Category: Travel for Fun

Mexico City #3: Street Food Tour

There’s no way to say this without sounding like an ass: When I signed up for a walking tour with Eat Mexico, I thought it would be a nice way to spend the morning, but not particularly educational. I mean, geez, I know what Mexican food’s about, right?

I know. I’m an ass! I already said it!

Within seconds of starting off on the walk, I was already learning that the pink tamales are the sweet ones. You’re probably thinking, well, duh. But I’ve never seen a pink tamale in the Yucatan! And it went on from there.

First of all, in the Yucatan, there’s nothing that starts with tl-, which is a Nahuatl-only sound. Here’s a fantastic array of toppings for tlacoyos, little blue-corn patties that are heated on a griddle and topped with Oaxacan string cheese and whatever your pleasure. The edges are folded over to keep everything in.

tlacoyo toppings

tlacoyo
A finished tlacoyo, from another source

Another couple of blocks, after stopping for some chicharron that was as flaky as pie crust, I finally learned what tacos de canasta are. I’ve seen signs, and logically I know it means “basket tacos,” but hadn’t given it much thought, as, again, this isn’t something I see much in the Yucatan.

Turns out tacos de canasta are pre-made tacos filled with soft, mild things (potatoes, cochinita pibil). They’re usually stacked up in a basket and covered with a towel, to keep the steam in. People usually eat them for breakfast (Lesley warned us not to buy them in the afternoon, as they’re usually soggy by then).

tacos de canasta

And just how snazzy was our tacos de canasta vendor? This snazzy. He sold loose cigarettes too.

senor canasta

Near the end, we were almost maxed out, but we stopped for tacos al pastor. I eat these plenty in the Yucatan, but these were different–the pork was crispier, and more important, the pineapple was raw, which added a super-fresh contrast. (In the Yucatan, a slab of pineapple is stuck on top of the rotisserie, so it drips over the pork as it cooks, which isn’t worse…just different.)

tacos al pastor

Our last stop was at a carnitas stand, where Lesley broke down the vocab for us–words like suadero and guiche I’d never even thought to look up–and explained how carnitas is really a texture experience, and people mix and match pork parts according to how much bounce and chew and crunch they want. A-ha.

But the high point, at least in terms of personal milestones, was eating…eyeballs! This never sounds like a great idea, but I’ve been particularly squeamish about eyeballs ever since my brother dissected one from a cow in high school, then brought it home in a plastic baggie and left it in the fridge right at eye level for a week. And Peter told me how he’d had to eat a lamb eyeball in Greece once, and it popped a little and had something hard in the center.

So there we were at a stand that was advertising tacos de ojo, and Lesley pointed this out. Janneth, Lesley’s friend and a tour-guide-in-training, noticed us all shuffling around looking anxious, and she said, “I’ll get some. I’ve never tried them either.”

The guy at the stand dug into the stewed cow skull, scooped out the eye and lot of other meat around it, and threw it on his chopping block. And then, just like every other taco meat, it got hacked up into little tiny bits. A little anticlimactic, but a huge relief. Here’s Janneth and the finished product, looking surprisingly benign:

eyeball tacos

It tasted like…beef. Very mild beef. I’m not entirely sure why anyone would choose ojo over lengua, say, but I’m glad I’ve tried it, as now I won’t live in fear. And if I hadn’t gone on this tour with Eat Mexico, I never would’ve gotten there.

A few minutes before the whole eyeball-taco frenzy, a man had asked Janneth what our gang was up to, eating miniscule bites of tacos and taking photos left and right. Her answer: “Somos gastronomicos.” And the guy looked happy and congratulated her.

Ah, Mexico–where you can still proudly say, “We’re foodies.”

Mexico City #2: Things Organized Neatly

Mexico City is heaving with commerce. Maybe not quite as much as Bangkok, but the sidewalks and storefronts are pretty crammed with opportunities to buy, buy, buy. Limited space and competition mean it’s important to display your wares in a sensible manner.

Here are just a few examples of excellent pegboard salesmanship on display throughout Mexico City:

But the real prize goes to this cactus-paddle stacker:

See previous post:
Mexico City #1: End of the Line/em>

Mexico City #1: End of the Line

Whenever Peter and I travel, we usually find ourselves at the end of the line. This isn’t metaphorical–it’s real, and it’s a conscious choice. We look at the transit map, pick a point off on the fringes, and head for it.

Mexico City is inconceivably vast. We bought an enormous foldout map that covered two-thirds of the twin bed in our hotel room, and the areas tourists normally go to (Condesa, Roma, Centro) covers about a square inch. Coyoacan, where the Frida Kahlo museum is, is a couple of inches south.

So Peter decided we’d go to the end of the new suburban rail line, Cuautitlan, up in the north. The train was pretty slick.

And so was the station.

The end of the line is pretty shiny.

It’s not even near the edge of the city, but it’s a start.

Those green lines are bus routes heading into even more remote suburbs.

The train ends in a giant big-box-store-architecture kind of terminal, with a mini-mall.

Cinder blocks and I-beams spell progress.

The mall is pretty normal: grocery store, couple of phone stores, a Ticketmaster outlet, a popsicle vendor. Oh, and a pawn shop with the cutest logo ever.

Pawn Power!

Another sign this mini-mall is not in America: the sex shop.

Excuse me, not a sex shop...a love store.

We finally wandered out into the real world of Cuautitlan. It looked pretty much like every midsize, reasonably prosperous Mexican town.

There’s a church, and some topiary. And a park with a clock tower.

There’s some architecture that looked like it could be in Astoria.

We ate some remarkably scrumptious esquites–corn off the cob, with chile, cilantro, cheese and a huge gob of mayo. (Note to Yucatan esquiteros: Up your game, dudes.)

It was starting to rain, so we high-tailed it back to the station, briefly stopping to do the math on how much our dream house would cost us here in Cuautitlan.

About US$45,000. Not bad.

We sat back on the train and watched the rainstorm roll in.

By the time we got back near the center, Mexico City felt a little smaller. Barely.

Why I’m Going Back to Egypt – Soon

At a party recently, I asked a woman about her summer travel plans. “Well, my husband and I had this trip to Egypt and Israel planned,” she answered, “but I guess that’s not a great idea now…”

At the time, I weakly replied, “Oh, I’m sure everything in Egypt is fine….”

Now I wish I’d pushed the issue. Because now I’m home, combing through my photos from my last visit, in 2007, and thinking how much I’d like to be there right now. And how it would in fact be just fine to be there now.

Yes, there has been violence since the uprising. And there was this story about a crime wave in Egypt in the New York Times last week. But let’s put this in perspective. There was previously zero violent crime in Egypt—Cairo, despite its population of 19 million, was one of the safest cities in the world (ah, the bittersweet bonuses of a police state). So any lawlessness is instantly a “crime wave.”

Friday Market: Taxidermy
Don't these boys look perfectly nice?

Well, yes, but: Lara Logan, you’re saying. Harassment of women on the street is not a new issue. But all that you, as a tourist, have to do is avoid mobs of agitated, shouting young men. So don’t go to a soccer game, and don’t join a street protest. But you’re perfectly OK sitting in a cafe drinking tea or walking around a museum.

One simple way to avoid all the post-revolution anxiety is to leave Cairo. I recently got an email from acquaintances who reported having a great time in Luxor and Aswan—they had all the ruins to themselves. The only drawback with traveling now, they said, is that the vendors are all a bit desperate due to low tourism, so sales pressure is high.

But…that’s Egypt. You’ll never have a sales-pressure-free vacation there no matter what. It’s practically where tourism was invented—I’m sure Herodotus got the hard sell too.

Of course something bad could happen tomorrow. But it’s important to remember that something bad can happen at any time. I mean, don’t remember this 24/7, or you’ll be paralyzed with fear. But just know that travel–and life in general–involves a degree of uncertainty, no matter where or when you do it.

Pharaonic Legs
One thing that could happen: You could lose your legs.

I was living in Cairo in 1997, an otherwise unremarkable year, when a tour bus was bombed in front of the Egyptian Museum, spitting distance from where I sat in class every day. Not long after, there was the terrible massacre of tourists in Luxor. Despite these two events, I still felt safer in Cairo than in most other places I’ve lived, and every Egyptian I knew went out of their way to tell me they were so sorry and shocked about what happened.

And I was sorry too, as I saw my friends who worked as tour guides lose their work overnight. That’s why, when I hear someone express worry about going to Egypt now, I think, “Stick with it! Those people need the money!”

Not that your trip should be a charity case. But the last thing Egypt needs now is for its tourism industry to collapse. What’s especially wonderful about the mass uprising this winter was that it was by Egyptians, for Egyptians, and there appears to be a greater sense of pride and independence across the country. But that doesn’t mean Egypt can be so independent as to not rely on outside money from tourism.

In fact, I think there’s no better time to go to Egypt than now. You’ll be showing your support for the country at a time when it needs it most. You’ll get to talk to Egyptians directly about what they think can and should happen next–so many social issues are out on the table now (see the movie Cairo 6,7,8 if it’s at a festival near you!).

But perhaps the best reason to go: Years from now, you can look back and say, “I was in Egypt the year everything changed.”

(Curious what to do in Egypt once you’re there? I just wrote a post about what I’d see in Cairo on Gogobot, a great new travel-info-swapping site.)

Thailand, Let Me Count the Ways, part 2

So, all this, and I would love to say the Thais are my people, that I have found my true heart-home on the globe.

And yet. And yet… I can’t. There is a connection that isn’t happening, some part of me that doesn’t throw off sparks when I come into contact with Thailand. I have felt it scores of times in Mexico, and in Syria, and even occasionally in Egypt, when I can cut through the smog and the traffic and the tourist fascination.

Is it because there is just too much like-going-with-like in Thailand? There, I’m on board with everything already. In Mexico, I feel like I’m visiting what could be my better self, if I stretched—my self that’s quicker to laugh but also more polite, that paints the room in cobalt blue and rose pink, that drinks without fretting about it. Syria is the model me that has perfected the art of hospitality, developed my sense of taste without being snobbish about it and learned to live with dignity no matter the circumstances.

More practically, though, the answer may simply be language. I speak Spanish and Arabic. Except for the ten hours Peter and I spent in a classroom in Bangkok near the end of our trip, I don’t speak Thai.

Those five days of classes were thrilling, though. Why did no one tell me there are languages in which you don’t have to conjugate verbs? That pronouncing tones can be fun, and not impossible after all? Our teacher was a delight, and even if we don’t recall anything we learned*, we at least made a Thai friend.

I rely on words. Even as I’ve switched to more of a photo format on this blog, I’ve felt like I’m cheating. The sensation produced by a great picture somehow doesn’t count if I haven’t hashed it out in three too-long paragraphs, then pruned it all back to one tight one.

As much as I felt freed up last year when we went to Thailand and bumbled around, language-less and reduced to pointing and smiling and giving the thumbs-up, I also felt cut loose, bobbing along in the current and never mooring anywhere or with anyone.

A lot of people, probably most of them, travel like this. But a lot of people are simply better at this style of travel than I am—they’re more outgoing, and they can make a real connection with people by pointing at lines in a phrasebook. But coupled with my more passive style, my lack of fluency, or even functionality, makes me a pure spectator.

I would never say I’m fluent in Spanish or Arabic, but I can order in a restaurant, buy bus tickets and crack the occasional joke—all without thinking too much about it and worrying over what kind of impression I’m making.

I think this is the key: if I can slip off my cloak of self-consciousness (like an invisibility cloak—but the exact opposite), there’s a chance for me to really see the person I’m talking to and really listen to what they’re saying. Less me, more them—probably a lesson I could use in any language, in any country.

It appears the only solution to my Thailand quandary is…more. More visits, more study, more food. And plenty more time with my bootleg Rosetta Stone software.

And in the meantime, I won’t take my grasp of Spanish pleasantries for granted, nor my ability to read Arabic.

*except the phrase paw dee, which means “just right.” But even that doesn’t really count because it turns out I already knew it, because my mom has been saying it for decades, to mean something more like “close enough.” I didn’t even know it was Thai until I took this class—it was jarring to hear a familiar phrase in a list of other non-cognates.

It must’ve worked its way into the family idiolect through my ex-stepdad, who was a monk in a Thai monastery for a while before he showed up on our patio when I was six or so. In my memory, he was wearing his saffron drawstring pants the first time I saw him, and he probably said, “Paw dee” right then, for all I know.

Thailand, Let Me Count the Ways, part 1

Ah, Thailand. The whole time I was there, I was making a mental list of all the ways in which I am totally down with Thai culture. The Thais and I—we are copacetic. For example:

1. Take your shoes off.
Aside from appealing to my sense of hygiene and aesthetics, the no-shoes thing is great as a traveler. Padding around on the cool stone floor of a museum in bare feet is lovely. And when a class of schoolchildren swarms in, they’re all soft and shuffling instead of crashing and stampeding like elephants.

And if you happen to stay in the nicest hotel in Phetchaburi, because it’s the only place that has a room, but it’s not like it’s actually a super-nice hotel, and that room has wall-to-wall carpeting—well, it’s nice to know that a significantly smaller number of people has walked on that carpeting in shoes, when compared with an American hotel of the same vintage.

And shoes-off culture supports excellent footwear. As someone who currently owns three pairs of Worishofers, I am thrilled by Thailand’s slip-on shoe scene. I apologize from the bottom of my heart for never starting that photo essay of all the ridiculous shoes I spotted in Bangkok. But I could never take the photos because I felt like I’d been gawking too obviously to then whip out my camera.

First in the photo essay would’ve been these spongy, Crocs-like things shaped like big, bulgy cartoon animal feet, complete with little claws. They came in pink and orange and blue and yellow, and I saw otherwise perfectly normal-looking people strolling around in them. One woman was all suited up in a gray pencil skirt and a white button-front blouse…and these bright-pink shoes. And not even in an ’80s-Working-Girl-high-powered-commuter way.

2. Kids are quiet.
Speaking of schoolchildren: They’re so good in Thailand. And they look cute in their uniforms. And their matching haircuts. Draconian? Nah—if those matching haircuts are contributing to their good behavior, I’m all for them.

Lavender Kids

3. Colors are fabulous.
Speaking of bright-pink shoes. And taxis the color of Barbie’s dream house, or an iridescent green beetle, or a turquoise sky. And monks in safety-orange robes (“saffron” is a euphemism).

Golden Mount

Granted, it’s not color like Mexico has color. Everything’s a bit more muted. But it’s also much more broadly applied and non-gender-specific. The king dresses his dogs in little pink coats. And as you saw above, schoolkids wear lavender uniforms.

4. Conflict is avoided.
It’s a stereotype of Buddhist culture, but keeping your cool is valued in Thailand. Yelling is rude, as is pushing or shoving.

You never see people shouting at each other in the street, or someone having a one-way fight on a cell phone. I didn’t realize how relaxing this was until I was away from the hair-trigger freak-out zone that is New York City.

The no-conflict ideal trickles into the physical realm as well. If you stop in the middle of the sidewalk to snap a photo of some obscene-looking mannequins…

Mannequins

…no one jostles you, or curses you under their breath, or shouts, “Hey lady, getthafugouttathaway!” They just flow around you, barely breaking stride.

And taxis never honk. In a taxi one night, someone passed us too close, and our driver had to swerve out of the way. He briefly slowed down, but just kept driving. No horn, no fist-shaking. After about 10 more feet, he reached out the window and flipped his mirror back into place.

Plus, you’d never see a sign like this in the US:

Why, Yes, I Am

5. OK, and: THE FOOD!
This is all I raved about after the last trip, so I was trying not to fall into that pit of oh-my-god-then-I-ate-that-and-that-and-that again. BUT. MY GOD. These people are insane. Everyone is eating at all times, no lie.

My analysis of Thai culture came largely from reading the Bangkok Post at breakfast every morning, then cherry-picking the quotes that seemed to illustrate my preconceptions. An academic I am not.

But how can you not extrapolate a whole wonderful worldview out of a news story about some white-collar criminal who is required to turn himself into the police but gets waylaid, and then produces the excuse “I was on my way to the police station, but I got hungry, so I stopped at the mall.”

Then we were in the Jim Thompson House museum, reading news clips from the 1950s, when the World Bank imposed austerity measures. (No one imposes austerity measures anymore. Did we just decide they don’t work? Or did we forget about them?) Women were asked to refrain from wearing makeup and stockings. Men shouldn’t go out drinking. And everyone was asked to eat only three meals a day, maximum. Please. If they could. That would be great, thanks.

So, Thailand, I love it and all its crazy eating and dressing and sweetness and shyness…but.

(to be continued…)

Adventures with an Extrovert, part 2

(read Part 1)

This trip to Bangkok, Peter proposed exactly three activities:

1. Stay at the Atlanta Hotel and maybe write a little at their funky old writing desks.

2. Eat at Soul Food Mahanakorn.

3. Go to that crazy market that the train goes through.

I said, “OK, fine, but we have to go to Nahm too. And what market?”

“Watch the YouTube video,” he said.

Having so few goals for our trip is another “signature” of our travel style. Less is more, we tell each other, as we order another coffee. Even the train market sounded a little active for us, but that was trumped by the fact that it involved a train. Trains trump everything.

We scheduled the train market outing for a day with Rod. The trip required leaving our hotel at the ghastly hour of 7:30 a.m., so we were counting on his energy to propel us there.

The train market is in the town of Mae Khlong, aka Samut Songkran. To get there from Bangkok, you take two separate rinky-dink commuter trains, with a ferry in between.

Or, if you’re like us and get lost in the transfer town, you take two ferries, because the first one is the wrong one. Once it became clear how inept we were, a nice man walked us all the way to the proper ferry dock, past grilled squid, a live elephant and papasan chairs of shrimp paste.

Shrimp Paste

The train market is a phenomenal two-in-one excursion, just made for Jack Sprat-ish spouses. She likes to shop? He likes trains? The Mae Khlong train market saves your marriage! I don’t really like to shop, and I don’t dislike trains, but we still made this joke a lot.

If you didn’t click over and watch that YouTube clip, here’s the gist: the train goes straight through the middle of the market. Before it does, everyone packs up all their stuff and pulls back their awnings and presses themselves back against the wall. What’s amazing is how quickly they put everything back and get back down to selling live eels, hacking up fish and all the other standard business.

So we lined up with the handful of other rail fanatics and watched the train go back out through the market, vendors standing frozen to the side, like stagehands waiting in the wings. We marveled and took a million photos. And then we walked around town for a few hours, got a foot massage, ate some fried chicken, as you do…

Fried Chicken Ladies

(As Peter points out, it just doesn’t seem fair that Thailand has this tremendous rich food culture, and they make perfect fried chicken on top of it all.)

Half an hour before the last train was set to leave, we took a spin through the rest of the market, the non-train-tracks part. It was late in the day, so it was almost deserted, but we could hear music coming from one end.

We rounded a wall, and there was a somewhat rowdy crew gathered around chatting, toasting each other and watching a delicate man in a crisp white shirt crooning karaoke. A few people were swaying to the tune.

We stood at the edge of the group for a moment, Peter and I settling easily into our hang-back-and-observe groove.

But Rod grabbed Peter by the elbow. “Let’s go talk to the tech guy. See what we can sing.”

The karaoke MC was just what you want in a small-town AV guy: curly hair, half-tint sunglasses, a couple of big amulets on gold chains dangling over his satin-finish shirt. Within seconds, he and Rod were scrolling through his library of songs in English. The delicate crooner soon reached the tear-jerking climax of his song, and Rod and Peter stepped up to the mike. A momentary hush fell over the market.

“Dancing Queen” has never been so warmly received. The crowd surged in close. Men pressed drinks, fresh peanuts and plates of spicy pork into my hands, and lined up cups to wait for Peter and Rod. Two people started a coordinated line dance in front.

Women advanced one by one to drape Peter and Rod in garlands or bashfully hand them long-stem roses. One of them poked me, nodding toward Peter, clutching her chest in a swoon.

As the song reached its crescendo, I checked my watch. Just about time for the train. In the wild applause that followed, Peter and Rod waved to the crowd, I gathered our belongings and slugged my Pepsi-and-whiskey and we all hustled for the exit, with cries of “Happy new year!” in Thai and English ringing out behind us.

We bounded onto the train, flushed and giddy, draped in flowers, already recounting the highlights.

“Did you see the guy doing the motorbike-revving dance?”

“That lady selling the fish was so in love with you!”

“And how did they refill my drink so fast?”

The train chugged out, and we squeezed into the rear cab to watch the market fall back into place as we passed, like the teeth of a zipper clicking together.

Soon we were out in the farmland between towns, rice paddies and shrimp ponds stretching away to either side. The conductor never came to kick us out of the rear cab. We felt very VIP. A man and his young son sat next to us, and we all watched the bumpy, narrow tracks unspool behind us.

When they got off at a small village, we gave the boy one of our garlands. The train pulled away, leaving the father and son walking together, each balancing on a rail and holding hands across the pebbled bed between them.

Peter and I sat back and watched. The pair on their parallel balance beams grew smaller, and eventually dissolved into the bluish haze. Even Rod was quiet.

“This was the best day,” he finally said. “The absolute best day.”

*Read Part 1
*Thailand photo set on Flickr

Adventures with an Extrovert, part 1

I’m very lucky that I happen to be married to someone whose travel style meshes perfectly with mine. (It might be that I got married only because I found someone I could travel with.)

That travel style is awfully particular, as it involves a lot of sitting and watching people go by. I didn’t quite realize how rooted we were in our ways until we were traipsing around Bangkok with a good friend of ours who’d come to meet us for a few days. Rod is an excellent traveler as well, but…he is just not like us.

He goes up to people and talks to them! I mean, he just asks them questions. And dumb questions, even. Like at the mall, when we’d already gotten our feet nibbled at the fish spa, which was really just a couple of tubs of fish stuck in a hallway toward the parking lot.

Fish Spa

(Excruciating. Like having a million mosquitoes attacking your legs. Worse: the attendant thought she was being nice by not starting the 30-minute timer until I’d stopped squawking and shuddering.)

Rod marches up to the girls at the info desk, grins and says, “Soooo, what’s fun to do in the mall?”

Meanwhile, Peter and I are averting our eyes, looking utterly disinterested and pretending like we don’t know Rod at all. I discover I’m clutching Peter’s arm in desperate embarrassment.

I am 38 years old. What is wrong with me?

The girls just giggle, look confused and say, “Shop-ping!” in that Thai way, where each syllable is given equal weight. Only after Rod has fully stepped away from the desk can I sidle up and say, “Oh, well. Nice try.”

So we went upstairs and sang karaoke.

At least here I’ve made a little progress. When a friend’s Japanese roommate in college explained the concept to me, I was horrified. Karaoke sounded like the absolute most horrible experience in the world. You were really singing?, I asked, incredulous. All alone? At a party?

But at the kinda dumpy coin-operated karaoke booth on the fifth floor of MBK mall, I felt very mature. We sang Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and tried to ham it up as much as Rod did. Impossible.

Karaoke Kings

The next day, we all got on a canal boat just for the sake of riding the boat. It was the most phenomenal form of public transit I’ve ever been on, and I’ve been on a lot. (It sounds like I am independently cool/nerdy enough to do this, but Peter really gets all the credit.)

Speed Demon

We barreled along at terrifying speeds, rooting for the tiny ticket-taker girl who walked up and down the edge of the boat, occasionally winching down the roof so we could fit under bridges. When we got off, we didn’t know exactly where we were. My guidebook was at the bottom of my bag that I was still clutching to my chest in half-terror, half-glee.

While I was digging around in my bag for a map, Rod disappeared. I was just finding the right page in my book when he came back.

“The woman at that tourist-info booth said there’s a temple on a hill over there, and we can climb up and get a nice view over the city.”

I spend a great deal of my professional life talking to people at these tourist-info kiosks, asking them obscure questions about bus routes and opening hours. But it had not even crossed my mind to use them the way god intended, as Rod had just done.

“Yeah, I just asked her what there was to do around here,” he said with a shrug and pointed us off toward the Golden Mount.

Temple Bells

The next day… Well, the next day it got even crazier. But I’ll leave that for another post.

*Thailand photo set on Flickr

Bangkok Smile Bike

The world needs to know: You can get free bikes in Bangkok!

On our trip last January, Peter and I had read about these in our guidebook, but when we went to find them, the kiosk was abandoned.

No Bikes

Imagine our excitement then when, on this trip, we saw a crew of people zip down a street one day on very touristy bikes. Last time around, apparently, the system was way too broad–you could go anywhere. Now you’re supposed to take the bikes on only two set routes–one on the east side of the river, and one on the west. You can pick them up and drop them off at any kiosk along the route. And did I mention they’re free?

We hit the east side (EAST SIDE!) first. That’s where all the big fancy temples are, and the bike route takes you in a big loop past all of them. But Peter and I were so excited to be riding bikes that we didn’t bother doing any of the sightseeing at all.

We did cruise past our previous point of disappointment. Now much happier:

Smile! Bikes!

The bikes are well designed for city use, with just one speed (Bangkok is totally flat) and a nice integrated basket on the front. Only trouble for Peter was that the seats didn’t go up very high. These bikes were not made with American tourists in mind, much less Dutch ones. They have this cool built-in prong that ka-chunks the bike into place at the kiosk rack:

Ka-Chunk

Ka-Chunk

There were a lot of buses and other things in the way on the bike route, as well as mobs of schoolkids (next time, I’d make a point of being off the street by 3pm). But it was far less strenuous than riding in NYC. Traffic moves more slowly, and drivers are on the lookout for more crazy behavior, having to deal with mopeds zipping between lanes, and tuk-tuk drivers, and food vendors biking along with their carts full of sizzling whatever. We even got big smiles and thumbs-up from some drivers.

A couple of days later, we took the west side (WESSIDE!) (sorry, can’t help it) bike route. This was much niftier, because it was more residential, and we felt no obligation to sightsee at all. We followed a spur route to the royal barge museum, which was just closing (fortunately, or we might’ve been obliged to go in it!), and wound up in a neat little warren of canal houses, where we were riding along narrow little paths right next to the water. These women were sitting near a bridge.

West Side Life

Later, back on bigger boulevards, we cruised past some dudes unloading pig carcasses. They were stacked so beautifully. They could teach a thing or two to the halal-meat delivery guys around here.

Pig Carcasses

And, don’t tell the bike people, but we got a little lost and off-route, and while we were at it, we passed these girls, raising money for a charity.

Sidewalk Performers

And then Peter got transfixed by some locks.

Lock Opening

And then we finally got back on the route, and found the guy we’d been looking for, a candied bael-fruit seller. He was marked as a destination on the bike-route map. I had a dim memory of seeing some travel-show segment about him, on some flight or other, and this magical fruit that was so rare and odd-tasting. We rolled up, and there was no sign of any real commerce. But we asked around, and a guy turned up and took the cover off his display, which seemed to draw customers out of nowhere.

Bael Fruit? Sure.

We’d been biking for a while, so we took a breather, on the tumbledown couch in the alley.

Chillaxing on the Couch

The fruit was strange, slightly numbing, and so intensely candied that my teeth hurt just thinking about it. He also sold dried slices of the fruit, which I wish I’d gotten, but they were big bags, and they weren’t cheap. I don’t think being in a tourist brochure has gone to this guy’s head.

Bael Fruit Seller

Down the alley a bit, we found we weren’t the only ones out for a sunset bike cruise.

Dog on Bike

We were just getting a little tired when we passed a guy by the side of the road with an old-fashioned projector.

Projector

Peter stopped to take some photos for our friend Katie, and next thing we know, people were pouring us shots of booze, offering us Cheetos and giving us high-fives.

Eat! Drink!

One woman realized I was never going to drink all my hooch, and so took it back and poured it back in the bottle. I like that kind of sensible hospitality. We took a tour of the back room, where we finally figured out they were getting ready for a dragon parade. Oh, so that’s why the kids outside had been playing around with boxes on their heads!

Kids Playing Dragon

We left them some bael fruits (a little went a long way), gave some more high fives, and wobbled off down the road. Fortunately, it wasn’t too much farther to the next bike drop-off point.

We’d almost done the full circuit (it’s a straight line on the west side, not a loop). But we were somehow almost more pleased to be able to drop our bikes at the penultimate stop–because we got to use the word penultimate.

We wandered over the bridge back to the east side and found ourselves smack in the middle of the wholesale flower market. Which took us a little while to figure out. “Gosh, there sure are a lot of marigolds here…”

Marigolds

Stupendous, and so much better than if we’d made a special trip.

Thank you, Bangkok, for your wonderful free bikes. We’re smiling still!

Dubai Is the Future, part 2

[continued from part 1…]

We arrived at the other side of the creek just as the Friday noontime prayer started. Aside from a few tourists milling around, taking pictures of the same penis-shaped minaret as we were…

Dubai Mosqu

…the streets were deserted. We took our usual stroll through a supermarket, marveling at the mishmash of Indian, Arab and Asian products on the shelves.

All Purpose Sauce

A man steered us away from the Thai fruit juices, pointing to a can of mango juice made in Abu Dhabi and saying, “From here. Fresh!” with pride.

(Wait, was that a real Emirati?! We didn’t stop to marvel like we should have!)

One back corner of the store was fenced off with a chest freezer, blocking the entrance like a fort. Oh, hey—what’s in there?

Pork Products

Oh, I see. Wait, who are those products for?

Pork Products (Not for Muslim)

But…what if a Muslim wants to buy these things?

Non-Muslim (Pork Products)

Ah. No. Got it. Got it.

Finally, we had lunch at a pretty basic Indian joint, which we chose for the special clatter of stainless-steel plates on stainless-steel tabletops, and the intriguing-looking fish dishes. It wasn’t the most amazing food, but it contributed to our sense that the earth’s center of gravity had shifted.

We were in a world oriented around an ocean we knew only from globes, built on thousand-plus-year-old trade routes that were just dashed lines on a map we’d seen on the endpapers of a book. The United States felt like an irrelevant blip.

In the Dubai that is our future, American culture will exist only as a distant reference point—those people who invented the mall, the megaresort and the musical fountain. (And actually, I’m not even sure about the latter two.)

And in the future, apparently there are no women. Dubai is so reliant on guest workers that they make up about 80 percent of the population. Of those workers, the substantial majority are men. Women work in houses. Or, if they’re Emirati, live in houses and can only be seen in the comfortable confines of the luxury wing of the Dubai Mall.

Another unfortunate loss in the future will be subway etiquette. Despite pamphlets with cartoons urging riders to stand aside and wait for people to exit the train car, it was a vicious scrum every time the doors opened. Peter theorizes that multicultural societies have fewer superficial politenesses like this, because no one quite trusts or knows the standards.

I love me a multicultural society, but Dubai trumped New York City for boneheaded subway behavior, and that’s saying a lot.

Dubai Metro

It looks harmless, but wait till the doors open.

We avoided that unpleasantness once by splurging on a “gold” ticket on the metro, just because we could, and sitting in padded-seat luxury in the front car. There was even an attendant (a woman!) to inspect our tickets and keep out the interlopers.

In the future, as an American I probably won’t be able to afford this privilege–and that may be the most unsettling aspect of all. Maybe I can find work on a dhow…