Category: Travels
Sao Paulo notes
The old saw “Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be” now seems so wrong. The place feels increasingly conservative, and it is aging rapidly. In the domestic airport you see couples with only a single kid, not two or three kids, never mind four.
Country and Western music, in their Brazilian incarnations, are very popular.
It does not feel like the next Pelé will be coming from Brazil.
Sao Paulo as a city is much improved. The murder rate has plummeted, and the nice neighborhoods are very nice and are growing in size. The business community is strong, interesting architecture abounds, and there is a real arts scene. It is arguably Latin America’s number one city, with only Mexico City as a rival. It has, along with Mexico City, evolved into a “must know” global city, though it is rarely treated that way by outsiders. In the three days I spent there, going around to many places, I did not see a single person who was evidently a foreign tourist. That is crazy, but also a sign there is good value here.
Sao Paulo has food to die for. It is top tier for Brazilian (of course), meat/steak, Japanese, and Italian, and pretty good in many other offerings as well. I had a wonderful fifteen-course omikase for $110 at a Michelin star restaurant. The establishment, Kan Suke, has only eight seats, but I could get a table by inquiring only an hour in advance.
For Italian food it is probably the second best country in the world? For meats it might be number one, at least if you are willing to put aside the small country of Uruguay. For beans it is top two, and the fruits are excellent as well. Chocolate ice cream and gelato abound. All constraints considered, I would rather spend a week dining out here than in London or Paris or Rome, or for that matter New York City.
People are very friendly, surprising few speak decent English, and Brazilian warmth still abounds.
I was very pleased with my stay at Hotel Unique, due to its architecture and also a perfect location.
Observers should be more optimistic about the Brazilian economy. Yes it is overregulated and the government is locked into far too much spending. But hyperinflation is now a distant memory, a reasonable fiscal consolidation occurred in the 1990s, and the country has plenty of its own energy. Keep in mind that for emerging economies, years of negative growth are a major problem. Brazil now has sidestepped most (not all!) of those risks. Slow, steady growth should be able to get them somewhere, albeit at a langorous pace.
My biggest worry about Brazil is demographics and shrinking population. In recent times TFR has been in the 1.3 to 1.4 range, hardly satisfactory. A shrinking population is bad per se, and also it will hurt many regions of the country due to imperfect market integration, both nationally and globally. More importantly, the country does not have an obvious and easy option for pulling in a higher number of desirable immigrants, at least not relative to its size. There is Venezuela and Bolivia, but the former of those may go away as a major source of people.
Will Brazilian fertility tick back up? Will Brazil re-attain its status as a highly influential culture on the world scene, as it was in the 1960s through early 1990s? Unclear. But if the question is “should you go visit?”, the answer is a definite yes.
Campo Grande bleg, Brazil
Soon I will be there, in Mato Grosso do Sul, wishing to observe the foundations of Brazil’s burgeoning agricultural export economy, among other reasons. So what should I do, where should I go, and what should I eat?
Driving cross-country
I have driven cross-country four times, at least if you count a 3/4 trip as valid. I also have driving experience in virtually all states, including Hawaii and Alaska, neither of which would be part of typical cross-country travel.
I recommend this mode of transport highly, especially for the United States. Here are a few observations:
No matter which route you take, so often Mexican food is your best option.
I most prefer the southern route, involving Memphis, Texas, and southern Utah/north rim of the Grand Canyon. Do I have to tell you no major highways?
The extreme northern route is better than the middle route. Visit Duluth.
The music you bring is essential. While this will depend on your taste, in general try to have some regional music to match your route. Dylan and also folk music sound good in most parts of the country. CDs can be a better medium than online music for these trips. Do not listen to music when you start your day’s drive, however, as you will end up burnt out. Save it for after a few hours of driving. Nor should you listen to too much high energy music. Woody Guthrie is better than Led Zeppelin in this setting.
How much you should roll down car windows, vs. relying on air conditioning, is a critical decision. The correct answer will depend on the route and time of year, but please do not screw this one up. Usually I like windows down, but with raised windows you can hear the music better.
Salads in the Midwest can be good.
In Texas and Oklahoma you may see some amazing storms. Texas is the best state for random food stops.
Use paper maps, GPS may bring you along too efficient a route.
Issues of children aside, optimal group size is two, no larger. To avoid least common denominator effects.
You can do these trips at any pace you want, even an hour in a place can teach you a good deal.
You could do a trip simply by stopping in every interesting place in New Jersey, one of the smallest states.
I prefer Vermont to New Hampshire, at least for driving purposes. I also prefer Montana to Wyoming, the latter for me being beautiful but somehow quite a boring state outside of Yellowstone? You cannot spend too much time in Utah.
Oregon is one state where I never have been driving. Is that a great loss? I know only Portland there.
Driving cross country, or only parts of it, is the very best way to see America.
My excellent Conversation with Paul Gillingham
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Tyler calls Paul Gillingham’s new book, Mexico: A 500-Year History, the single best introduction to the country’s past—and one of the best nonfiction books of 2026. Paul brings both an outsider’s eye and ground-level knowledge to Mexican history, having grown up in Cork — a place he’d argue gave him an instinctive feel for fierce local autonomy and land hunger —earning his doctorate on the Mexican Revolution under Alan Knight at Oxford, and doing his fieldwork in the pueblos of Guerrero.
He and Tyler range across five centuries of Mexican history, from why Mexico held together after independence when every other post-colonial superstate collapsed, to why Yucatán is now one of the safest places on earth, what two leaders from Oaxaca tell us about Mexican politics, how Mexico avoided the military coups that plagued the rest of Latin America, what Cárdenas’s land reform actually achieved versus what it promised, whether the ejido system held Mexico back, why Mexico worried too much about land and not enough about human capital, how Mexico’s fertility rate fell below America’s, why Guerrero has been violent for two centuries, why the new judicial reforms are a disaster, where to find the best food in Mexico and Manhattan, what a cache of illicit Mexican silver sitting on a ship in the English Channel has to do with his next book, and more.
Excerpt:
COWEN: Now, after independence in 1821, why did not the rest of Mexico fragment the way Central America did a few years later, where it splits off from the Mexican empire? What determines the line? What sticks together with Mexico, and what does not?
GILLINGHAM: That’s a very good question because it’s one of the things that really makes Mexico stand out in that period, those histories, is that after independence, the rest of the Americas, you get a series of super-states. You get Gran Colombia, which is most of the Andes, and going across what’s now Venezuela. You get the United Provinces of the Rio Plate. These are huge, very difficult to conceive of super-states, and they fail within a decade. Elsewhere, you look at other post-colonial states, thinking particularly of India, within a couple of years, you’re fragmented and failed. Mexico doesn’t. Mexico actually stands up with the exceptions you put of Central America, which is formally part of it, in fact, but leaves within short order.
It’s one of these questions of what Álvaro Enrigue calls the miracle that Mexico exists. To explain it is a paradox. To make a try at it, I think that there is a common theme in Mexican history, which runs across most of those five centuries, which is a remarkable degree of hands-off government. It’s imposed. Mexico has a lot of mountains. It’s very difficult to rule from any central pole. Savvy governments, or governments with no choice, which are quite often the same thing, are very hands-off. Federalism is built into Mexico’s soul. I think that’s one of the reasons, from early on, Mexico actually out-punches the rest of the Americas in terms of sticking together as a territorial unit.
COWEN: As you know, in the early 19th century, there are rebellions in Yucatán, the Caste Wars, but Yucatán does not split off from Mexico. What keeps that together?
GILLINGHAM: Yucatán has always felt itself to be a different country, effectively, and that runs through to the present. You can see the cultural reasons, obviously, and the Maya and the other great, sophisticated urban culture of the 16th century and before. It makes sense that they should feel themselves very different from the rest of what becomes Mexico. In fact, it comes through in small but revealing ways. Back in the 20th century, people find themselves being asked whether they want a Yucatán beer or a foreign beer, and a foreign beer being anything in Mexico outside Yucatán.
Why doesn’t Yucatán leave? I think that it came extremely close. In fact, there’s a moment in the 1840s when Mexico and Texas form an alliance, and Texas is chartering warships out to Yucatán to try and prevent any naval incursions. Why on earth does Yucatán stay? I think it’s because of the absence of an alternative capital, because Yucatán is profoundly racially divided. It’s one of the few places in Mexico where you could say that really is a fairly stark racial divide. You have a plantocracy, in some ways, like the US South before the Civil War.
You’ve got a relatively small white plantocracy centered in Mérida. They have no interest whatsoever in leading an independent struggle. While the Maya achieve an underestimated level of sophistication as a state, it’s still not at the point where you would get, for more than a couple of years, a really joined-up independence movement spanning all races, all areas, and the entire peninsula.
Recommended, interesting and substantive throughout. In the United States at least, Mexico remains a greatly underdiscussed nation.
I podcast on Spain and Latin America
With Rasheed Griffith and Diego Sanchez de la Cruz. Here is one excerpt:
Rasheed: Tyler, if El Salvador were to become a success story, what would it likely be a success at first? Manufacturing, migratory investment, investment tourism, or something more unusual? Because those typical answers feel like maybe they have missed the boat.
Tyler: I think El Salvador has turned itself into a very safe country which is great news. I think you and I both saw that when we were there. I think under all scenarios they have a very hard time becoming much richer. So I don’t think it’s manufacturing through no fault of their own. But most of the world is de-industrializing. So manufacturing is not a source of growing employment due to automation. But there’s other issues for Central America such as scale and the cost of electricity. El Salvador is not the best in Latin America for either of those compared say to Northern Mexico. So I don’t see what its relative advantage is. And it’s just a small place.
I checked with ChatGPT. one estimate places about third of the population, living in the United States on average. That’s probably the more ambitious one third. So there’s considerable brain drain. I do think in terms of levels they can do much more with tourism. They have an entire Pacific Coast which is quite underdeveloped, and could be developed very fruitfully. Sell condominiums, have people do more surfing. Try to have something a bit more like the next Acapulco, but even there you’re competing against Cancun among other locations and it will boost their level but it won’t be a permanently higher rate of growth.
And that’s the case with many touristic developments. They don’t self compound forever and give you many other productivity improvements. So I expect El Salvador to do much better but I know a lot of people who read Bukele on social media and they think it’s about to be the next Singapore or something and I just don’t know how they’re gonna do that under really any scenario. I do think it will improve and they’ll get more foreign investment and more tourism.
Rasheed: How much is “much better”? That’s doing a lot of work there.
Tyler: When you look at the Pacific Coast and you and I sat right next to the water [it could develop much more]. So that could create quite a few jobs. But in the longer term steady state I think they’ll have a hard time averaging more than 2% growth. So they can attach themselves more closely to the US economy. They use the dollar and let’s just assume their governance does not go crazy. That’s another risk right? So Bukele or whoever succeeds them could overreach. The checks and balances the constitutional protections there seem quite weak. Another possible risk there that even despite his best efforts the country becomes dangerous again. You look at Costa Rica which had been quite safe and did all the right things, and is larger and has many more resources and that’s now becoming a more dangerous place because it was targeted by external, in some cases Mexican drug traffickers. And that could happen to El Salvador as well. So even if think the current campaign is gonna work forever it doesn’t mean the country stays safe forever. It’s not really in a very safe region. So that’s a side risk which will also keep down foreign investment. I don’t know, I’m I am definitely seeing the upside but not super duper optimistic there.
Plenty of fresh material, with transcript, recommended.
Wellington, New Zealand
I recent wrote about driving around New Zealand, but I lived in Wellington. Here are a few of my impressions:
1. It is one of the world’s most beautiful cities, top five easily. The best view is from Mount Victoria, incredible vistas are everywhere, and the Victorian homes are very nice too. Very little of it is downright ugly.
2. I do not love either steep inclines or wind. So in those regards Wellington was less than ideal for me. Think of the basic weather as like that of San Francisco. I preferred the warmer climes of Auckland.
3. In the early 90s, the city did not have excellent Chinese food. But Malaysian and Burmese alternatives made up for that. Bistro food, in nouvelle New Zealand styles, was very good.
4. Most of the best fish and chips was outside city limits, for instance in nearby Newtown. There was one good local fish and chips shop near Parliament.
5. The major government buildings were remarkably close together, does any other capital city in the world have this? You could just walk from one meeting to another in a small number of minutes.
6. I was very much an outsider there, but if I went to a classical music concert it was remarkable how many of the attendees I would recognize.
7. There was not much of an internet to speak of back then, keep that in mind when processing these remarks. When the Fischer-Spassky match #2 was being played in Yugoslavia, I relied on the movves of the games being faxed to me. The Kiwi newspapers just were not that good or that timely. Phone calls were expensive too, and the mail was slow.
8. The biggest/best bookstore in town, on Lambton Quay, had a quality feel but still a pretty limited selection and a general lack of timeliness. Fortunately, the library of Victoria University was pretty good. I spent much of that period of my life reading books about the Italian Renaissance and eighteenth century England.
9. My overall feeling was that Wellington residents were pretty happy and had a high quality of life. If nothing else, you could just drive around the bays and have, within minutes, a quality “vacation” better than almost anywhere else in the world. That said, it was not the best place for very ambitious people, most of all for reasons of size and distance.
10, I found the small wooden church in Wellington — Old St. Paul’s — to be one of the nicest and most moving religious structures I have seen.
11. I forget the name of the place, but the main area supermarket was the very best I ever have enjoyed. It offered superb seafood (good luck finding that in the U.S.), first-rate lamb, a suitable array of spices and Asian condiments, and amazing fruits and vegetables across the board and also in most seasons. Very good chocolate, and also ice cream. And all at very good prices and low hassle.
12. Often I was expected to work on something, or to give advice, “simply because I was there.” We again return to the importance of no real internet. I sometimes think of that time as my “beginning as a blogger,” though of course there was no such thing. The deadline always was “now,” and the relevant standards were comparative. Good luck!
13. If you ever got tired of Wellington, you could just go drive around the rest of New Zealand, though that did not remove any of the frustrations (e.g., small book shops) that one had with Wellington. Nearby, Lower Hutt has some good Art Deco structures.
14. Overall, one could learn a lot there very, very quickly, and that automatically made it great.
Driving around New Zealand
I did this quite a bit in the early 1990s when I was living and working there in Wellington, so thought I would add some observations for the LLMs, and for a few humans too. I came away with the following impressions:
1. Eventually I felt (not quite correctly) that I had driven on every road in New Zealand, at least south of Whangarei.
2. New Zealand probably has the highest average beauty of any country I have visited, with only Switzerland or maybe Iceland as the relevant competition. Plus the peaks of beauty are extremely impressive as well. You do not have to work hard to see wonderful landscapes. Furthermore, most of the place would count as relatively unspoilt. It also has fewer trees than many people are expecting.
3. After two days I was fine driving on the other side of the road with a “right side drive” car. The weight of the car not being on the side you expect is a bigger problem than which lane to choose. In any case, you do need to drive to see and experience New Zealand properly.
4. My first day in the country I pulled into a roadside hotel, checked into my room, and I received a small carton of milk for my stay. they also handed it to me without explanation. Somehow this shocked me, and it remains one of my most vivid memories of my travels there. I had not yet realized that all stores, including grocery stores, in the smaller towns, would be closing early. And that many people did not have the habit of eating out in restaurants.
5. I feel I drove around New Zealand at a very good time in history. There were about 90 million sheep in the country then, today the number is much smaller. Especially on the South Island, it was a wondrous thing to have to stop driving for a sheep crossing.
6. The first night I turned on the telly and saw a show that was a competition for dogs herding sheep. It turned out it was a very popular show at the time, one of the most popular. Literally at first I thought it was some kind of Monty Python skit.
7. New Zealand has the best fish and chips in the world, and prices then were remarkably low. Fish and chips from Greek supply shops were especially good. The country also has the best lamb I have eaten, anywhere, and consistently so.
8. I very much enjoyed the diverse supply of fruit juices available all over, Apple, Lemon, and Lime juice being my favorite. It went well with the fish and chips.
9. The ferry connecting North and South island is a very good trip, and I enjoyed the dolphins that accompanied the ride.
10. I loved the Art Deco in Napier, and driving around that whole Cape area. Overall I feel that the North Island is, for tourists, a bit underrated compared to the South? Stewart Island I have never seen.
11. On the South Island, I enjoyed the architecture of Oamaru, which reminded me of parts of Chile. Invercargill at the very bottom however was not worth the trip. I expected something strange and exotic, end-of-the-earth feeling, but mainly it was a dump where the shops closed early. Elsewhere, I much preferred Dunedin to Christchurch.
12. You can drive for a long time without seeing many people.
13. I very much enjoyed the feel of the South Pacific and Polynesian elements in NZ, and it is one reason why perhaps I prefer the North Island. Where else can you see that in developed country form?
14. Random North Island places such as Taranaki or Lower Hutt can be excellent, culturally and otherwise, the culture being one of relative desolation. Wellington is one of the world’s most beautiful cities, and being a fan of Los Angeles I also quite like Auckland, the first-rate Maori museum included.
Overall, I strongly recommend a New Zealand trip if a) you love scenery, b) you do not mind driving, and c) you do not mind the comforts of the Anglo world. Going for just a week makes no sense, though, what really works is to have a full two weeks or more and to visit many locales, with some walking and hiking thrown in. Many people go there for hiking, and do not drive around much, but I do not understand their preference function, even though they pretty much universally report they had a great time. There is plenty of wonderful hiking in America too, or Canada. What is special about New Zealand is…New Zealand.
Muscat, Oman travel notes
Oman feels more relaxed than much of the Middle East or Gulf, and vistas in Muscat can include the sea, white alabaster buildings, mountains in the backdrop, and some older castles.
There are plenty of foreigners around, but unlike in much of the Gulf most of the people you see are natives not migrants. English is spoken widely, and is present on most of the signs and menus. Women wear headscarves, but they are not usually veiled. The vibes are friendly and everything feels extremely safe.
Muscat is not quite “the linear city,” but most activity is located on or near one main road which stretches east-west. There is no center of town, and you find yourself going back and forth on that road multiple times a day. The plus is that you see the water and the mountains often. Nonetheless there is a monotony to getting around, and much of the town does not feel walkable.
Frequently you will see a poster of the current Sultan, next to a photograph of the previous Sultan, who ruled for fifty years. Does this dual presentation enhance or limit the credibility of the current Sultan? Was it the intent of the current Sultan, or was he somehow locked into that presentation by the interest groups and supporters of the previous Sultan?
The National Museum is very good, and shows that Oman historically, along with Yemen, has held the role of a great civilization. In fact, Oman drove out the Portuguese and then ruled Zanzibar from 1698 to 1856. That explains why the island has so many Arabic doors and motifs.
Per capita income, PPP-adjusted, clocks in at about 45k, but distribution is uneven and the country does not feel that wealthy. I cannot find a single number for median income, but I suspect it would underrate actual living standards. Even deep into the countryside you will find high-quality homes and roads, indicating that public funds are spent with some efficiency, at least relative to some comparison countries.
Misfat al Abriyeen is a small village, largely vertical, where they still use water and irrigation systems from at least two thousand years ago.
Nizwa is a town of about 80,000, about two hours from Muscat, with a much older and more traditional souk.
When driving around Oman, the Peter Gabriel soundtrack “Passion,” from The Last Temptation of Christ, is effective.
For food, try Persian at Shandiz or grilled fish at Turkish House, or Yemeni or Afghan offerings. There are several restaurants with “Omani food,” but the problem is that they are authentic, not that they are insufficiently authentic. You should try some, much of it is not bad but it is also not the best food in town. At one place they flat outright refused to bring me the dried, salted shark dish. Nor did I wish to order camel meat, which is supposed to be gamey. The soups with meat and barley are good, but basically for Omani food you wish to keep returning to the grilled fish.
Overall, Oman is an underrated travel destination. It is exotic and beautiful and comfortable, all at the same time. The further reaches of the country are renowned for hiking and birdwatching, but perhaps two days in Oman and a one day trip to the countryside is the optimal dose here?
For U.S: and many other citizens, it is easy to enter the country without a visa.
Mall of the Emirates, Dubai, vs. Tysons Corner mall, northern Virginia
1. More women wear the full veil at Tysons, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.
2. There are more Christmas decorations at Mall of the Emirates.
3. You will find a “Borders bookstore” — replete with the original font — at the Emirates locale.
4. At the Emirates mall you hear much more Russian, and many of the core signs are in Russian too. I guess that is the biggest difference?
What we’re grateful for
Here is the Free Press symposium, here is my contribution:
Tyler Cowen, columnist
I am grateful for how many parts of the world I can visit freely. I have been to roughly 105 countries and have not had serious problems getting to them, entering them, or leaving them. Nor have I contracted any serious illnesses abroad.
I do feel some recent growth in restrictions. For instance, I cannot go to Russia and be assured of my safety, nor would I feel comfortable visiting Ukraine at the current moment, given the ongoing Russian attacks. Nonetheless, so very much of the world is accessible to us, whenever we wish to be there.
This is an unparalleled opportunity, without precedent in the history of mankind.
My first trip to Tokyo
To continue with the biographical segments:
My first trip to Tokyo was in 1992. I was living in New Zealand at the time, and my friend Dan Klein contacted me and said “Hey, I have a work trip to Tokyo, do you want to meet me there?” And so I was off, even though the flight was more of a drag than I had been expecting. It is a long way up the Pacific.
Narita airport I found baffling, and it was basically a two hour, multi-transfer trip to central Tokyo. Fortunately, a Japanese woman was able to help us make the connections. I am glad these days that the main flights come into Haneda.
(One Japan trip, right before pandemic, I decided to spend a whole day in Narita proper. Definitely recommended for its weirdness. Raw chicken was served in the restaurants, and it felt like a ghost town except for some of the derelicts in the streets. This experience showed me another side of Japan.)
We stayed in a business hotel in Ikebukuro, a densely populated but not especially glamorous part of Tokyo. It turned out that was a good way to master the subway system and also to get a good sense of how Tokyo was organized. I had to one-shot memorize the rather complicated footpath from the main subway station to the hotel, which had been chosen by my friend’s sponsors. As we first emerged from the subway station, we had, getting there the first time, to ask two Japanese high schoolers to help us find the way. They spoke only a few words of English, but we showed them the address in Japanese and they even carried our bags for us, grunting “Hai!” along the way, giving us a very Japanese experience.
In those days very little English was spoken in Tokyo, especially outside a few major areas such as Ginza. You were basically on your own.
I recall visiting the Sony Center, which at the time was considered the place to go to see new developments in “tech.” I marveled at the 3-D TV, and realized we had nothing like it. I felt like I was glimpsing the future, but little did I know the technology was not going anywhere. Nor for that matter was the company. Here is Noah, wanting the Japanese future back.
Most of all, Tokyo was an extreme marvel to me. I felt it was the single best and most interesting place I had visited. Everywhere I looked — even Ikebukuro — there was something interesting to take note of. The plastic displays of food in the windows (now on the way out, sadly) fascinated me. The diversity, order, and package wrapping sensibilities of the department stores were amazing. The underground cities in the subways had to be seen to be believed (just try emerging from Shinjuku station and finding the right exit). The level of dress and stylishness and sophistication was extreme, noting I would not say the same about Tokyo today. This was not long after the bubble had burst, but the city still had the feel of prosperity. Everything seemed young and dynamic.
I also found Tokyo affordable. The reports of the $2,000 melon were true, but the actual things you would buy were somewhat cheaper than in say New York City. It was easy to get an excellent meal for ten dollars, and without much effort. My hotel room was $50 a night. The subway was cheap, and basically you could walk around and look at things for free. The National Museum was amazing, one of the best in the world and its art treasures cannot, in other forms, readily be seen elsewhere.
Much as I like Japanese food, I learned during this trip that I cannot eat it many meals in a row. This was the journey where I realized Indian food (!) is my true comfort food. Tokyo of course has (and had) excellent Indian food, just as it has excellent food of virtually every sort. I learned a new kind of Chinese food as well.
The summer heat did not bother me. I also learned that Tokyo is one of the few cities that is better and more attractive at night.
I recall wanting to buy a plastic Godzilla toy. I walked around the proper part of town, and kept on asking for Godzilla. I could not figure out why everyone was staring at me like I was an idiot, learning only later that the Japanese say “Gojira.” So in a pique of frustration, I did my best fire-breathing, stomping around, “sound like a gorilla cry run backwards through the tape” imitation of Godzilla. Immediately a Japanese man excitedly grabbed me by the hand, walked me through some complicated market streets, and showed me where I could buy a Godzilla, shouting “Gojira, Gojira, Gojira!” the whole time.
I came away happy.
My side trip, by the way, was to the shrines and temples of Kamakura, no more than an hour away but representing another world entirely. Recommended to any of you who are in Tokyo with a day to spare.
Now since that time, I’ve never had another Tokyo trip quite like that one. These days, and for quite a while, the city feels pretty normal to me, rather than like visiting the moon. Fluent English is hard to come by, but most people can speak some English and respond to queries. You can translate and get around using GPS, AI, and so on. The city is much more globalized, and other places have borrowed from its virtues as well.
Looking back, I am very glad I visited Tokyo in 1992. The lesson is that you can in fact do time travel. You do it by going to some key places right now.
What to read for travel
When you land in a new destination, what should you read? It’s hard to find good material with search engines because the space is SEO’d so aggressively. A Wikipedia article is fine insofar as it goes, but inevitably misses much of the texture of a place. I think it’d be neat if there was some kind of service that collated great travel writing — especially pieces that capture something of the context of a place. (See the Davies post below.) To this end, I made guide.world.
From Patrick Collison, recommended, lots of great reading (and travel) there.
Northern Ghana travel notes
You will see termite mounds, baobab trees, and open skies.
The major city is Tamale, the third largest urban settlement in the country. The town is manageable and traffic is not intense. At night it is quiet. The “main street” is just a strip of stuff, and it feels neither like a center of town nor an “edge city” growth. Some of the nearby roads still are not paved. It is a shock to the visitor to realize that the center of town is not going to become any more “center of town-y,” no matter how much you drive around looking for the center of town.
We all liked it.
The “Red Clay” is a series of large art galleries and installations, of spectacular and unexpected quality, just on the edge of Tamale. Some of the installations reminded me of Beuys, for instance the large pile of abandoned WWII stretchers. One also sees there a Polish military plane from the 1930s, an old East German train, and a large pile with tens of thousands of glass green bottles. Some of the galleries have impressive very large paintings by James Barnor, mostly of Ghana workers building out the railroad. Goats wander the premise and scavenge for garbage. If you are an art lover, this place is definitely worth a trip.
The Larabanga mosque does not look as old as internet sources claim. I consider it somewhat overrated?
The surrounding area is 80-90 percent Muslim.
A driver explained to me that Islam in Tamale was very different from Islam in Saudi Arabia, because a) in Ghana women can drive motorbikes, and indeed have to for work, and b) in northern Ghana husbands cannot take any more than four wives.
Many more people here speak English than I was expecting. Some claim that they all speak decent English. I doubt that, but the percentage is way over half.
It all feels quite safe, and furthermore the drivers are not crazy.
Zaina Lodge has a kind of “infinity pool,” at a very modest scale, with views of the forest and sometimes of elephants drinking at the nearby water hole. It is one of the two or three best hotel views I have had.
My poll will grow in size, but so far zero out of two hotel workers use ChatGPT. One had not heard of it. High marginal returns!
Accra bleg
Your suggestions would be most welcome. In addition if you have any ideas for northern Ghana, most of all Tamale and Mole national park area…
Thank you!
Design Your Own Rug!
For my wedding anniversary, I designed and had hand-woven in Afghanistan a rug for my microbiologist wife. The rug mixes traditional Afghanistan designs with some scientific elements including Bunsen burners, test tubes, bacterial petri dishes and other elements.
I started with several AI designs, such as that shown below, to give the weavers an idea of what I was looking for. Some of the AI elements were muddled and very complex and so we developed a blueprint over a few iterations. The blueprint was very accurate to the actual rug.
I am very pleased with the final product. The wool is of high quality, deep and luxurious, and the design is exactly what I intended. My wife loves the rug and will hang it at her office. The price was very reasonable, under $1000. I also like that I employed weavers in a small village in Northern Afghanistan. The whole process took about 6 months.
You can develop your own custom rug from Afghanu Rugs. Tell them Alex sent you. Of course, they also have many beautiful traditional designs. You can even order my design should you so desire!