Monthly Archives: April 2011

Street food in Beijing

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Scorpion snack

Arachnid kebob, anyone? If you haven’t lost your appetite from all the lusty hawking and spitting and splatting, your stomach will certainly rumble as you browse Beijing’s edible temptations. Between great steaming caldrons and vats of bubbling oil, squirming specimens are lined up, already impaled, ready to be plunged to their crispy deaths. They’re simply waiting to be chosen…by you?

If you’re bored by the ordinary, fed up with fishballs and fried octopus, sick of spicy noodles and delicate dim sum, why not try the next level of Beijing street food? Have something on a stick.

Beijing snack

The adorable seahorses must be all crunch when fried, but who’d want to eat such a fantastical creature? I’m heartbroken to see the splintery skewer piercing the armor of its chubby belly while it’s big round eyes stare sadly… Excuse me while I anthropomorphize. Don’t call me ethnocentric!

On the other hand, I get the shivers looking at the seahorses’ stick-mates. The headless scorpions curl and straighten their tails and claw the air. They’re certainly fresh, but not terribly appetizing, even though my heart holds no soft spot for them.

When I see them fried, they’re no more offensive than a barbecued shrimp: a thin-shelled body with a lotta legs. Crisp and plump, with the promise of succulent sweetness inside. It’s mainly a difference in attitude and behavior, isn’t it, between the shrimp and the scorpion. One swims, one hikes. One fishes, one hunts. One has charm and magnetism, the other is furtive and hostile. The scorpion’s reputation makes him repugnant. It’s prejudice! And look: unlike the shrimp, the scorpion’s fully edible—no legs or tough shells to spit out. Still…no thanks. I can’t bring myself to nibble one.

The young woman in the video is a Russian tour leader. And yes, she ate them all—I watched. She judged the fried scorpions “actually quite pleasant.” She was hesitant to eat their tails, but I know about these things and told her the shop would have removed the stingers if they were harmful. She bought it and chowed ‘em down.

Candied larvae

Silkworms, locusts, and grasshoppers are other potential snack options, sold separately or in colorful combinations. Big fat larvae, mahogany brown and shiny with oil, are five on a stick. They look like beads of exotic hardwood, but I know their liquidy centers would gush out at the gentlest squeeze. Wait, on closer inspection they appear to be candied. My mouth waters in anticipation of a brittle coating of burnt sugar shattering against my teeth. Maybe they’re buttered, not oiled… I’m close to grokking the allure of the delicacy. If it weren’t for the damn ick factor.
Read the rest with more photos… Continue reading →

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Database data loss

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Vault door

People often share their credit card anxiety with me. They’re afraid their cards will be lost or stolen and huge bills will be run up by a thief, and that their identities will be cloned. “Is it better to just carry cash?” they ask. “Should I follow the waiter when I pay my restaurant bill?” “How safe is it to use a credit card on the internet? Will my identity be stolen?”

So let’s put these questions to rest. Then we can move on to the real risk.

First, yes. Your credit card can be lost or stolen and big debts can be incurred by others. You won’t be responsible—your financial institution takes the hit. But in the grand scheme of things, the odds are not high that your credit card will disappear and be compromised. The risk is higher in some places than in others, and for some people more than for others. But that’s life. Get over it and live.

No. It’s not better to carry cash. Keep some cash for small (or secret) purchases, and use credit cards for the rest.

Yes, shop on the internet with your credit card. If it makes you feel better, get one of those temporary credit card numbers on your account, good for a single transaction or a limited amount. Without internet and a credit card, you’re crippled.

The real risk of identity theft and credit card fraud

It’s big business. The hotels and hospitals we go to, the stores, banks, schools, airlines, doctors, utilities, banks, credit unions we use, and even government organizations. All of these and more store information about us. They all comply with information security regulations to some extent. But how much and how well? Our identities are in the hands of those who store our details.

If our PII (personally identifiable information) is set free, it will most likely be due to an electronic data breach of some sort, in a (probably-large) batch with others’ information.

We used to be concerned that manilla folders containing our records were physically locked up. Who had access to them? How were they discarded? Shredded or dumped in a Dumpster? There’s so much more to worry about now, and so much more than a single set of paperwork. Our most sensitive secrets and deepest dirt are stored electronically on hard drives, on servers, in the cloud, backed up, on laptops, mobile phones, and even on thumbdrives.

Laptops and thumbdrives are lost and stolen every day. Databases are breached every day. This is where the risk is, and it’s out of our hands.

The advantage goes to data thieves like Rogelio Hackett who, until a little slip-up, broke into the computer networks of businesses, downloaded credit card information, and sold it for profit. Big profit.

“The bad news is that banks and businesses have not made great progress in the fight against account takeover fraud,” says The Information Security Media Group in its 2011 Business Banking Trust Study. Bringing institutions to compliance has been a painful process.

Security vulnerabilities are uncovered daily in computer networks everywhere, from the Australian Parliament House to the Pentagon to our water supplies In the 3/28/11 Los Angeles Times, Ken Dilanian wrote that “Impeding the move toward bolstering U.S. infrastructure is the government’s lack of authority to coerce industry to secure its networks and industry’s lack of an incentive to implement such protections.” He was referring to the threat of terrorist cyberattacks, but our personal security is at risk as well.

Read this for the state of cybersecurity:

A new survey reveals that roughly three-quarters of energy companies and utilities experienced at least one data breach in the past 12 months. … Seventy-one percent of respondents said that “the management team in their organization does not understand or appreciate the value of IT security.” Moreover, only 39 percent of organizations were found to be actively watching for advanced persistent threats, 67 percent were not using “state of the art” technology to stop attacks against SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems, and 41 percent said their strategy for SCADA security was not proactive. The survey also concluded that the leading threat for energy utilities was not external attackers, but rather inside ones—43 percent of utilities cited “negligent or malicious insiders” as causing the highest number of data breaches. …

InformationWeek (04/06/11)

To get a fuller grasp of the number of electronic records lost or stolen, take a peek at the DataLoss DataBase project, which “documents known and reported data loss incidents world-wide.” You can search by type of data lost (Social Security numbers, financial information, credit card numbers, etc.); by the industry sector (business, government, educational institution, etc.) You can see if the breach was by an insider or an outside attacker, and whether it was malicious or accidental. And you can search by many types of breach: improper disposal, a hacked or lost computer, a stolen drive, a web attack, etc. I’m especially fond of the datalossdb Twitter feed, for minute-by-minute reports of data losses, with links to known details. For example:

    http://bit.ly/eDcD2s – Blockbuster Video – Employee and applicants’ records containing names, contact details, Social Security and personnel matters found discarded

    http://bit.ly/gW2WYs – AllianceBernstein Holding LP – Employee downloaded client files and transactions before resigning

    http://bit.ly/dTAmUX – Qdoba Mexican Grill – Customers’ card numbers acquired and misused

    http://bit.ly/hdmt25 – Hyundai Capital – Personal credit rating information of 420,000 vehicle loan customers plus 13,000 security passwords acquired by hackers

And on and on. The feed may shock you daily, as it does me. Why is our vital information handled so carelessly?

Well-known and trusted companies like Brookstone, AbeBooks, Ralphs Grocery, Ritz-Carlton, Smith’s Food & Drug, Best Buy, Verizon, etc., assure us they store our information responsibly. Then they farm it out to Epsilon online marketing, a company they do not control. Epsilon got hacked.

More than 65 companies have been impacted, to the great risk and inconvenience of their customers. I got emails after the breach from three of the businesses, warning that data on me had been among the stolen records. Security experts now expect a massive increase in “spear phishing,” in which individuals are personally targeted and tricked by spoofs of companies they have a legitimate relationship with. I get plenty of phishing email already, and some of them look damn believable. Expect them to look even better now, addressed to us by name.

I’m not going to address every risk and precaution here. There is much, and it’s all to be read elsewhere on and off this blog. My points are two:

1. Our ordinary everyday activities may expose us to a little risk of credit card fraud and identity theft, but the big risk is out of our hands.

2. Do look at DataLoss DataBase or at least skim its Twitter feed to get an idea of how much information is lost daily.

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

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Pattaya’s sex tourism

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Pattaya couple

Pattaya, Thailand’s got to be the seediest, one-track party-town in the world. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Huge signs advertising the Fcuk Inn Bar and Kiss Food and Drink make the theme obvious. Couples like this one are ubiquitous.

Pattaya girls

Hot, sweaty days are for advertising the possibilities of hot, sweaty nights. Bored “massage” girls pose on plastic chairs in front of their shops, long bare legs ending in spike-heeled evening shoes dangling in the trash-filled gutters.

Pattaya men

Just across the narrow lanes, clusters of old, fat, ugly, white men slouch and slump over beers, gathering confidence from one another. They all look the same. They all wear floppy shorts and t-shirts and sandals. Some wear socks with their sandals. These are the tunnel-vision men those pretty Thai girls are dreaming of.

Ladyboy

The local specialty, called ladyboys, also ogle these men. Look at the 23-year-old ladyboy pictured at left, who just had her bag snatched while riding on the back of her Italian boyfriend’s motorcycle. (A reversal of the classic Italian scippatori theft, in which the thief—not the victim—is the backseat rider.) The Italian “boyfriend” may or may not have known what was under the coy ladyboy’s skirt.

Pattaya bar

After dark the lanes explode with open-air billiards bars, tiny beer bars, bars named for your country, pole-dancing bars, and enormous “pussy bars” offering “pussy menus” and buckets of ping pong balls. Establishments large and small feature alluring girls.

Pattaya cycle vendor

The city’s other passion is food. I love the street food culture in Pattaya. Entire restaurants zip through the streets on the backs of tricycles and on motorcycle sidecars, their sauce buckets sloshing and condiments precarious. In grubby plastic baskets they carry the myriad fresh and fermented ingredients that their specialties comprise. Seductive food is cooked to order on smoky charcoal grills or stirred over car-battery-operated stoves.

Pattaya street food

Hot, ready-to-eat curries are peddled from wooden trays on the backs of bikes, single servings tied up in clear plastic baggies. Mysterious delicacies are baked in bamboo canes—the ultimate environmentally-friendly fast-food container. Longons, lychees, mangosteens, jackfruit, dragonfruit, durian—the tropical fruit displays are mouthwatering.

Whatever your pleasure, Pattaya is to drool for. Western men tend to visit for three week stays. Many or most have met their exotic girls online and come specifically to see them. They pay the girls about US$100 a night to stay with them in their hotels. They might visit their girls two or three times a year. Sometimes the couples marry and the men take the girls away to live in their Western countries.

Pattaya ping-pong

For a beach resort town, Pattaya’s remarkably unattractive. Where trees should be, tangled electrical wires form a shadeless canopy over streets, the thick cords nearly obscuring the mosaic of signs for Cialis, Viagra, pharmacy, clinic, laundry, and rooms-for-rent. There’s nothing for the eye here—just hard-driven business: that is, the business of the sexual drive. It’s a lewd town, but an honest one, advertising what it’s about in every way it can.

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

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Hotel Oddity #16

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I stay in a lot of hotels, some of which are the best or most unique in the world. This one in Hong Kong—not so hot.

Why was there a bucket under the sink? And in the bucket, a smaller bucket.

Fill it up to flush the toilet? Bail out the bathtub? Store up drinking water? I don’t think I want to know…

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

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Japan’s complicated shoe rules

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Japanese shoes for the toilet

Communal toilet shoes

Despite the focus on negative experiences compiled on this site, it is possible to travel without being ripped off. It bothers Bob and me that our blog, as well as our lectures, present travel as a minefield of risk and theft. Because we discuss and relate mostly the catastrophes, the sadnesses, and the evils of travel, our audience gets a scary mass of horror stories compressed into an unfair perspective.

Bob and I have just completed a totally theftless traipse across Asia, and I’m in the mood to write about the joys of travel—the foreign experiences we seek, as well as the serendipitous discoveries.

I’ll begin with a simple little story here and, unless I interrupt myself for something time-sensitive, I plan to post several more Asian vignettes.

Say goodbye to Western street shoes for the duration of the stay.

Say goodbye to Western street shoes for the duration of the stay.

Temporary shoes, just to get us to our rooms.

Temporary shoes, just to get us to our rooms.

As a child, I had school shoes and play shoes. I have quite a few more now, but no dedicated “toilet shoes.” There are no communal shoes in my house, either.

Last month, I had the great fortune to stay in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. Upon arrival, we leave our street shoes at the entry, and slide into flat black leather slippers.

Indoor sandals with tabi socks.

Indoor sandals with tabi socks.

These are used only to get to our rooms because once there, proper woven sandals await—but they require special socks. We change into multi-layered and belted yukatas, and tabi socks, which have a split toe. The split toe allows us to wear the thonged sandals. But not in the room! On tatami mats, we pad around in just the tabi socks. (Fresh ones provided every day.)

Clogs for the stone floor.

Clogs for the stone floor.

Sandals for the private garden.

Sandals for the private garden.

For stepping down into the stone-floor garden room next to the glass doors, two pairs of white leather clogs are strategically positioned. Slide open the glass doors to enjoy the bamboo, mosses, koi pond, and hot soaking pool. Step out, and thick wooden garden shoes await.

Slippers for our own tiny toilet room only.

Slippers for our own tiny toilet room only.

One pair of woven toilet slippers are always arranged toes-forward just inside the bathroom door. They are not to leave the bathroom! One must back out when exiting, so the shoes are ready to be stepped into next time. We found toilet slippers in many restaurant bathrooms outside the inn. You wouldn’t want to get close to the toilet in just your socks, would you?

At the same time, you wouldn’t want to wear your toilet shoes outside of the toilet room. Yet we find it’s easy to forget to take them off. We repeatedly looked down in horror to see toilet slippers on our feet in the bathing room. Gross!

We wear the woven-straw thonged sandals when leaving our rooms, but leave them at the door of any tatami room—toes pointed out, of course. Everybody’s are the same, so it doesn’t matter which you step into when you leave.

At the tatami dining room, most of us leave our sandals helter-skelter. When we come out, they’re neatly arranged, toes-out, for step-in-and-go convenience.

Wooden shoes for outdoor strolls.

Wooden shoes for outdoor strolls.

Want to go for a walk in the woods? At the inn’s entry, grab a pair of wooden outdoor shoes, the wider ones for men. These are particularly tricky to walk in, sized to fit no one. But—no Western shoes until check out!

Some of us have considerable difficulty with the one-size format. My nephew’s size 12 tootsies hang off the backs of his shoes, while my tiny sister developes a sliding shuffle to avoid inadvertently stepping out of her slippers. Our men, considerably larger than the Japanese, unanimously cry pain.

Shoes, lit.

Shoes, lit.

We visit a martial arts studio across the road to watch the ryokan’s chef demonstrate his sword skills. We wear the outdoor wooden shoes to get to the studio. On entering, we’re given sandals to cross a stone floor—three or four steps across—then ditch them and wear only tabi socks when stepping onto the tatami mat.

Have you lost count? That’s eight separate single-function footwares to use (and learn the rules of) while staying at a ryokan. Mistakes were made, of course.

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

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Pickpocket at large in a zoo

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Nutria-orange beaver rat

Source: Wikipedia.org, by Peleg

The Nocturnal Sting and the Bite
Skansen, Stockholm’s outdoor museum, suffered a nasty spate of pickpocketing incidents one midsummer. Up to eight known incidents a day occurred within the dark confines of the nocturnal animal exhibit, a part of Skansen’s aquarium.

Jonas Wahlström, owner of the Månskenshallen (Moonshine Hall), had an idea. He placed a particularly irritable five-pound Australian beaver rat into the shoulder-bag of an aquarium employee, and had her mingle with visitors at the exhibit.

An earthy smell permeated the cave-like area, and the only light came from the dimly-lit habitats. Visitors tended to murmur softly, as if they might otherwise disturb the animals. Therefore, it was shocking to everyone when a deathly human scream erupted and a heavy animal shot up toward the low ceiling before thudding to the ground.

There was havoc, of course. Visitors screamed and clumped together as far as possible from the hubbub, too curious to flee. When the poor animal fell, the aquarium employee who had been wearing it dropped to the floor and trapped it with her shoulder-bag before it could cause further harm to anyone else or itself. No one saw the man who screamed.

The badly bitten pickpocket left a trail of blood on his way out, and it is a testament to Swedish mentality that he escaped so easily. The trap was laid, the bait was fresh, the exits unguarded.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams

Chapter Five: Rip-Offs: Introducing… The Opportunist

© Copyright 2008-2011 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

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Money-changing scam

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Euros crumbled

Some years ago, before Bulgaria was part of the EU, Dodie B. and two male friends visited one of that country’s small port towns. She had a $100 bill with which she hoped to buy euros. (Not a smart strategy, exchanging one currency for another currency in a country that uses neither, but that’s not the point here.)

The first two foreign-currency-exchange booths Dodie tried refused. They would sell her only Bulgarian money for her US dollars. Eventually she found a closed money exchange kiosk where a man was changing money on the street in front of the shop. She asked him if he would give her euros for US dollars. He said yes.

Dodie’s two friends wandered a bit away when she asked the rate. He quoted a price and she thought to herself, wow, great rate, and agreed. He counted out the euros for her and put them, folded, on top of his wallet. She held onto her $100 bill. They joked and bantered a bit, until Dodie finally said hey, are you going to give me the euros or not? She started to put her bill into her pocket.

Just then there was shouting. “No, no money change on the street!” She grabbed the folded money and the man took her bill. Another man, large and intimidating, was suddenly looming over her, shouting that she cannot change money on the street. She walked toward her friends and the goon followed, uncomfortably close to her. She shoved the cash deep into her pocket and walked faster. When she reached her friends the thug turned and left.

The friends asked what took her so long and she explained, shaken but happy to have accomplished her goal. She took the cash out of her pocket and saw right away that she’d been scammed. The pile was made of one 5-euro note wrapped around a pile of worthless old Yugoslavian bills, taped together. Of course the goon was gone, and so was the “money changer.”

Her friends wanted to go to the police, but Dodie was afraid to, since changing money on the street is a crime. Dodie still has the bundle of bills and promised to send me a photo of it, but I got tired of waiting.

The critically-timed loud and scary threat by a third party is typical in many scams, and is designed to conclude the deal in a rush and quickly separate the vic from the perp. The interrupting third party always seems to be an uninvolved stranger, or a pseudo cop as in this example. But he’s always part of the game. Note also the con man’s intentional establishment of a friendly rapport with his mark—that’s the CONfidence-building that gives the con artist his title.

© Copyright 2008-2010 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

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