The other day, Audrey and I walked into a laundry service here in Oaxaca, Mexico and after a confounding exchange we discovered that they don’t accept underwear.

You heard right: NO UNDERWEAR!

Now try to imagine the charades that yielded that understanding, before we read the sign:

It has been said that the only guarantees in life are death and taxes. Allow me one more: laundry.

Maybe you do it yourself, maybe you have someone do it for you, but you gotta’ do it. In fact, laundry is so integral to today’s human existence that “What do you do about laundry while traveling?” is easily among the top five frequently asked questions readers have about our around-the-world travels.

So the intersection of the “no underwear” episode and the general importance of laundry to the human condition got me to thinking about my own complicated relationship with laundry. As I thought deeply about my duds, a few themes and questions emerged.

Laundry As Meditation, Laundry As Martial Art

When things are busy and my mind is crowded (almost always), I sometimes escape to the sink for a little meditative laundry. While the opportunity to dump my duds into a washing machine might satisfy an occasional compulsion for everything to be clean at once, working my duds by hand brings me to higher ground.

Cambodian girl and her laundry. A kindred spirit?

Hand washing my clothes is like the martial art I never learned when I was a kid. Wash your skivvies, get into the zone. Sometimes when I scrub the ends together (like they used to do in those liquid detergent commercials), I hear Miyagi from the Karate Kid, “Wax on, wax off.”

I keep thinking that if I wash enough pairs of underwear by hand, I will eventually become one with the universe.

Blue = Clean Laundry?

Since when in the world of wash and laundry does blue equal clean? And when and who on high made this decision?

If you do your own laundry by hand, I suppose you have two ways to go in the way of a formal cleaning agent (I say “formal” because it is entirely possible to wash one’s clothes with a bar of bath soap, something I have resorted to more times than I’d like to admit.) The first is a tiny bag of detergent (remember we pack light, sort of).

Fine print: BARF means snow. International marketing fail.

The second is a bar of laundry soap. Laundry bars come in all flavors and colors, but it’s those universal chalky bright blue bars that make me wonder.

Can anyone explain to me how a bar of soap dyed a horror show dark blue makes everything appear cleaner?

Two Birds, One Stone: Laundry in the Shower

Sometimes I like to kill two birds with one stone and do my laundry in the shower. I find this is a little bizarre. And I figured you might, too. It’s my little concession, my little confession.

The broader story? Family and old roommates all know that if I could spend the rest of my life in the shower under a stream of warm water, I just might. Sometimes I use the need to do my laundry as an excuse to get a few more minutes closer to that nirvana.

Aside: I once fell asleep doing my laundry in the shower (a shower rather bizarrely in the shape of a bank vault, turn-lock and all) in Cordoba, Argentina.

The Magic Dryer You Never Knew You Had

Our marriage almost ended over this disagreement, but I finally came around. I’m here to tell you that the quickest way to dry clothes (especially those t-shirts) is to wrap and ring them inside a towel, thereby transferring their moisture to the towel.

Hang your clothes up in your favorite sunny, dry spot and you’ll be ready to go in no time.

I know this is probably an age-old trick that Audrey was wise enough to divine on her own without searching the internet. But I’m a guy. And sometimes I’m stubborn.

OK Audrey, all the time.

Know Thy Laundry, Know Thyself

Laundry can also be a path to self-knowledge.

When you only have a couple pairs of underwear, a few shirts and two pairs of pants, you develop a pretty close relationship with them all. You might even say “intimate” even though that word sounds like it should always be whispered. You know their ins and outs.

Speaking of ins and outs, “turn ‘em inside-out,” you say? Cool, but what happens when my five-sided pair of underwear can’t take it anymore?

Coincidentally, this reminds me of the guy who did a science experiment with his jeans by wearing them continuously without washing them for 15 months. His solution to beating back the stink — which, by the way, jeans resist like nothing else — was to occasionally freeze them.

Well, I know myself and I don’t freeze my clothes. Ever.

You also become familiar with your own stink. That is, if you stink. Which, by the way, I do not.

OK, I kid.

Familiarity with self-stink is double-edged. I will say no more.

Oh, except that when Audrey and I ate southern France out of cheese and decided to sweat it all out in a sauna across the border in Switzerland. I won’t belabor this story except to say that you know you’re in trouble when your wife’s socks begin to smell like crottin de chèvre.

Laundry By the Pound

Sometimes I like to have someone else do my laundry.

When it’s cheap, that is. Because I am cheap. (Ah, there I’ve said it. I feel so much better now. Laundry is also cathartic, apparently.)

Laundry services effectively come in two pricing models: by the pound and per piece. Per piece laundries are usually a heist. By the time a few t-shirts and underwear are rung up, I’m taking out a mortgage. Unless someone else is paying for it or I’m on business and I need to look like a champ, I don’t do per piece.

I go by the pound (or kilo). Many countries and cultures around the world have laundry shops where you can drop off your laundry and have it returned to you, washed, dried and folded for anywhere between $0.50 – $2 per kilo. Southeast Asia, Nepal, and places in Central and South America come to mind.

Launderer beware: Some laundry joints feature rigged scales. Be sure that the scale actually balances at 0 and doesn’t somehow mysteriously register your little bag of laundry at 10 kilos (22 pounds). If ever you’re in doubt, take your bag down the street and get a second or third opinion.

Zen and the Art of Lost Laundry

We travelers are a funny lot. We’re all about minimalism and doing without, but god forbid our favorite pair of underwear vanishes at the laundry.

When you hand your laundry over to someone, you must do so with a Zen-like willingness to accept that you may never see any of it ever again. Ever. Sometimes pieces get lifted, most times they get lost to your neighbor, and sometimes they go to the great laundry graveyard in the sky.

That favorite t-shirt. I’ve lost it.

Favorite underwear. Check.

I’m over it. (Sort of.)

On second thought, I’ll never forgive that laundromat in Kyrgyzstan that vanished my Land Mine Museum shirt from Cambodia.

Washing Machines: Of Hummers and Minis

When we’re traveling and we happen upon a guest house or apartment that features a washing machine (I use that word “features” rather deliberately), Audrey reacts like she’s won the lottery. Her eyes light up similarly to the sight of artichokes and avocados.

Here’s the scoop: European homes favor small washers, American ones big washers. No surprise there, but the difference is like that between a Mini Cooper and a Hummer.

American washers are so large I’m certain Audrey and I could live in one if it came to that. (It just may one day.)

But here’s the curious thing about European wash cycles: they go forever. Not sure what’s going on in those small machines, but I’d like to think our clothes come out all the cleaner for it.

European washers are also curious because they usually offer a built-in drying function in the same machine. Not a gas dryer, but an electric dryer without an exhaust. It’s akin to roasting your clothes in a convection oven. When we lived in Prague, we had one. We called it the clothes cooker. Clothes never quite dried. They were warmed, like a pre-dinner face towel at a fine sushi bar.

—-

And when you have neither a large washer or small, you get lazy and wait until your clothes are about to walk out the door on their own in protest of their own stink. Then you go next door only to find that they don’t accept underwear. And finally, you go to the sink, whip out that dark blue bar of soap, throw on some tunes and scrub away.

Wax on. Wax off.

Ommm.

——-

What’s your best piece of laundry kung fu?

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 37 comments

We would like to eat American food. You know, you are American, so it would be great if we could try American food with you.

- A dinner request from our Iranian CouchSurfing guests a few weeks ago in Berlin.

Dan and I looked at each other, deer in headlights. American food? What’s that?

The first thing that came to mind was Thanksgiving dinner, one of my favorite meals in all the world. As much as I wanted to be the good host, cooking a full Thanksgiving meal — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie — in a couple of hours was beyond us.

After a few false starts (hamburgers? tuna casserole? deli sandwich?), we settled on chicken fajitas and refried beans Tex-Mex style. That counts as American food, doesn’t it?

Iranians are foodie travelers too. Babak photograps our “American in Berlin” Feast

But as we cooked away and our guests queried us about other typical American dishes, we strained: What exactly is American food anyway? A frequently asked question for the American traveler, but one for which we still don’t have a satisfying answer that rolls off the tongue.

American food inspiration in a German grocery store?

In my search for the ultimate American food, I visited a Berlin outpost of Lidl, a German grocery store chain, advertising “America Week.”

Curious. What does “American food” mean to them?

Here are a few examples of the American food I found:

I know I’ve been outside the United States for the better part of the last decade, but are these oddball yogurt flavors really the norm these days? Chocolate muffin? Really?

Any Americans here who are caramel popcorn or cranberry-chocolate yogurt fans?

Lady Liberty ought to be shedding a tear.

Microwaveable mini-hamburgers. Getting closer to more authentic. Never tried one of those myself, but they do look like White Castle sliders. I can imagine seeing them on shelves across America.

But I’ve also seen similar items in almost every big grocery store in the world. Call it American cultural hegemony.

Bright orange chemicals pressed into a cellophane sleeve and sold as cheese? Getting warmer. But do American stores really sell plastic-wrapped cheese slices expressly for hamburgers?

Jackpot! What says American food more than marshmallows? But barbecue(!) ones? There’s a specificity itch being scratched during America week.

Note: Notice the clever branding: McEnnedy. No, that’s not a misspell on my part. That’s a bizarre end-around on trademark. A typo embraced for its uniqueness.

American Food, Our Take

Ask across street corners and in villages across the world about American food. Hamburgers maybe, hot dogs, too. Pizza, too. Everyone’s got that, though. McDonalds and KFC also appear high on the list. Sure, America downs its share of fast food, but show me a country in the world that doesn’t have their own version of hamburgers, hot dogs, and fried chicken.

Though they may be spun with a local twist, those foods have fast become universal.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t tap the usual American food icons Spam and Velveeta (whose generous use of the term “cheese” does not go unnoticed). Tuna casseroles (Hamburger Helper, anyone?). Actually, any sort of one pot meal that combines various packets, cans and some sort of meat could well be characterized as American cooking. (Or is that co-ed cooking?)

Surveys turn up all these usual suspects, but are they really representative anymore?

Maybe I’m missing barbecue (or BBQ) — be it from Texas, Carolina, or Kansas City? Throw in some apple pie, but I often wonder where that was invented.

The reality is that the United States is a country of immigrants, and American food — at least as I have known it –reflects this melting pot. What food Dan grew up with as a kid – poppyseed stuffed pastries, kielbasa, pizza and rye bread – is different than what I grew up with — because our families are of different origins, from different cities populated by descendants from different ethnic groups.

When we think of the food eaten in the U.S. these days, it’s things like pasta, stir fry, tacos, sushi, pizza, curries, deli sandwiches, burritos. The list is long. I could go on.

Or maybe all we need to do is watch the candidates for President of the United States trying to out-America each other while on the stump.

Mac and cheese and corn dogs, anyone?

—-

Help us out here. Next time we host someone who would like to eat American food, what should we prepare? When you hear American food what comes to mind?

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 46 comments

As we put together travel plans for this coming fall, it occurs to us that some travel apps are still missing. Here are just a few of the award-winning ones we’re still waiting for.

1. What Would MacGyver Do (WWMD)

Forget TripIt. When you are in the middle of nowhere and the shit’s going down, who you gonna’ call? If you don’t have a signal, nobody. But wouldn’t it be nice to go all MacGyver, and know that a roll of duct tape, some nail clippers, a bandana, a head lamp and a business card can help you escape the pack of banditos waiting for you at the base of the volcano?

Ready for the magic of What Would MacGyver Do?

Enter in the bits, bobs and gear available, describe the situation that needs to be overcome and let WWMD figure a way out.

2. Bedbug Detector

Bedbugs are everywhere: in the news and also in beds across the world, from the spiffiest 5-star hotels in New York to the dingiest of guest houses in Ecuador. If you’ve ever been bitten, you’ll know how truly awful they are. (In one of our worst bedbug bouts, we sustained well over a hundred bites each.)

Enter Bedbug Detector.

Hover over the bed in question and the app delivers a heat map of it. The red spots, those are the bedbugs. And if it looks like your bed is on fire (and not with passionate love), it’s time to hit the road to someplace with a bit less itch in its future.

3. The Haggler

I know, I know. Haggling is half the fun. Heck, it’s all the fun if you are one of those travelers who relishes grinding a street vendor down to $1.00 for that Che Guevara t-shirt.

But let’s say you find yourself in the middle of a market and you don’t know how to begin haggling, you feel at a disadvantage, you don’t know the language, or you just don’t have the energy to play the haggling game.

A perfect opportunity for The Haggler?

Open The Haggler.

Haggler Basic allows you to take a photo of the item and have the app suggest a fair local price for it. Then it will give you some phrases to use in your haggling process. Use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” setting, turn the phone towards the vendor and have it do some basic haggling for you.

For more difficult higher-end items, Haggler Pro offers the opportunity to connect with a local. Via video chat, show the person the item you wish to purchase and then allow that person to haggle for you.

4. The Consul Finder

If you’ve ever obtained a visa to one of the stickier countries on the planet, you’ll know that not all consular officers are created equal. Some are traveler-friendly — they offer tea and biscuits. And then there are others. They show you the door. Add to this the fact that visa regulations not only change from country to country, but also from consulate to consulate.

There must be a way to sort through this more efficiently than random travel forums.

There is. It’s called the Consul Finder.

Enter your nationality, the country to which you are trying to get a tourist visa, and where you are currently located. This app will tell you where the friendliest (and least expensive) consulate is in the region.

5. Mini Taser

Tired of that bulldog slackpacker who won’t stop hitting on you? Need to dispatch with a few touts? You just exited the airport, are swamped in cabbies and need some space? A little behavior modification for someone cutting in line to get into the Sistine Chapel? You’re about to hand over your phone to a mugger?

The Mini Taser is just the app for you.

Two settings, subtle and brutal. Subtle is for the transgressor who needs an inconspicuous nudge to adjust his behavior. Brutal is for, well, you know.

A key pick for the solo female traveler.

6. Street Food Sleuth

Raise your hand if you’ve ever eyed up some fine looking street food and wondered, “Is that going to make me sick?”

Raise both hands if you ate that street food and actually got sick.

Don’t get us wrong: we love street food. While traveling, it’s often the cheapest and most enjoyable way to nourishment and local interaction. But some are still scared of it.

You know you want it

Enter the Street Food Sleuth. With this app, you can hover your smart phone over the street food in question and get a reading on lurking parasites and unhealthy bacteria like e-coli or salmonella. Eat street food to your heart’s content without the fear of hugging the bowl later that night.

Warning: Don’t bring the Street Food Sleuth to your favorite restaurant back home. You may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

7. Stag Party Avoider (SPA)

Having lived in Prague for five years and having waded through piles of post-stag party puke on Prague’s fine streets, we go on the record: stag parties (bachelor parties bent on cheap destruction) are a blight.

Worse yet, wading through mobs of would-be vomiters in places like Tallinn, Vilnius, or Bratislava does wonders to scotch a romantic nighttime stroll.

Enter Stag Party Avoider (SPA), the crowd-sourced, artificial intelligence method of avoiding staggering stag partygoers.

Based on your current location, SPA will give you a reading on stag parties in the area, complete with information about nationality (so you can tune your avoidance if you wish, choosing the lesser of evils).

How does it work, you ask? SPA intelligence is based on real-time crowd-sourced feedback (“I’m at Murphy’s pub and there are naked young men wearing matching t-shirts.”) and a patented Facebook activity-scanning algorithm that looks for keywords like “strip club”, “barf”, “beer”, and “There’s no way he’s getting married this weekend.”

8. You’re Off Track

While many of our best travel experiences have taken place in the context of getting lost, there have been times (oh, so many times) when it would have been nice to actually get where we were headed.

And having a map, even a Google Map, doesn’t always solve this problem. We need the genie in the phone – aka, You’re Off Track – who buzzes, rings or shocks us in case we’ve strayed too far off course.

In dire need of You’re Off Track in Bangladesh

Then we know to take out the phone, find where we are and get back on track.

Maybe you’re thinking “But how about TomTom?” The rub is that we don’t want our iPhone yelling out directions as we walk or bike down the street. Also, can TomTom guide you through the backwoods of Bangladesh in search of 7-layer tea?

You’re Off Track can.

9. Sticky Finger Finder

About to enter a busy market, festival or concert and wondering who’s on the take?

Open Sticky Finger Finder and let it scan the area for pickpockets.

Within seconds, the phones of nearby pickpockets and thieves begin to ring — with a custom ringtone, of course — making it easy for you to avoid them.

Whose phone is ringing now?

Add-on modules include Tout Finder and Scam Finder.

Then, enter the Mini Taser app.

How does it work, you ask? We wish we knew.

10. The Travel App You Wish Existed

What iPhone travel apps or Android apps would you like to see come to life? Leave us a comment below and we’ll select the most clever ones in a follow up post.

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 35 comments

Before I set off for my first trip abroad to India many years ago, I harbored visions — visions of mystical women in colorful saris who would place their hands upon the crown of my youthful head and say, “I see great things in your future.” Through osmosis, I would absorb their wisdom and they would enlighten me with the path I might take to achieve such great things.

Instead, 14 years later, as I sat in a barber’s chair in Kuala Lumpur, a man named Deepak, a Gujarati Indian barber from Mumbai decked out in too-tight jeans and a checkered shirt, placed his hand upon the front of my head and told me I was going bald.

Where did I go wrong?

The Chop, The Bad News
My haircut at the Indian barbershop began innocently, as most haircuts do. Deepak began with a few zips of the electric clippers in the back and on the sides, then he grabbed for the scissors to cut the top.

Chop, chop. Cut, clip, cut.

After a few sprays of water from his pump bottle and a comb-through, he delivered some astonishingly unsubtle bad news: “Hair very thin. In four, five years — all gone.”

In all the countries I’ve endured a haircut, never has a barber had the courage to deliver such bad tidings. But that’s what I love about barbers, Indians and especially Indian barbers: when it comes to bad news, man, they give it to you straight.

I was shocked. The blood drained from my face. I squinted into the mirror. “Really?!?!”

Deepak didn’t just answer “Yes.” He didn’t even waggle. He went full bore and gave me the side nod, which as much as said, “You’re in deep shit, cue ball. You’d better find yourself a Ferrari and start ridin’ out that midlife crisis.”

Deepak finished. It wasn’t the best cut. Wasn’t the worst, either. But I bore him no ill will. In fact, he was a rather nice guy.

Life’s Important Questions
As I stroked my impending baldness with my right hand, Audrey began taking a few photos and we engaged Deepak and his colleague Suppeiyav.

They asked to look at the photos we’d taken. Meanwhile, Balaji, one of their friends from the neighborhood dropped in to say hello and read the newspaper.

Dan with Deepak (far right) and Balaji

Eventually, the five of us convened a circle and covered all of life’s critical questions:
Where are you from?
How old are you?
How many hours does it take to fly here from your country?
Do you have children?
Why not?

I love barber shops.

Low Cost Airlines: The Engine of Migrant Labor
A good deal of our time was then spent exchanging information regarding low-cost airlines to and from India. We found out that Kingfisher is good, but only flies within India. We know Air Asia is inexpensive, but discovered it now also flies to once unlikely cities such as Trichy. Tiger Air is OK, too.

We even got a run-down on which airlines allow you to drink their beer for free. (I don’t believe there are many of those left anymore.)

In a fit of excitement, Balaji spoke up, “Sometimes you can find Air Asia to Chennai or Trichy for under 300 ringgit return ($100). Need to pay attention to sales.”

He, too, had figured out how to play the low cost airline price game.

Low cost airline talk at an Indian barber shop in Kuala Lumpur may sound trivial. However, it’s a key variable in the movement of migrant labor. Like many of the Indians you find in Kuala Lumpur, these men live and work in Malaysia, but their wives and children all live in India. For Balaji, a 15-year resident of Kuala Lumpur, cheap flights mean he can now afford to visit his wife and two young children every few months, rather than just once every year or two.

A Doozy of a Massage
Amidst our talk of airlines and southern Indian food, Deepak looked at me once more and pointed to my hairline: “No shampoo. Only conditioner once a week.”

“OK,” I said, figuring that this untimed dose of advice was an indication of just how advanced my hair loss had become in the few minutes since I’d left his chair.

I felt uneasy.

Suppeiyav, sensing my discomfort, waved me in the direction of his chair: “Massage!”

Suppeiyav, the master of the Indian head massage

I hopped up and instantly he began squeezing my neck, pounding my shoulders and back, and tugging around the few tufts of hair I had left. Then he administered a stunning barrage of “prayer chops” — his hands placed together, thwhacking every inch of my skull.

I began to see stars, quite literally.

As I prayed for the massage to end, I was reminded of a recent comment from a friend on Facebook. “In India,” he said, “Indian barber means a head and neck massage that will make you see stuff that isn’t actually there.”

When Suppeiyav finished demolishing a few billion more brain cells, I found myself struggling to get up from the chair. I had forgotten my name. Well, my middle name at least.

Don’t ask me why I was searching for my middle name. A mild concussion will do that to you, apparently.

A Chinese Perspective: Traditional Medicine
When we returned to our guest house later that evening, we ran into a Chinese Malaysian man who’d taken up residence. A permanent fixture of the joint, he was also a font of practical local knowledge. We needed a notary public. He knew of three nearby. We wanted an acupuncturist. He told us of a tea shop in Chinatown with a connection.

Then I mentioned that the barber told me I was going bald.

“Oh, my friend was going bald. He uses crocodile shit.”

You have got to be kidding me. He didn’t just say what I think he said, did he?

Before I could respond, he followed up with, “I heard your foot was hurting. Are you diabetic? My friend’s foot was hurting and he went to the doctor. The doctor told him he was diabetic and he had to have his toe cut off.”

“Let’s get back to the hair loss. Tell me more about the crocodile poo.” I redirected.

“I think he uses it once a week. I don’t know where he gets it. I can ask him.”

“Thanks. I think I’m OK. I’m trying to cut back on the excrement treatments these days.”

I ran my fingers through my hair — out of habit, or perhaps in anticipation of it slowly vanishing.

If only I could find those mystical women in colorful saris, perhaps they could help me find the wisdom to go bald gracefully.

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 26 comments

Four years ago yesterday: December 5, 2006. The time had come; time had also nearly run out. I was to meet Dan in thirty minutes at the Prague main station to catch a train to Dresden, Germany.

I scanned our empty apartment, our home for five years. I was closing the door on another life chapter. Glimmers and fragments — like the empty pots from a summer herb garden, now frozen brittle on the balcony –- hinted at the well-lived and settled nature of our lives there.

The week before we had shed almost everything: selling, giving, tossing. Farewell parties, too. The previous evening, we had bid adieu to one of our most prized possessions: a spice collection in the hundreds of bottles and bags from all corners of the Earth. We had invited our foodie friends over and divided up the precious booty.

After saying goodbye to the last sachet, we drowned our culinary sorrows in one last surviving bottle of wine, a Brunello di Montalcino that had been given to us as a gift. This was a special occasion.

That morning, I picked up the empty bottle for one last trip to the recycling bin. Then I checked the fridge.

“Shit!” A five-pound hulk of frozen pork butt stared at me from the freezer. We got it from the butcher with the intent of recreating the slow-roasted puerco pibil in the movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Unfortunately, we never did get around to making it. And we never got around to finding the pork a good home.

I threw on my too-heavy backpack (I’ve since learned to pack lighter), tucked the pork under my left arm, grabbed the empty bottle with my right hand, closed the door, ran down the steps, and knocked on our neighbors’ door downstairs.

Our neighbors: sweet Czech widow pensioners. They were so patient when our flower pots fell off our balcony and crashed onto theirs earlier in the year. “Maybe they’ll take the pork butt,” I thought.

Only twenty minutes to go until the train departed.

This would be a difficult sell. In my neighbors’ doorway, I felt like a used meat salesman. I mustered as much charm as I could. With a smile and the last of my best Czech, I pitched the women my pork, explaining that it was perfectly good. We were just leaving the country — forever — and we couldn’t use it anymore. Would they please, please take it so that it would not go to waste?

Puzzled, our sweet little neighbors shook their heads. They both looked at me as if I had lost it.

Maybe I had.

Or maybe my Czech really hadn’t improved that much over five years.

Or maybe, just maybe, there’s no proper way to express “Would you like my frozen pork butt before I travel the world?” in any language.

After being rejected by my neighbors (pork butt rejection, I’ve learned, is some of the easiest to endure), I threw our apartment keys in our landlord’s mailbox and ran out into the street with the still-frozen, rock solid hunk of pork under my arm.

With all worldly possessions on my back and a frozen hunk of meat in my hands, I must have looked rather deranged. I hoped that one of the people who rooted through our trash regularly would emerge to save the pork from the fate of spoil.

But alas, no. So, I left my frozen meat on top of the trash can. It was wintertime in Prague, so I figured it would remain frozen at least until the following May.

I dropped our celebratory wine bottle into the recycling bin and ran full tilt to the tram stop, as fast as my legs would carry me, as fast as my too-heavy backpack would allow. There was no time for nostalgia for Vršovice, the neighborhood we’d come to love over the years.

With two minutes to spare, I arrived gasping at the train platform.

Dan was pacing, wondering if I had changed my mind. “What happened to you?!?” he asked.

“It’s a long story.”

It always is, it seems. And I like it that way.

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 27 comments

The key to eating grilled mutton is to chew and swallow it before the fat cools and congeals on the roof of your mouth.

— Our guerrilla eating tip for Central Asia.

“You guys seem to have only good things to say about your experiences, especially the food. Have you ever had a bad meal? Something disappointing, gross, or even repulsive?”

You bet.

First off, I understand that what one eats is based in great part on habit and how one was raised. So chicken feet in the morning will never do for me what it might do it for the boy we met in Guizhou, China. But I do enjoy peanut butter on toast, something that repulsed our Tajik, Kyrgyz and French counterparts when we served it in the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan.

And before I’m accused of throwing cultural stones from my glass house, I understand that the United States knows some of its own rather questionable delights. When we queried the Twitterverse about gross American foods, things like Cheese Whiz, Velveeta, Spam, refried beans in a can, root beer, pop tarts and pizza rolls topped the list.

So here’s a sample of treats — that we’ve encountered, eaten or both — that render me thankful for different cultures while giving me culinary pause.

1. Guinea Pig
As a child, I never owned a pet guinea pig, but some of my friends did. And I never harbored even the slightest interest in eating their furry little friends.

Then we visited the Ecuadoran Andes. We priced guinea pig at the market, we photographed guinea pig farmers.

Then came time to eat it.

In the words of our table mate, a fellow traveler who was totally stoned: it’s like “a frog in a chicken orientation with the skin of a duck, almost like pork crackling.” (Coincidentally, I highly recommend eating guinea pig with friends who are baked — very amusing.)

And he took great interest in inspecting – and eventually eating – the little guy’s testicles. We opted for the other bits and were underwhelmed.

On a side note, the owner of the restaurant in Vilcabamba, Ecuador serving the critter told us that pet stores in U.S. cities with large Ecuadoran and Peruvian populations are careful who they sell to because they know their goods may end up on the dinner table.

2. Blood bouillon
Two words that simply do not belong together.

But the blood bouillon chunks are cheap as chips and ready to take away at the otherwise beautiful Phousy fresh market in Luang Prabang, Laos.

3. Goat blood soup and “Five Fingers”
Goat, the gift that keeps on giving.

Our horse-trekking guide in the hills of Kyrgyzstan killed and drained the animal. Then we were invited to a Ramadan feast that involved eating every last bit — and every last drop — of it.

Your impression of beshbarmak (meaning “five fingers” in Kyrgyz) will depend entirely on whose five fingers are fingering your noodles.

4. Anti-Pizza
I’m all about going outside of my comfort zone, except when it comes to pizza.

To my dear Argentine friends reading this: referring to a crust rubbed oh-so-minimally with tomato sauce and piled high with ham slices, marinated palm hearts and thousand island dressing as “pizza” is almost criminal in my book.

Criminal.

5. Sea Horse
Eating a sea horse strikes me as belonging to the class of offenses that includes “eating a penguin.”

6. Sheep-head somsa
We understand that in the photo below, the Uzbek (or Kyrgyz) somsa looks quite tasty and delicious.

Now, imagine it being made:

I once described the filling of a somsa as “akin to a sheep doing a swan dive into a meat grinder.” Head, legs, and all.

I stand behind that assessment.

7. Bats on a Skewer
I just don’t eat rodent, even when it has wings.

This Burmese bat vendor had such a sweet smile, but not quite sweet enough to entice me to break my rodent fast.

8. Bugs
Yeah, I know. Everyone does bugs. Everyone loves bugs. It’s a rite of passage for the world traveler.

I chewed this palmetto bug looking thing for at least five minutes. The texture reminded me of a nightmare I once had where I was forced to eat a bag of shrimp shells and wash it down with licorice-flavored printer cartridge ink.

Would I try bugs again?

Only if I were guaranteed an invitation to a Cambodian Buddhist wedding blessing.

9. Cow Stomach in a Peanut Sauce
Take a cow’s stomach, turn it inside out, cut it into little cubes and stir it into a peanut-based sauce with some potatoes and you’ve got something the Andean folks call guatita.

The peanut sauce has its moments.

But those stomach-y bits — that’s where things start to go wrong. Besides being rubbery, their texture reminds me of dryer balls.

Should your digestive constitution remain intact after the completion of today’s reading, make your way to Ibarra, Ecuador. You’ll find guatita served at night on the main plaza for a tidy $2.

10. Balls
Until I encountered this scene in southern China, I kept a partially open mind regarding testicles as a culinary experience.

Not anymore.

———-

Would we do it all over again? Whether we ate it or just sniffed it, I’m certain we’re all the better for it.

Or are we?

Either way, we’ve only just begun. The world is big…and we are hungry.

———

Editor’s Note: We ask you to excuse the censored profanity in the title. It’s the author’s (Dan’s) birthday, so he’s allowed to do whatever he wants today.

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 53 comments

In the understatement of the century, let’s just say that the nature of my accommodation concerns has evolved. The days of watching colleagues stalk turn-down maids have been replaced by nights searching for hotel attendees in dark, dank hallways that recall films like “Psycho” (cinematic excellence) and “Hostel” (a cinematic abomination).

In the midst of this lifestyle adjustment, I have found that the budget accommodation business can sometimes revolve around a slumlord-style premise: extract as much cash as you can from your property without investing a penny on maintenance, upkeep or improvement.

The upshot for us travelers: some very basic stuff is missing.

Now before we roll with the rant, take note: It’s one thing if you are paying $1-$10 a night for a double room. At prices like those, you can easily turn the other way. But it’s another thing entirely when that bare-bones room runs $20, $30 and up.

1.  A wastebasket
This strikes me as a no-brainer.  It’s cheap and easy, and the self-serving benefit — to help keep the room clean — seems obvious and compelling.  Throughout Latin America, were it not for the fact that guesthouses often request that you throw your toilet paper in the wastebasket rather than in the toilet, there might be no wastebasket to be found at all.

2.  Hooks
I’m happy to throw my wet towel on the bed or drape it on the door handle. But wouldn’t a place to hang it make more sense?

3.  Sheets that actually fit the bed
There’s nothing like waking up in the morning and turning over to see a bare mattress.  If I had a nickel for every short-sheeted bed I’ve slept on, I’d be rich.

I have a theory on how these sheets end up in my bed:  somebody’s grandmother died just about the time the guest house was opened.  Grandma’s heirloom sheets were passed down just after her death.  The only problem: her bed was five feet long; ours is six. (Well, five and a half, but I’m not complaining — six feet tall, thank you.)

4.  Towels
Yes, I understand that some guesthouses and hostels don’t offer towels, and others rent them out for about $1 per day.   But for guesthouses where it’s clear that towels are included, how difficult would it be to simply place them on the bed rather than to play the game where we hunt you down to ask for them?

5. Electrical plugs, especially ones that aren’t on the ceiling
I often find myself attempting to reverse engineer the logic that placed an outlet on the ceiling or just inches below.  Maybe the building once functioned upside-down?

Plug it all in.

Why should we care?  Imagine trying to recharge all of this out of a ceiling socket.

6.  Pest control
When I’m paying $0.50 to stay with a family in Sikkim (a semi-autonomous region in Northwest India), I’m OK with a rat or two dropping from the ceiling. Really. It’s all part of the experience. Everything fits.

But when we pay $35 for a double room in Coyhaique along Chile’s Carretera Austral and our friend and neighbor is literally shaking 100s of bugs out of her jeans in the morning, there’s a problem. A huge problem. Imagine earwigs pouring forth from the kettle just as you are about to fill it with water for your morning coffee.

Remind me again what I’m paying for, exactly?

7.  Toilet paper
I appreciate the frustration hotel owners must experience with the endless cycle of stolen toilet paper.  When I’m finished traveling, I promise to fund a study examining the origin of toilet paper rolls carried by backpackers.  I’m guessing 80% have been stolen from their last hostel.

But this leaves me in a bit of a bind, particularly when I arrive at my guesthouse after a long bus ride and nature calls rather urgently.  And the roll of toilet paper nicked by the last traveler in the bathroom has not been replaced.

If you run a hotel with a shared bathroom, please stock it with more than one roll of toilet paper per day.

And to you thieving travelers, please buy a roll using the $0.50 you saved while haggling the guy down the street for that t-shirt you are wearing.

8.  A mop
No, I have no interest in a mop.  But I do have interest in hotel owners getting their hands on one so that our floor is not an encrusted Petri dish whose corners are cobwebbed with decades-old dead bugs.

Bonus:  Add a little bleach or disinfectant to the mop.  Absolutely revolutionary.

9.  The truth about hot water
By no means do we need hot water all the time.  But when it’s offered — or worse yet highlighted — as a benefit to staying somewhere, it had better work — and it had better be more than just barely lukewarm.

Ah, the electrical showerhead of Latin America. You may get a trickle of hot water…and a shock.

And if you are listening India, I better not have to flip two switches in my room, one in the hallway, beg to have another flipped at the front desk, and pay your cousin to turn something else on down the street. 

True story.

10.  The truth about internet
“Wifi in room.”  Here’s me laughing.

If I have to hover over your 10-year old router with my laptop to battle for a fraction of a dial-up connection circa early 1990s shared with 30 other guests, guess what:  YOU DON’T HAVE WIFI. Please don’t advertise it in your services list.

—-

So while I’ve traded turn-down service for those small victories when half the things on this list appear in any given guesthouse, I still wouldn’t exchange places with my former self.

Why?  Life happens outside the hotel room.

Now my question to you: What’s missing from your hotel room?

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 51 comments

If memory serves, it’s a cruel dating world out there. For those of you still in the game, take comfort that the animal kingdom knows no more forgiveness than our human one.

Were Charles Darwin to lead a voyage into the realm of dating advice, perhaps this is where he’d take us:

Note: We are not ornithologists. The information below comes from first-hand observations and the humorous, grain-of-salt commentary from Jorge, our guide in the Galapagos.

1. When your man brings gifts, be choosy.
The blue-footed booby female is. When a suitor brings her trinkets and twigs for the new nest, she inspects them. And if she doesn’t like what she sees, she lets him know with a disapproving honk.

Don’t accept just any old piece of flair. Inspect it. Make sure it’s valuable and that your man had to search far and wide to obtain it.

2. It’s perfectly acceptable to poop in his general direction if he brings inadequate gifts.
Iron-clad advice straight from the Galapagos. Blue-footed booby females will turn their backs on male suitors if they don’t like what they see in the way of gifts. And if the booby male gift-giving really falls flat, she’ll turn her back, bend over and give a squirt of her own white paint.

Now I don’t suggest going quite this far with your dissatisfaction, but you get the gist.

3. Make sure your man gets decked out.
The frigate bird male chooses a good bush and parks it. He primps, puffs out a red sac between his neck and chest, and struts his stuff to communicate his availability to the ladies flying by.

Yes, that’s right — males know they need to look their best in order to attract the right attention. But women make the choice.

4. Look for the guy with the best dance moves.
The man on the islands with the best moves: the blue-footed booby. In front of an interested female, he flares his wings, whistles and does a little jig with his big blue feet. If his moves are good enough, the booby bachelor will find himself one step closer to being mated for the season.

Watch a Video of Blue Footed Booby and Waved Albatross Dancing

5. Use the numbers to your advantage.
Be selective. Blue-footed booby females are…because they know they are outnumbered by their male counterparts. They build demand and make the men work for their attention.

So, next time you are at a bar and it’s all men (i.e., a sausage hang), know that like the blue-footed booby, you have an advantage.

6. When choosing a mate, consider his taste in architecture.
During mating season, female frigate birds fly overhead and consider not only the size of a potential mate’s red pouch, but also the quality of the home (or bush) he has chosen.

When evaluating the man, look closely at his nest.

7. Make sure your man can sing.
The blue footed booby sings (whistles, really) his way into his beloved’s heart. Be certain your mate is confident enough to serenade you in public.

8. Keep the romance alive by dancing every day.
After you’ve paired up, keep the spark alive by taking a cue from the waved albatross. Make sure you dance — and cross beaks — every day. Watch the video above for a how-to.

9. Make sure he’s willing to share responsibilities.
Galapagos birds are remarkably egalitarian when it comes to sharing responsibilities between the sexes. Boobies, albatross, and frigates all divide time caring for the egg and newborn chicks.

Once you’ve chosen your guy, be clear about the responsibilities ahead. Is he willing to spend half the time warming the egg in the nest? Or taking care of the little one while you go out to fetch food?

10. Not everyone is monogamous.
In the bird kingdom, as in the human one, there are some birds that remain faithful and there are those who cannot help but choose someone new each season.

Figure out whether your man is more like a waved albatross (monogamous) or a nazca booby (a new mate every season). If you insist on straying, make sure you do so during the off season. Otherwise, everyone in the neighborhood will discover the indiscretion and next year’s mating season could be awfully lonely.

Editor’s Note (a.k.a, A Word From Dan): The editor will not entertain any personal questions regarding whether his behavior is more like that of a booby or that of an albatross.

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 21 comments

Dan: We noticed you put away a lot of bamboo for breakfast. Lunch and dinner, too. Don’t you ever get tired of it?

Jing-Jing: Dude, we keep things simple and focused. All bamboo, all the time. I’m not much of a multi-tasker, you know. Can’t say enough about what it does for the digestive system, either.

Dan: What’s it like being the rock star of the animal kingdom?

Jing-Jing: A lot of pressure and a lot of work. Maybe a reason for our low birth rates.

Did you know the Chinese government made us stay still for hours as they sketched us for that Olympic mascot? No bamboo breaks, either!

Dan: What’s the most difficult situation you’ve ever been in here at the center?

Jing-Jing: An ambitious Japanese tourist – 3 cameras around his neck – jumped the moat and joined me for breakfast.

Dan: Holy sh-t! What did you do?

Jing-Jing: I swiped him with my right claw and he fainted. Couldn’t even get a snapshot off. Eventually my handlers took him away. They made him pay a big fine…went to the bamboo fund.

Dan: What’s your favorite Chinese beer?

Jing-Jing: While Tsingdao has the international recognition, the local version is a bit too watered-down for my taste. We pandas are PBR [Pabst Blue Ribbon] bears, all the way.

Dan: An American beer, really?

Jing-Jing: Yeah, don’t tell the authorities. We and our handlers keep it on the down low.

Dan: Rumor has it that you guys are actually tough animals. What’s this about air conditioning in the cages at the breeding center?

Jing-Jing: My natural home is up there in the mountains [pointing with his right paw]. It’s cool up there. The specialists didn’t think we were making enough new pandas in the hills, so they brought us down here. You know, the Chinese are big on family. But we need a cool environment in order to get busy.

Dan: What do you think about Tibet?

Jing-Jing: Time’s up. Nap time.

Thanks to the Chendgu Panda Breeding Research Center for cranking out high-quality pandas. And a big bear hug to Jing-Jing for some real perspective on life as a Chinese panda.

Our visit to Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, occurred just weeks after the Sichuan Earthquake (May 12, 2008). The largest panda conservation in Sichuan – Wolong Nature Reserve – had been badly damaged by the earthquake. The Research Center just outside of Chengdu was unaffected and almost begging people to visit. During our visit, we shared the entire center with three other tourists.

More Panda Photos

How to get to the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center:

Getting there by public transport is not as difficult as the guest houses make it out to be; this also allows you to spend as much time with the pandas as you like. Take bus #1 north until the end and then take bus #532 or #107 to the Panda Center. Each bus costs 1-2 RMB. Ask your guest house to write the name of the center in Chinese so you can double check that you are on the correct bus. Don’t worry, the entire bus will make sure you get off at the right place.
Tickets: 30 RMB ($5).
Address: #26 Panda Road, Northern Suburb of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 8 comments

Now, men get their say.

For all the women out there who spend countless hours wondering what annoys men, this one’s for you.

The credit goes to a Kolkata (Calcutta) weekend newspaper we picked up in April 2008. I recently found the newspaper clipping. However, a quick Google search yielded that the real source of this advice is actually a Russian newspaper. Russian dating advice for Indians? Maybe that explains #1.

My favorites: #1, #4, #5, and #9. And yours?

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Originally posted on the Uncornered Market travel blog. Find beautiful travel photos from around the world. | 5 comments