Travels in the Riel World

I’ve had some posts in recent months about the character and personality of cities. It never really occurred to me, however, that these character traits could make a city resistant to a recycling program. But that seems to be the conclusion of this story about the startlingly low recycling rate in Houston, Texas.

While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not. The city’s shimmering skyline may wear the label of the world’s energy capital, but deep in Houston’s Dumpsters lies a less glamorous superlative: It is the worst recycler among the United States’ 30 largest cities.

Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively.

Houston officials - even those who favor recycling - place a large part of the blame for this issue on the city’s sense of independence and aversion to government regulations.

“We have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up,” said Mayor Bill White, who favors expanding the city’s recycling efforts. “Houstonians are skeptical of anything that appears to be oversold or exaggerated.” …

“I’m a Texan, and it pains me that we still have the Old Western mentality,” said Tex Corley, the chief executive of Strategic Materials, the nation’s largest glass recycler, which is based in Houston.

Well, there you go. Some cities promote walking and mass transit, while others shun recycling as just another unnecessary government mandate.

The Southeast Asian nation of Laos is still a fairly untraveled destination, especially compared to its neighbor, Thailand. But the word is getting out about the charms of the Laotian town of Luang Prabang. Gayle Keck went there recently with her husband and wrote about their experiences for the Washington Post.

Strangers talk to one another here, people who’d never strike up a conversation when touring London or Rome. It’s one of those clues that tell you this Mekong River town in northern Laos is an outpost. The atmosphere is part “Star Wars” bar, part “Casablanca.” Backpackers descend from the surrounding mountains or step ashore off slow boats, clutching tattered Lonely Planet guides. Europeans, Australians, Thais and a few Americans wing in on prop planes. Members of ethnic hill tribes, particularly the Hmong, appear at sunset, spreading their wares along the street. And everywhere you turn there are Buddhist monks in blazing-orange robes…

From our balcony, lazing against triangular bolsters, we shamelessly gaze down on our neighbors across the river with that fascination modern urbanites have for the simple life. The far bank is patchworked with small plots. Men hoe vegetables, women scrub laundry in the dingy water, a fisherman checks his bamboo traps, kids turn a washbasin into an impromptu boat and skid away from their soap-wielding mom.

The vast majority of Laos’s population is rural, but 10 minutes away by tuk-tuk, the bargain-priced motorcycle-powered open trucks, Luang Prabang bustles. In 1988, the year Laos reopened to tourists, only 600 of them visited the entire country; there are probably that many trolling Luang Prabang’s streets today alone. We see bamboo scaffolding where repairs are being made to colonial-era stuccoed homes with mossy tiled roofs and sagging shutters, efforts to meet the growing demand for guesthouses.

Sydney, Australia

A view of the Harbour Bridge at sunset.

There was an interesting recent article about Tel Aviv in the New York Times travel section. It’s interesting because it not only gives the typical tourist overview of a destination, but it gets into the culture and the psyche of Tel Aviv and Israel. An excerpt:

Tel Aviv is “half Iran, half California; it’s a synagogue meets a sushi bar,” says the writer and lifelong Tel Aviv resident Etgar Keret… “This is a country that on the one hand is so conservative that we don’t have public transportation on Saturdays, but on the other hand is so open that we sent a transsexual to the Eurovision Song Contest,” says Mr. Keret. “Israel is full of contradiction. In Jerusalem, this contradiction means separation. But it doesn’t in Tel Aviv.”

For Israelis, the 45 minutes that separate Jerusalem from Tel Aviv are a fitting metaphor for the cultural gulf they see between, on the one hand, the hidebound, pious cradle of world religion and, on the other, the libertine, nightclub-filled Mediterranean idyll. But for us visitors, the proximity of the two cities is a huge boon — it’s rare that you can pair a beach vacation with 5,000 years of history…

Tel Avivans are quick to point out that their city is less suffused with history than Jerusalem, and that that is what makes their city so hospitable to newcomers and to people who don’t fit in elsewhere. Perhaps, like others in the Middle East, Tel Avivans must perforce set their gaze on the present.

Along with the story there is a slide show about Tel Aviv, titled ”The Capital of Mediterranean Cool.” 

The Washington Post has a sad story about the state of women in the poorest parts of Africa. When food is scarce in some countries, the culture dictates not that the meager amount should be shared equally among all members of a family, but rather that men and children should eat first, leaving the women to eat last and sometimes to eat hardly anything at all.

The article is worth a read, not only for insights into a culture but also for a look at how a food crisis is affecting wide swaths of an entire continent.

After she woke in the dark to sweep city streets, after she walked an hour to buy less than $2 worth of food, after she cooked for two hours in the searing noon heat, Fanta Lingani served her family’s only meal of the day.

First she set out a bowl of corn mush, seasoned with tree leaves, dried fish and wood ashes, for the 11 smallest children, who tore into it with bare hands.

Then she set out a bowl for her husband. Then two bowls for a dozen older children. Then finally, after everyone else had finished, a bowl for herself. She always eats last.

A year ago, before food prices nearly doubled, Lingani would have had three meals a day of meat, rice and vegetables. Now two mouthfuls of bland mush would have to do her until tomorrow.

Rubbing her red-rimmed eyes, chewing lightly on a twig she picked off the ground, Lingani gave the last of her food to the children.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

In poor nations, such as Burkina Faso in the heart of West Africa, mealtime conspires against women. They grow the food, fetch the water, shop at the market and cook the meals. But when it comes time to eat, men and children eat first, and women eat last and least…

“It’s a cultural thing,” said Herve Kone, director of a group that promotes development, social justice and human rights in Burkina Faso. “When the kids are hungry, they go to their mother, not their father. And when there is less food, women are the first to eat less.”

No, it’s not the KFC you were probably expecting. Although it’s close. In Afghanistan, Kentucky Fried Chicken has been transformed into Kabul Fried Chicken by an Afghan expatriate who has returned to his home country with his sights set on an emerging market for fast foods. Time magazine has the story.

As the sun sets in Kabul and the wail of the muezzin issuing from loudspeakers mounted on minarets calls the faithful to evening prayer, the fryer at KFC is being fired up for the evening rush. But Kabul Fried Chicken has little in common with the U.S. chain whose initials it copied: The chairs are a little too high for the tables, and the delights depicted in photographs mounted on the walls — big milkshakes, braised ribs, lattes — are conspicuously absent from the menu. The fare on offer is more egalitarian. Kebabs, pizza and, of course, fried chicken.

Kabul Fried Chicken is, if he is to be believed, the brainchild of Mirwais Abuldrahizmi, who long ago observed that the young people of the Muslim world like to express their cosmopolitan yearnings through their consumption habits. And returnee Afghans, like himself, bring with them visions from exile of girls without headscarves, shopping malls as social hubs, and the rituals of fast food…

Mirwais is not the only Afghan pretender to the Colonel Sanders mantle in Kabul. Another is Jamshed, who uses only one name, and runs one of three rival KFCs…He claims that after being told by the (real) KFC regional HQ in Lahore, Pakistan, that opening a franchise in Kabul would cost him a few hundred thousand dollars, he opted to go the pirate route. He claims to have bought the U.S.-based KFC’s secret fried chicken recipe on the black market for $1,200, although obviously that claim can’t be verified. “You can get anything at the bazaar in Pakistan,” he says.

Normally, a knock-off of a global company would have to deal with legal issues of intellectual property rights. But this is Afghanistan. As the story notes:

Imitation … is endemic to Afghanistan’s business environment. “We’re an underdeveloped country,” Mirwais says. “So we can’t come up with our own ideas.”

It’s all too easy sometimes to focus on all of the interesting travel destinations abroad and to miss some of the equally interesting locations in our own country. That point was driven home by two recent travel features in different newspapers.

First, the Boston Globe raved about West Coast beaches in this article. Or, specifically, about Laguna Beach outside of Los Angeles.

Sapphire sky, car windows open, radio blasting top-10 hits from the ’60s. Turning off the freeway from Los Angeles - where the road stretches endless and flat - the hills of Laguna Canyon rise up so green and vibrant I have to take off my sunglasses to see whether the color is real. It is.

Eventually, wildflowers and boulders give way to civilization as houses appear atop sandstone ridges. The air grows cooler and before I can sing another chorus of “California Dreamin’ ” there it is, the great Pacific, wide and muscular and dazzling in the midday sun.

I’m certainly not the first traveler to be seduced by Laguna Beach’s charms. Since the late 1800s this 7-mile stretch of sandy coastline resting below rolling cliffs about 50 miles south of Los Angeles has attracted tourists and travelers, including many artists who made the town their home.

Today, besides the landscape’s raw beauty, and the town’s well-preserved architecture and independent shops, Laguna Beach hosts an arts community that imparts a funky, if upscale, authenticity that’s getting harder to find in a homogenized world.

Then, the Los Angeles Times explored a different region of the country in this story about the wonders of train rides through Alaska.

The Alaska Railroad slices up the middle of the state like a bolt of blue and yellow lightning, into the belly of a place that is camera-ready and bountiful beyond belief.

The rail line begins in the little seaport of Seward, chug-a-lugs up to Anchorage, past Denali National Park and Preserve and finally to Fairbanks, an almost 500-mile jaunt of day trips throughout Alaska’s short, short summer.

Why the train? Because, unless you’re a moose or have moose tendencies, parts of the 49th state are accessible only by rail.

Why the train? Well, does your rental car come with a bartender? Or a fresh-faced young tour guide? The train is also an affordable throwback — comfy, almost clubby, with way more wiggle room than a 737 and none of the flight crew psychosis.

Everyone knows about the Frommer’s series of travel guidebooks, but what about the man behind the guides? Arthur Frommer just did an online interview for Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding site and talked about his life as a traveler and a writer. Some highlights:

How did you get started traveling?

By accident, and at the expense of Uncle Sam. I was drafted into the army when I graduated from the Yale University Law School. The Korea War was going on at that time, and I was trained to be an infantryman in Korea when someone in the Pentagon must have discovered some of my linguistic abilities. I was assigned instead to Berlin. I wanted to pinch myself for my good luck. I had never dreamed that I would ever be able to see Europe, as I came from a family of very modest income.

And there I was smack in the heart of Europe with a strong US dollar and I utilized every opportunity I could find, every weekend and three-day pass, to simply travel throughout Europe regardless of how little money I had. I was living on a PFC’s salary. And in the course of doing that it occurred to me that I should write a book about the experience.

I discovered that the fact that I had very little money had transformed the quality of my vacation and travels and made them far more rewarding and far more pleasant. I discovered that the less you spend the more you enjoy — the more authentic is the experience you have.

As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?

My biggest challenge is to keep my own eyes and consciousness fresh. I’ve realized that there was such a thing as too much travel, which causes you to be jaded.

There was a moment when my plane landed at the airport of Amsterdam one day and I didn’t even take my eyes away from the book that I was reading because I was as familiar with Amsterdam as I was with my own home city. And I suddenly realized that that’s not the mood with which travelers approach a new destination — travel is exciting and novel and somewhat bewildering. And it’s very important, even for an experienced travel writer: not to become jaded and not to relax, but to keep in mind the tingling excitement that most tourists feel when they encounter a foreign destination for the first time.

That has led to a style of writing in which nothing is left out — in which you don’t assume anything, in which you take the reader by the hand and lead him through the steps he will need to absorb in order to enjoy a particular destination.

What travel authors have influenced you?

I don’t think I was influenced by any other authors of travel guides per se, but I loved reading general travel memoirs about trips that people have taken. I remember that Richard Halliburton had an immense impact on me earlier in my life when I read him as a young boy.

But I find that general reading, both novels as well as nonfiction books about different aras of the world, has had a great impact on my writing. I’ve been fascinated in recent months to read the Cairo Trilogy of Naguib Mahfouz, the great Egyptian Nobel Prize winner. I have also been influenced by the wonderful books written by Rory Stewart, who in the immediate weeks after 9/11 walked from one end of Afghanistan to the other and wrote a book, The Places In Between, that gives you a better picture of what’s going on in Afghanistan than any other deeper, more political tome could possibly bring to you.

Rick Steves became famous for his European travel advice, but he recently journeyed to Iran in order to produce a documentary about that country and its people. A photo essay about the trip was then published in Yes! magazine. The experience was described by Abdi Sami, who accompanied Rick on his travels.

Over the years, Rick had introduced so many travelers to European destinations through travel books, television programs, and travel blogs. Friends asked him to consider how he could increase understanding between Iran and the United States. Rick realized that the most powerful thing would be to produce a television show introducing Americans to the true Iran … the people, their extraordinary hospitality, their beautiful country, and ancient history.

Everywhere we went, we came across people young and old, teachers, students, artists, business people, soldiers, and farmers and we were always, always received with warmest welcomes and with smiling faces.

The photo essay begins here.

If you follow U.S. politics, you’ll enjoy Jib Jab’s latest animated satire of this year’s election campaign. They poke fun at everyone involved. Check it out:

Jib Jab first became famous for a satire of George Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. It’s a classic and is still fun to watch:

The Portuguese city of Lisbon has often been an afterthought when considering the great capitals of Europe, but that seems to be changing. Lisbon is getting increasingly good press of late, culminating in this nice profile in the travel section of Sunday NY Times, which focuses on the city’s vibrant arts scene.

After all, this wasn’t a metropolis with a well-established avant-garde tradition like Paris or Berlin, but dowdy old Lisbon, a small Catholic city that is best known for inexpensive seafood meals, throwback cable cars and faded colonial architecture from Portugal’s long-vanished international empire.

But on a balmy night in March, the throngs filing into the complex made it clear that the city was more than ready for a bit of progressive bohemia in their remote corner of the Continent. Looking like the assembled listenership of some Portuguese version of National Public Radio, a buzzing crowd of tweedy academics, tattooed cool kids, bourgeois couples and bespectacled grad-student types fanned out to sample Fábrica Braço de Prata’s typically diverse offerings: a jazz combo, a reggae outfit, a Leonard Cohen documentary and a 1 a.m. after-party featuring D.J.’s and alternative bands.

“It’s creative in all areas — theater, art, music, dance,” Mr. de Roubaix said of the venue’s appeal, clearly pleased by its unexpected success. “There’s a fast turnover of events and shows that keeps the place very dynamic.”

The same could be said for 21st-century Lisbon…

Portugal languished for much of the 20th century on Europe’s geographic and cultural margins. From the 1920s until the 1970s, a repressive dictatorship smothered the nation, sending the creative classes fleeing to London and Paris and severely stunting any potential arts scene. The economy also slumped. Once the center of a global trade empire, Portugal sunk into notoriety as Western Europe’s poorest nation.

As dust collected on Lisbon’s monuments — Roman theaters, Moorish edifices, Gothic churches, Baroque squares — the city became the Miss Havisham of Western Europe: a relic, forgotten and forlorn.

The last of the Western European capitals to experience a cultural bloom, Lisbon is avidly making up for lost time. All over the city, an upstart generation is laying waste to the sepia-toned stereotypes and gleefully constructing edgy and forward-looking ventures amid the time-worn monuments and quaint cobbled lanes.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Argentine tango dancers in a public square in Buenos Aires.

Now, this is the way to travel around the world. Matt Harding’s latest dancing/travel video…

You can read more about Matt at his website, or in this recent NY Times profile.

If you’ve traveled abroad, to someplace other than Europe, than chances are you’ve had an experience or two with haggling over prices in an overseas market. The drill is the same pretty much everywhere and, once you get used to the practice, it can even be a bit of fun. That’s what Yemisrach Kifle discovered, as well, and he wrote a fun little essay for the Christian Science Monitor about his experience bargaining with a shopkeeper in a Vietnamese market.

That shopping day in Hoi An, I had to remind myself to focus on what I thought was a good price for the gray shirt.

“How much?” I repeated my question. The saleswoman came closer and peered at my face searching for telling signs of what she should charge me. I tried to project a blank face.

With the most confident voice she could muster, she responded, “One hundred ninety” and continued to stare at me with a straight face.

“Noooo!” I exclaimed, my eyes wide with feigned surprise and offense. I stomped my feet. I pretended to walk away.

She didn’t betray hesitation. She didn’t call after me to come back. She was on top of her game.

I looked back begrudgingly and shouted, “I pay 30!”

Now it was her turn to pretend to be offended. She shook her head. “You crazy!” she yelled. But she knew that I knew how it worked. “One hundred, last price!” she said throwing her hands up in the air.

I considered the offer for a few seconds. “OK, how about I pay 85?” I asked in a conciliatory voice, taking my money out of my wallet.

“OK,” she said, smiling now. “Ninety,” she pushed my offer up a bit as a matter of course and put the shirt in a bag. She then playfully pointed her index finger at my chest. “Good for you,” she beamed and pointed it back at herself, “good for me!”

Mongolia is not the first place one thinks of when pondering the fate of budding democracies around the world. Heck, how many people could locate Mongolia on a map? Now, though, the country may become known as a poster child for the risks of mixing democracy with vodka.

The charred shells of two Soviet-style buildings rising from the center of this capital stand as a warning of the dangers of mixing vodka with voter frustration.

In a barren land where nomads still gallop across pastures to polling booths, that potent mix led last week to the literal gutting of some of the country’s most prominent political and cultural institutions. Now, with an election in dispute, Mongolia’s fledgling democracy faces its biggest challenge since its birth in 1990.

Following cries of fraud in parliamentary elections — accusations that were disputed by international election observers — hundreds of rioters, many of them drunk, attacked the headquarters of the dominant political party and the neighboring national art gallery on July 1. Fires were started. Five people were killed. More than 1,000 pieces of artwork were destroyed, damaged or looted…

(J)ust as shocking as the violence was the government’s reaction — it declared a four-day state of emergency, sent soldiers into the streets and shut down television and radio stations. The outburst of violence was without precedent in democratic Mongolia, and many here — from sheepherders to business executives — are deeply ashamed of what unfolded.

For nearly two decades now, Mongolia has had one of the few true democracies in northern Asia, a fact which made this outburst of electoral violence there all the more unfortunate.

On the surface, Mongolia is an unlikely place for an experiment in democracy. It is the most sparsely populated country in the world. Half the population still lives in round felt tents called gers, and livestock outnumber humans eight to one.

Yet Mongolia’s literacy rate is 98 percent, a legacy of nearly seven decades of Communist rule. The country held a constitutional referendum in 1990 and a vote in 1992 that led to its first democratic change of Parliament. Since then, it had held peaceful elections every four years — until June 29…

As the country’s leaders grapple with how to resolve the election, everyone knows nothing less than the future of Mongolia is at stake.

“We made our democracy ourselves, we will defend it ourselves,” Oyungerel said. “I love democracy. I want to give this society to my children.”

Who are the best behaved and most liked tourists in the world? According to one recent survey, it’s the Japanese.

Following the Japanese as most-liked tourists were the Germans, British and Canadians. Americans finished in 11th place alongside the Thais.

The survey was carried out among employees in 4,000 hotels in Germany, the U.K., Italy, France, Canada and the U.S. for the French travel website Expedia.fr. The study asked respondents to rank clients by nationality on criteria of general attitude, politeness, tendency to complain, willingness to speak local languages, interest in sampling local cuisine, readiness to spend money, generosity, cleanliness, discretion and elegance.

The least well-behaved tourists? According to this survey, which only took 21 nations into account, it’s the Chinese, Indians and French.

Friday is the 4th of July and U.S. Independence Day. For many Americans, that means a party and a backyard barbecue. In Texas, though, which has its own unique culture within the U.S., the word barbecue takes on a particularly special meaning. Bonny Wolf explains it in a feature for NPR’s Kitchen Window.

It’s the Fourth of July and time for a barbecue. Like many Americans, I thought “barbecue” meant throwing a few hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Then I moved to Texas.

The word “barbecue” has a whole different meaning there. For one thing, it is a noun, not a verb. “Let’s go out for some barbecue,” therefore, makes perfect sense.

In Texas, barbecue is not just a food — it is an icon, an ideal, a way of life. If you’re not a Texan, the assumption is that you just don’t get it.

The process is pretty simple: Get a huge slab of meat covered in fat, get the coals ready, slap the meat on the grate, cover and cook for a couple of days…

In a state that’s bigger than France and that has a strong independent streak, though, it’s hard to reach agreement on recipes and styles. Does oak or mesquite work best? Should the meat be cooked for 10 hours or two days? These are still raging controversies in the Lone Star state.

Check out the entire story for more in-depth reading about Texas-style barbecue, including a few recipes.

Everyone knows about the Cancuns and Cabos of coastal Mexico. But there are still a few small Mexican villages strung along the country’s coastline where in-the-know travelers go to find a quiet slice of paradise. One of these places is the Baja town of Mulege, which Meredith May recently visited. She wrote about her experiences for the San Francisco Chronicle.

About two-thirds the way down the Baja peninsula on the Sea of Cortez side, Mulegé (moo-luh-HAY) is an eight-street town with no stoplights, few tourists and dozens of empty beaches in stunning coves. It’s the kind of place where the car radio will scan fruitlessly for a station, where drivers on the two-lane Mexico Highway 1 into town must stop for donkeys and snakes, and where it’s still possible to find sun-bleached cow bones among the saguaro cactus.

Mulegé still feels authentic, but the same can’t be said for many of the sleepy mission towns that are transforming into mini-Cabo carnivals, as development inexorably creeps along virtually every stretch of Mexico’s coastline…Travelers trying to stay one step ahead can find their palapa paradise in Mulegé - but perhaps not forever…

Many visitors gather to swap fish tales at El Candil, a Canadian-owned restaurant that serves burgers and chili along with a full Mexican menu. They are often joined by Mulegé’s nouveau locals - Californians who kept visiting so many times they finally bought a place and settled in Mulegé.

“It’s the sweetest little town in the world,” said fisherman Larry Deakyne from the town of Cool, near Auburn (Placer County). “It’s how I imagine Hawaii was before it got overrun with tourists.”