Tag Archives: food

Cancun – Setting Your Senses on Fire

  Once you’ve soaked up enough of the Cancun sun that your burned skin begins to bubble, it’s probably time to go home. Fried skin aside, there was little about this trip we didn’t enjoy. (And Soo even enjoyed my sunburn. Ever sympathetic, this was merely a new toy, something irresistible to play with, like an unused roll of bubble wrap.) That I am lousy at sunbathing is no surprise; I’m not good at very much. Drinking, however, is a strong suit. When a friend repeatedly moans “What did you do to my husband?!” you know you’ve accomplished something meaningful. Such was the case our first night on the Mayan ... [Read More]

Penniless in a Hong Kong Typhoon

I arrived in Hong Kong to notification from American Express that there had been fraud on my account (unsurprisingly as a result of my recent El Salvador trip) and they had helpfully cancelled my card. This was irritating, but in typical AMEX-efficient fashion they promised to have me a new card within days, and I could survive until then on my debit card. SunTrust cancelled the debit card the next day. Since I only travel internationally every single month, SunTrust decided my Hong Kong usage must be fraud and blocked my card. The mindless twits at SunTrust didn’t trouble themselves to notify me of this, or even to ... [Read More]

Black Jesus, Grilled Guinea Pig, and the Damned Spanish.

  Spain is a global version of The Biggest Loser. It’s hard to believe that Spain, today a country smaller than the state of Texas, once ruled an empire covering all of Central America, much of the US and South America, parts of the Caribbean, bits of Europe and even some outposts in Asia. That’s a lot of empire to lose. Remnants of the former empire are everywhere evident in Latin America, however, where Spanish remains the predominant language, where the culture and food retain heavy Spanish influence and where Roman Catholicism, the religion imposed on native civilizations at the often bloody point of a sword, remains the overwhelmingly dominant religion. Even ... [Read More]

Careful what you eat in the land of the Nine Dragons

  You might think your biggest culinary concern in China would be your hosts serving you a still-alive animal or foul-smelling fungus. Not so much. Perhaps you think that by avoiding street vendors in favor of established restaurants you’re more likely to find foods that won’t make you sick. Uh-uh. Though China works hard to suppress news damaging to its image, do a little research and you’ll learn that the biggest health threat in Chinese eateries is “gutter oil,” which, believe it or not, is even fouler than it sounds. Cooking oil is like gold in China, where virtually every recipe requires a wok full of it, and goes for a ... [Read More]

Shark fins and chicken testicles

Many Asian cultures place great importance on visitor’s willingness to eat any local food presented to them. Knowing this, and always wanting to make a good impression, I’ve never refused anything offered, which is why on past trips I’ve downed without hesitation live bugs, snake pancreas (cut from the still-alive scaled beast at my table) and steaming yellow crab brains, among other things. Today, I broke my cardinal rule, refusing, I believe for the first time, to eat the proffered local delicacy. My refusal wasn’t based on any assumed revulsion for the taste or texture of the food in question. Quite the opposite – by all accounts the ... [Read More]

Demonstrations, Dragon Hill and dinner in a tent.

  Soo and I strolled out of our hotel last night and into the middle of what looked for all the world to be a war zone. We were surrounded by thousands of police, fully armored in their riot gear and ready for battle. We hadn’t the slightest clue what was going on. Soo, a sensible woman, was in favor of getting ourselves elsewhere – any elsewhere would do – but that seemed like so much less fun then wading into the troops deployed right in front of us. I mean, how often does somebody deposit an army on your doorstep? We wound our way around and through ... [Read More]

Style, service and sangrias in Spain

  It's easy to like Barcelona (pronounced Barthalona by the locals. Truly – I spent my first two days here convinced everyone had a lisp.) I decided upon arriving in Catalonia's capital city that it was my duty to sample Spain's native drink in as many places as possible. (This perhaps has less to do with the fact that it’s Spanish that it does with my fondness for sampling drinks – tequila in Mexico, grappa in Italy, vodka, well, everywhere. You get the idea.) And I wondered if being full of sangria would, among other things, help me understand the bizarre and wonderful style of Gaudi, the 19th-century architect whose ... [Read More]

Swimming with whale sharks

  When I told Brian and Jim that we planned to swim with sharks while in Cancun the blood drained from their faces as they stammered and stuttered unkind things about my sanity, huffily but firmly refusing to get anywhere near water teeming with sharks. I might have failed to note the sharks in question were whale sharks, docile beasts who feed only on plankton, microscopic plants and fish eggs. Might have forgotten to mention that part. My bad. Turns out that an area of ocean about 20 miles off the Cancun coast is known for occasionally having the largest congregation of whale sharks ever witnessed on earth. Schools ... [Read More]

Tequila is my friend

Mexico and tequila and are two things that just naturally go together, sorta like West Virginia and incest. My friend Jeremy remarked that my little group consumed more tequila in our five days in Cancun than he'd managed since moving here eight years ago. I don't think he was kidding. There's a lot to love about Cancun, and the local tequila surely makes the list. When the hotel waiter on the beach asks you if you want the "good stuff," however, say no, emphatically, unless $25 shots are in your budget. These connoisseur tequilas aren't in my budget, though this failed to occur to me until after we'd downed ... [Read More]

Nha Trang: Cheap, and Beautiful

When you think of top beach vacation spots, Nha Trang, Vietnam, doesn’t spring immediately to mind. It should. The secret is out about this tranquil beach town on Vietnam’s southeast coast, and its population is booming, expected to nearly double in the next seven years alone. Tourists are flocking to the new luxury high-rise hotels and resorts sprouting up along the beaches, and, commendably, the city is thus far doing an excellent job of balancing its burgeoning tourist industry with its historic roots as a fishing village. Our hotel, the exquisite Sheraton Nha Trang (itself a recent edition to the city -- it opened its doors only eight ... [Read More]