), insha’allah is the constant reminder that human beings are not in control. It is funny, but also somewhat telling, that most foreigners and visitors to Egypt believe it means ‘never.’”

- Jehan Sadat, My Hope for Peace

7. No worries, Australia and New Zealand

Although the phrase “sweet as” might be just as strong a contender in Kiwi territory, no worries is probably the most culturally relevant phrase in Australia and New Zealand.

The saying expresses a laid-back approach to life. No worries, mate.

8. Huevos, Mexico

Our own Sarah Menkedick offers her experience in Mexico with the variations on huevos (eggs):

“Que hueva.”

Imagine you are Jorge, it is Sunday morning, and you are snug in bed with the sun pouring down on you. Then your peppy girlfriend and her German Shepherd come racing into the room, jump on the bed, and shout/bark “Come running with me!!”

Your response would be: “Que hueva.”

Huevo photo by bpheonix

In case the context didn’t help, “hueva” here means something like boring/tedious/dull/dreadful. You could also translate it more or less directly as “how laziness-inducing.”

“Que huevon/huevona.” This is that guy with his arm elbow-deep in the Ruffles and his gut pouring over the edge of his jeans who shouts “yeah, I’ll get around to it later honey, I’m watching the Simpsons!” The Lazy Egg.

Huevona is the feminine form.

This is what you try to pull on your friends when they refuse to walk the dog with you or trek it across town to catch a bus to see a movie.

“Que huevon!” you say with mock indignation. It rarely works, but it’s fun to call someone a lazy egg anyway.

- Huevos a la Mexicana

9. Maningue Nice, Mozambique

Mozambique photo by JenvanW

A cross between a purely national term and a flair of English, maningue nice means “very nice” and is the closest thing to a slogan in Mozambique. Scream it from the tallest buildings whenever fortune favors you.

10. Bahala Na, Philippines

Come What May.

“This is the term that is very often used when all else fails, when you have done all you could, it doesn’t matter
because fate will take over. Sort of a comfort in a sense, that wills the Filipino, that gives them a sort of perseverance.”

Source: tingog.com

A Cross Cultural Theme

When I started researching these expressions, I was expecting to find similarities based on geography: patterns in Asia, South America, Western Europe, etc.

I was surprised, however, to find a cross-cultural theme; many of these phrases are used in response to circumstances beyond people’s control.

How each culture is epitomized in these terms is indicative of how they react to unfortunate or unavoidable events.

The Japanese and French suck it up; the Thais, Kiwis, Aussies, and others shrug it off; Arabs put the responsibility to a higher power.

Join the Conversation!

Do you know a phrase that seems to epitomize a culture? Please share it by leaving a comment below!

Photo by gruntzooki

Feature photos by striatic

The Beach, Los Angeles, California

As long as a beach bum is within sight of one of the elevated antenna locations along Pier Avenue in LA, he can surf the net. The Hermosa Beach wireless system (WifiHermosaBeach) has been up and running since February of 2008.

Hermosa Beach / Photo by Chris Cohenour

Phone Booths, Moscow, Russia

Plans for integrating 200 coin-box telephones with wireless connection into Moscow’s Comstar network began back in 2007. Customers can use pre-paid cards, SMS-authorizations and MGTS phone cards to access the Internet.

Since then, other cities have jumped on board. Hong Kong offers wi-fi at a few hundred phone booths throughout the city, and internet street kiosks have also popped up in London, Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, and New York. The price is typically steep, but these are convenient if you’re desperate to get online.

Buenos Aires subway photo by Irargerich

Subways, Buenos Aires, Argentina

No, not your favorite sandwich shop, although a few of those have been known to offer wi-fi, too. But in some cities, it’s possible to check out the latest YouTube vids…well, while riding the tube.

Buenos Aires became the first city to offer free Internet access in subway stations a few years ago, and several cities have followed suit, including Hong Kong, Glasgow, and Boston.

Marinas, Auckland, New Zealand

Specifically, Westhaven Marina, which is now the largest marina wifi zone in the southern hemisphere.

Coverage at Westhaven is provided by Auckland City Wi-fi, a collaboration between the Auckland City Council, Kordia (leading provider of broadcast and telecommunications networks), and Tomizone (Australasia’s largest wi-fi provider) that covers seven zones across Auckland.

Marina hotspots are becoming more common, and there are several around the world, including Canada, the U.K., Europe, and several states in the U.S.

Photo by andreanna

Whole Foods, Most Cities, United States

As announced on their blog in April of 2009, now customers can stay connected to the world while shopping for local food, or enjoying an organic soy latte in the Whole Foods cafe.

Bonus: Now you can run a Google search for the weird stuff in the produce section. (You know what I’m talking about. That spiky orange football-shaped thing.)

Golf Courses, Tallahassee, Florida

At Florida State University’s Don Veller Seminole Golf Course, wi-fi isn’t just for the club. Thanks to the GPS Industries’ Inforemer HDX display units on their golf carts, combined with an integrated wi-fi communications network, the entire facility is a hotspot.

Internet access on the green helps the staff monitor play to keep things running smoothly. And Tim Melloh, General Manager, adds, “Even the ability to order food from the course’s Renegade Grill while you’re out on the course will save golfers time at the turn.”

Middle of Nowhere, Sarohan, India

Wi-fi in India may not seem so surprising, but for this small village of 2,000 people, it’s almost miraculous.

As of 2005, Sarohan didn’t even have electricity, so the 20-metre wif-fi tower that looms over the thatched roofs and mango orchards provided a much-needed way to communicate with relatives.

The tower was provided by IIT Kanpur’s Digital Gangetic Plain Project, which has taken phones and internet connectivity to 10 villages in and around the Unnao area.

What’s the weirdest place you’ve found Wi-fi?

Share your experiences by leaving a comment below!

Thai monks by Ryan Libre

The King Makes it Rain

The King of Thailand perfected and holds the patent on a form of cloud seeding. He has designed bridges and dams and holds an engineering degree from Switzerland.

The King also plays the sax and composed the Thai national anthem. He built his own sailboat and is a talented oil painter.

He is the longest reigning monarch in the world. The Thai people love him and with many good reasons.

It is Year 2552

Buddha statue by Ryan Libre

Thai people start counting from when the Buddha was born, who came along before Jesus. A few other Asian countries also count from Buddha’s birthday, but they are all a few years apart.

The Clock Starts Over Every 6 Hours

You know the 12 hour clock, you’ve heard of the 24 hour clock, but you didn’t know that most of Thailand runs on a 6 hour clock that resets 4 times a day.

Bangkok? Where’s Bangkok?

Bangkok was the temporary Thai capital after the Burmese sacked Ayutthaya. After 10 years or so the Thais moved across the river to start a new capital city called:

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit.

This is the longest place name in the world. Thais usually shorten it to just Krung Thep.

Destinations

Community Connection to Thailand

The original temporary capital city “Bangkok” was soon swallowed up by the rapidly expanding Krung Tep, so Bangkok is now just one of the many outlying neighborhoods.

If you ask most Thai people where Bangkok is they only have a very vague idea and wouldn’t know exactly how to get there.

The “Thai” in Thailand Means “Free”

Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country that was never colonized. This is a fact that they are very proud of and want ingrained in their national identity.

Even Thai Kings Often Misspell Words

The Thai alphabet has 6 more vowels than the entire English alphabet! All together, Thais have 32 vowels and 44 consonants.

All the Thai kings in the past several generations have been educated overseas. If you read their personal memos and writings there are many spelling errors.

The Chinese run Thailand

Chinese influence by Ryan Libre

Many generations ago there were no paid jobs in Thailand. Every man had to work for 3 months for free for the monarchy.

Sometimes that labor wasn’t enough and sometimes the kings didn’t trust their own subjects for accounting jobs, so they hired Chinese workers.

Their salaries may have been small, but they gave the Chinese the upper-hand in business, which paved the way to political success.

Thaksin (the highly polarizing former Thai Prime Minister), and a large majority of Thailand’s businessmen and politicians are the ancestors of these early Chinese workers.

Despite living in Thailand for many generations, many of these powerful individuals hold on to their Chinese heritage and often read the newspaper in Chinese.

Vegetarianism is NOT a Western Import to Thailand

The Chinese also brought vegetarianism with them hundreds of years ago.

Vegetarian Thai food by Ryan Libre

The Thais still use the Chinese word for vegetarianism, simply pronounced “J”. Eating vegetarian has been a major part of the Thai worldview for generations.

Despite the recent article in the New York Times about the “booming” vegetarian movement in Thailand, little has changed in the last 100 years and almost nothing has changed in the the last decade.

Going to Thailand?

Check out 10 Thai Customs to Know Before Visiting Thailand.

For a good laugh, read Matador Nights editor Tom Gates’ diary of an eating binge in Bangkok food-courts. Tom also has reviews of authentic Italian food in Bangkok and the coolest hostel in Bangkok.

Nomadic Matt lives in Bangkok. Matt is an expert on Bangkok nightlife but also knows how to get off the tourist trail in Southeast Asia.

Your very own Matador Abroad editor Tim Patterson thinks You Sabai is the best organic cooking school in Thailand.

Matador Trips editor Hal Amen shares a jungle adventure in his guide to Khao Sok National Park.

For up to date and comprehensive information about travel in Thailand, you can’t do better than the online Thailand travel guide on Travelfish.

Not a Matador member yet? Join our travel community.

Photo by jdl deleon

Madonna doesn’t do things by halves and has rarely been known to take no for an answer.

When Madonna flew to Malawi recently to adopt a second child, who could have foreseen the problems she would face?

Madonna’s case has once again reminded childless people that there are millions of children in the world today who are looking for homes.

In spite of her wealth and the fact that she set up a children’s charity in Malawi, Madonna’s adoption application didn’t cut it with the judge.

Photo by fffriendly

So what did she do wrong, and what should you do if you’re considering welcoming a child from another culture into your life?

1. Stop and think.

The first step in the long journey towards adopting a child from another country or indeed adopting or fostering any child is to stop and think.

The Jolie-Pitts of this world may make adoption look easy, but integrating a new human being into your world is a challenge.

Think about your emotional commitment to a child for the next twenty years and how the rest of your family will feel; in other words, evaluate all of the factors that most prospective birth parents consider.

You should also think about your commitment to the child’s home country – you should be ready to keep the child aware of their heritage.

2. Check home-country regulations.

Photo by peasap

It’s a good idea to look into the regulations in your home country before you start the process.

Adopting a child is not as simple as signing their name into your passport.

For example Canadians need to sign up for a home study by a government representative, which can take up to a year to complete.

There’s no point getting indignant about this paperwork; the rules are in place to protect the kids from even more trauma than they might already have suffered.

3. Prepare to pay the fees.

When there’s paperwork, there are fees to be paid. Adoption of foreign children isn’t a cheap process; the US Office of Children’s Issues talk about costs of $30,000 just for the adoption agency fees.

Not that a child’s life can be measured in dollars, but you should be prepared for the financial commitment.

Groups like Help Us Adopt exist to help you find that initial funding, but you’ll also need money for education and all the other costs of raising a child.

Photo by lepiaf.geo

Remember that the adoption process is only the beginning of your commitment to the child.

4. Avail yourself of help from agencies.

But even though the agencies are expensive, you’ll find the process a lot easier with their help and going through an agency mandatory in some countries.

Each year in the USA, about 20,000 foreign children are taken into homes along with about 2,000 in Canada, so adopting a foreign child is not an impossible task.

It’s important for you and the child to check that the agency is fully accredited – American agencies should be accredited by the Council on Accreditation (COA).

5. Check foreign regulations.

With the help of the agency, you’ll need to carefully check out the regulations of the child’s country.

Madonna wasn’t aware that she had to live in Malawi for 18 months before adopting a child – probably because she had managed to get around that law once before.

This U.S. state department website gives you detailed information on which countries have signed up to The Hague Adoption Convention and also allows you to track changes in national adoption laws.

This kind of information will make your journey to finding a child smoother and more successful.

6. Familiarize yourself with the Hague Convention.

Photo by nyki m

Read up on The Hague Adoption Convention.

This agreement between 75 countries was set in place to stop trafficking or other abuse of children. It means more paperwork for you if you adopt from one of these countries, but you and the child will feel a lot more secure in your relationship.

After all a child takes a huge leap of faith getting on a plane with you, so the more safeguards there are for them the better.

7. Think beyond logistics.

Of course it’s not all about paperwork. Try to get as much information as you can about the emotional effects of adoption.

Books like Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew or The Complete Book of International Adoption will give you a good idea of what’s going to happen.

Use the internet – once you know which country your child is from, you can join online support groups to help you though the adoption process and to make friends who can support you in your new life.

8. Think about the child!

Photo by Tom@HK

Depending on how old your child is, the adoption process can be quite difficult for them.

Older children will have to learn a new language, new culture and come to terms with being far away from familiar life. We talk a lot about culture shock but imagine what it’s like being 7 or 8 years old and thousands of miles away from home with no return ticket?

You’ll need to be patient and remember that no matter how much you love this child, it will take time to create that perfect family you’ve been dreaming about.

But given time and oodles of love, adopting a foreign child will be the most rewarding journey you can imagine.

Photos via Travelfish

The success of Travelfish, Matador and other travel websites begs a questions – are travelers spending too much time online these days?

Here’s an open letter from Stuart MacDonald, the co-founder of Travelfish:

Despite the dour economic scene worldwide, it seems barely a week passes without a press release landing in my in-tray proclaiming yet another internet travel site destined to be the best thing since padded moneybelts.

The higher-tech sites promise things like localizing content depending on where you are (via your laptop or mobile phone) and telling you how far down the road the guesthouse is — but if you pass another guesthouse while walking down Khao San Road in Bangkok you might get a text from them telling you they are offering a 50% off deal if you check-in during the next hour.

Is that really as absurd as it sounds?

Obviously running a website like Travelfish, we hope to help travelers plan and enjoy their trip, but has travel become too wired?

It’s a sign of the times that it is considered normal to walk into a guesthouse and see it full of travelers gazing into their laptops, checking their Facebook page, updating their travel blog, uploading their photos, Twittering, ranting on Lonely Planet’s Thorntree or, yes, cruising Travelfish.

Just a few years ago, walking into a scene like that would have been decidedly odd.

How is this changing travel?

People’s sources of travel intelligence are morphing.

Largely gone are the days of guesthouse comment books, once immensely valuable tomes full of snippets and travel advice. Instead people search travel websites for up-to-date info.

Why ask a stranger in the common room where a good cafe is when you can simultaneously ask a million people through Twitter on your laptop?

Why use a guidebook when a savvy website will localize content to your iPhone and recommend the best guesthouse within 100 metres of where you are standing based on your past reservation preferences?

Why swap addresses when you can just swap phone numbers or email addresses on your Blackberry? When was the last time on the road you actually exchanged postal addresses with another traveler?

What happens when you leave your laptop, iPhone and Blackberry at home? Remember Poste Restante?

All these new ways of collecting travel intelligence can be great, but when it comes to up-to-date information they are rarely a substitute for sitting down with a complete stranger and swapping notes.

So try it: Switch off your laptop, walk across the room and introduce yourself to another traveler — you’ll be surprised just how much untapped information is sitting right there in the guesthouse common room with you.

And, of course, once you’re done chatting, be sure to get the laptop back on and post the information on Travelfish quicksmart — or at least throw in your two cents about wired travel on the Travelfish forum.

What Do You Think?

Hey there, wired traveler. What do you think about the profusion of online travel guides? Please leave a comment below.

Photo by jurvetson….feature photo by permanently scatterbrained

For many travelers, Bangkok is the first stop on travels in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia.

With its chaotic veneer, Thai customs are easily overlooked in Bangkok. Respect the local people by knowing these ten cultural points before you embark on travels in Thailand.

Photo by specialkrb

Versatile Greeting

The wai, or pressing your palms together at chest or nose level and bowing your head slightly, is a gesture that you will encounter almost immediately upon arrival in Thailand.

An integral part of Thai etiquette, it denotes respect (or reverence when performed in front of a Buddha image), and can be used to express a hello, thank you, or goodbye.

Absolute Reverence

Photo by permanently scatterbrained

Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, and the royal family is revered throughout the country. The King is especially beloved for his six decades of public service and humble demeanor.

His image is everywhere, from posters plastered on the exterior of buildings to photos displayed on taxi dashboards.

Always stand when the King’s anthem is played before movies, concerts and sporting events. Travelers should also refrain from making disparaging remarks about the royals.

Strict lèse majesté laws apply, and offenses are punishable by imprisonment.

National Pride

Over the past several decades, the government has introduced various practices to encourage nationalism.

Photo by Swami Stream

One example of this institutionalized patriotism is twice daily broadcasts of the national anthem.

Pedestrians, commuters, and students are required to stop or stand whenever this song is played.

In recent efforts to boost patriotism, a group of generals proposed that traffic also come to a standstill, arguing that motorists “already spend more time in traffic jams anyway.”

Colorful Days

Based on pre-Buddhist Hindu legends, a particular auspicious color is associated with each day of the week. This is most noticeable on Mondays, when many people wear yellow shirts, acknowledging and honouring the day on which the King was born. Other popular colors include pink (Tuesday) and light blue (Friday, the Queen’s day of birth).

Given recent political protests, the colors red and yellow are also of significance, representing opposing movements.

Never mind!

The phrase Mai pen rai (never mind) describes the country’s unofficial philosophy, capturing locals’ knack for keeping cool in taxing or annoying situations. In the grand scheme of things, why stress about trifling matters? Mai pen rai!

This laidback mindset goes hand-in-hand with an inherent sense of light-heartedness. Nothing is taken too seriously, and anything worth doing should contain some element of sanuk (fun)!

Sexual Tolerance

Photo by zaphodsotherhead

Thailand has long enjoyed a reputation for sexual tolerance, based more on non-confrontational (as opposed to progressive) attitudes. The country is very safe for GLBT travelers.

Transsexuals, also known as krathoeys or ladyboys, are highly visible in mainstream society, from scantily clad teens to high-profile celebrities.

Religious Objects

About 95% of Thailand’s population is comprised of Buddhists from the Theravada school.

Photo by jurvetson

Despite teachings against material attachment, many Thais worship Buddha images and don amulets for protection.

Various animist practices have also been integrated into Thai religious life.

Most buildings boast spirit houses or altars, where offerings of food and garlands are made to appease the spirits inhabiting the land.

Avoid touching such displays as some Thais can be highly superstitious, fearing disruption of harmonious balance.

Bodily Conduct

Based on Buddhist beliefs, the head is the most valued part of the body while the feet are the lowest, symbolizing attachment to the ground, a cause of human suffering.

Photo by irene2005

Touching someone’s head is highly offensive, as is raising your feet or pointing them at people or religious objects.

Shoes are to be removed before entering homes and religious structures.

Most types of attire are tolerated in areas frequented by tourists. It is a good idea, however, to cover up when visiting temples and shrines. Those wearing sleeveless tops, short skirts, shorts, and flip flops may be denied entrance.

It is not unusual to encounter signs prohibiting women from entering highly sacred places, such as temple libraries. Women who wish to worship do so outside the buildings.

Also, while it is taboo for a woman to touch a monk or pass things to him directly, polite conversation is fine.

Nicknames

Destinations

Community Connection to Thailand

Thais are generally addressed by their first names, preceded by the honorific title Khun, appropriate for both men and women. In more casual settings, mono-syllabic nicknames are used.

More traditional monikers cover categories such as colors, animals, and fruit, including Daeng (red), Lek (small), and Moo (pig); these days, you will encounter nicknames such as Good, Money, and Benz (as in the luxury auto).

Bathroom Basics

Outside of large cities, squat toilets rule. These are flushed by pouring water from an adjacent bucket into the hole. Also, used toilet paper is to be discarded in the bin provided; never try to flush it down as it most plumbing isn’t designed to handle paper.

Traditional washrooms include a trough filled with water where a ladle or bowl is used to sluice water over the body. In areas where outdoor bathing is the norm, women will don a cotton sarong or wraparound, and men will bathe in their underwear.

Photo by jurvetson

Matador loves Thailand.

For a good laugh, read Matador Nights editor Tom Gates’ diary of an eating binge in Bangkok food-courts. Tom also has reviews of authentic Italian food in Bangkok and the coolest hostel in Bangkok.

Nomadic Matt lives in Bangkok. Matt is an expert on Bangkok nightlife but also knows how to get off the tourist trail in Southeast Asia.

Your very own Matador Abroad editor Tim Patterson thinks You Sabai is the best organic cooking school in Thailand.

Matador Trips editor Hal Amen shares a jungle adventure in his guide to Khao Sok National Park.

For up to date and comprehensive information about travel in Thailand, you can’t do better than the online Thailand travel guide on Travelfish.

Not a Matador member yet? Join our travel community.

Burmese Curry / photo by jackol

Photo: David Hagerman

Does eating a searing red curry with a piece of buttery naan make you feel like a different person from one who normally eats, say, a baguette of Serrano ham and heirloom tomatoes?

Does eating pickled vegetables on a daily basis start to get to you, make you feel a little differently about life after awhile?

Does standing in the narrow corridor of a Japanese yakitori bar, smelling grilled chicken and onion, watching smoke billow around a bandannaed man flipping the skewers, temporarily give you a new identity?

Like traveling, food can pull the rug – subtly or blatantly – out from under a given identity.

The transformative effects of food might not be as immediately obvious as those of a new cultural environment, but they’re just as significant.

Which is why I bring you my top five Asian food blogs.

Why Asia? Because the continent is fortunate to have some extremely talented and experienced cooks and writers dedicating their lives to exploring its cuisine.

These bloggers will help you navigate the overwhelming realm of Asian food. They’ll flesh out the context for you and guide you through the culinary metamorphasis that takes place in travel.

And they’ll make you so. freaking. hungry.

1. Yasuko San’s Home Cooking

Photo: I Love Egg

Poco is a Japanese woman blogging about her mother’s cooking. The aim of her site is to preserve knowledge of and respect for traditional Japanese cooking. She quotes her grandfather :

“You eat local cuisine and you’ll not get sick.”

The site is a food diary of what her mother cooks every day—literally, almost every day—as well as an extensive catalogue of Japanese ingredients and recipes. This is one of the best resources I’ve found on Japanese food and cooking.

I think Poco sums it up simply and sweetly in an essay entitled The Natural Style:

I never forget that our body is made up of foods.

2. Appetite For China

I cannot tell you how many times in Beijing I’d spend the morning devouring Appetite For China and the afternoon scouring the city for roujiamo (a kebab-like sandwich of pulled pork) or the perfect dan dan mian(spicy Sichuan noodles).

Diana Kuan grew up partly in Puerto Rico, where her family operated a Latin-Chinese “fusion” restaurant (before fusion became the most overhyped food concept of the century) and partly in suburban Boston, where the family ran a “Polynesian-style take-out and Cantonese bakery.”

Combine that family background with French culinary training, a stint as a pastry chef, years spent as a food writer covering everything from chocolate to Ethiopian food, and a move to Beijing, and you have one helluva perspective on food.

Appetite For China runs the spectrum from the traditional (mapo tofu) to the innovative (absinthe cranberry frappe).

And you can’t beat Diana’s 100 Chinese Foods To Try Before You Die if you’re moving or traveling to China.

3. Eating Asia

Photo: David Hagerman

Writer Robyn Eckhardt and photographer David Hagerman have been living in Asia for over thirteen years, and are currently based in Kuala Lumpur.

Their blog is equal parts travel, people, and food, and can’t be missed if you’re traveling to Malaysia.

The photos and the stories behind them invoke fields, valleys, smoky alleyways and street-side noodle stands where you’ve never been but can somehow feel and taste.

The writing is suburb and direct – as much about recipes as it is about local ingredients, people, and stories.

Even though I’ll be leaving Japan soon and don’t have another Asia trip planned, I visit this blog because I want to be there in the dumpling steam, sitting at a tiny plastic table beside a ramshackle stand, with the taste of scallions and meat and sharp vinegar in my mouth at 7 a.m.

4. Rambling Spoon

Karen Coates is the Asia correspondent for “Gourmet” and author of “Cambodia Now: Life in the Wake of War,” among other books. She and her husband have spent more than a decade living in, traveling through, and writing about Asia.

Rambling Spoon is as much about Asian politics, history, nature, and social life as it is about food. Coates writes:

Food is life (and death). It is history and politics and science and nature. It is everything, and it is not a subject to be taken lightly. After all, food is everything we are.

Photo: Jerry Redfern

I would argue, food is also essential to traveling, and it is part of the transformation that takes place in traveling.

What we put in our bodies links us to people and landscape.

And those links are evident in the stories, recipes and photos that come together on Rambling Spoon.

5. Sticky Rice

The bio on this site leaves an air of mystery about the authors:

“Eating, drinking, sitting, watching -these are the things we love about Hanoi. On this site we will attempt to eat our way through Vietnam’s northern capital and pass on the results.”

Despite the dearth of personal info, the writing has a distinct voice. It manages to be snarky, insightful, slightly pretentious and down home all at once.

It makes for great reading and stokes a desire to go to Vietnam that I didn’t know I had.

Photo: avlxyz

For anyone traveling to Hanoi, and Vietnam in general, this is the one blog that should not be missed, and for those of you for whom food blogs are porn, Sticky Rice is particularly drool-worthy.

Sticky Rice teleports you to the green banana stand, to the cluttered café, to the pho joint that haunts your dreams.

Again, these five blogs are the ones I find exceptional in the way they capture places through food. There are, of course, many more great Asian food blogs.

Consider food blogs as travel guides that give you another angle through which to experience culture. With these blogs as your guide, you can learn how to literally swallow up and digest a place.

Community Connection

For more about the connection between food and place, check out this author’s article about Tasting Place, or peruse Essential Cookbooks for the Culinary Traveler. You also might want to know how to eat a new language before you embark on your culinary adventure.

For up-to-date Southeast Asian restaurant reviews and trip planning information, check out TravelFish.

Destinations

Community Connection to India

Lonely Planet author Sarina Singh shares the secrets of the Taj Mahal in this beautiful video.

The dark love story of the magnificent monument is fascinating. If you’ve seen the Taj, is there any other man-made structure in the world that could possibly match its beauty?

Going to India?

Be sure to read 10 Indian Customs To Know Before You Visit India.

Feature photo by Matador member Vlogabond.

Lajpat Nagar by Wili_hybrid

For ages, India has been viewed as a symbol of the mystical and exotic East.

Dismissing India as a cliche runs the serious risk of placing India in a timeless zone outside of the real world, which is increasingly modern and complex.

India is a vast and rapidly developing country with twenty-eight different states and seven union territories. India hosts a great many languages, religions and cultures, which coexist and intermingle.

Delhi sunset by Wili_hybrid

The real India is hardly the random (yet homogenous) assortment of the Taj Mahal, call centers, poor people and veiled women you might expect.

The India you’ll actually encounter is a lot more diverse and complicated than that. Things are changing in India at a frenetic pace, especially in the big cities.

Hopefully, these tips will give you a better understanding of what to expect when you travel to India.

Sacred cow by Wili_hybrid

Temple Etiquette

Always take your shoes off before you enter a place of worship in India, and do not wear revealing clothes.

Travelers in India are often tempted to wear shorts, but it’s crucial to keep your shoulders and the lower part of your body covered when visiting a site of religious importance.

As the land where four major religions originated, and many others arrived and never left, many Indian people take their religion very, very seriously.

If you are interested in exploring their religious sites – many of which can be of immense historical and archeological importance – please respect religious sentiments even if you are not a believer.

Street scene by Wili_hybrid

Prepare to be OVERWHEMED!!!

India carries the burden of three centuries of British imperialism, along with the weight of its own often reworked and redefined history.

Destinations

Community Connection to India

The two make a very postmodern combination. The complications and contradictions of India’s political realities will stun the first time foreign visitor.

You’ll encounter huge, swanky shopping malls very close to massive slum settlements that reek of utmost poverty.

Many visitors who stay in India leave with a sense of accomplishment, after having survived the initial overpowering shock.

And rest assured: it is a shock to learn what it means to live in India (as over a billion of us do).

Public Displays Of Affection

The beautiful lagoons of Kerala or the beauty of the Taj Mahal might make you want to sidle up to your partner and give them a quick hug and kiss, but think twice before doing that in public.

Even though you might catch young couple canoodling in public parks, it’s best not to perform public displays of affection in India.

Sexuality and Women Travelers

White women traveling in India may feel very vulnerable and exposed to some of the Indian men that they might encounter.

Due to some cultural constructs, and also a great deal of curiosity, Indian men might have formed certain false notions of the sexual availability of the foreign woman.

I am not saying that every other Indian guy you meet will be a pervert, but street sexual harassment is a phenomenon that is unfortunately widespread in the country.

You might fall prey to this due to your increased conspicuousness. It’s best to dress conservatively and keep yourself safe at all times.

Don’t forget the basic safety rules you’ve learned in your own country, and also observe the way the local women dress and behave as an example.

Hands and Feet

Hand by Meanest Indian

There’s a whole hierarchy of the body parts in Hinduism. The head is superior to the rest of the body, and the feet are lowest on the rung.

Feet are considered dirty in India, so take off your shoes before you step into someone’s house. Don’t step on anything important and if you do, immediately express your apologies.

It’s a sign of deference to bend down and touch a respected elder’s feet in India.

The left hand is customarily used for cleaning oneself after defecation, so Indian people never eat with their left hands. Also remember never to pass on anything – money or a gift – to an Indian with your left hand. The most conservative Indians might take offense.

Questions and Eyes

Bow Down by Koshyk

What might be considered intrusive in many Western cultures is only a matter of course in India. Also, people will generally be very curious about foreign visitors, and this can take the form of unabashed staring.

There’s a lack of privacy among the teeming millions of India, and the concept of personal space as you know it might not exist.

Try not to take it too personally if people on the street seem to be staring at you all the time, and if Indian acquaintances and friends ask you questions that you think are none of their business.

Most of the time, it’s just friendly curiosity, and if you smile at a staring stranger, many times you will get an amicable smile back. However, never sacrifice safety for the sake of politeness. This is especially true for women travelers.

You’ll Be Hounded

You might be seen as a rich foreigner thanks to the exchange rate, and many times you’ll be followed around by beggars, beckoned into shops by over-eager store keepers, and hailed by expectant taxi drivers.

Make sure your local friends tell you what the standard rates are, because if you’re looking to do some great shopping or have a comfortable public transport experience, you need to be in the know.

Holi festival by faceme

Indian Festivals

With so many religions and cultures, you will come across fairs, celebrations and merrymaking of all kinds.

Whether it is the shimmering lights of Diwali, the colors of Holi, the extravaganza of Durga Puja, Navaratri, Onam, Dusshera, Id Ul Fitr and Christmas, you’ll encounter indigenous customs, amazing Indian cuisine and total festive abandonment.

We Are Like This Only

English is widely used throughout the Indian subcontinent, and is the “co-official” language of the country. Indian English has a distinct flavor and inflection that differs as you travel around different parts of the country.

Official Indian English often uses many phrases that are passé in the West, so don’t be surprised if you’re doing some paper-work and someone asks you to “do the needful”.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Other excellent articles by Shreya Sanghani include:

Photo by Wili_hybrid

Calcutta Nights: A Guide To Live Music and Discos

India’s Pink Chaddi Campaign

India’s Up And Coming Rock Scene

Also be sure to read Can You Develop Your Spirituality Without Visiting India? by Matador’s resident yogi, Christine.

Namaste!

Photo by Tallkev______Feature pic. by Mhogan35

Keep your sushi simple. Avoid rolls with mayonnaise or anything deep-fried.

If the highlight of your meal is a spicy tuna roll, you’re in trouble.

Pink Sherbert Photography

1. Pick Your Master Chef

Make no mistake: although sushi is often the main attraction in upscale Japanese restaurants, there is lots of lousy sushi out there. Let’s start from the bottom of the barrel.

Pre-packaged

I don’t care if it was made at Whole Foods with all-natural ingredients; the freshness and quality of fish in most prepackaged sushi samplers is laughable.

Why spent a minimum of $8 on a cheap sushi lunch when you can duck into an atmospheric restaurant and get ten times the quality for only twice the price?

On The Cheap Side

Fast food Japanese places restrict themselves to maki rolls when it comes to sushi.

The reason? The “rollers” don’t have to be trained as full-blown sushi chefs, and the fish doesn’t have to be properly cut with an amazingly sharp knife.

What You Want

Irrashai-mase! Tiarescott

Look for a slightly nicer Japanese restaurant featuring a sushi chef who:

Keeps a clean cutting board.

The cleaner and neater the work station, the better the chef.

Has charisma in his presentation.

You want to be able to talk to your sushi chef, joke around with him, ask him for recommendations.

Knows his rice.

Chefs in Japan typically spend two years’ training on rice alone, as it is the essence of sushi. Unlike sweet rice served at meals, sushi rice is repeatedly rinsed to clean up the grains and seasoned with vinegar and the chef’s own secret ingredients.

Fortunate enough to have a woman as your sushi chef?

That’s a rarity. For better or worse, sushi is a man’s world. If you’re living near Los Angeles, be sure to check out Sushi Go 55, run by the country’s first female sushi chef, Tomoko Morishita.

2. Ordering: The Three O’s

Trevor Corson offers the following guidance in his fascinating book The Story of Sushi:

“The order in which the customer requests different types of fish is not crucial, but most sushi connoisseurs begin with leaner, lighter-tasting dish and progress toward fish with strong flavors and higher fat content.”

Here are three Japanese phrases that refer to different ways to order sushi.

Okimari: “It has been decided.”

This refers to set meals and sushi samplers, menu items that have a fixed price and require very little thought. Still, there is usually a good variety of fish to be had.

Okonomi: “As I like it.”

If you’ve been around the block with sushi restaurants and know what suits your palette, go ahead and order fish-by-fish. Most venues will present only two pieces of sushi for each order – the idea is to appreciate the variety.

Omakase: “Please decide for me.”

Saying “omakase” while sitting down at the sushi bar is probably the smartest decision you can make.

Plastic sushi Matsuyuki

Sushi chefs know which fish are the tastiest to have arrived that day, and omakase gives them an opportunity to show-off their skills and experiment with presentation.

The only downside of omakase is the expense: if you ask the chef to choose what’s best, he will most likely assume you aren’t concerned with the price.

Many chefs will use less rice for an omakase order, so you may eat more fish without filling up so quickly.

3. NO chopsticks, NO wasabi, NO soy sauce

The most ignorant thing you can do in a sushi restaurant is to pick up a perfectly formed nigiri topped off with the freshest bluefin tuna the Tsukiji Market has to offer, and proceed to dunk the entire slab of fish into a dish of wasabi and soy sauce.

In old Tokyo, sushi was a finger food sold on the street. Many westerners traveling to Asia assume everyone uses chopsticks for all varieties of food – this is simply not true.

Sushi is meant to be eaten with your hands.

Toro (tuna) Adactio

Give respect to the taste of the fish itself. Every morning good sushi chefs are scouring fish markets to choose only the best catch for their restaurants.

A lot of thought goes into the weight, color, texture, and age of the fish… which is one reason many Japanese chefs are puzzled when their American patrons ruin the taste by overpowering it with salty soy sauce and strong wasabi.

Did you know that the vast majority of Japanese restaurants in the States serve fake wasabi, an inferior horseradish product?

4. Let’s Enjoy Eating Sushi!

Ok, by now you’ve got the basic protocol down. Let’s try some sushi.

Destinations

Community Connection to Japan

Step 1:

Make sure your hands are clean by wiping them down with the damp cloth provided.

Step 2:

Pick up whichever fish suits your fancy.

Step 3:

Insert into the mouth upside down so that the “fishy side” touches the tongue first. Get it all in one bite, and mindfully chew, enjoying the tasty sensations.

Step 4:

If you’re moving on to a different type of fish, be sure to eat some ginger to cleanse the palate and wipe your hands again to eliminate traces of the other fish.

Step 5:

Repeat as needed.

At the end of the meal it is proper to drink green tea. Congratulations. You are now a certified sushi ninja.

5. And Now For Something Completely Different

Kaiten-zushi

kaiten-zushi by jlastras

Conveyor belt sushi is becoming increasing popular outside Japan. Instead of placing your orders with a chef or waiter, diners simply lift their choice of sushi off a belt that rotates around the room.

The dishes, which are counted at the end of the meal, are color coded to determine price. Kaiten-zushi is usually much cheaper than a regular restaurant.

Nyotai-mori

Some rather twisted people like to pay a lot of money to eat sushi off a naked body.

Although women are typically the centerpieces, men can be used as well (called nantaimori).

Do you have a favorite sushi restaurant?

Give us a heads-up in the comments, and be sure to leave a link – maybe the chef will give you some free maki in exchange for the review

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Why is sushi the sexiest food on the planet?

Check out Tim Patterson’s Sexy Sushi: The Global Foreplay Food.

If you’re interested in traveling to Japan to try some really fresh fish, brush up on Japanese customs with Turner Wright’s Zen-like advice.

Want something even more exotic?

Nellie Huang explains why every day is an adventure when you’re eating in Asia.

Corporate rule? Izaak Hane

Maybe to experience another culture. Maybe to do some traveling. Maybe for work.

Maybe to escape the hordes of morons in this country who don’t know anything about the world, and yet insist on characterizing it as bug-infested, crime-ridden and moments away from a coup.

You all can slave away the rest of your lives to afford your poorly made, vinyl-sided house in a featureless subdivision, fighting it out with everyone else to prove how much you have and just how good of a consumer you are.

Buy Humans Buy! sf slim

I’ll be sitting on my porch with my feet up, a drink in hand, listening to the sounds of nature and enjoying the simple life.

I’d love this country if it weren’t populated with total idiots…

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

This post was a comment in response to the article What Can $150k Buy In Real Estate Around The World.

Do you agree with the author?

Do you think his aggressive, insulting tone is unhelpful regardless of the quality of his arguments?

Please leave a comment below!

Photo by NeilsPhotography___Feature photo by Ramona.Forcella

If you’re off traveling and are suddenly crippled by a horrific attack of Campylobacter jejuni after eating some under-cooked chicken, would you prefer to be treated by a Doctor — who, you know, has an understanding of the germ theory of disease — or have raw pig’s blood slathered on your face by a man who has never washed his hands?

I mean, I like “local color”, too, but I also like people who know how to build school-houses and hospitals, and who don’t believe that their neighbor can make their “cattle fly off into a vortex of clouds”.

(Turns out pig’s blood can also be used to ward off Thai witches and Cambodian cattle rustlers, as well as cure every sort of disease in Laos.)

dirty bodega

The truth is, the inhabitants of rural areas — most particularly in the Third World, though this is true of parts of Europe as well — are not lovely repositories of authentic culture.

(To be fair: while I suppose being slathered in pig’s blood is ‘authentic’ in the basic sense that it is what they would do to one of their own, that isn’t an argument for trying it, nor for enjoying it.)

In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get…and, eventually, you reach places where the word ‘culture’ is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger.

Give me Allopathic Medicine, hot water, Das Pergamonmuseum and a nice chèvre en brioche, any day.

None for you, though, because you think that “cities all over the world are pretty homogenized”.

Ugh…not even someone who checked into the nearest Hilton as soon as they arrived in every city they ever visited could be so deluded!

Within a hundred miles of Paris alone there are fifty unique cultures, and a few dozen argots. The same could be said for Barcelona, Glasgow, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Florence…

They all include nice clean beds, and clean food, too!

(Anyway, if you’d like to try to argue that there is no ‘culture’ in Paris or Barcelona…or that they are ‘homogeneous’…well…)

- Jordan

Editor’s Note

The essay you just read is a response to a popular article I wrote called How To Travel The World For Free.

In the article, I advised broke travelers to stick to rural areas instead of cities. Perhaps I went too far when I wrote the following in the discussion that followed my original post:

In my experience, culture is best preserved and practiced in rural areas. In this globalized age, cities all over the world are pretty homogenized – especially wealthy downtowns.

Sure, there are museums and restaurants, but real, living, vibrant culture – the blend of traditions unique to place – is best preserved in the countryside, away from corrupting influence.

The essay above, one of several smartly written rebukes, was a comment from “Jordan”.

Jordan, if you’re out there, thanks for making your voice heard.

-Tim Patterson

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Here’s a lyrical essay about a pig slaughter in Nicaragua by Teresa, a contributing editor her at the Matador Network.

Also, check out a recent New York Times feature that shows how big U.S. pig farming companies like Smithfield are changing the farming culture of Eastern Europe.

goa_entranced

Here are five common American gestures that will get you into hot water in foreign countries.

1. Watch Your Fingers in Italy

We were on our way to Rome after days of hiking the Cinque Terre. As we walked through the train looking for our seats, Kati kept complaining about her mosquito bites. People stopped mid-conversation to give us dirty looks, turning and whispering to each other.

I couldn’t understand this open hostility. Was it that obvious we were Americans? What were we doing wrong?

As I turned to ask my friend what she thought about about the glares, I caught her scratching a nasty bite on her chin, flicking her fingers in a backwards wave from her neck. I grabbed her hand and shuffled, embarrassed, toward our seats. It all began to make sense.

To an American, Kati had just been scratching her chin. To an Italian, she was giving them the equivalent of the middle finger.

2. Don’t Tell Them to Come Hither in Japan.

I tried teaching English in Japan for a couple years, and was trying hard to keep up with Japanese gestures. One day I beckoned for a student with my index finger. Her mouth dropped open and other students stared.

While in America the “come hither” finger is a perfectly acceptable way to ask someone to come to you, in Japan it’s a highly offensive gesture. I later learned that this gesture isn’t welcome in most Asian countries, and symbolizes death in Singapore.

The Japanese way to beckon someone looks like an American wave, palm out and fingers waving down.

3. Keep Your Thumbs Down in the Middle East

A friend of mine was once bargaining for trinkets at a street market in Iran, negotiating for a decent price. Although they couldn’t speak the same language, he and the storekeeper were having an agreeable exchange…until one good ol’ American gesture got him into trouble.

After they agreed on a price, he gave the shopkeeper a hearty thumbs-up. The shopkeeper’s brow crinkled in confusion, then he muttered something in Farsi before turning away. My friend was baffled until a fellow traveler leaned over and told him that his hand gesture signified that the shopkeeper could stick his price where the sun don’t shine.

In certain parts of the Middle East, thumbs-up is definitely a highly-offensive thumbs-down.

4. Order Beer With Words in England.

Along the same lines as the Middle Eastern thumbs-up is the English backwards peace sign (your index and middle finger held up with your palm facing toward you). It means the same thing as giving the middle finger in America, and will get you in trouble with the bartender faster than you can say “Cheerio!”

If the pub is loud and crowded, shout your order for two beers over the din rather than raising two fingers.

5. Is It OK to Use the OK Sign?

Many parts of the world interpret a circle made with the index finger and thumb, with the three remaining fingers up as “OK.” But some places see it a little differently.

In Japan, this gesture stands for “money.” In France it means “zero” or “worthless.” In Venezuela and Turkey, gesturing to someone in this way implies that they are a homosexual. And in Brazil, the OK sign is the same as an Italian chin flick.

Community Connection

If you’re stressed out about going to someplace new and inadvertently insulting the locals, don’t worry too much. No one will expect you to know everything about their culture, and people will laugh off your mistakes.

The crucial things are to respect obvious local customs, try to learn some of the language and most importantly, keep smiling!

Breaking News! An Australian has been deported from Dubai after flipping the bird in traffic. Watch those fingers, everyone.

Feature photo: Lorri37

Korean culture has survived for 5,000 years, despite the best efforts by hostile neighbors to stomp it out. If you know and respect Korean culture you will get much more out of your time in Korea.

1. KIMCHI IS CULTURE!

Photo: Nagyman

Kimchi is sliced cabbage, fermented with red chili sauce and anchovy paste. It is pungent, spicy, and sour. Koreans love it and eat it with every meal – usually on the side – though they also use it as an ingredient in countless other dishes.

Kimchi is symbolic of Korean culture: it’s strong, distinctive, and defiant. Some foreigners can’t stomach it, but if you can, you will earn the locals’ heartfelt respect.

2. SHOES OFF!

When entering a Korean home, you must remove your shoes. To do any less is a sign of great disrespect.

Photo: ilya_ktsn

Koreans have a special relationship with their floor, on which they sit and often sleep. A dirty floor is intolerable in a Korean home, and they view Westerners as backward savages for remaining shod in our living rooms.

3. SOJU!

Korea is a drinking culture, and their national booze is soju, a clear, vodka-like drink.

Photo: rtclauss

Soju is drunk out of shot glasses, and like all liquor in Korea, it’s always served with food. Koreans drink in boisterous groups, regularly clinking glasses, while shouting geonbae! (cheers) and one shot-uh!

At night you will see men coming out of norae bang (karaoke rooms) and staggering through the streets, laughing, singing and arguing. Just be sure to avoid the puddles of reddish-vomit often left behind, which are also known as kimchi flowers.

Koreans have strict drinking etiquette: never pour your own drink, and when pouring for someone older than you, put one hand to your heart or your pouring arm as a sign of respect.

4. RICE!

Like the Japanese, the Koreans eat rice with almost every meal. It’s so ingrained in their culture that one of their most common greetings is Bap meogeosseoyo?, or ‘Have you eaten rice?”

Unlike the Japanese, Koreans usually eat their rice with a spoon, and they never raise the rice bowl off of the table towards their mouths.

Also, chopsticks must never be left sticking out of the rice bowl, as this resembles the way rice is offered to the dead.

5. DO NOT SMILE!

Koreans are a warm and generous people, but you would never know it from the sourpusses they paste on in public.

Photo: aplomb

Sometimes, the chaotic streets of the peninsula resemble a sea of scowls, with everyone literally putting their most stern faces forward. This is NOT true of the children however, who will invariably grin and laugh while shouting “Hello! Hello!”

6. BEWARE OF ELBOWS!

Korea is a crowded country. It’s a cluster of stony mountains with only a few valleys and plains on which to build.

The result is a lot of people in small spaces, and folks will not think twice about pushing and jostling in order to get onto a bus, into an elevator, or to those perfect onions at the market.

Don’t even bother with “excuse me,” and beware of the older women, known as ajumma. They’re deadly.

7. PROTESTS!

South Koreans fought hard to achieve the democratic society they now enjoy, and are among the top in the world when it comes to exercising their right to protest.

Dissent is alive and well. Koreans protest with frequency and they protest with fervor – on all sides of the political spectrum.

Photo: rabble

Protesters employ a variety of methods, from the violent (angry students regularly attack riot police with huge metal rods), to the absurd (cutting off fingers, throwing animal dung, covering themselves in bees).

8. HIKING!

As Korea is mountainous, it should come as no surprise that hiking is the national pastime.

Even the most crowded of cities have mountains that offer a relative haven from the kinetic madness of the streets below.

Photo: xiaojiecha

Koreans are at their best on the mountain. They smile and greet you and will often insist on sharing their food and drink. Make sure to stop at a mountain hut restaurant for pajeon (fritter) and dong dong ju (rice wine).

9. BOW-WOW!

Yes, some Koreans do eat dog meat, despite some sporadic attempts by the government to shut down the boshingtang (dog meat soup) restaurants, in order to improve the country’s “international image.”

Dog meat is mainly consumed during the summer and by men, who claim that it does wonders for stamina.

10. NATIONALISM!

Koreans are an extremely proud people, and sometimes this pride transforms into white-hot nationalism.

You see this nationalism displayed at sporting events, where thousands of Korean fans cheer their national teams on in unison, banging on drums and waving massive flags.

This nationalism especially comes to a boil whenever Japan is mentioned, as Japan has invaded them several times, and occupied Korea as a colony for almost the first half of the 20th century, decimating the country’s resources and conscripting thousands of their women as sex slaves.

Finally, please remember the two following things:

To a Korean, there is no such thing as The Sea of Japan. The body of water between Korea and Japan is known only as the East Sea.

Also, Koreans fervently believe that Dokdo – the disputed islets between Korea and Japan (known in Japan as Takeshima) – belong only to Korea.

It would be most unwise to attempt to disagree with either of these points, as Koreans don’t consider them up for debate.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION!

Who the heck wrote this piece? Check out a profile of the author:

Introducing: An Olympian Travel Writer In South Korea

For the lowdown on finding work in Korea, read How To Get A Job Teaching In South Korea.

“Of all the gastrointestinal hazards in faraway lands, a tough one to avoid is traveler’s diarrhea, which is caused not just by tainted food but by general changes in diet and climate.”

– Rolf Potts, Vagabonding

Let’s say you’ve spent a week or two in Thailand.

You eat Thai food regularly, exercise every day, and spend weekends drinking with your expat friends. At some point, your buddies might have a hard time ignoring the fact that you’re ducking away every ten minutes, coming up with a different excuse each time, returning to the table looking red and flustered…. our own Tim Patterson can tell you how it feels.

One should never be less than a hundred meters from a porcelain throne when TD hits. Though, depending on where you are in the world, there might not be a throne on which to sit. Or one made of porcelain. Even life-saving paper can be absent at the most critical of times.

What are some of the best and worst places to deposit your waste across the world?

Incredible India

“An Australian girl on our bus was unfortunate enough to have found herself with sporadically urgent stomach problems on a fourteen-hour journey. She, quite admirably, would get off at the various five-minute stops to settle whatever intestinal disagreement she had, in full view of the bus and anyone who cared, or dared, to be watching.

This went on throughout the night until we arrived at one of the customary twenty-minute service stops. Here, she proceeded to go through the usual, but desperate motions of finding a bush, manoeuvring herself into position and engaging in whatever comes next.

It was only then that she realized, not only was there a perfectly acceptable, and surprisingly clean toilet facility in the service station only ten metres away, but that she had just soiled the entrance to the only house within visible distance.”

-From the blog “Dirty India” by Matador member Swazi

Photo by Rheanna2

Squatters of Asia take some getting used to; public areas of Thailand, China, Laos, India, and Vietnam, among other countries, are rife with them. In Thailand many restrooms have a tollbooth. Even in some of the more touristy places of Beijing you’re probably better off holding it in until you return to your hostel.

Few travelers take bottom washing practices into consideration when researching customs, but toilet paper really hasn’t caught on in many parts of Thailand and India.

“I am honored to accept your waste.”

Photo by Yuya Tamai

Only in Japan will one find the most advanced butt-warming technology on the face of the planet. Toilet seats in this country allow the user to select the temperature of the seat (VERY handy in the cold weather of Hokkaido), and control how high and fast the rinsing and bidet water moves.

Some of these space-age crappers even have advanced features like a computerized voice, gentle massage, and self-lowering seats. Just be sure not to enter a suspicious looking lavatory that’s likely to be featured on Japanese prank shows.

The Deep, Deep South

McMurdo Station in Antarctica might have a few facilities that are comparable to any you’d see back home, but all bets are off when you’re walking out in the field – a bucket with a polystyrene lid and subzero temperatures. That’s right, you ARE freezing your ass off.

Wishing On A Crap

Photo 2001: A Space Odyssey

Grab some reading material and $20 million and you too can experience the joy of a zero gravity toilet in LEO (Low Earth Orbit).

Unlike nearly all ground toilets, this one uses absolutely no water, instead relying on vacuum energy to clean up the mess. It also happens to be very energy efficient: liquid waste is distilled to make water that is clean enough to drink.

The solid waste is expelled at regular intervals to burn in the upper atmosphere. So remember: when you wish upon a falling star, you might just be basing all your dreams on a flaming pile of… well, yeah.

Be careful if you’re a Russian citizen, though, as you might have to hold it until you return to Earth.

Incredible India Two: Slums Of Calcutta

“I’ll never forget this early trip [4:00 AM] to the latrines of the City of Joy. Access was already obstructed by a line of several dozen people.

The arrival of a sahib in jeans and basketball shoes provoked a lively upsurge of curiosity and amusement, and all the more so because, in my ignorance of the customs of the country, I had committed an unforgivable blunder: I had brought with me a few sheets of toilet paper.

Was it conceivable that anyone should want to preserve in paper a defilement expelled from the body? A young boy came up to me with a tin full of water.

‘Take this water, big brother, and wash your bottom with it,’ he urged gently.”

- Dominique Lapierre, I Should Have Stayed Home, “Enlightened Sahib”

You’re A-Peein’ Exhibitionist

Photo by Jose Luis Roldan

There’s really nothing wrong per se with public urinals in Amsterdam and around Europe, depending on your sense of modesty and whether you have a shy bladder. If so, you might want to cross the border and find a public restroom with walls… located a little distance from the sidewalk.

Worthy of Donald Trump’s Golden Poop

This is one of the few times when it may be excusable and not the least bit suspicious to take a camera into the bathroom. The Shoji Tabuchi theatre in Missouri is the essence of luxury: freshly-cut flowers, marble, gold, stained glass, even a fountain. Maybe they should invest in rich people toilet paper.

Going in Ghana

“I tried not to step in the stream that came running out of the hut. Inside, I was alone. There were several stalls, separated only by short concrete walls. Each stall had a couple of bricks for the feet on either side of a small pit that was shallow enough to be superfluous.

There were lumps everywhere, filling the holes to an uncomfortable height, over which one would not want to squat, for fear of contact. They were strewn all about the holes as well, even on the brick footstools. I must digress, but not without mentioning that the West African diet must be as varied and unpredictable as any on the planet.”

Gone to Ghana: The Worst Toilet(s) I Ever Saw

The Big Loo

The public toilets present in parks and major urban areas of New Zealand are nothing special, but I appreciated them because they had automated doors that locked, opened, and told you if anyone was inside. The ones at Auckland International Airport even spoke in computerized voices.

Other than that, you might try taking a dump in the southern hemisphere just to watch the water spin the other way.

Want more? Check out the Golden Plunger awards.

“The rhetorical disaster of proclaiming war on terror is now becoming clear. The world is full of terror, just as it is filled with beauty and kindness. It can never be exterminated, only borne.

Every traveler knows this – every traveler expects it – because an understanding of our world’s shifting ambiguities is travel’s most mysterious gift.”

-Tom Bissell

from Over There: How America Sees the Rest of the World, a collection of narrative essays published by Granta.

Taking a cooking class can be a fantastic way to immerse yourself in the local culture and meet other travelers. The bonus? You don’t have to worry about shopping for ingredients or doing the dishes, and even if you don’t make a dish perfectly, there will be plenty to eat!

Classes for novices are offered in many countries all over the world, and they are usually pretty affordable. Here are seven reasons why you should take advantage of a cooking class during your travels:

1. You’ll try some of the best food the region has to offer.

Photo by WordRidden

Maybe you’ve seen the locals eating a delicious-looking dish, but you can’t figure out what’s in it or how to order it.

Why not learn how to make it yourself?

Most classes will show how to make several local specialties, some of which may be difficult to find in restaurants. There might be plenty of familiar food to eat wherever your travels take you, but wouldn’t you rather explore authentic regional cuisine?

A cooking class will highlight some of the best local dishes.. Part of the class might involve a trip to a local market or specialty food store off the beaten path, introducing you to some edible delights you never knew existed.

2. It’s great chance to ask questions only a local can answer.

Your instructor will probably a native of the area, or at least know it very well. Take advantage of his or her knowledge, food-related and beyond. He or she can answer questions about the language, where to find a great cup of coffee, and which restaurants are hidden gems, not to mention which markets or other sites you should check out.

Photo by WordRidden

3. It’s a perfect opportunity to meet other travelers.

While you’re chopping vegetables or waiting for water to boil, there’s plenty of time to chat with your classmates. You may be able to pick up some great tips on where to go next, or have a captive audience for some of your own stories.

4. You don’t have to worry about doing the dishes.

Photo by WordRidden

One of the perks of traveling is that you don’t have to do many chores, and the cooking class will be no exception! Classes give you all the fun of cooking, but the clean-up is left in the hands of someone else.

5. You get good food and plenty of it.

Generally you’ll be making quite a few dishes — enough for a meal plus leftovers. Share the food with your friends or take it back to your room for a snack! You definitely won’t go hungry. You’ll be able to sample quite a few dishes in one sitting so you won’t waste money at a restaurant ordering something you don’t like.

6. A cooking class leaves you with a unique souvenir.

After you return home, you’ll still have the recipes from your class. It may be tough to convince your friends to sit through your four hour slide show of Italy, but if you can offer them pizza like they make in Naples, you’ll probably have a few takers.

Plus, recipes can be made and shared for years to come, and they don’t take up any space. T-shirts and trinkets are nice, but recreating the amazing mole you had in Oaxaca will bring back fond memories of you trip, and won’t collect dust on a shelf in your apartment.

7. The atmosphere is mellow and fun.

Unless you’re at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, most cooking classes have a relaxed atmosphere with no pressure, so even if your culinary skill doesn’t extend past microwaving a cup of noodles, you will find success in your class, and who knows! You may find a new passion for the culinary arts!

Recommended cooking classes in Asia and Europe:

Asia

May Kaidees: A vegetarian restaurant with branches in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, Thailand. They offer vegetarian cooking classes 7 days a week and include a market tour, lunch, and recipe booklet.

Old Hanoi: A popular restaurant in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam that offers half-day cooking classes. You’ll get a market tour, prepare four different dishes, and eat what you made.

Cookery Magic: Located in an old house on Palau Ubin, Singapore, this class includes transportation to the island by boat, a walk through the jungle, cooking instruction, and lunch for $110.

You Sabai: A rustic Thai vegetarian cooking school on the edge of a National Park north of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Many organic ingredients are grown next door at Pun Pun Farm.

Europe

Marguerite’s Elegant Home Cooking: If you’re in Paris and want an introduction to cooking French food, Marguerite will take you to a market and show you how too cook a simple menu. The class finishes with lunch.

Cook and Taste: Located in the heart of Barcelona, classes last half a day and include a market visit, lunch, wine, and a recipe booklet. Lessons are taught in English, Spanish, or French.

InTavola: This cooking school in Florence, Italy, offers courses ranging from beginner to professional level, including classes that focus pasta-making, dinner, lunch, or cooking with a market visit.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Food is a force for creating authentic connections with others as well as lasting memories of your travels. Even if you don’t take a cooking class, you can learn to eat like a local. If you’re unsure about local culinary customs, check out one of our favorite blogs from a community member who’s decoded it all for you… at least in Japan.

Barfy Hamburgers in a Flow Pack

Dismay cookie

Maybe after dining on your Barfy burgers, you’re ready for some dessert. How about a Dismay cookie?

Penetrit Lubricant

This lubricant says it’s multi-use, but as far as I can tell, a lubricant called Penetrit has only one use.

Polyana Deodorant

If you didn’t get that last one, maybe it’s time you had a Polyana Moment. Teen Spirit has nothing on this deodorant.

Ades

This juice might not share the same success in the U.S. as it does here. Drink Ades, crap lightning!

The Bichy

La Bichy Ahora or “The Bichy Now.” I imagine it best helps the drinker live up to its name when mixed with tequila or gin.

All Photos by Kate Sedgwick

Feature photo by Quinn Mattingly. Photo above by blmurch.

So you’ve moved to a new country for work/study/self-growth, and culture shock has hit. It’s all too easy to hide from the world in that expat pub, speaking English and bonding with others over your cultural hurdles. Instead, follow our tips for immersing yourself in this new country, through food, friends, and language:

Find a native roommate.

If you’ve gone overseas to work, ask your employer for help. Otherwise, check housing websites like Craigslist. A native roommate will keep you connected to the country through language, food, and mannerisms.

Even if you don’t become the best of friends, a roommate is a great asset for all those little questions. (”Where can I buy lightbulbs?” “How late do the subways run?”)

Practice a new word every day.

Language immersion is crucial. Learn a new word or phrase every day, starting with basics like “Excuse me” and “That was delicious.” Practice on as many people as you can. It takes time, but it will stick.

Photo by blmurch.

Eat like a local.

Instead of familiar chain restaurants, hit the local eateries. You’ll eat the most authentic local dishes when they’re not catered to a tourist palate. And when ordering, forget the phrasebook. Listen carefully to the way locals order their food and imitate them as best you can, even if you’re not 100% sure what they’re saying.

The same goes when shopping at local markets. Imitating the way locals make their transactions is the gateway to language acquisition–you’re not translating, but already “speaking” their language.

Set up a language exchange.

A language exchange is an opportunity to make friends and to learn local slang and idioms. Post a flyer or online advertisement for find a partner. If you’re living in a city with a university, contact the English department, as they may have information.

Steer clear of gloomy expat bars.

When your new culture gets overwhelming, it’s all too easy to hit the expat bars for some American music and familiar comfort food. But when culture clashes strike, the best course of action is to sit back and learn from them. Griping with fellow foreigners about the things you dislike in your adopted country will only alienate you from it.

Photo by philyook.

Find an ally or two.

Still, there’s no need to avoid other expats altogether. A good expat friend will want you both to navigate this new culture together, not join you in shying away from it. Seek people with the same interests as you and the same curiosity for the country you’re in.

Close the guidebook.

Keeping your nose in a guidebook means you’ll be meeting other travelers at guidebook-recommended places, but not many locals. Instead, ask a local for his or her recommendation on restaurants, sights, or maybe his / her favorite place to go and relax.

Nine times out of ten, their insider tips (for example, your coworker’s cousin’s art show) will take you places that a guidebook never could.

Accept all invitations.

At least as many as you can tolerate. Go to dinner with your zealous boss. Take that flyer for a student battle of the bands. Have tea with the eccentric housewife next door.

These interactions can give you insight to different viewpoints of the culture. It might not be an offer you’d take back home, but now is as good a time as any to break routines.

Community Connection:

Looking to meet some locals on your travels? Check out 6 Essential Items to Pack if you Want to Meet the Locals or 6 Strategies to Connect with Locals Through Sports.

Feature and above photo by Quinn Mattingly.

1. You don’t understand, and that’s okay.

As a college student, you’re expected to understand class material. You’re used to analyzing and making sense of things—and being required to do so. Suddenly immersed in a new culture, however, you will come across things you simply don’t understand, and trying to analyze everything will just give you a headache.

Studying abroad will teach you to live with mysteries, and to appreciate the beauty of an unanswered question.

2. “Authenticity” is a meaningless concept.

Photo by Tinou Bao.

I arrived in Mexico for the first time with a clear image of my host mother: small and plump, with long pinned-up braids and an embroidered apron. She would clutch me to her bosom, feed me handmade tortillas, and declare me her honorary hija.

My actual host mother, as it turned out, had dyed blond hair, wore skintight jeans and false eyelashes, did yoga, and couldn’t cook so much as a quesadilla. Annoyed by what I perceived as her “inauthenticity,” I wrote in my journal that I could’ve stayed at home if I’d wanted to meet such a woman.

Later, though—after the afternoon she spent hours heating towels and laying them on my aching stomach as I curled, whimpering, in my bed—I had to admit that, her Wonderbra notwithstanding, she was an “authentic” representative of her culture, as well as a lovely human being. She couldn’t teach me how to make a tortilla over a wood fire, but like anybody in the world, she had things to teach, once I was willing to learn from her.

3. You are not the ultimate moral authority for all people (but you don’t have to abandon your values, either).

Maybe it’s the role of women, or the treatment of animals, or the attitude towards the environment, or the way children are disciplined—whatever it is, you are sure to run across some aspect of your host country’s culture that you find morally questionable, if not repugnant.

It’s tempting to either want to mount a protest or, conversely, to feel that you must adjust your own moral compass—“If these people I respect can do or believe this, maybe it’s not as bad as I think.” Resist those temptations: this is an opportunity to learn humility and restraint.

You’re in this country to study, not to subvert its dominant paradigm. Certainly you may run across an opportunity to tactfully and respectfully mention to a receptive individual that, hey, maybe Fido’d appreciate a little shade and more than a foot of chain. But those moments need to be chosen carefully.

Remember that it is the people who belong to the culture who are in the position to decide what needs changing, and change it. Let them do their job; your job is to keep your eyes and heart wide open.

4. Being able to communicate in a second language is awesome, but can be its own barrier.

Photo by Julie Schwietert.

You’re probably studying abroad at least in part because you want to learn a new language, and that’s wonderful. But you will run across situations where your newly-acquired ability to communicate in the local tongue actually gets in the way of communication—so go with it.

I will never forget trying, along with several of my classmates, to ask research questions of three women who were selling fruit in a village we visited.

We were sure that if we could phrase a grammatical, properly-pronounced question, we could communicate, but they just giggled at our queries. Perhaps we unknowingly touched on culturally inappropriate topics; perhaps they were just shy. Quite possibly Spanish was their second language, too—though we didn’t think of that at the time.

Only when the women offered us each a perfect, tiny peach—when we were standing there slurping and dripping all together—did the tension break. The language of food communicated far more than words could that day.

5. “Go back and tell them.”

Towards the end of my study abroad trip, I met a man in the market who told me how happy he was that I was in Mexico. He told me earnestly, “You have to go home and tell them what we’re like here. Go back and make them see that we’re people, too.”

And that’s key—of course, you’re studying abroad for you. But you’re also taking on a responsibility. This country has taken you in, fed you, taught you, broken your heart, and healed it again.

How will you return the favor?

Community Connection!

Check out Anna Barto’s excellent article about the Best Places to Study Abroad in Mexico

Interested in a free apartment in the heart of Mexico City? Matador editor Julie Schwietert Collazo is letting travelers stay rent-free in her apartment while she and her husband are out of town from October 15th to late December. Click here for details!

This was one of the best essays so far.

community connection

Considering teaching abroad? Check out some of our favorite articles on the subject: Top 10 Places for Teaching English Abroad; How to Become an English Teacher in Mexico; and the Beginner’s Guide to Teaching English in China.

Feature photo by Andris Bjornson Photo above by fearweb

1. Footing the Bill

The word invite takes on a whole new meaning in Israel. To invite someone means you are volunteering to pay for them. When you say “I am inviting” to an Israeli, they hear “I am paying.” Even if you are prepared to treat your friends often, be careful that you don’t use this phrase too much.

The exchange of money and gifts in Israel is governed by a very delicate protocol. Paying for someone else is a matter of pride, so if you know that your friends cannot afford to treat you in return, limit the number of times you treat them. However, it is acceptable for a friend with a lower income to invite in return as a token. For example, if you are financially successful and you take a student friend out to dinner, he may return the favor by taking you to coffee.

2. Being Invited

Almost nothing is expected of guests, especially so if you are a tourist. When invited to someone’s home they will serve coffee, tea, and snacks with the utmost hospitality. If you offer to help make the coffee or clean up afterwards, you will be waved away without a response to dignify the offer.

Israeli hosts are very attentive and will pick up on every action as if it were a silent request. If you yawn you may be offered a quiet room to take a nap. If you’ve come in from a hot day you may be offered a shower. You are not required to accept but either way, saying toda raba (תודה רבה), or thank you very much, will go a long way toward making your hosts feel appreciated.

Photo by kikasso

3. Water Conservation

The first thing you will notice about bathrooms in Israel is that toilets have two handles: a small one for a small flush and a large one for a large flush. You can decide for yourself which one to use.

Israelis conserve water whenever possible. If you leave the faucet on while washing dishes or brushing your teeth, you may notice disapproving glances. Likewise if you take excessively long showers.

4. Security

Security procedures are much more strenuous in Israel than in other countries. When you enter bus stations, train stations, malls, or other crowded places, your bag will be searched and you may sometimes be asked to empty your pockets. This is simply a matter of course for Israelis- when they encounter a gate with a security guard, they surrender their bag or purse. It’s also a good idea to keep identification with you at all times, even if it’s only your driver’s license.

5. Military Presence

Military service is mandatory for most Israelis beginning when they graduate from high school. Although there are exceptions, young adulthood and military service generally go hand in hand, which means that nearly all 18-21 year olds are carrying guns.

Soldiers with guns are a common sight, especially in the train stations on weekends. Soldiers often carry their guns even when they’re not on duty, but they don’t always wear uniforms, so don’t be alarmed if you see someone on the beach with shorts, sandals, and a submachine gun.

6. Shabbat and Jewish Holidays

As Saturday is the Jewish day of rest, most business shut down on this day. Trains and buses do not run and most stores will be closed, with some exceptions. Buses still run in Haifa due to an edict by the first mayor of the city.

Tel Aviv is a big city with lots of secular residents, so some services will be available here. The monit sherut (service taxis) run, many business will be open, and a greater number of people will be out and about on the streets.

Outside Tel Aviv you will have difficulty getting around or buying anything on Saturday. In Jerusalem, which is home to a much greater number of religious people, this custom is strictly observed. The same goes for Jewish holidays, except for Yom Kippur, when every single business in Israel shuts down.

Photo by nicasaurusrex

7. Entering Religious Neighborhoods

Tel Aviv is described by its residents as a modern, western city. You can dress and act there as you would in San Francisco or New York.

But when visiting religious communities, or Jerusalem as a whole, you will need to dress and act conservatively. Women should cover their arms and legs and wear some sort of hair covering, like a scarf. Shorts are not acceptable on women or men.

Public displays of affection are not permissible and women and men should not walk together unless necessary. In these communities, you will be immediately recognized as an outsider no matter what you do, but observing as many of their customs as you can will gain you a better understanding of their lives.

If you’re a photographer, please note that taking pictures of people in these areas requires the utmost consideration.

8. Sex and Gender Relations

The party scene in Israel further exemplifies how different Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are. Tel Aviv is full of clubs and house parties that go on until morning are common. Gender relations are much more relaxed than in Jerusalem, partly because of the mandatory and mixed-gender military service (except for religious groups, which are usually exempt from military service).

Women serve in all the same units and positions as men and are therefore not generally seen as the weaker sex. Because of this relaxed attitude, Israelis are very open about sexuality.

9. Talking to Strangers

Israelis love to talk to strangers, be they foreign or domestic. When strangers talk to you, they may be asking you directions, where you got your shoes, or if you like the weather.

If you don’t speak Hebrew, you can simply say so in English. Nearly all Israelis speak at least some English and most members of the younger generations are fluent.

When you respond to their inquisitions with “Sorry, I don’t speak Hebrew,” they will respond almost invariably with an immediate translation to English. Because English is such a highly prized language, most people will be thrilled to practice their English with you.

10. Getting Directions

Because Israelis love to talk to strangers, they will be only too happy to answer questions you may have, such as how to get somewhere. However, sometimes their desire to talk to you (and practice their English) exceeds their knowledge about the subject in question.

Often their level of uncertainty about how to get somewhere gets lost in translation. In Hebrew, they might have been able to say “I’m not sure but I think it’s to the left” whereas in English they might only be able to say “to the left.” For this reason it’s always a good idea to take a sampling of directions from 3 or 4 people to be sure the information is correct.

Community Connection

For profiles of travelers and locals in Israel right now, and blogs and articles on everything from oversexed felines in Tel Aviv to the kick ass band Balkan Beat Box, check out the Israel Page here at Matador.

Feature photo by kalandrakas. Photo above by kalandrakas

1. Addressing Someone, Respect

Bowing is nothing less than an art form in Japan, respect pounded into children’s heads from the moment they enter school. For tourists, a simple inclination of the head or an attempt at a bow at the waist will usually suffice.

The duration and inclination of the bow is proportionate to the elevation of the person you’re addressing.

The duration and inclination of the bow is proportionate to the elevation of the person you’re addressing. For example, a friend might get a lightning-fast 30-degree bow; an office superior might get a slow, extended, 70-degree bow. It’s all about position and circumstance.

In addition to bowing, addressing someone properly is key. Just as a “Dr. Smith” might feel a little insulted if you were to refer to him as “Smith”, so would a Japanese if you do not attach the suffix “san” to their last name, or “sama” if you are trying to be particularly respectful.

Usually children are content with just their first names, but you can add the suffix “chan” for girls and “kun” for boys if you like.

2. Table Manners

Some simple bullet points here:

- If you’re with a dinner party and receive drinks, wait before raising the glass to your lips. Everyone will be served, and someone will take the lead, make a speech, raise his drink, and yell “kampai!” (cheers).

- You will receive a small wet cloth at most Japanese restaurants. Use this to wash your hands before eating, then carefully fold it and set it aside on the table. Do not use it as a napkin, or to touch any part of your face.

- Slurping noodles or making loud noises while eating is OK! In fact, slurping hot food like ramen is polite, to show you are enjoying it.

- You may raise bowls to your mouth to make it easier to eat with chopsticks, especially bowls of rice.

- Just before digging in, whether it be a seven-course dinner or a sample at a supermarket, it’s polite to say “itadakimasu” (I will receive).

3. No Tipping

There is no tipping in any situation in Japan – cabs, restaurants, personal care. To tip someone is actually a little insulting; the services you’ve asked for are covered by the price given, so why pay more?

If you are in a large area like Tokyo and can’t speak any Japanese, a waiter or waitress might take the extra money you happen to leave rather than force themselves to deal with the awkward situation of explaining the concept of no tipping in broken English.

Just remind yourself: a price is a price.

Photo by tavallai

4. Chopsticks

Depending on the restaurant you decide upon for that evening, you may be required to use chopsticks.

If for some reason you aren’t too adept with chopsticks, try to learn before passing through immigration. It’s really not that hard.

One false assumption among many Japanese that’s slowly being dispelled by time is the “uniqueness” of Japan. Japan is an island nation; Japan is the only country that has four seasons; foreigners can’t understand Japan; only Japanese can use chopsticks properly.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told I use Japanese chopsticks with skill and grace, despite the fact I’ve seen three-year-olds managing just as well.

If you’re dining with a Japanese, don’t be surprised if you receive a look of amazement at your ability to eat like a Japanese.

5. Thresholds

Take off your shoes at the entrance to all homes, and most businesses and hotels. Usually a rack will be provided to store your shoes, and pair of guest slippers will be sitting nearby; many Japanese bring a pair of indoor slippers just in case, though.

Never wear slippers when you need to step onto a tatami mat (used in most Japanese homes and hotels; the standard unit of measurement for area even today), and be careful to remove the toilet slippers waiting for you in the bathroom.

It is extremely bad form, for example, to reenter the main room of a house wearing slippers that have been running across dirty linoleum.

6. Masks

Photo by toestubber

SARS is long gone, though I did happen to see a “SARS Preparation Kit” during my brief stay in a Japanese hospital.

Nevertheless, sterilized masks, like the ones you’d see in the emergency room, are commonly used by salarymen, office ladies, and municipal workers to protect other people from their germs.

Rather sensible when you think about it, as masks do not protect the wearer so much as the ones around him. The reason could be anything from a slight cold to simply being worried about exposing other people; don’t let it concern you on your Japanese vacation.

7. Conformity

When groups of high school students in Japan were asked to identify the dangers facing children today, the majority agreed on the number one threat: individualism.

Japanese society is focused on the group. Western cultures are focused on the individual.

Does this mean that the Japanese are nothing more that worker bees in a vast hive of steel and concrete? Certainly not, but their presentation of such individual qualities are carefully calculated and given in doses.

Drawing attention to yourself as an individual is a huge no-no: don’t blow your nose in public, try to avoid eating while on the go, and don’t speak on your cell phone in crowded public areas like trains or buses.

The main problem with this is that foreigners simply can’t avoid standing out; we stick out like sore thumbs no matter how long we’ve been here, or how much we know about Japanese culture and society.

As a result, being in Japan gives foreigners the status of D-level celebrities: you’ll get glances, shouts for attention, calls to have pictures taken with people, requests for autographs (happened once to me on a southern island), and overall just more awareness of being a “stake that sticks out”.

8. Bathing

Photo by meganscheminske

Public bathhouses are alive and well in Japan.

Sento, or neighborhood bathhouses, can be found from the largest area in Shinjuku to a small town on the island of Shikoku.

Onsen, or hot springs, are very popular as weekend excursion resorts.

Unlike in western cultures, the Japanese bath is used after you have washed and rinsed, and feel like soaking in extra-hot water for 10, 20, 30 minutes. It’s an acquired taste to be sure, but can be very relaxing.

If you happen to be invited into a Japanese household, you will be given the honor of using the bath first, usually before dinner. Be extra careful so as to not dirty the water in any way; the sanctity of the ofuro (bath) is of utmost importance.

Take the time to visit a sento if you have the opportunity. These are places without barriers, without regard to skin color, age, or language… well, they are separated by sex with the exception of some mixed-bathing areas.

Lying in the hot water and slowly listening to my heart beat slow down is a time when I feel most attuned to Japanese culture.

9. Speaking English

Japanese will generally assume you are a native English speaker until you prove otherwise. Even during a short visit, you’ll see:

-A group of schoolchildren in neatly pressed Prussian uniforms walking across the intersection, shouting “Hello! Hello! Herro!” as they assess your foreign features

-A random person just walking up to you and asking “Where are you from?”

Friendly? Certainly. But I can see how constant celebrity status might get confusing or frustrating for travelers who don’t speak English.

Although you may speak some or fluent Japanese, the default language of choice is English. Many Japanese will insist on using their own English language ability, however limited, to converse with foreigners, in spite of the fact that the person on the opposing end may have more knowledge of the local tongue.

10. Safety

Every Japanese person I have met warns me to be safe in my travels, to take care of my belongings. Every foreigner tells me not to worry, nothing can go wrong, nothing will be stolen. This may be based on individual experience, but there are other issues:

- The fear of crime in Japan is high, especially among Japanese citizens.

- Murders happen. I repeat, murders happen. People are attacked, robbed, assaulted, raped, beaten, and swindled

However, Japan’s low crime rate is evident when you see businessmen who have missed the last train sleeping outside on a park bench, or a group of 5-year-old boys walking by themselves for over a kilometer to make the starting bell at school.

Going to Japan?

Check out our humorous list of 10 Extraordinarily Useful Japanese Phrases.

Community Connection!

There are a bunch of cool Matador folks living in various parts of Japan. If you want the lowdown on teaching English, ask Abram or Stephanie.

If you’re looking for a photography outing in Asia, ask pro photographers Ryan Libre or Scott Lothes.

Wanna ride a wave? Ask Angie where the best surf spots in Japan are.

Wanna go hiking? Check out Tim’s definitive list of the top 10 hikes in Hokkaido.