Category: Travels

Yes, I would buy Tanzania Fund. 

The calm and reserved Dar Es Salaam is remarkably safe; I haven’t once felt threatened or even
"watched."  It is the women who stare, not the men, as is common in Islamic countries.  Throughout East Africa the country has a reputation for
politeness and courtesy. 

If a 45-year-old Muslim woman tells you she took out a micro-credit
loan to open a "saloon," she usually means a "salon."  In the interviews the Tanzanians are eager to be helpful, but they do not take over
the conversation, as might happen in West Africa.

Although there are no tourist sites of note, the city is a
pleasant green and backs into the water.  You might see an Indian Dhow
pulling into the harbor.  Every now and then you see an impressive Masai walking down the street.

Food prices are falling and the economy is
booming.  Per capita gdp in Tanzania is about $700 but the city is
prosperous.  Squalor can be found,  but only with effort.  There are plenty
of new buildings, a few real bookshops, and a bunch of OK shopping
malls.  Spiderman 3 is already in the theatres.  Given that
migration is possible, and the city is not crushingly overcrowded, how
bad can the countryside be?  (Don’t answer that one.)

They carry eggs on the bicycles and everything else on the top of
womens’ heads.  SUVs are common.  Crafts are not impressive.  Tanzania,
though large and populous, is far from an African cultural leader.

The Indian and Chinese restaurants are spicy and genuine.  The crab and the vegetables are superb.  Ugali is the native
dish; you get some ground cornmeal, roll it in a ball with your
fingers, and then dip it into a coconut sauce with vegetables.  They
cook "pullau" rice with cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, and coriander.  Goat biryani is also common; it bears only a passing resemblance to the Indian concept of the same name.

Zanzibar, a two hour ferry ride away, has splendid old Arabic and
Indian doors and many Arabic-style buildings.  Children play in the
narrow streets.  Most of the women wear headscarves and a few wear the
full veil.  The beaches appear perfect though I did not have time to
swim.  For nightly street food there is spicy lobster, grilled fish,
large fresh prawns, and french fries.

My guide in Zanzibar explained:

I decide to sell to muzungu [in Swahili this means "white person," plus
some local nuances of expression] for my living.  The Tanzanian custom is go to witch doctors.  The muzungu custom is go to travels.

At this point in life the answer is usually that I do nothing other than call up memories of previous cultural consumption.  If you are not at that point, Wikipedia is an excellent source for fiction and movies from a country.  When it comes to music, consult the various Rough Guides to music; I mean the books, not the mediocre CD collections or the so-so travel guides.  Also try the AllMusic guide, either paper or on-line; when it comes to music neither Amazon nor Wikipedia is to be trusted ("why not?" is an interesting question, is it because too many people feel entitled to have an opinion about music?).  Bring music on cassette, CD, or iPod, as soundtrack for your trip, and ask your driver to put on Radio East Africa.  Finding the best non-fiction books is the hardest category to master.  I still prefer shelf browsing at libraries and book superstores. 

An MR request is another option.  Matt Dreyer asks what I recommend for a trip to Greece and Turkey.  Offhand I’ll say Herodotus, the usual Greek classics, Pamuk’s Snow and Istanbul books, Sarkan (a Turkish singer), Sufi music, Greek traditional music from 1930-1950 (there are some wonderful collections, look for the word rembetika), a study of Turkish and also Greek textiles, a picture book on Cycladic art, a book on Greek sculpture at the National Museum in Athens, Norwich on the Byzantine empire, Michael Grant on the ancient world, Lord Kinross on the Ottoman centuries, a biography of Ataturk and there are a few good recent books which survey contemporary Turkey.

Your tips, either general or specific, are of course welcome.

Visit London every year.  Bar Shu, 28 Frith St., near Leicester Square, is the best Sichuan food I have had.  The "Exploded Pork Kidneys" are especially fine, as are the green beans.  Also noteworthy is Hot Stuff, 19 Wilcox Rd., a small Pakistani takeaways place which is rapidly gaining global fame.

For the first time in my life, I no longer feel I live in or near the center of the world.

Red light indicates Your voice may be Heard by the Driver.

If they are going to have little flashing red lights (it was off on today’s trip from the Tate to Harrod’s), that is not one of the five verifiable contingencies I am most curious about.  It’s not even my greatest curiosity about the driver.

On his travels to almost 100 countries, Barry Goldsmith, a creator of tours for General Tours, says he has worried about risks like terrorism, crime and infectious disease. But one trumps all the others.

“It’s traffic accidents,” Mr. Goldsmith said.

Road accidents are “the largest cause of nonnatural death among U.S. citizens overseas,” said Betsy L. Anderson, a senior consular official at the State Department.

Here is the full story.  Some of the lessons are simple: insist on a vehicle with seat belts, sit in the back whenever possible, try to avoid driving or being driven at night, and don’t take too many car trips.  Avoid the "Andean bus plunge."

I also wonder how anyone in Italy makes a buck.  Rome is filled with small shops that apparently provide one small good or service–in my neighborhood alone, there are at least 3 competing herbalists (besides 3 or 4 farmacie), 2 guys who sell stuff for remodeling your bathroom, 4 tire stores or auto repair shops (each in a space no bigger than my living room at home), at least 4 small dry cleaners, 3 barbers, 3 hair dressers for women, a furniture restorer, a guy who sells wood and tile for floors, a different guy who sells only paint, a guy who does hand-painting on china (at least I think that’s what he does), and a dozen other small businesses.  In fact, from my limited experience here, Rome seems to have far more small shopkeepers (i.e., small entrepreneurs) than Chicago.  And I don’t see how any of the proprietors can make enough to keep his doors open.

And I wonder how so many used book stores survive in the expensive districts of central Paris.  I also wonder why Italy has so many stores for fancy underwear, and why so many Italians conduct their arguments out in the street.

That’s the title of a fun, new book.  Here is my personal selection of 10, in no particular order, and not counting the U.S.:

1. Glottertal to St. Maergen, through the Black Forest.  Maybe only two hours by car, but sheer magic.

2. The East Coast of Taiwan, Suao down to Hualien and then into Taroko, the marble gorge.  The best coastal route I know.

3. Mostar and Sarajevo, to remind us of the thinness of civilization.  They’re also beautiful cities with great food and moving graveyards.

4. Susten Pass, in Switzerland, the best route through the Alps.

5. The bus from Punta Arenas to Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile.  You see flamingos, rheas, and end up in a stunning national park.

6. The Panama Canal
— perhaps the most underrated sight; you feel like you are in the jungle,
you are in a jungle, then a large steamer comes by.  The tour of
Rotterdam Harbor is a close runner-up.

7. To and through the Tiong Bahru food stalls in Singapore.

8. Thingvellir, Iceland, home of the first Icelandic Parliament.  Such a long trip to see just four homes.

9. A walk through Ginza District in Tokyo, or perhaps Shinjuku subway station, with its dozens of maze-like paths to varioius streets.  Don’t even try the map, just be happy with wherever you end up.

10. Walking Paris end to end, pick just about any route.

I’ve never been to East Africa, and I’m not counting the Iron Market in Port-Au-Prince.

I arrived three hours early and went through six different and thorough searches at the airport; I do look like a drug dealer.  By my fourth day it had become clear how many wealthy Colombianas have had plastic sugery, of the disproportionate kind if you get my drift.  Colombia now has more people than Spain.  The American government freezes the funds of the families of Americans who have been kidnapped.  I found Bogotá safer than Madrid.

The Italian edition of Vanity Fair just listed Bogotá as one of the six up-and-coming tourist hotspots; Sibiu, Romania and the Kurile Islands (Russia) also made the list, enjoy.

Unlike Mexico City and Rio, most of the shops don’t have private security guards or much in the way of security systems.  Bars on home windows are unusual.  I haven’t heard many sirens.  Solo women walk around many parts of town.  Fear of civil war, kidnapping, and paramilitary guerrillas is no reason to postpone a trip.  From a tourist’s point of view, Bogota is more secure than most other Latin American cities.

There is less glamour here than I expected, and most of the city is solidly working class, lower middle class.  People are well dressed but in a relatively formal way; there is little sartorial individuality or flair.  Dark clothes, especially black, are the default style, but not in a Will Wilkinson cool hipster sort of way.  Rather the message is "it rains here a lot and it is cool and foggy and we have endured centuries of violence, so why wear floral pink?"  The bowler hat, however, is now passe. 

Bookstores and libraries are everywhere, and it is common to see people reading or carrying books.  The shops display their serious books, not the junk.  The museums are the best in South America, for both content and presentation.

Bicycling is a big deal, and the bus system is well-developed to an extreme.  The water is potable.  The green hills around the city are attractive, the colonial part of town has wonderful colors and houses, and the modern architecture is getting better.

Colombianos are remarkably gracious and friendly.  There is nothing like isolation to make people love foreigners.  Does having a bad international reputation make people nicer to compensate?

You have to utter "good day" to the guard each time you enter a new room in a museum.  People open doors for each other.  No one is loud.  It all feels vaguely right-wing.

The local soup mixes shredded chicken, avocado, potato, corn, capers, cream, and herbs for a tasty blend.  So far the food doesn’t thrill me; too many restaurants remain in the meat and potatoes stage; being in the Andes has never been good for any cuisine, except of course for their hearty soups.

The people look surprisingly homogeneous; I expected more Caribbean types and indigenous.  That said, the Turks run the textile trade and there are plenty of Chinese (so-called) restaurants.  Indian features are common, but blended into a broadly Spanish mix.  No one is very tall.

How can such a nice place be in the midst of a civil war and guerrilla uprising?  Why do leaders in the highest reaches of government secretly work with the paramilitaries?  Does every radio station in the country play Juanes, and how long will their Tower branches last?

Here is a good reading list on politics and institutions, but do any of these pieces explain what I am seeing?

A love affair between a Colombian and a Russian friend of my wife, long ago.  The Iron Curtain intervenes.  A name.  An old address.  A non-working phone number.  Can I find him?

Since I enjoy revisiting familiar places, it is not often I get to new countries, but if all goes well I will tomorrow…

Here is how to make your own map, including for the USA.  The insane are welcome to register their "counties visited."

Property rights are evolving, and rapidly:

Vigilante militias are alleged to have taken over Rio de Janeiro
slums, ruling as feudal lords and imposing taxes, as a result of the
collapse of legal policing in these areas.

The vigilante militias are made up of off-duty police officers
and former police officers.  They work to expel drug traffickers and
other criminals from favelas, known as Brazil‘s poorest and roughest neighborhoods, to set up protection rackets themselves.

According to Rio De Janeiro’s public security department, 92
favelas are now controlled by militias, up from 42 in April 2005.  They
take over a new neighborhood at an average of 12 days.

Sociologist Ignacio Cano, who works for the Rio de Janeiro
State University, said that the root of the phenomenon is a quest by
corrupt police officers for more money, against the backdrop of falling
drug profits and a drop in bribery.

These officers have decided to take direct control of the
areas and seek other ways to extract cash from Rio’s poorest, he said.

Militias then demand protection money from the neighborhood
they have captured: taxing residents five to seven U.S. dollars per
head for living in the area; demanding two dollars for each tank of
natural gas, the most common source of heat for cooking; and charging
local taxis for entering the area.

I read many articles on this topic but the most insightful is this Chinese source, consistent with what I heard from Brazilian friends. 

Two questions: first, which groups are the most efficient "bandit-controllers" of the favelas?  Should it be someone who will continue to live there, or someone who owns land there (informally perhaps), or someone altogether different?

Second, would drug legalization do much to limit crime in this setting?  If a group can create a territorial monopoly on selling drugs, and drugs cease to be very profitable, cannot that same territorial monopoly be transferred to other goods and services, as we seem to be observing?  In Rhode Island the vending machine business was long corrupt.  It may be claimed that the illegality of drugs makes them a special target, but keep in mind the laws are not and cannot be enforced inside the favelas.  It is the favela boss who issues the relevant dictates.

As for Rio, here is what went on earlier this week.  I am happy to report that all three of us are back home safe and sound.

One data point aside, the most obvious difference in Rio, from ten years ago, is how much safer it
seems.  Many parts of town that were previously filled with stalkers and
snatchers and kiddie gangs are now quite walkable and indeed pleasant. 
Small crimes have gone down in frequency, but crime occurs on a larger
scale.  The city has been parceled out, and if the police control a part
of town they are able to keep snatchings and the like to a minimum, unlike ten
years ago.  That said, the clashes at the fringes, between the police and
the favela kings, are, according to my Brazilian friends, more frequent and
more violent.  There is greater cartelization of territory, with
tighter control within each market, but more at stake on the borders.

As Americans (and Russians) we are not used to visiting large, insular
countries like our own, but Brazil is just that.  The diversity is remarkable, for one example Sao Paulo has about three
million ethnic Japanese.  But as in the United States, much of the
diversity is an illusion.  You can be from anywhere, and do anything you
want, but somehow you still only have the option of being Brazilian. 
Hardly anyone here speaks English, or indeed anything other than
Portuguese.  Many people claim to speak Spanish; that only means if you
speak to them in Spanish they are willing to answer you back in Portuguese,
with one or two Spanish words thrown in.  There are few concessions to
tourists, and even the most famous sites are visited mainly by Brazilians,
not foreigners.  It is one of the best experiences of intense cultural
immersion you can get.

Yes there are string bikinis but they are overrepresented on
postcards.  The ocean walk in Rio is full
of people who should not be wearing bikinis.  Brazilian women are among
the world’s most beautiful but in part because they do not insist of being
superthin.  They will overwhelm you with their sensual earthiness, and
their true appeal doesn’t rest much on their looks one way or the other.

I had to wait four hours for a connecting flight from Sao Paulo to Rio.  I saw hundreds of Brazilians waiting for different flights (have I mentioned that infrastructure is terrible?), but not once did I see anyone reading a book.

The food is better than I remember it, top sirloin being the best cut at a
churrascaria.  The cheeses, while not complex, are superb.  The cold antipasti are often the best part of the
meal.  Only Italy has better pasta, and even that is debatable.

I find it hard to finish Our Mutual Friend, perhaps because the plot
still doesn’t make sense to me, not even on second reading.  Still, I hold
an obvious fascination with serial stories which pretend to be about one thing
and are in fact deeply about something quite different; those who read MR most
closely already know this, even if they can’t always figure out the plot.