I have to say, there’s something rather cozy about a warm toilet seat. Definitely got used to that in Japan. I came to expect the full panel of services, too, from waterfall or babbling brook sound effects to various water-jet options. I was a little taken aback the first time I entered and the lid saluted me, opening on its own. And I was just plain amused by a toilet with a lit bowl. Maybe even a little horrified.
Oh, and yes. They flush and close by themselves, too. Any more questions?
Starbucks has a bad rap when it comes to theft. Customers focus on their drinks, their conversations, their open computers, and thieves know it. A busy coffee shop is a mess of people coming and going, pushing between crowded tables, standing waiting, looking for seats, looking for friends, looking for loose objects…
Bob and I were in Lisbon’s bustling Starbucks, waiting for its broken internet to come back on (it never did). One lucky customer had found a nice corner with a power outlet and had dragged a chair over. He was opening his laptop when… his phone disappeared.
His reaction caught our attention, but we were dismayed that the perp hadn’t. We consider it our business to spot thieves before they strike. This time, we failed. We never saw him.
The victim said he’d set his phone down only a minute ago. Sitting beside the milk and sugar station, he hadn’t worried about the constant human traffic.
Bob looked up and saw a surveillance camera. “Get them to show you the video,” he urged the victim. But Starbucks’ manager refused to access the video unless the victim filed a police report. The victim threw up his hands in frustration. He didn’t want to spend his short time in Lisbon dealing with police and looking at surveillance tapes. He walked out.
“It’s only getting worse,” a security guard told us. He was positioned just outside the old elevator tower. “We see them every day;” he was referring to the city’s pickpockets. They don’t necessarily ride the elevator. It’s just a short walk up the hill to the lift’s viewpoint, and that’s where they wait for their prey.
That was corroborated by the security guard who keeps watch on the elevator tower. She seemed fascinated by their chosen profession, picking up on many details that others in the security business miss. All she can do when she sees pickpockets though, she said, is warn the visitors and shoo the thieves away.
It’s been two years since our last visit to Lisbon. Tram lines 15 and 28 are as crowded and infested as they were then. More buildings are boarded up and the city looks worse than ever.
Lisbon looks terribly dilapidated, its glory days over, deteriorating as we watch. Its structures are still grand, but they’re dressed like homeless derelicts, with the same empty-eyed glower, all dignity and self-respect burned off by neglect.
To quote myself.
On the other hand, the sidewalks are still spectacular.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Read also: Japanese Kaiseki Dinner.
How it felt to be in Japan’s 9.0 earthquake.
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.
4-1/2 hours before Japan’s earthquake: it might have been my sister’s fault. Had she kept the slip of paper her bad fortune was printed on, as was her intention, blame certainly could have been laid. Instead, she folded the paper and impaled it on a tree branch in the ritual manner of rejecting bad fortunes. Surely by doing so she should have prevented the predictions she’d plucked only a few hours before the 9.0 devastation.
“BAD FORTUNE,” warned the English translation on her plucked paper. “Although it seems to be quite safe, everything is full of the coming danger.”
It was 10:15 a.m. on the first day of our family vacation in Japan. In Tokyo’s Asakusa district to visit the the Senso-ji Buddhist temple, all 16 of us were high on togetherness, anticipating the exotic experiences we’d carefully planned.
“You meet so many sadness, to be forced to leave from the people with sympathy.” Karen’s fortune continued. “Wind is so hard and make waves so high.”
“You should make an offering and get rid of it,” our Japanese guide explained. Karen folded the paper and stuck it to a branch.
4 hours before: As we left the temple compound, a mob of Japanese schoolgirls surrounded my blond, blue-eyed, buff nephew, taking turns snapping photos of themselves with him. Nick felt like a celebrity—and acted like one. We were all certain the photo-frenzy would be the highlight of our day.
3 hours before: Our next stop was the 790-foot-tall Sunshine-60, a skyscraping tower capped by an observatory on its 60th floor. One of the fastest elevators in the world blasted us to the top, from which we looked down on the dense city. Strangely, we watched seal-training on a rooftop below.
The earthquake, now less than three hours in the future, would have swayed the observatory to a sickening and terrifying extent. The speedy elevators would have been shut down. Alone but for a few young staff members, we’d have been stuck in the stratosphere for the huge aftershock 30 minutes later, petrified.
1-1/2 hours before: After lunch we visited a house in a residential district for a traditional tea ceremony. First, we were each to be dressed in kimonos—a long, arduous process, we learned, with their many layers, and the tugging and tying of the obi, the wide, extravagant sash tied elaborately in back.
Earthquake! I was half dressed when the rumbling began. Lamps, scrolls, and empty hangers rattled while the house seemed to be surfing mad waves. At first, we hustled into doorways—many of us had been trained as California school children. Moments later, the staff ushered us under their two large tables. The house also functioned as a cooking school, so the two tables were big enough to shelter all 16 of us.
The staff threw open the doors and windows—as they are trained, I later learned, to enable escape should walls shift and doors jam. Meanwhile, the bumps and jerky rolls continued. For two full, long minutes, we rode the rocking floor bent double under the tables, some of us already bound tightly in traditional Japanese dress.
I’m no stranger to earthquakes. I was in “the big one” in Los Angeles in 1971, and many smaller ones. Most of them last a good 20 seconds or so which, when you’re in one, feels like a long time. This one just wouldn’t quit. Crouched and crowded with my family, I wondered how many floors the tables would support. And how many stories high was the building we were in, anyway? Should we run outside? Why hadn’t I noticed more about the neighborhood?
Some of the staff were kneeling, hands together, praying. One of our children wailed. There was nervous laughter and inappropriate joking. There were tea cups falling in their cabinets and weird, whistling sounds. We all had the same thoughts: how long would this go on? And: this is our whole family. My parents, their four children, some spouses, and five of their seven grandchildren.
4 minutes after: When we emerged, we looked around dazed and confused. There wasn’t much evidence of damage in the house, but cell phone service was down. Without radio, television, or phone, we didn’t know the severity of the quake. The staff looked shaken, but quickly got back to their duties. I was shoed back into the dressing room for obi-tying along with my niece, who was also half-dressed, and my sister, who was photographing. All of us nervously watched the lamp, hangers, and scroll, and noticed that they never totally stopped swaying.
30 minutes after: The first huge aftershock came soon after the earthquake—about 10 minutes after we’d resumed our activities. We dove under the tables again, those of us who appeared calm soothing the ones who let their fear show. We were all scared, floundering, and aware of how helpless we felt.
One of my sisters got news on her Blackberry. The quake was first measured at 8.8—huge. There were no immediate reports of damage. We studied the staff members for signs of fear or distress. To us, they appeared a little distracted, but resolute, ready to push on with their characteristic dignity. A little familiar with the national ethos, this did not necessarily fill me with confidence that all was well.
We soldiered on through kimono-dressing and a somber tea ceremony, only half interested, whispering worries and nervously joking. The Japanese showed no emotion. They maintained perfect grace and extended courteous hospitality. At 5:00, we left the house, only then looking up to see what had been above us.
1 hour and 15 minutes after: By then, traffic was at a standstill. The sidewalks were surging with office workers, many wearing hardhats. Our vehicle had satellite TV tuned to Japanese news. We got our first horrendous images of the raging fires and tsunami damage. On every station, maps of Japan blinked with garishly-colored tsunami warnings. We learned that all trains had stopped running. With traffic jammed, even buses and taxis would not be able to get office workers home, many of whom live an hour or more commute outside of Tokyo. They’d be walking all night.
4 hours and 15 minutes after: The five- or six-mile drive to our hotel, the Peninsula, took three tense hours. The lobby was full of stranded workers. A scribbled signboard promised the hotel would provide food and drinks to all. We worried about our two magnificent guides, who would be as stuck as everyone else in the city. We decided to double up: three sisters and one husband sharing one room, freeing one of our eight rooms for our guides. It took much cajoling before they gratefully accepted our offer.
Our dinner plans had been scrapped and, with gas stoves shut down, the hotel’s kitchens were only semi-functional. My nephew set out to find groceries, but returned to report that all shelves were bare. We weren’t really hungry anyway.
5 hours after: We hunkered together, reluctant to separate from other family members, opened wine, and nibbled mini-bar nuts in front of the news. Hyper-aware of our rooms being on the ninth and 18th floors of a skyscraper, we considered choosing an emergency meeting place. Everything seemed uncertain, though. What would the world look like in an emergency? What’s a good meeting place in a landscape of skyscrapers?
Aftershocks rocked the hotel every ten or fifteen minutes. The highways below were parking lots. I came across a video showing Tokyo’s skyscrapers swaying after the earthquake. It wasn’t until we turned off the television and got into bed that we heard the eerie creaking of the building. Only those who popped pills got any sleep that night.
The Japanese are often characterized as stoic. This trait has been pointed out relentlessly over the following days, and for good reason. Where possible, people carried on as usual. Little emotion was shown. Life goes on, even for survivors in the most devastated areas.
For us, too. We cried for the country we cared enough about to visit. We are heartbroken for the Japanese, for those we know and those we don’t know but know about. Yet, there we were, wondering: what now? What should we do?
1 day after: Glued to the TV, thankful for Blackberry news when away from it, we debated our course of action over and over. Should we leave? Are there flights out? Is it safe to stay? Insensitive? What reports can we trust, anyway? Are the Japanese being forthright? Is CNN dramatizing? BBC overly cautious?
With major changes to our itinerary, we stayed—one day at a time. We were constantly aware of the dichotomy between the massive devastation and our frivolous holiday. It felt strange to continue. Queasy. Callous and selfish.
Each day, we all received concerned but hysterical emails begging us to leave. Fears of a nuclear meltdown and radiation leakage brought new worries. Not for us so much as for our five teenagers. We moved south and west, as planned, first to Hakone, then to Kyoto. Our flights at week’s end were to be out of Tokyo. Would the city be safe then? What if we flew to Tokyo, then couldn’t get out?
3 days after: Rolling blackouts were announced, to save power. We diligently turned off unnecessary lights in our luxurious rooms, irony not escaping us. The papers criticized the power-hogging vending machines that my family had been so entranced with. Each machine serves both hot and cold beverages. You can have a bottle of hot green tea or cold maple-syrup pancake drink on any street corner.
7 days after: We had flights from Osaka to Tokyo, from which we’d all be flying onwards: some were going home, some to Beijing, one to Vietnam, and I was going to Hong Kong. Reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant seemed to be exploding daily. With the situation so unstable, we agonized over returning to Tokyo with our children. In the end we did though, and were treated to one last, large aftershock in the airport, shortly before our flights.
15 days after: Flying through Thailand, I come face to face with a health screening desk for passengers flying to Japan. Free iodine tablets are on offer. I wonder if I should partake. I’m flying through Tokyo again on March 31 and radiation levels are increasing. Even today, just writing this report feels frivolous in the face of headlines.
Our trip was a celebration of my father’s 80th birthday. He and my mother chose Japan because they love the country’s people and its culture. In a world of conflict, I’m sure they also considered it safe for the family. The week became one of conflict anyway: worry and fear and festivity and pleasure. And though we’re all still riveted by the news out of Tokyo, for us it’s over. Not so for our new and old friends in Japan.
4/25/11 edit: While we were blithely dressing in kimonos, the tsunami was rolling in (unbeknownst to us, of course). See this horrifying video to its end.
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Read about Japan’s complicated shoe rules.
Read about a Japanese kaiseki dinner.
The Wellington in Madrid is a lovely, old hotel full of charm, the official temporary residence of visiting bullfighters. Our room was large and faultless.
I was puzzled by the sliding glass door in the bathroom, which separated the toilet from the sinks. It was even lockable. Why clear glass? What is the purpose of a transparent door? Isn’t the point of a toilet stall… privacy?
The back wall of the bathroom is all mirror, making the photo confusing but also reflecting the fact that the bathroom does have an ordinary solid door.
One day in Spain and we are bombarded with sad stories, particularly of crime in Madrid.
1. Madrid Metro: A couple in their 60s are on a train when they are surrounded. The woman has everything of value in her fanny pack. She has too much of value in her fanny pack. Not only does she have seven credit cards, her driver’s license, and her husband’s driver’s license, but she also has both their social security cards and a slip of paper with the user names and passwords for all their credit cards and banks.
Yep. All stolen. Plus lotsa cash. She felt it happening, but was too intimidated to speak up. Anyway, it happened too fast. The perps got off the train immediately, as if they’d timed the theft to coincide with the doors opening. Which, of course, they had.
Yeah, there really are people like this. Born victims, you might say.
2. Madrid Metro: Same day. A 30ish New York woman traveling with her Spanish boyfriend is hit on an escalator. She has her purse zipped into a large bag on her shoulder. Yes, the bag could have been hanging toward her back, instead of in front of her. She notices the women behind her as she is about to get on the escalator, and she notices that when she gets on, they don’t. She checks her bag and—yep. Purse gone. In it: all the couple’s cash, all their credit cards, their travel itinerary for tomorrow’s flight, the name and address of their hotel, and their passports.
Well, they do have €50. They spend the rest of the day canceling credit cards and making phone calls to recover their travel information. In the morning, they’re able to fly from Madrid to Malaga without passports. They’re to join a cruise ship, but they’re not allowed to board without their passports, and have to fly back to Madrid to visit the embassy.
3. Malaga: Next day. Another American couple, both speakers, land in Malaga and rent a car. They drive to their hotel, a small place on a small street. She goes to check in while he unloads the car. He takes out their two large suitcases and a bellman brings them into the lobby. Meanwhile, the man removes from the car a backpack and a small suitcase, and sets them down beside the car while he fiddles with the unfamiliar lock buttons on the rental car key. When he turns back to the two small bags, one is gone. He assumes the bellman picked it up.
No, the bellman hadn’t. Our friend, a frequent world traveler, hadn’t noticed anyone around him out by the car. In the stolen backpack: all their cash, credit cards, an expensive camera, a very expensive computer loaded with too much data, and the charger for their other computer, which already had a dead battery.
4. Same day, more crime in Madrid: an active woman, a practitioner of yoga, has her purse snatched in a brutal manner. She falls down and, almost two weeks later, is still in a wheelchair.
5. Same day, more crime in Madrid: a wiry, active man, 60ish, who “grew up on the wrong side of the tracks,” feels his male pickpockets working on him. I don’t know why this man carries a cane; he doesn’t appear to need one. But he has it and swings it. Three times, he bashes his accosters. “Got ’em good. They ran.”