"Chai chai chai!" "Pakora! Samosa! Pakora!" I'm on a train heading east from Goa to Hampi. Food hawkers jump on and off at every stop rushing through the cars shouting, selling refreshments. I want to taste everything that passes—samosas served from a worn cardboard box, crispy masala rice snacks in a giant plastic garbage bag, fresh mango lassis carried in a tattered milk crate. Yet I cringe as the vendors grab food with their bare hands, … [Read more...]
The Old House in Silay
For many generations the same families have owned and preserved ancestral houses in the Philippines as part of their culture. Several houses of prominent families have become points of interest or museums in their communities because of their historical, cultural or architectural worth. Some of these houses, too, have become endangered because of negligent businesses that have no interests in preserving them. I find “preservation” of these homes … [Read more...]
Cooking Lessons from a Street Vendor in Thailand
On a humid afternoon in November, I found myself slowly wandering through the outdoor food markets of downtown Chiang Mai, Thailand. A cornucopia of vibrant and enticing food stalls and souvenir stands littered the pathways as vendors competed for my business. My stomach and brain have never had such a conflict... Stomach: "Wow that sushi looks amazing" Brain: "It's 10 THB ($0.33 USD) a piece. How long has it been sitting there? It's a … [Read more...]
The Thai That Binds, Eine Kleine Nacht Market
An American backpacker cannot decide whether street food or budget restaurants offer the best (read: safest) fetish of freshness until he visits one of Thailand’s signature Floating Night Markets... As someone used to eating Thai food in New York City, with restaurants with babytalk names like “Yum Yum” and “Tastee Thai,” I was blown away when I tasted real Siamese fare for the first time in Bangkok’s Banglamphu district, an area filled with … [Read more...]
Astana: Whipping up a storm
This is the story of how Stalin lost his nose and why the face of former British prime minister Tony Blair pops up in the strangest places in a former Soviet republic. But first I want to tell you about Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan. And later I’ll tell you about kyz kuu, a kind of lovers’ kissing game they play on the steppe of central Asia. Kazakhstan, independent since 1991, and squeezed between those other ‘stans’ (homelands) … [Read more...]
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Cambodia- What to Expect
Freshly off a sweltering, barely-running bus, I’m poised at the entrance to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, or as it’s known to most visitors, S21. This was a former schoolhouse turned torture prison from 1975-79 during the Khmer Rouge’s notoriously brutal, merciless, yet hasty, reign of Cambodia. I hand over the small entrance fee, and am instantly clouted by the deceptively pleasant grounds. Aromas of freshly planted flowers punctuate the insane … [Read more...]
Dispatch: Atom Ant Japanese Houseguest
John M. Edwards receives a strange visitor from the Nipponese “Land of the Rising Sun,” who is, of course, despite a strong yen, ultimately a freeloader. In Westfield, New Jersey, United States, North American Continent, at my apt upstairs from the now-long-gone Tullio’s Hair Salon (which daily pumped up the odoriferous air of Free Heat, Aqua Velva, and Brill Cream), I received a visitor from not another planet exactly but instead from a way … [Read more...]
Postcard: Gilli Islands Hopping – Peepholes in Paradise
John M. Edwards visits the Indonesian Gilli Islands, a tripartite chain of paradise islets, ending up on Gilli Trawangan, where locals Gilligans follow us around and spy on us like flypaper paparazzi. “I see India everywhere but I do not recognize any of it.” --Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale. . . . “Hello, John!” the curiously canny kid said, eyes wide with the practiced veneer of a … [Read more...]
The Amazingly Industrious Trishaw Driver from the Sultan’s Kraton
John M. Edwards rides around into infinity with an amazingly industrious trishaw driver skilled in perpetual motion for a mere pittance (a pocketful of rupiahs) at the Sultan’s Kraton in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. At the Sultan’s Kraton in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, I stood face to face with “The Great Man”--the Sultan himself! Since I was a known American “oil baron,” not a gas station attendant but part owner of a privately held oil and … [Read more...]
Feast: Vietnam Vittles
John M. Edwards chows down in Hanoi, finding fun with pho and no, no, no Walking along the French colonial streets of Hanoi after a light rain--sidestepping the crazy moped drivers and inspecting the caldrons of street food bubbling with bad bacteria and rat meat (popular not only here but in neighboring Cambodia)--the first thing you notice is the conspicuous lack of “organized” restaurants of any stripe. I asked what appeared to be a … [Read more...]
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