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El Salvador: My Trip Write Up and Tips
Travel to El Salvador: It’s a place where grimy surfers voluntarily disappear barefoot on black sand beaches for cheap. It’s the type of place that’s getting harder and harder to find. You can order spicy chicken or fish under a thatched roof beach shack. The cook might chase your yard-bird or a fisherman might wrestle in pacific treasures into the boat that morning. It’s bubbling turquoise foam at your feet while the black sand sticks to you like Oreo cookie crumbs. If palm trees, quiet colorful towns, and ungodly amounts of papusas sound enticing, then El Salvador is for you. Mind Open to the New This is an up and…
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Taipei, Taiwan
The place where I almost lost my love for seafood? Taiwan. Also the place where I had some of the most awesome street food ever? Also Taiwan. Surprised to see real curved swords reverently wielded around by old men for daily exercise in the form of martial arts? Yep, you guessed the place. Taiwan. Taipei to be exact. What my experience in the world had taught me, after a lifetime of examining “Made in” manufacturing tags, my best guess as to what Taiwan might look like would be a conglomerate of dirty manufacturing warehouses. After all, everything is Made in Taiwan (okay that’s a hyperbole). There may have been a…
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Singapore, Bewildered: Where Ancient Tradition Meets the Modern Cutting Edge
^ This is what I thought I’d see in Singapore. I was expecting to be immediately dumbfounded by modern technologies from the cutting edge of development. What I wasn’t expecting to see was how this place, Singapore, was rooted in ancient tradition. A walk through Singapore is an assault on the senses. The hawker stands and plazas are exotic. The climate? Scorching tropical. The food? Pretty bowls of spicy, sultry goodness, flavors you didn’t even know existed. The high rises? Full of flats with tenants that are [from what I imagine due to their rent value] untouchably, stupid rich . . . like walking their orangutans from the window of…
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Kuala Lumpur: A Place of Many Firsts
Monsoon Season You have not experienced Southeast Asia until you have heard the sky open up on top of a market of corrugated metal roofs during monsoon season. That was the introduction that Kuala Lumpur yielded me. The mood of the Petaling street market changed, time to hunker down for an hour to keep you and your belongings dry on what was otherwise a hot sunny day. A man selling his wares used a stick to lift his tarp roof, dispelling water in every direction and wading through it. We stopped to sit in plastic lawn chairs. An open air buffet steamed beside us. A street person with what…
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Penang: A Food Paradise, Malaysia
The Journey My hips twisted to balance as I focused on keeping my feet planted, surfing with the movement of the train on the tracks. I was too intrigued to sit during the ride from Kuala Lumpur to Penang. I tried not to fumble my camera lenses as I switched them then held my camera up. I felt the tea harvesters pull me in. I gave myself over to the train, letting it have it’s way with me as I fought to stay upright. Giving myself over to the journey felt symbolic. Two Asian water buffalo wallowed in a hole. They chewed as they watched the train hurtle by. The…
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Friends to Cuba- Actually, Friends to Cubans
If loving Cuba is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. What I especially loved about it were it’s normal, everyday, working class people and the families of the slums. I visited Cuba legally, and hesitated to publish what I learned because of the icy relations of the past that have yet again been drug up to the mat. But I’m publishing in the name of art, in the name of truth, in the name of education, free speech, and almost everything I believe in: loving others despite their ethnicity, nationality, race, political stance, or religion. The second story balcony of a colonial casa with iron railings and white…
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Authenticity in Costa Rica
This is where this story began; it was hard not to miss the burning forest outside of Liberia. When the Spanish claimed “Costa Rica” they named it after the RICH land they saw. Mixed research indicates that in the 1940’s 75% of Costa Rica was forested. Suprise As of today 20,000 acres of land is deforested annually. Now, while I can’t speak first hand about the authenticity of statistics, I can speak about what I saw while there. I had these HUGE expectations of Costa Rica . . . cue the dreams of . . . forging a river crossing in a Land Rover, maybe getting stuck in the mud a time or two,…
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Scratching the Surface in Oaxaca City
In our modern urban lives we search for the latest cuisine hot-spots across American & European cities. On Friday nights we settle in to the hippest cantinas for tapas and music. It’s exhausting to keep up with the latest trends as the new continuously turns over. What happens when trendy is incredibly Old- World, relatively unknown, & authentic? Most travelers search for an unspoiled culture. Oaxaca City isn’t a place that tries to be trendy . . . it just is. The sun beats down on the farming fields surrounding Oaxaca City. A cool breeze floats through the cobblestone streets down from the Sierra Madre. The city seems to exhibit perfect placement; it’s no wonder…
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Thai Town: Ditching the L.A. Tourist Scene
Disclaimer: I will never be an L.A. kind of girl. I’m not even much of a (dare I say it?) beach kind of person. Que the Crickets. Recently I’ve expanded my horizons. I’ve permanently relocated to Colorado and as consequence I’m on a new.found.mission to explore the West. Needless to say when round trip airfare to L.A. popped up for two– for $90– round trip, we hopped. Los Angeles was nice for about an hour but it was honestly hotter, dirtier, and rougher than expected. The Hollywood sign was neat at a glance up but totally overrated and crowded when forced to climb up the hill to get a close up.…
