06.25.08
Posted in Travel at 15:55 by RjZ
The travel agent we use for business travel got back to me for a recent trip and explained that she had upgraded me to a mid-size car instead of the compact I had requested. “Between you and me, I think mid-size is really a compact. Anyway, it was only $2 more.” I told her that actually I ask for compact cars because they use less gas. I figured that would be a pretty plausible argument given $4/gallon gas in the United States.
It seemed to work because when the confirmation arrived I noticed that it detailed “compact car” just as I originally asked. When I arrived at the rental counter, I handed over my ID and credit card and said that I had a reservation for the smallest car they had. You know, just a reminder. Of course, the clerk responded with an offer for an upgrade. They always do this, so no surprise. “Only if you plan on paying for my gas,” I responded. He ignored me and went about entering information into the computer. “Space D24,” he finally explained after I had signed all the contracts and initialed all the disclaimers.
I made my way out to space D24 where a beautiful blue Ford Mustang was waiting for me. I asked the help counter and some attendant standing around if there was some mistake, but there wasn’t. I could have made a bigger fuss, it was only going to be a short drive, so I just went on with my business.
Climbing inside the Mustang, I could see why they might have confused the V-6 gas guzzler with a compact. The rear seats are more fashion than function, as most everyone I know actually has legs below the knee cap and there would be no place for them in rear. It’s also hard to see over the bulging hood even with the seat as high as it would go and it wouldn’t matter anyway, because the poor driver is dazzled by all the sparkling plastic chrome trim on the instrument panel.
The thing is, I don’t rent compact cars for gas mileage exactly. I rent them because I really don’t need to drag around extra car for some short business trip. No sense spewing sucking down more oil and spewing out extra gas just because I am not home. I don’t get any extra pleasure driving some luxury or sporty car for a day or two; cars just don’t do it for me. Still, I understand my little environmental gesture is pretty meaningless. The impact of driving a compact car for two days it pretty much wiped out before the airplane taxis even a few feet.
Canvas bags really don’t make that much difference but I bring them to the store. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator is even less of an energy savings, but I do it whenever it’s convenient. It’s clear that all these tiny gestures are silly at best, but in combination, maybe they add up to something. And if I do them and people I know decide there’s little stopping them from saving a miniscule bit here and there, then together, maybe we really do make a difference.
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03.12.08
Posted in Society, Travel at 13:11 by RjZ
“Oriental,” I answered, when my Israeli hosts asked what I wanted for dinner that night. Oriental is what Israelis call middle eastern food and it’s a delicious array of mezzes or salads of eggplant, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, chick peas and on and on. We left their office south of Tel Aviv and drove a good 15 miles south along the coast to a small village not far from one of my colleague’s home. He knew the area and often went to a bakery near our destination restaurant.
We parked on the street and walked towards the restaurant past another bakery, still open, and selling warm challah and pitas, but, mysteriously, no bagels. (I assume there are bagels in Israel, there are enough New York jews there for sure, but I never saw one.) It was dusk of a warm evening. The village wasn’t nearly as tidy as Tel Aviv and several people were just hanging about chatting and smoking and taking in the evening. Some children we’re still playing in an alley off of the street.
The atmosphere in the restaurant had more in common with an American diner than a fine bistro. We sat in a booth at a metal and formica table near the windows, from which I could still make out the darkening ocean over the roofs of houses across the way. The restaurant was nearly empty. Some men wearing the traditional Palestinian black and white Shumaggs, like Yassir Arafat used to wear, were smoking a hookah in the far corner and shortly after we were seated a western dressed husband and hijab wearing wife sat at a table not far from ours and quieted their rambunctious young daughter and younger son.
And so, here we were, sitting in a restaurant in the Gaza strip, a few years before it would be in control of the Palestinian authority and no longer an annexed part of Israel. My two colleagues are both rather liberal Israelis. They were far more interested in keeping their electro-optics business running than Palestinian/Israeli politics. But, as I’ve written before, outside of religion and politics, there really isn’t much to talk about in Israel. We were finishing our meal and ordering some baklava when some from the hookah party came by to offer us a few puffs of the perfumy smoke. (We all politely declined.)
“You see…?” my colleague asked, “they don’t care if we’re Jews or Arabs. Real people just go about their business.” My colleagues don’t wear yarmulkas or the dark orthodox Jewish robes and hats, but no one who’s been to Israel would mistake them for anything other than Israelis. The thin, short-sleeve dress shirts and worn chinos all worn with a rather disheveled air are the hallmark of most Israeli businessmen. Still, no one gave us a second glance. The bakery sold Challah along side the pita; families ate dinner together; Arab men offered us the chance to join them enjoying the hookah; and the server spoke to us in Hebrew and English.
Even if the media is exaggerating the real devastation and despair in the Gaza strip today, it’s clear to me that things have gotten worse since that charming evening in a cheap, but delicious restaurant along quiet village streets. While there is real and justified animosity between people living in this region it’s equally important to remember that just a few years ago, people were smoking and breaking bread together. Too bad the pragmatism of my Israeli associate didn’t work out. Sure made sense at the time!
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02.22.08
Posted in Travel at 15:32 by RjZ
The more you’ve travelled the tougher the decision is to make. To book a tour or not. The problem is that advantages and disadvantages of the organized tour don’t change much from country to country. Once you’ve gathered a bit of experience, you can be confident that you know what to expect and what you’d have to do in order to arrange the darn thing yourself. So, for those of you who don’t yet, let me run down some options.
Just to give you a starting point, suppose you’re in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and you’ve heard of this kitschy elephant training camp that’s not too far away. How are your going to see it?
The organized tour:
Starting in your budget hotel, and nearly everywhere you go, people are offering tours throughout the Chiang Mai area. Virtually all of them have an offering that includes the elephants playing soccer that you read about in your guide book and, it turns out, there’s much more to see in one convenient tour! It always pays to shop around, just to be sure, but it won’t do you much good, because it’s nearly impossible determine which tours are the best. They all promise much the same things. Better, is to ask fellow tourists if they found one that they liked and also why they liked it. Тry to nail down details from the person selling you the tour about what exactly they’re promising and how long things are supposed to last. Ask what happens if your tour group decides they don’t want to see the reptile farm and they’d rather have a few more moments for coffee. Depending on your taste for coffee this may not be a problem for you, but it’s a good idea to know in advance how that’s going to be handled—will they just skip the reptiles after running out of time?
What happens next in the great majority of cases is that you pay your money and a tour bus of some sort comes by your hotel the next morning to pick you up. It’s great service, but tour operators have learned that waiting for tourists to show up is a recipe for disaster so it’s worth it to them. Next, You’re rushed from one site to another, almost always with more time to eat and shop than to see what you paid for. A sheepherder tour guide explains what you’re going to see next and includes stories about why it’s important. While it can be pretty annoying cooling your heels in a terrible cafeteria restaurant after finishing your bland meal while the rest of your group enjoys a second cup of coffee, you’re still going to fit at least dozen different activities into your short day.
Result: you’re part of a possibly annoying, embarrassingly loud, group, and you get to feel rushed while seeing just enough of any site or activity so that you won’t complain that you were cheated. On the other hand, you’ll get chauffeured around to a dozen sites in one day and you might even have a guide in your language to explain what you’ve seen and provide a few cute, memorable stories too.
Your own private guide:
If you look closely at the songthaews (truck-taxis) racing around Chiang Mai (or whatever the local taxi service is for your destination) you’ll notice that some of them have names of the places they go written on them—in English. Your elephant trip is printed right there on some of the songthaews…surely you could just hire one of those. In order to visit the clever pachyderms, you venture out to find a cab or truck-taxi, or whatever you can get. Some negotiation later, your taxi driver insists he understands everything and he’ll take you exactly where you’d like to go.
A private guide, you figure, will give you more freedom and time to do things your own way. Now you’re riding in a back of a cab and hoping he takes you to the places you had in mind. You haven’t paid him yet, (right?) so he’s got some incentive to make you happy, but you have negotiated a price already (and it’s more than you would have paid for a tour, but this is a private tour, isn’t it!) and the driver figures that the sooner he get’s you on your way, the sooner he get’s paid. Plus, if there’s anything chance he can convince you to stop and shop for some souvenir, he might even get a commission out of the deal.
Result: your-taxi-driver-cum-tour-guide rushes you from site to site as much as he can and even squeezes a few upscale souvenir shops into the deal, and though you’re paying more for a trip without meals, you’re completely at his mercy the whole time. At least you can keep him waiting for you at each site as long as you wish, and sometimes he finds something cool that wasn’t even in your guidebook.
Self-catered tour:
If you’ve been doing this a few times already, it’s pretty easy to see there’s no real rocket science to driving you around to places which frequently end up being right next to each other in the first place. If you could only do it yourself, you’d have as much time as you wish and no pressure from anyone to have an extra cup of coffee or to see if the diamond and gold gallery is your kind of souvenir shop. Plus it’s going to be great fun!
Problem is figuring out how to get to these places. Not only where they are, but whether self-drive is the same as taking your life into your hands. Not surprisingly, this information is a little harder to come by. You don’t exactly speak Thai and many locals who do operate tours and tell you everything is too far away or too dangerous to get to. About the only guy who thinks it’ll be no problem is the guy who’s renting the motorbike…but then he really would like to rent that motorbike.
Inspired by the other tourists racing around the town, you rent the bike, buy a map, and begin your adventure. Damn if it doesn’t turns out finding street signs in another language is tougher than you thought and actually getting to places is further and more difficult than you imagined. All the while, you fret about someone stealing your rented bike the whole time you meant to be enjoying the silly elephant show.
Result: it takes more time to plan and execute your self-guided tour and you have no idea what you even missed. You stand in awe of temples that you can’t find on your map, but, without a guide, you won’t even be able to tell people the names of them, let alone what their significance is. Still, nothing gives you a more intimate connection with a new country than being lost on back streets where nobody ever even sees tourists and you’ve got some serious bragging rights about how cool and independent you are. Tours are for sissies.
It can be pretty irritating taking guided tours in big groups and even worse, it turns the whole world into a big museum. But don’t count them out, above all when you’re time is limited. It can be pretty disappointing to return from a trip having missed a world famous site just because you couldn’t find it before your rental period was up. If you’ve got the time to really figure out where things are and enough books to understand what it is you’re actually looking at, nothing will give you a closer look than getting somewhere yourself and there’s a sense of accomplishment too.
Regardless of what fits your schedule, don’t miss the touristy elephant show near Chiang Mai; they really were amazing. Come on, how many places in the world can you see elephants paint flowers? How cool is that?
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02.14.08
Posted in Travel at 17:24 by RjZ
I’ve got bad news for you. Most likely it’s good news for the people you’ll visit, but budget travel destinations just aren’t as cheap as they used to be. It’s not a huge difference from a decade ago, and it won’t break the bank of most backpackers, but they’re not likely to get quite as far on their savings as they used to because, well, many of the classic destinations such as Thailand just aren’t so third-world anymore.
I hope you’ll agree with me though, that this isn’t really bad news at all. It means that many people (not all, to be sure) living in these budget destinations are better off. Here’s one sign that I’m right. Sure, there are more cars in Bangkok and Beijing than the roads are designed for, but cars are pretty invariable measure of economic success. Cars aren’t market priced alone like, say, local fruit is. For example, Indian auto manufacturer, Tata, is very excited to have announced the world’s cheapest car at $2500, but when I first visited Indonesia, more than a decade ago, I met quite a few people working in or around the tourist trade who were earning about $30/month. Cars are limited in how cheap they can get because at the end of the day, there’s still heavy pile of metal in them. Just because people make $360/year doesn’t mean local auto sellers can afford to start offering cars to them at prices they can afford.
Fast forward to Thailand, 2008. The majority may not have cars ,and I reckon something like 40% of the vehicles on the road were low powered motor-scooters, but there were plenty of cars. Nice cars. Sporty cars with flashy extras. Venture out to more rural areas and nearly 100% of the vehicles were more practical trucks, but there’s no denying that many Thais can afford automobiles. What that tells us is that many Thais make the same money, or near it, as people in the west do, simply because there is no reason to imagine that cars are magically cheaper in Thailand.
Well it’s about time too! Thailand is modern country with a sophisticated manufacturing and services economy. Bangkok is an unmistakable an incomparable world city on par with Paris, London, and New York. It’s almost a shame that I would write such a presumptuous post! Except that many people visit Thailand, and countries like it, because they can afford the expensive flight, only because once they’ve arrived it’s so cheap.
Rest assured, it still is pretty inexpensive in Thailand (whew !). Food is ubiquitous, delicious, and about a $1 per meal and hotels range from three star quality for Motel 6 prices to run-down-but-clean-and-safe-enough for a few dollars—where in the U.S. or Europe can you stay for a few dollars except for a friend’s couch? Travel around the country is also a great value. It cost $11 to take a bus from my home to the airport and about twice that for a deluxe bus with a meal and a (flight?) attendant for the all night ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.
Still, the world is changing and while everything hasn’t caught up to western prices in Thailand, I suspect it won’t be long before they do. While many of us may lament the end of true budget travel, can we really begrudge people the same cell-phones and cars that we use back home?
P.S. I sure hope we find an alternative to the gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing automobile soon! While I can’t begrudge the developing world a car in every garage, I doubt that the earth can handle it if everyone acted just like U.S. Americans do!
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01.31.08
Posted in Travel at 13:49 by RjZ
So how did dragging too much camera equipment and too little clothes work for my recent trip to Thailand? Here’s the scoop:
Too much camera gear: thankfully, you really can’t have too much camera gear! I don’t change lenses nearly often enough and tend to walk around for a while with one and then change it for more walking, but, having more reach, both wide and long, makes for great fun and better pictures. I am not sure I actually got better pictures, but it least I felt like I could. I regularly used the ridiculous external flash, although I didn’t get a chance to use it wirelessly on such a short and fast-paced trip. Taking pictures with a flash is (for me) much more work than just snapping the photo and it slowed me down quite a bit and annoyed people around me some too, but it enabled many pictures that would have failed and if I get better with it, I’ll be able to do some amazing things without torturing those around me! The flash will go on the next trip!
What didn’t work about all that camera gear is my new bag. It’s a great bag, but it just isn’t comfortable to carry around all day, every day, everywhere. You weren’t thinking you could actually leave that expensive camera gear in your cheap hotel were you? Budget travel means carrying things with you 100% of the time. Passports, extra cash, and anything rather expensive really needs to stay attached to you if you expect to have it for the whole trip. The new bag is convenient and safe, but it could only carry camera stuff. No extra room for a guide book and none for water or food, but I needed somewhere to put those things, lest I die of thirst, lost in back streets of Bangkok. It also hurt my shoulder after 12 hours. Waaah! The bag stays home. Back to the store for something else.
Verdict: camera gear OK; but get a more convenient bag with room for other stuff too; even if you have to give up some rapid access to that zoom lens.
Too little clothes: actually, I wondered if I could pare down further. I don’t think that will be necessary, but I definitely didn’t want for an extra shirt or pair of pants. I bought a silly shirt to wear, just for fun and it was four dollars. If I needed clothes, I would have gladly bought some more. Toiletries and medications were also readily available. This won’t be true everywhere you travel, but it’s true in most places I’ve been. You can almost always bring less than you did and get what you need, when you need it, in country. I used stuff sacks to keep stuff sorted and this is a well worth it idea–it even helps you to keep inventory of those things you’ll need to buy when you’re there. A big stuff sack was an awesome addition when I needed to store the few things we weren’t taking on a trek with the hotel. You should get one of these if you don’t have one.
There is one more change though. I may not need a very big bag for the tiny amount of things I bring on a trip but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have a bigger bag that one can pack loosely. I carry my extra shoes (or sandals) clipped to the backpack with a carabiner. This is annoying at best, but became an actual problem when the shoes didn’t fit in a bus overhead so, I unclipped them, and then left them on the bus.
I went on an all day hike the next day, in sandals, which actually worked out just fine and then bought a pair of beat-up used shoes for a three-day trek, which also worked out fine, but simply having enough room to throw the shoes in the bag like my traveling partner did would have eliminated this hassle. So, go ahead and get a bigger bag; just make sure it’s a long, narrow one that will likely fit in small bus compartments and that you can compress a lot. Above all, don’t be tempted to fill it, you need the room during your trip.
On the other hand… you might not even need the shoes at all if your feet get tough enough and you have sturdy sandals. You’ll almost never see your local guides leading you in much more than flip-flops. As I said before, save the hiking boots for the trip to Annapurna base-camp. (Actually, you’ll likely have sherpas in old running shoes, maybe you don’t need them there either).
Meanwhile, if anyones going to Thailand in the next couple of days, my shoes might still be shuttling back and forth from Surat Thani to Phuket island on an A/C express bus. If your pack has room, maybe you could bring ‘em back for me?
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01.09.08
Posted in Travel at 13:28 by RjZ
I’m packing for another trip. It’s not like it takes long to do; I almost never carry much more than a small book-bag for personal travel abroad. People who are amazed by how little I bring usually haven’t traveled very much yet. Everything you’ve read in those guide books is true: lay out everything you intend to bring with you and then get rid of half of it!
So, for these two weeks in Thailand, here’s a look into my backpack:
- I’ll be wearing a pair of light trail-running shoes, some socks, a pair of quick-drying pants, a plain quick-drying shirt, and a light, long-sleeved button down shirt over that. The rest is in the pack.
- three pairs of socks
- three pairs of underwear
- one more pair of pants
- one more plain t-shirt
- toothbrush, floss, battery operated razor, some extra toilet paper, a few small bottles of soap and shampoo; my Dr. Bronner’s use it for everything soap is in too large of a container to take on the plane!
- foam ear plugs
- a few ibuprofen, immodium, and other simple medications
- a camp towel, it’s a tiny absorbant thing that doesn’t work very well, but I keep taking it
- a pair of sandals that are actually too heavy, but at least are tough enough to hike all day in
- a light, thin, shell (unlined jacket) for rain
- a thin fleece
- swim trunks. I never need these, but they pack small, and if you’re European and think you can make a speedo work, hey, that’ll pack even smaller. Above all, they’re something to wear while everything else is being washed.
- a drawstring bag that I can use to throw stuff in and take my backpack with me for day trips. It can also double as a souvenir bag. The only reason I bring this, though, is because I already have too many cheap bags that are super easy to get in many places.
- guide book. If there’s loads of extra room, I might even bring another book for the long train rides. I shouldn’t though.
I’ll also be bringing way too much camera stuff. This goes against everything I am going to write here, but it’s an experiment for this trip, to see if there really is much reason to bring the extra stuff…after all, I’m carrying so little otherwise I can make the exception. (trap! that’s how it starts!)
- a separate, way too large, camera bag with SLR camera, extra lens, flash (am I crazy?), memory extra batteries and chargers.
It rains in tropical Thailand and it might end up being cold in the north during our trekking. I can’t claim that my trail runners and shell are going to be enough for this travel, but they ought to be work…a little discomfort will make for a better story later. It’s a compromise, after all, do you really want to wear (or worse, carry) heavy boots for two weeks in the tropics, so that you’ll be better off during three days of hiking?
The problem is that there are so many reasons to bring that extra shirt, or that extra electronic gadget. But carrying a big back-pack can also be a barrier to actually seeing a place. Bored with the few clothes you brought? Buy new ones! They’re often cheap and make fun souvenirs. What about clothes for going out? I don’t bother much; I am tired from all the sight-seeing, but if I do, I just wear the darker of the two plain t-shirts. It’s hardly high-fashion, but it passes as hip in many places. I am going to wedding on this trip, so I’ll be wearing the button-up over shirt for that. If I were a part of the wedding, this would obviously not be enough, but how much can people really expect of someone who’s traveled so far in the first place?
Hair dryers and gel? How nice do I need to look while sweating in the tropics? Just two shirts; just four pairs of underwear and socks? They actually have sinks in most hotels. That’s why I sprung for the quick-drying stuff! In many countries having someone launder your clothes (often by bashing them with rocks and then laying them out on the grass to dry) is quite affordable and they come back with the life pressed out of them. (Looking to experience razor creases on your underwear? Launder them in India.) iPods? How are you going to hear the sounds of this crazy new place with headphones on? And when you really need to block out sound, those little foam earplugs sure are much lighter. By the way, you might want to read that guide book and see if the spaghetti strapped halter top that really does pack so light and is so comfortable will get you anything other than uncomfortable stares from the locals. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you; they’ll know you’re a tourist from a mile away anyway, but why have even more barriers between you and the people you’re trying to meet?
Carrying a backpack that is too large to just fit on your lap means risking losing it on the top of a van, or being terrified it’s going to be taken every time the bus stops. It means taking the first hotel you can get to because you’re sick of sweating and checking out the next one. It means bumping into people at lines in the bus or not being able to board the bus at all because of this crazy thing. It means making yourself into a target for people praying on tourists and it means you have more to keep track of everywhere you go and every time you pack for another hotel.
One reason you’ve spent so much money and flown so far is to see something new and have new experiences. Looking your best while worrying about your gear and being unable to hear someone you bumped into because of your iPod headphones isn’t going to make that happen. And by the way, unless you really are traveling to a remote village in a little visited part of the world; guess what, they have clothes, soap, and most everything else you need where your headed, even if it isn’t the brand you’re used to. If only I could heed my own advice and leave most of that camera gear. I’ll let you you know in a later post how stupid that experiment was.
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12.27.07
Posted in Travel at 15:48 by RjZ
I am stopping by the DMV today. I have to get my auto license renewed and it’ll cost over $100 not including the smog check my car required, even though it’s still relatively new and passed with flying colors. Still, I’ll be smiling when I pay my fees. I can imagine being pretty upset about the inconvenience; but like many who’ve traveled or lived abroad, I returned to the United States to find a reserve of patience I never knew I left here.
I made a visit to California while living in Germany, where drivers spend over $1000 to get their driver’s licenses, and wait in long lines to fill out forms for them. I took advantage of the visit to San Jose to renew my driver’s license, which I could, at least unofficially, use in Europe. I remembered the long lines in southern California so I got there very early, but alas, the line had already formed before the doors were even opened. Then, before we were let in, angels employees came and handed out forms and little pencils for us to fill out while waiting. They let us know which line we’d have to wait in once the golden gate doors were opened
Once we were inside we waited a bit more in our respective queues and I listened, smiling, to the muttering and complaining from my line-mates. I was eventually helped by a bored but friendly official, who asked me for a correction on the form, and then for $12 for the renewal. That’s it. Done. I few years previous, there is little doubt that I would have joined in the chorus of whining about the lines and bureaucracy, but that day, I was grinning ear to ear at the lack of expense and the relative ease with which I was able to perform this little task.
I don’t always remember how happy I was that day to wait for a little while in line and pay my money. I also don’t mean to imply that Germany has a horrible system of intractable bureaucracy while the United States is some smoothly operating machine. (Even if that is true for the DMV.) Still, it’s helpful for us to notice when things aren’t nearly that bad after all and maybe revel in it a bit. That’s why I’ll be smiling at the DMV today.
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12.26.07
Posted in Travel at 15:41 by RjZ
We had just gotten back into the car after a brief stop to pray. My American colleague and I were on our way to visit another customer and we’re being driven there by our orthodox Jewish sales representative. Normally, he was more discrete in strictly following his tradition, but there was really no other time and we assured him it was no bother. He stood outside the car for a little while davening and muttering and then returned to the car after a few minutes.
He and I had been enjoying a steady stream of discussion topics. We spoke about the Intifada; we spoke about American foreign aid. Now we were busy comparing and contrasting religious practices thanks to his brief interruption. The third in the car hadn’t contributed very much so far, and suddenly he burst out: “Can’t we talk about something else! Don’t you two know that it’s not polite to talk about religion and politics?!” He was obviously quite exasperated by all this.
The Israeli looked away from the road at both of us to say flatly “This is Israel. What else do we have to talk about?”
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12.21.07
Posted in Travel at 18:04 by RjZ
A friend got me one of those travel maps where you can place pins to mark where you’ve been. Naturally, map in mind, I was pretty excited about my recent business trip to Korea. It was a painfully short excursion but I ought to be able to come up with something to write about. I haven’t had the time to really come up with a good story about the journey, so I’ll just include everything about the travel, journal style, for your enjoyment. Here it is:
home -> airport -> hotel -> office -> hotel -> airport -> power plant -> hotel -> power plant -> hotel -> office -> airport -> home.
There were some meals in there, loads of kimchee, but no place particularly special and I saw essentially nothing. Airports and power plants are not, typically, near anything interesting; these were no exceptions. I’ve never actually traveled somewhere and seen so little.
I put a little pin in my map just the same though. This totally counts.
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10.03.07
Posted in Travel at 17:35 by RjZ
I enjoy both beer and travel very much, so it’s not surprising that I’ve tried to sample beer every where that I’ve visited. Beer is enjoyed nearly everywhere I’ve visited, but rarely in the exact same way. In the U.S., you can tell from the “coldest beer in town” signs at gas stations across the nation that drinkers here like their beer cold. Way too cold, if you ask me; how can I appreciate the hoppy aroma with ice crystals floating in the glass? The United Kingdom is equally famous for their room temperature, really cellar temperature, beer.
Germans take seven minutes to serve the perfect Pils, while Belgians serve every beer in its respective, custom glass. The notoriously cheap Dutch uncharacteristically keep pouring beer until they fill the glass and scraping off the over-flowing foam with a special plastic knife sending it irrevocably delicious beer down the drain!
What got me started on this research of beer serving, toasting and enjoying traditions was my first trip to Prague, Czechoslovakia. It was still Czechoslovakia at the time, by the way. My friend and I were backpacking around Europe like many people do during their college years. We’d joined up with two fellow travelers from France and, after our fill of site seeing, we made our way to a downtown pub where we sat down together with several locals at one of the many community tables and each ordered a beer.
The Czech Republic is where Pils beer was invented. Pils is the light yellow stuff that the rest of the world calls beer even if they only have one kind. While I am not usually a fan of watery yellow beer, there is something unmistakably drinkable, quaff-able beer drinkers say, about Czech Pils. It doesn’t hurt that it was about $0.50 for a half liter either.
The server dropped a coaster for each of us and marked a small stroke on the edge before setting down our delicately foaming beer. It wasn’t long before the beer disappeared from our glasses. As I put down my empty glass, exhaling satisfyingly, the smiling waiter nodded and returned immediately with another glass of beer and another stroke on my coaster.
Now that’s service, isn’t it? The same happened for the rest of our party and we were pretty impressed by how these guys had read our minds. Another glass drained and here comes the waiter with a beer and check mark! The French girls, more used to drinking wine, were a little unsure they still wanted more at this point. My traveling partner was pretty sure he didn’t feel like more, but once that final glass was empty, the waiter promptly came by with yet another.
And another while everyone (well, everyone else, I was having a great time) tried to explain to them that they were done, but he kept trying to explain that we had ordered another beer! How?! We looked around and noticed something interesting, when people were ready to pay, they’d call the waiter over and he’d count up strokes on their coasters. They’d pay, and then finish their last gulp of beer before leaving. That was the secret! We kept finishing our beer and then asking him to come over so we could pay! It turns out that draining your glass is Czech for, “I’ll have another.” How convenient. An enjoyable lesson that made me understand I had more beer research ahead of me. And as soon as I got over the six or so beers I inadvertently ordered, I had plans to get to it!
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