Around the World Blog

Dengue Fever-- Something You Don't Want To Bring Back From A Vacation

2012-01-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

I didn't buy any souvenirs on my recent trip to the Yucatán. Mostly what they sell visitors to Mérida are hammocks and Guayabera shirts. I took something else home instead-- Dengue fever, an infectious tropical disease transmitted by mosquitoes. It's different from the deadly dengue hemorrhagic fever, which I don't have. The one I have takes a week or two and you're better... or so my doctor says.

I'd like to say I got it traipsing around the jungle investigating the connections between Mormon polygamists and the worship of the Mayan and Aztec feathered serpent deity Quetzalcoatl. The Mormons, who were led to Mexico as a way of preserving their polygamist lifestyle 125 years ago by Mitt Romney's great grandfather, notorious polygamist Miles Park Romney, believe that Jesus Christ came to America after he was resurrected and was remembered by the Mexican Indians as Quetzalcoatl. The second president of the Mormon church, John Taylor, who sent the Romney family down to Mexico wrote, "The story of the life of the Mexican divinity Quetzalcoatl closely resembles that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same being." But that isn't how I contracted Dengue fever.

I met plenty of Mormons and plenty of Mayan Indians who the Mormons are trying to convert-- there's a Mormon temple next to all the big intercity bus terminals so that missionaries can prey on the illiterate peasants arriving in the cities for the first time. But the mosquito that got me came from a broken fountain in the beautiful house we rented in downtown Mérida.

When Romney’s father was five years old, the Mexican Revolution broke out and his parents moved back to the United States to avoid the violence. Mitt Romney was eventually born in Michigan. But the other branch of the family-- leading down to Romney's cousins Leighton, Mike and Meredith-- stayed behind in Mexico, their numbers growing. The Romneys chose to remain in Mexico because they established good lives for themselves and their families there. Most of them are now dual-citizens.

“We certainly have a love for both countries,” adds Leighton. “I can sing both national anthems and tear up at both of them. I think that having two countries that you love and two countries that you can serve or be a beneficiary of their service is a great thing.”

The Romneys living in Mexico are well aware of their wealthy and famous relative’s popularity in the Republican primary race. They support their cousin's candidacy and they hope that Mitt will be more open about the issue of his religion and Mexican heritage during the campaign. It’s a family history they’re proud of, despite the fact that Mitt Romney has never come to visit.

Dengue fever is becoming quite the problem for tourists in tropical countries lately. Popular tourist destinations like Cambodia, Polynesia, Bali and India have had problems recently.

The mosquito menace which has even led to a few deaths has spread its net of fear amongst the monks and tourist visiting Bodhgaya, the important Buddhist pilgrim destination in the state of Bihar.

Bodhgaya is famous for the Mahabodhi Temple and the Bodhi tree in its courtyard under which Lord Buddha attained enlightenment. The Mahabodhi Temple is a World Heritage Site and attracts a large number of Buddhist pilgrims from all over the world.

However the past three months has seen the mosquito menace increase from bad to worse and has resulted in the spread of encephalitis, dengue fever and malaria, which has resulted in quite a number of deaths that have occurred over this period.

As such most devotees, monks and even tourist who come to visit Bodhgaya are virtually caged inside portable mosquito nets even during the day, even blocking their free movement. This has caused a real panic among the visitors who are in constant fear of being bitten by mosquitoes.

"Mosquitoes killed even Alexander the Great, and hence we too are quite frightened," said Madelina Illibery, a tourist from Italy. "I was told encephalitis and malaria together [caused by mosquito bites have claimed many lives in the Gaya district alone in the past few weeks…and hence I too have brought a foldable mosquito net for I can't afford to get exposed to those deadly mosquitoes," she added.

Many of the foreign countries have advised on the need of a mosquito net in their travel advisories. This is so because of the current tourist season which attracts a lot of visitors and also to enjoy a hassle free journey in good health.

My case seems pretty mind... at least so far. Not so for this Australian tourist, Trevor Proudlove, who picked it up in Bali.

He said he knew something was wrong when, after returning home from a 10-day holiday in October, he broke out in a bad rash and was so unwell he was unable to drive.

But Mr Proudlove said it was not until he developed pain in his joints and muscles about a month later that he was diagnosed with the disease, which doctors told him he was genetically susceptible to.

He said he would not travel to Bali again because of the distress it had caused him and his family, despite their efforts to stay safe.

"I couldn't even lift my arm to comb my hair and trying to get on and off chairs caused excruciating pain," he said. "It was like somebody was tearing my muscles out of my legs every time I would get up.

"My feet swelled up to twice the size they normally are, my hands swelled up, too. I couldn't bend my wrists because my joints were so sore. It was horrific."

It's far worse than dealing with proselytizing Mormons. And, yes, you can get it here in the U.S. as well, especially in Florida and Texas.

"We know now that Key West is a high-risk area for dengue and we could have ongoing dengue outbreaks again," said the report's lead author, Carina Blackmore, from the Florida Department of Health. However, if people use air conditioners and screens and stay inside during hot, muggy days there is little chance dengue will become endemic, she said.

Dengue remains a leading cause of illness and death in tropical areas but was largely thought to be absent from the United States since the 1950s.

However, in 2009, 27 people living in Key West came down with illness via locally acquired infections, and then 66 more residents contracted the illness in 2010, the researchers report. The outbreak seems to have eased since then, with no cases reported in 2011.

...Because Key West has a large population of the type of mosquitoes that transmit dengue, called the "house mosquito," Blackmore's team decided to investigate the size of the outbreak there. They identified a number of cases and found that people who got dengue were less likely to use air conditioning, and they often had birdbaths or other types of containers where the mosquitoes could breed.

Blackmore noted that dengue is not transmitted person to person, but from humans to mosquitoes and then back to humans again. However, trying to eradicate house mosquitoes has never been successful, she said, because of where they tend to propagate. "House mosquitoes are lazy mosquitoes-- they breed in [even] very small containers," she said.

Eating Healthy In Mérida, Yucatán

2012-01-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

Roland had some kind of pork thing

I rented a house in Mérida to kick back and use as a base to explore the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula of southeastern Mexico, the old Mayan Empire-- and to follow up on some leads about Mitt Romney's being a longtime worshipper of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec and Mayan feathered serpent god that the Mormons believe is the resurrected Jesus Christ. But in between... you gotta eat.

Today when we got back from tracking down an old family of Mormon polygamists near Uxmal-- with Romney connections from when the two families first fled America to live in Mexico in the 1800s so they could keep the polygamy hustle (like they still do in Arizona)-- we ate at a Greek/Italian restaurant in the neighborhood, Rescoldos. Their garden dining immediately transported us to Europe and the food was like nothing we've been eating in Mexico. Michael, who lives in NY and spent last summer in Italy, says his ravioli (stuffed with brie and garlic) was the best ravioli he'd ever tasted anywhere. I had scruptuous vegetarian moussaka that was better than any vegetarian Moussaka I ever found in Greece. Everything was delicious and fresh and very inexpensive. What a place!

Finding good vegetarian food isn't easy in Mérida and I had given up when we found Rescoldos. People here eat pork, lots of it. A the food tends to mostly be fried. Healthy eating doesn't seem to be much of a preoccupation. There's a long-time "vegetarian" restaurant that all the guide books hype, Amaro, just down from the Zocolo in the heart of touristville. It's not bad and there are a few vegetarian dishes (in the broadest sense of the word) but... it's not what I was looking for. Way across town is a franchise place called 100% Natural (near Sam's Club). They have these in Cancun and other Mexican resort towns. It reeks plastic and it's not worth the long bus ride. And we met this guy Pedro who has big dreams and a small new vegetarian placed called 2012 (on Calle 62 right near all the tourist action). It wasn't bad-- but not as good as Pedro's dreams. It was the closest thing to vegetarian though.

Ironically, the organic food you can only buy at a market called Superama here but that we eat in California, mostly comes from Mexico-- but from barren northwest Mexico, Baja California. The NY Times got into it this weekend.

Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’-- that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as overexploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.

They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.

To carry the Agriculture Department’s organic label on their produce, farms in the United States and abroad must comply with a long list of standards that prohibit the use of synthetic fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, for example. But the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability, even though the 1990 law that created the standards was intended to promote ecological balance and biodiversity as well as soil and water health.

...While the original organic ideal was to eat only local, seasonal produce, shoppers who buy their organics at supermarkets, from Whole Foods to Walmart, expect to find tomatoes in December and are very sensitive to price. Both factors stoke the demand for imports. Few areas in the United States can farm organic produce in the winter without resorting to energy-guzzling hothouses. In addition, American labor costs are high. Day laborers who come to pick tomatoes in this part of Baja make about $10 a day, nearly twice the local minimum wage. Tomato pickers in Florida may earn $80 a day in high season.

What a great big interconnected world. I wonder if President Romney would set up a shrine to Quetzalcoatl in the White House. I hope we never find out. Here's a photo of me at Chichen Itza, a sacred site where the feathered Mayan serpent god was worshipped. And below that is a Mormon picture at Chichen Itza that represents Quetzalcoatal as the resurrected Jesus. Bishop Willard Romney, the same guy who's running for president under the assumed name "Mitt" Romney, teaches this version of... whatever it is.

Side Trip From Merída-- Beautiful Campeche... How Safe?

2011-12-23T19:29:00.000-08:00

Lovely Campeche... ready for tourists to start arriving

We picked the Yucatán for our December vacation for a few reasons-- from curiosity about the Mayan culture to the warm weather; it's around 90-something by mid-day, although the early mornings and nights are cool. We rented an indoor-outdoor living house in ancient downtown Merída, the capital of the province. The house is so alluring, whole days pass when no one even thinks about unbolting the big doors and gate and going out. The house is it's own biosphere. And it feels very safe (not counting the damn mosquitos). In fact, we picked the Yucatán because of it's reputation as a safe haven in the never-ending Mexican violence maelstrom. But that was before we read about eleven decapitated bodies found just outside Merída a few years ago.

Yesterday we took an ADO bus-- a nice comfy one-- from Merída to the capital of the next province over Campeche. The city is also Campeche and it's sleepy, charming, a world heritage site and all painted and cobbled and ready to be discovered by tourists. But tourists are mostly afraid of Mexico in general so Campeche, just two and a half hours from Merída, is still sleepy. They don't care; they found oil off the coast. About 200,000 people live in the gem of a baroque colonial city, which was founded in 1540 on top of the ruins of an old Mayan city Canpech. Anyway, back to the bus. It was around $20 each way if I remember correctly and it took about 3 hours to get back because the nice highway stops every now and then for construction and you have to trundle along slowly in one lane-- harder in the dark. And police roadblocks stop you and search the vehicles, ostensibly looking for Guatemalan "illigals" who would like to get jobs in the glittery tourist mecca, Cancún. But Roland told me that Los Zetas, a paramilitary drug cartel, sometimes pull buses over and rob everyone. It made for some excitment every time we got pulled over. But nothing happened. Apparently, Los Zetas-- or some facsimile thereof-- were busy just north of where we were yesterday.

Three U.S. citizens traveling to spend the holidays with their relatives in Mexico were among those killed in a spree of shooting attacks on buses in northern Mexico, authorities from both countries said Friday.

A group of five gunmen attacked three buses in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Thursday, killing a total of seven passengers in what authorities said appeared to be a violent robbery spree.

...Rocha said the other bus passengers killed in the attacks were a young Mexican couple, who left behind a three-month-old baby boy, who survived the attack. A bus driver was also killed.

Five gunmen who allegedly carried out the attacks were later killed by soldiers.
Earlier in their spree, the gunmen shot to death three people and killed a fourth with grenade in the nearby town of El Higo, Veracruz.

On Thursday, the U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros, a Mexican border city north of where the attacks occurred, said in a statement that "several vehicles," including the buses, were attacked, but did not specify what the other vehicles were.

The consulate urged Americans to "exercise caution" when traveling in Veracruz, and "avoid intercity road travel at night."

On the other hand, Merída is nicknamed the city of peace, the real estate market is booming, and the food is yummy, ... but I feel like I should report on that next time.

Danger Lurks For Airline Passengers-- Germs Are Out To Get You

2011-12-20T09:06:00.000-08:00

Last week Lee Rogers, a Los Angeles-based physician running for Congress, explained why he would work to ban airport x-ray body scanners. The health concerns are legitimate and powerful and the risks are imposed on us by government. There's another more immediate health risk involved with flying and this one isn't imposed by government. Today's Wall Street Journal runs through the viruses and bacteria that wait in prey for airline passengers, especially at this time of the year. And all government has done are make some toothless recommendations to the airlines-- recommendations the bottom-line oriented airlines routinely ignore.

Air travelers suffer higher rates of disease infection, research has shown. One study pegged the increased risk for catching a cold as high as 20%. And the holidays are a particularly infectious time of year, with planes packed full of families with all their presents--and all those germs.

Air that is recirculated throughout the cabin is most often blamed. But studies have shown that high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters on most jets today can capture 99.97% of bacterial and virus-carrying particles. That said, when air circulation is shut down, which sometimes happens during long waits on the ground or for short periods when passengers are boarding or exiting, infections can spread like wildfire.

One well-known study in 1979 found that when a plane sat three hours with its engines off and no air circulating, 72% of the 54 people on board got sick within two days. The flu strain they had was traced to one passenger. For that reason, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an advisory in 2003 to airlines saying that passengers should be removed from planes within 30 minutes if there's no air circulation, but compliance isn't mandatory.

Much of the danger comes from the mouths, noses and hands of passengers sitting nearby. The hot zone for exposure is generally two seats beside, in front of and behind you, according to a study in July in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A number of factors increase the odds of bringing home a souvenir cough and runny nose. For one, the environment at 30,000 feet enables easier spread of disease. Air in airplanes is extremely dry, and viruses tend to thrive in low-humidity conditions. When mucous membranes dry out, they are far less effective at blocking infection. High altitudes can tire the body, and fatigue plays a role in making people more susceptible to catching colds, too.

Also, viruses and bacteria can live for hours on some surfaces--some viral particles have been found to be active up to a day in certain places. Tray tables can be contaminated, and seat-back pockets, which get stuffed with used tissues, soiled napkins and trash, can be particularly skuzzy. It's also difficult to know what germs are lurking in an airline's pillows and blankets.

Research has shown how easily disease can spread. Tracing influenza transmission on long-haul flights in 2009 with passengers infected with the H1N1 flu strain, Australian researchers found that 2% passengers had the disease during the flight and 5% came down within a week after landing. Coach-cabin passengers were at a 3.6% increased risk of contracting H1N1 if they sat within two rows of someone who had symptoms in-flight. That increased risk for post-flight disease doubled to 7.7% for passengers seated in a two-seat hot zone.

...[S]ome basic precautions passengers can take to keep coughs away.

Hydrate. Drinking water and keeping nasal passages moist with a saline spray can reduce your risk of infection.

Clean your hands frequently with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. We often infect ourselves, touching mouth, nose or eyes with our own hands that have picked up something.

Use a disinfecting wipe to clean off tray tables before using.

Avoid seat-back pockets.

Open your air vent, and aim it so it passes just in front of your face. Filtered airplane air can help direct airborne contagions away from you.

Change seats if you end up near a cougher, sneezer or someone who looks feverish. That may not be possible on very full flights, but worth a try. One sneeze can produce up to 30,000 droplets that can be propelled as far as six feet.

Raise concerns with the crew if air circulation is shut off for an extended period.

Avoid airline pillows and blankets (if you find them).

...You think the plane is bad? Security checkpoints harbor a host of hazards as well, researchers say.

People get bunched up in lines, where there is plenty of coughing and sneezing. Shoes are removed and placed with other belongings into plastic security bins, which typically don't get cleaned after they go through the scanner.

A National Academy of Sciences panel is six months into a two-year study that is taking samples at airport areas to try to pinpoint opportunities for infection.

With limited resources, airports and airlines have asked researchers to help figure out where best to target prevention, said Dr. Mark Gendreau of Boston's Lahey Clinic Medical Center who is on the panel.

Check-in kiosks and baggage areas are other prime suspects in addition to security lines, he said.

Ever Wonder What Medical Doctors Have To Say About Airport X-Ray Body Scanners?

2011-12-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

Dr. Lee Rogers is the Simi Valley surgeon running for the L.A.-area House seat which GOP fossil Buck McKeon is still clinging to. Although his campaign has focused like a laser beam on the economy, jobs and housing, it's always fascinating when he gets into topics that sit at the intersection of politics and medicine. This week his campaign called for a ban on airport body scans.

"Currently, there are about 250 body scanners that use X-rays placed in American airports by the Transportation Security Administration which have screened millions of passengers. Last year, a report by the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety, which includes the European Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency, and the World Health Organization, concluded that pregnant women and children should not be subject to the scanning, even though the radiation dose from body scanners is small. The Committee also stated that governments must justify the additional risk posed to passengers and should consider other technologies to achieve the same end without the use of radiation. Recently, the European Commission banned the use of X-ray body scanners in all European Union airports, citing the health and safety concerns.”

“The TSA’s use of these devises violates an important principle in radiation safety: humans should not be radiated unless there is some possible medical benefit. The devices used for security screening are not subject to FDA regulations for safety, unlike X-ray machines in a doctor’s office. Additionally, TSA officers are prohibited from wearing radiation dosimeter badges, as worn by healthcare workers to track their radiation exposure.”

“It is obvious that the use of this risky X-ray technology is the result of the culture in Washington. The manufacturer of the X-ray device is a California company called Rapiscan Systems which has more than tripled their lobbying cash in the past 5 years. The health and well being of our citizens should not be for sale.”

“As Congressman, I would work to stop the use of radiating devices for human screening that serve no medical benefit and I call on others in Congress to do the same. I would ensure that any future research on X-ray screening devices for humans meets the same ethical and safety standards that are required of medical devices emitting radiation. I would also fight to allow workers who operate X-ray machinery for baggage screening to wear radiation detector badges for their safety.”

Mérida-- In The Heartland Of The Mayan People... Or What's Left Of Them

2011-12-11T15:51:00.000-08:00

Roland loves Guatemala, especially the people, and he's always pushing that we go down there. We're about the leave for the other half of the Mayan homeland, Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. We rented a house with our friends Helen and Michael for a few weeks in Mérida, the sleepy, romantic, tropical old colonial capital. I have a very queasy feeling about the Mayan people, primarily because how horrifically they're been treated by my government which-- let's be real-- represents me.

Roland and Helen seem to always feel validated when some NY Times travel writer does a piece on one of our destinations. My response is always "Yecchhhh." These Times travel writers are clueless and always between a year and ten years late to any travel trend. But Helen and Roland both forwarded me the lame, even embarrassing 36 Hours in Mérida story from two weeks ago. Like all their "36 Hours In" stories it's written by an idiot for idiots and is never anything like our own excursions to the same places. If we happen to eat in one of the same restaurants or go to one of the same sites they recommend, it's either a coincidence or despite their recommendation. "Yucatecans," the piece begins, "are fiercely proud of their culture, sprinkling their Spanish with Mayan words and quick to recount the stories of resistance and revolution that set this region apart from the rest of Mexico for centuries." Nothing, though about the exploitation and slaughter of Mayans in our own lifetimes, and not by Spanish conquistadors, but at the direction of our own glorious CIA. More of that below, from a post I ran this weekend at DownWithTyranny. The Times travel section isn't political and they continue that Mérida is "one of the safest in Mexico, is an architectural jewel, and has one of the country’s largest historic centers outside Mexico City. Block after block of houses dating to the mid-19th century and earlier are in the midst of a restoration boom, and the city’s cultural and restaurant scenes are flourishing." We rented a house in the middle of town and all I can think of is resting, relaxing and, at some point, when I'm rested and relaxed-- the weather is balmy and the temperature around 90-- we'll go explore the old Mayan ruins in the vicinity-- on the Mexican side of the border.

It's always very sad to be writing about Guatemala-- sad and, as an American, shameful. What we've done to the people of that country is beyond conceivable and probably damns every single one of us to a special collective circle of hell. Last summer, in the context of our heroic unleashing of the hounds of hell on Libya, we looked at Glen Yeadon's observations of the bloody U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1953

In 1953 the CIA also intervened in Guatemala, and regarded the action as a success. For what reasons they regarded the operation as success can be only guess at for what followed was a bloody civil war that lasted 36 years. Once again this intervention fits the model perfectly. The legally elected government of Arbenz was reform minded. The center piece of his reforms was land reform. In an overwhelmingly rural nation only 2.2% of the population owned 70% of the land. Prior to the 1944 revolution and ousting of the dictatorship of Ubico, the army was used to rope farm labors together for delivery to low-land farms where they were kept as debt slaves. The expropriation of large uncultivated tracts of land to landless peasants, improvement in the rights of unions and other social reforms were hurting the bottom line of United Fruit. Arbenz even constructed a port on the Atlantic to compete against the port controlled by United Fruit, likewise a public hydro-electric plant was constructed for the same reasons.

The position of United Fruit inside Guatemala was essentially one of a country within a country. United Fruit owned the country's telephone and telegraph systems, administered the country's only Atlantic port, monopolized banana exports and a subsidiary owned the rail system. In the US United Fruit had close ties to the Dulles brothers, various state department officials, congressmen and the US Ambassador to the UN. The former CIA Director, Walter Bedell Smith was seeking an executive position with United Fruit at the same time he was planing the Guatemala coup. He later was named to the board of directors of United Fruit.

The first plan to oust Arbenz was given by Truman as a response to Guatemala receiving arms from Czechoslovakia and the implied communism threat but was canceled. After the election of Eisenhower the plan was put into effect. The Guatemala coup also provides and ideal example of how the CIA manipulates the American opinion. After first being tried in Guatemala this technique has been employed throughout South America. It involves the CIA planting an article in the foreign press the article is then picked up by the news wires and newspapers in other countries. Besides the obvious multiplier effect upon the potential audience it has the appearance of an independent world opinion. Incidentally it was the same tactic that Bush tried to use against Clinton in the 1992 election.

The immediate after effects of the coup was draconian, within four months 72,000 was labeled as communist, many who were tortured and murdered. It is known that the U.S. Ambassador John Peurifoy had a long list of names of leaders that the successor government was to assassinate. Agrarian reform was stopped and the land already expropriated was given back to United Fruit. Union leaders turned up dead. Three quarters of the population was disenfranchised by barring illiterates from the polls and all political parties, unions and peasant organizations were outlawed...

The blood bath and carnage that followed for the next 36 years can only be described as horrific A genocidal war was carried on against the native Indians. Murders, kidnappings and disappearances became widespread and everyday occurrences as right wing death squads roamed the countryside. The report on Guatemala as a first step to reconciliation states that the army is blamed for over 200,000 deaths and disappearances. Below are some extracts from that report:
"Of the 42,000 deaths investigated in the report, the army was found to be responsible for 93 percent. Three percent were the work of the leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, and 4 percent were unresolved. The report found that 29,000 of the investigated deaths involved summary executions.

Most of the victims were civilians and Mayan Indians... [T]he government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some state operations."

It was "clearly genocide and a planned strategy against the civilian population," said Christian Tomuschat, a German citizen who heads the three-member commission. "Government forces... blindly pursued the anti-communist fight, without respecting any legal principle or even the most elemental ethical or religious values."

In 626 massacres, the report found that government forces "completely exterminated Mayan communities, destroyed their dwellings, livestock and crops." The guerrillas were blamed for 32 such massacres, the report said."

Guatemala also provides us with the first example of the right wing death squads that have became so much a part of South American politics. Those death squads and the dictators that employ them are products of the CIA-Military intelligence system of the US. They lead directly to the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.

In reading Corey Robin's new book, The Reactionary Mind I came across a review he wrote for the London Review of Books in 2004 of Greg Granlin's Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. How could any serious examination of the reactionary mind-- particularly the American reactionary mind-- not deal with the enormity of what was visited (by reactionary minds) on the Mayan native people of Guatemala, the ones whose ancestors had managed to escape being slaughtered in previous centuries by Spanish imperialists? And whose reactionary mind-- albeit an extraordinarily weak one-- would be better to start with than Ronald Reagan's?

On 5 December 1982, Ronald Reagan met the Guatemalan president, Efraín Ríos Montt, in Honduras. It was a useful meeting for Reagan. ‘Well, I learned a lot,’ he told reporters on Air Force One. ‘You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries.’ It was also a useful meeting for Ríos Montt. Reagan declared him ‘a man of great personal integrity... totally dedicated to democracy’, and claimed that the Guatemalan strongman was getting ‘a bum rap’ from human rights organisations for his military’s campaign against leftist guerrillas. The next day, one of Guatemala’s elite platoons entered a jungle village called Las Dos Erres and killed 162 of its inhabitants, 67 of them children. Soldiers grabbed babies and toddlers by their legs, swung them in the air, and smashed their heads against a wall. Older children and adults were forced to kneel at the edge of a well, where a single blow from a sledgehammer sent them plummeting below. The platoon then raped a selection of women and girls it had saved for last, pummelling their stomachs in order to force the pregnant among them to miscarry. They tossed the women into the well and filled it with dirt, burying an unlucky few alive. The only traces of the bodies later visitors would find were blood on the walls and placentas and umbilical cords on the ground.

Amid the hagiography surrounding Reagan’s death in June, it was probably too much to expect the media to mention his meeting with Ríos Montt. After all, it wasn’t Reykjavik. But Reykjavik’s shadow-- or that cast by Reagan speaking in front of the Berlin Wall-- does not entirely explain the silence about this encounter between presidents. While it’s tempting to ascribe the omission to American amnesia, a more likely cause is the deep misconception about the Cold War under which most Americans labour. To the casual observer, the Cold War was a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, fought and won through stylish jousting at Berlin, antiseptic arguments over nuclear stockpiles, and the savvy brinkmanship of American leaders. Latin America seldom figures in popular or even academic discussion of the Cold War, and to the extent that it does, it is Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua rather than Guatemala that earn most of the attention.

But, as Greg Grandin shows in The Last Colonial Massacre, Latin America was as much a battleground of the Cold War as Europe, and Guatemala was its front line. In 1954, the US fought its first major contest against Communism in the Western hemisphere when it overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, who had worked closely with the country’s small but influential Communist Party. That coup sent a young Argentinian doctor fleeing to Mexico, where he met Fidel Castro. Five years later, Che Guevara declared that 1954 had taught him the impossibility of peaceful, electoral reform and promised his followers that ‘Cuba will not be Guatemala.’ In 1966, Guatemala was again the pacesetter, this time pioneering the ‘disappearances’ that would come to define the dirty wars of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil. In a lightning strike, US-trained security officials captured some thirty leftists, tortured and executed them, and then dropped most of their corpses into the Pacific. Explaining the operation in a classified memo, the CIA wrote: ‘The execution of these persons will not be announced and the Guatemalan government will deny that they were ever taken into custody.’ With the 1996 signing of a peace accord between the Guatemalan military and leftist guerrillas, the Latin American Cold War finally came to an end-- in the same place it had begun-- making Guatemala’s the longest and most lethal of the hemisphere’s civil wars. Some 200,000 men, women and children were dead, virtually all at the hands of the military: more than were killed in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua and El Salvador combined, and roughly the same number as were killed in the Balkans. Because the victims were primarily Mayan Indians, Guatemala today has the only military in Latin America deemed by a UN-sponsored truth commission to have committed acts of genocide.

And one more thing from Corey Robin about what this whole reactionary mind actually wrought for us-- us being Americans... American taxpayers... we, us... you and me. What we defeated in Guatemala and Latin America wasn't "Communism." It was, in Robin's words, "the defeat of a continental social democracy which would allow citizens to exercise a greater share of power-– and to receive a greater share of its benefits-– than historically had been their due... [and] the defeat of that still elusive dream of men and women freeing themselves, thanks to their own reason and willed effort, from the bonds of tradition and oppression." Remember what we saw about the end of serfdom in Russia last week? The U.S. fought hard to preserve that in Guatemala into very recent times.

[I]n Latin America, Grandin shows, it was the left who took up the Enlightenment’s banner, leaving the United States and its allies carrying the black bag of the counter-Enlightenment. More than foisting on the United States the unwanted burden of liberal hypocrisy, the Cold War inspired it to embrace some of the most reactionary ideals and revanchist characters of the 20th century.

According to Grandin, the Latin American left brought liberalism and progress to a land awash in feudalism. Well into the 20th century, he shows, Guatemala’s coffee planters presided over a regime of forced labour that was every bit as medieval as tsarist Russia. Using vagrancy laws and the lure of easy credit, the planters amassed vast estates and a workforce of peasants who essentially belonged to them. Reading like an excerpt from Gogol’s Dead Souls, one advertisement from 1922 announced the sale of ‘5000 acres and many mozos colonos who will travel to work on other plantations’. (Mozos colonos were indebted labourers.) While unionised workers elsewhere were itemising what their employers could and could not ask of them, Guatemala’s peasants were forced to provide a variety of compulsory services, including sex. Two planters in the Alta Verapaz region, cousins from Boston, used their Indian cooks and corn grinders to sire more than a dozen children. ‘They fucked anything that moved,’ a neighbouring planter observed. Though plantations were mini-states-– with private jails, stockades and whipping posts-– planters also depended on the army, judges, mayors and local constables to force workers to submit to their will. Public officials routinely rounded up independent or runaway peasants, shipping them off to plantations or forcing them to build roads. One mayor had local vagrants paint his house. As much as anything Grandin cites, it is this view of political power as a form of private property which confirms his observation that by 1944 ‘only five Latin America countries-– Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica and Colombia-– could nominally call themselves democracies.’

I Hope You Used Up All Those American Frequent Flier Miles-- I Wish I Had

2011-11-29T05:12:00.000-08:00

AMR filed for bankruptcy early this morning in New York City. Their Frequent Flier miles are now what is called "a general unsecured claim" and it's far from certain that they'll be useable. Or maybe they'll make a deal-- like a million miles for an upgrade to business class or an extra checked bag-- maybe even a roundtrip on a day you don't want to fly to a destination you would never want to go. Rothschild, Inc., one of the sleaziest and most predatory Wall Street financial firms anywhere in the world is their financial advisor. Rothschild specializes in advising their clients how to screw everyone, especially consumers. From their press release:

"But as we have made clear with increasing urgency in recent weeks, we must address our cost structure, including labor costs, to enable us to capitalize on these foundational strengths and secure our future. Our very substantial cost disadvantage compared to our larger competitors, all of which restructured their costs and debt through Chapter 11, has become increasingly untenable given the accelerating impact of global economic uncertainty and resulting revenue instability, volatile and rising fuel prices, and intensifying competitive challenges.

"Our Board decided that it was necessary to take this step now to restore the Company's profitability, operating flexibility, and financial strength. We are committed to working as quickly and efficiently as possible to appropriately restructure American so that it can emerge from Chapter 11 well-positioned to assure the Company's long term viability and its ability to compete effectively in the marketplace," Horton stated.

Sounds like the first target will be the airline's labor unions. Bloomberg reminds us that American was the last major airline in the United States to resist filing for Chapter 11 in an effort to shed contracts, a move that analysts said left it less nimble than many of its competitors. They had to sit out "a round of mergers that dropped it from the world’s largest airline to No. 3 in the U.S."

They'll be operating normally and they claim that they'll honor all Frequent Flier miles. Board chair Gerard Arpey is retiring and Thomas Horton has been named new chairman and chief executive. Last year American was the only major carrier not to turn a profit and looks like it will announce losing numbers for 2011 as well.

Visit Ancient, Exotic Mali? Safety Revisited

2011-11-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

Amanar restaurant, smack in the center of Timbuktu

Almost 3 years ago to the week, I posted a story I wrote from Mali, How Safe Is Mali For American Tourists? At the time, I concluded that it was very safe and I even made light of the State Department prohibition on Peace Corp volunteers traveling to Timbuktu or anywhere north of there-- not that really is anything other than the vast wastes of the Sahara Desert north of there anyway. But Timbuktu is one of the best destinations in Mali and a major reason to travel to that country. Turns out, though, the State Department knew what they were talking about. Four tourists were kidnapped from a central Timbuktu restaurant, Amanar, in broad daylight and one was executed when he refused to get into the kidnappers' truck in front of the restaurant. The dead man was German and the three now missing are from Sweden, Holland and South Africa. The government of Mali ordered a plane to evacuate foreigners back to Bamako, the capital.

Until a few years ago, Timbuktu was one of the most visited destinations in Africa, but it is now one of the many former tourist hotspots in Mali that have been deemed too dangerous to visit by foreign embassies because of kidnappings by the local chapter of al-Qaida.

Friday's incident comes after two French citizens were grabbed in the middle of the night from their hotel in the Malian town of Hombori on Thursday. French judicial officials have opened a preliminary investigation into their kidnappings.

Neither kidnapping has yet been claimed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, whose members have kidnapped and ransomed more than 50 Europeans and Canadians since 2003.

If Friday's kidnapping is by AQIM, it will mark the first time they have taken a hostage inside of Timbuktu's city limits. Thursday's kidnapping would be another first-- the first hostage taking south of the Niger River.

In October the State Department issued a new travel alert warning against all travel to the north of the country due to kidnapping threats against Westerners.

The Department of State notes that the U.S. Embassy in Bamako has designated northern regions of Mali as "restricted without prior authorization" for purposes of travel by U.S. government employees, contractors, grantees, and their dependents. Prior to traveling to these areas, U.S. government employees in Mali are required to have the written approval of the U.S. Ambassador to Mali. This designation is based on the presence of AQIM, as well as banditry in the region. This restriction does not apply to travelers who are not associated with the U.S. government, but should be taken into account when planning travel. The restriction is in effect for the regions of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu.

U.S. citizens are specifically reminded that these areas include the Timbuktu site of the popular Festival au Desert music festival, as well as the sites in the regions of Kidal and Gao where many other musical and cultural festivals are traditionally held between December and February. It should be noted that-- in addition to the potential terrorist and criminal threats-- these festivals are located in particularly remote locations, and the Malian authorities would have extreme difficulty rendering assistance should an emergency occur at any of them.

And it isn't only the U.S. State Department warning tourists away from Mali. European countries have been telling their nationals since April that Mali is too dangerous to visit.

• We advise against all travel to the northern provinces of Mali. This includes the provinces of Kidal, Gao, Koulikoro (north of Mourdiah), Ségou (north of Niono), Tombouctou (including the city of Tombouctou (Timbuktu)), Mopti, and areas bordering Mauritania east of Nioro in the Kayes province.

• There is a high threat from terrorism in Mali. Terrorists have been involved in kidnaps in the region, on a number of occasions leading to the murder of the hostages. We believe that further kidnap attempts are likely.

• On 19 April the Embassy of France in Bamako (Mali) alerted its nationals of a “very high risk” of being kidnapped in Mali and Niger particularly between the city of Mopti and the border with Burkina Faso.

• There have been reports of kidnap threats against westerners attending festivals in Mali. The festival in Anderamboukane, which takes place in an area of Mali that we advise against all travel to was postponed earlier in the year due to security concerns. In 2009 a British national who attended this festival was subsequently kidnapped and murdered. Bookings are already being taken for 2012 festivals in areas of northern Mali to which we currently advise against all travel.

Bangkok Under Water

2011-10-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

I lost count of how many times I've been to Thailand years ago. It's been one of my favorite countries for decades and-- aside from specific Thailand trips-- any time I go to Asia, I always try to spend at least a week in Bangkok or Phuket or Chiang Mai. A few weeks ago we saw how there is a big threat of flooding and of Bangkok sinking into the sea, but we looked at predictions that Bangkok would be underwater by 2030. Looks like the timetable got moved up by two decades!

Severe flooding in Thailand on Friday threatened central areas of Bangkok, a bustling capital barely above sea level and facing inundation at the next high tide predicted at 13 feet.

Residents who decided to stay in their homes despite government pleas to get out waited anxiously to see if the highest tide, forecast for Saturday afternoon, would overwhelm defenses along the Chao Phraya River and its many canals.

Bangkok's outer suburbs were already submerged but the central city had been largely spared the misery Thailand has been suffering for months in the nation's worst flooding since 1942.

...The high tide Saturday, the Red Cross said, will put "extreme pressure" on Bangkok's elaborate system of dikes and other flood defenses.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered work crews Friday to cut channels in roadways to allow faster water drainage, according to the state-run MCOT news agency. But the plan was rejected late in the day in favor of dredging canals and using pumps, the Bangkok Post reported.

Health concerns were rising with the water.

Bangkok residents waded through murky waters without knowing what lurked within, the risk of infection and communicable disease worrying health officials. The government sent out crocodile hunters after reports of crocodiles and snakes in the filthy floodwater.

"We were hearing disturbing reports of dangerous animals such as snakes and crocodiles appearing in the floodwaters and every day we see children playing in the water, bathing or wading through it trying to make their way to dry ground," said Annie Bodmer-Roy, spokeswoman for the humanitarian agency Save the Children.

With the Chao Phraya River overflowing its banks, virtually all the city's best hotels are having flooding problems and the old airport-- mostly used for domestic flights these days-- is also flooded. The main tourist areas (Silom and Sukhumvit) are having serious flooding problems. We're talking about a multi-billion dollar industry. Now we rent an apartment (on the river) when we're in Bangkok but one of the hotels we used to always stay at-- the Shangri-La-- reports that their 70-90% occupancy rate for this time of the year is now down to 30%.

UPDATE: Worst Flooding In Generations

Thais are making the best of it but... what else could they do? The flooding has gotten worse, both around Bangkok and in the city itself. Extensive damage to automotive parts factories, computer parts factories and a major pharmaceuticals center are starting to impact the worldwide supply chain, a quarter of the country's rice crop has been wiped out, and the death toll rises every day.

Thousands of people in Thailand have been living in filthy floodwater for some three months-- the most devastating flood the country has seen in decades caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains. More than 400 people have died in the Thailand floods, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

As a protracted battle to stay dry unfolds until the massive pool of stinking water and garbage drains into the Gulf of Thailand, which could take months still, even simple things like disposing of human waste can become complicated.

Tourism is the only thing that's dried up in Bangkok and now it's beginning to impact Phuket and other tourist areas in the southern part of the country. And things could well get worse.

Sex Tourism-- Philippines... And Jamaica: Unrestrained Capitalism Taken To The Extreme

2011-10-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Snow means Sweden

One of my friends has taken to fantasizing out loud about "Swedish girls." He should just go get a dvd; I'm sure there are scores of them on the topic. Instead he keeps asking me about planning a trip with him to Sweden. I should probably tell him that since 1999 it's been illegal to hire a prostitute in Sweden-- and that 10 years later Norway adopted the same approach. It's not illegal for the prostitutes to offer their services... it's illegal for the johns to buy them though (the Kvinnofrid law... try the Google). Brothels are also illegal. I suggested he take his fantasies to Bangkok. I don't know if they have Swedish girls in the brothels-- Roland tells me there are foreign girls working there these days-- but I suspect that if you have enough money to spend, you can get whatever you'd like there... kind of a Randian Republican dream market. Alas, he's programmed against Asian women. Plenty of Caucasians aren't. Asian sex tourism is rampant.

The other day the U.S. Ambassador to the Phillipines, Harry Thomas, was forced to apologize to the whole nation after claiming that 40% of male tourists to that country are there for the sex. He sent a cellphone text Friday to Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who was on a visit to Vietnam, expressing regret for his comments.

"I should not have used the 40% statistic without the ability to back it up. I regret any harm that I may have caused," Thomas said in the text message, which was released to journalists.

The US embassy spokeswoman Tina Malone said Thomas "offered his deep regret" for his comment made during a conference last month.

The US would continue to be a "strong and dedicated partner of the Filipino people in combating the global scourges of human trafficking and sexual tourism," she added.

Thomas also told the conference on human trafficking in the Philippines last month that the sex tourists included Americans and that it was "something I'm not proud of." He urged Philippine authorities to prosecute all foreign sex tourists, including Americans.

The Philippines is trying to revive its tourism industry and erase its reputation as a sex tourism hotspot.

Wikileaks had posted several U.S. diplomatic cables about the rampant sex trade industry-- including the exploitation of children-- in the Philippines. "Sex tourists reportedly came from Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia to engage in sexual activity with minors," said a leaked embassy cable dated February 17, 2010... "In 2009, the Bureau of Immigration deported two foreign sex offenders and pedophiles, and in a joint program with the Australian Federal Police denied entry to 19 Australian sex offenders upon their arrival in the Philippines. The government also cooperated with the US in prosecuting American nationals under the terms of the U.S. PROTECT Act of 2003, which criminalized the commission of child abuse by American nationals overseas, including child pornography and other sexual offenses against a minor." Another leaked cable named Sabang Beach in Puerto Galeraand the province of Mindoro Oriental as well known destinations for sex tourism.

Trafficking of Philippine women and children for sex is an international business. And according to Rene Ofreneo, a former Philippine labor undersecretary and an expert on the sex trade, "the number of prostituted persons in the Philippines is about the size of the country's manufacturing workforce." That same report cites a recent study that showed there are about 75,000 children, who were forced into prostitution due to poverty. The Washington Times reported that "Teen-age girls are being forced into prostitution due to the Asian economic crisis. In Davao City, the Philippines, there are more than 1,000 prostituted teen-age girls; customers pay as little as from 50 cents to $2.50. This rise in prostitution increases the spread of AIDS, especially as contraceptive costs have gone up with the currency collapse and bankrupt government cuts in distribution programs." Most of the customers are Filipinos but the country is one of the top destinations for pedophile sex tourism, much of it financed with Japanese capital.

A Philippine Adventure Tour costs $1,645, including round trip airfare, hotel accommodations and guided tours to the bars where men purchase sex from prostitutes for as little as US $24. Tour owner and operator Allan Gaynor promises that customers "never sleep alone on this tour" and recommends that the customer have sex with a different girl every day "two if you can handle it."

...13,000 Australians, second in number to Americans, a year visit Angeles City, a center of prostitution surrounding the former Clark U.S. Air Force base in the Philippines... Men from Australia and Great Britain are primary suspects as perpetrators of child prostitution in the Philippines. Two of the three-pedophilia cases recently decided by Philippine courts involved British nationals, although there are reportedly more Australian suspects.

Maybe this is where Ambassador Thomas got his statistics:

Maybe while hubby's away exploiting child prostitutes in southeast Asia, his wife is off on a little sex tourism of her own though:

Traveling While Non-White

2011-10-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

A fascinating series of question-- and responses-- were posted in Reddit's travel section recently. The correspondant, who describes himself or herself as an ethnic Chinese who grew up in the U.S., is trying to figure out if it's better to travel abroad as a Chinese or an American citizen. I recall the brisk business in little Canadian flags that American travelers used to sew on their backpacks and jackets at one time-- mostly when there were especially hated and warlike American presidents like Nixon, Reagan and Bush. I'm not sure how far Obama has moved in that direction.

The questions, though, aren't just about Chinese people, not by a long shot.

I'm wondering if non-white travelers face additional challenges while traveling, whether it's racism, unwanted attention, unexpected assumptions by the locals, etc.

For instance:

• What kind of discrimination would non-white travelers face in overwhelmingly white countries like Poland or Russia?

• Are blacks able to blend in while visiting Africa? How about Latinos in Latin America and the Caribbean?

• Are Asians subject to the vicious inter-Asian rivalries while traveling in Asian countries? Do the locals try in vain to converse in their native language?

• Are Indians treated well in Pakistan and vice versa? Do Arabs or Iranians get refused service in Israel?

And, of course, it's the 100+ responses that make the link above worth clicking. No matter what race you are, you'll find these shared experiences worthwhile.

Cusco-- A Video Tour

2011-10-01T17:11:00.000-07:00

Incredible food, profound culture, friendly people, mysteriously impressive history and... free alcohol. Where can you go to find this? Peru. Roland loved it; I missed it but I've been assured that when considering travel plans, Peru and the city of Cusco, in particular, offers something for everyone (not to mention that it's quite affordable). Everything from camping, hiking, bungee jumping, paragliding, fine wine, excellent food and mind boggling scenery can be explored all within a 100 mile span.

If the short blurb above hasn't convinced you, take a peak at this online web-series I've discovered that sets the pace as two young American travelers set forth to explore, the ancient imperial city of the Incas, the town of Cusco. Explore22 is an online travel series from San Francisco's BaseStudio, geared towards all audiences with a focus on helping, discovering and exploring unique communities. You can begin your journey with part 1 of this 4 part web series.

There's More To Australia Than Sydney, or Even Melbourne... Canyoneering With Mark Jenkins

2011-09-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

© Carsten Peter/National Geographic. Cascades of mammoth ferns flourish in the humid air trapped between the narrow walls of Claustral Canyon.

Tuesday the new issue of National Georgaphic comes out with a fascinating essay by one of my favorite adventure travel writers, Mark Jenkins. His 1997 book, To Timbuktu was one of the inspirations for my own trip there two years ago. I doubt however, I'm up to following his trail into Australia's Blue Mountains. "The Swiss," he writes, "have mountains, so they climb. Canadians have lakes, so they canoe. The Australians have canyons, so they go canyoneering, a hybrid form of madness halfway between mountaineering and caving in which you go down instead of up, often through wet tunnels and narrow passageways."

Unlike other places with slot canyons, such as Utah, Jordan, or Corsica, Australia has a rich, deep heritage of canyoneering. In a way, it's an extreme form of bushwalking, something Aborigines were doing tens of thousands of years before Europeans arrived. But without ropes and technical equipment, Aborigines couldn't explore the deepest slots.

Today perhaps thousands of Aussies hike canyons, hundreds descend into them by ropes, but only a handful explore new ones. These driven individuals tend to have a rugby player's legs, knees crosshatched with scar tissue from all the scratches, a penguin's tolerance for frigid water, a wallaby's rock-hopping agility, and a caver's mole-like willingness to crawl into damp, dark holes. They prefer to wear Volleys-- canvas, rubber-soled Dunlop tennis shoes-- ragged shorts, ripped gaiters, and thrift-store fleece. They camp beside tiny campfires and make "jaffles" for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Jaffles are sandwiches containing all manner of ingredients-- including Vegemite, a nasty-tasting yeast extract-- cooked inside fire irons over the flames. Above all they search for the most remote, difficult to access canyons. "The darker, the narrower, the twistier the better," says Dave Noble, one of the most experienced canyoneers in the country. "People say, What if you get stuck in there? But that's what you are after. To be forced to improvise to get yourself out."

His story in National Geographic is set about 4 hours west of Sydney in Kanangra-Boyd National Park and down the Mount Thurat fire trail and then up to the top of Danae Falls. He and his companion are traveling with wet suits, helmets, a rope, harnesses, and lunch in their packs. "It's like rappelling off the edge of a green-cloaked Grand Canyon," he writes.

The walls are covered with moss. Sliding to the inside of the giant stone turns out to be like squeezing into a narrow, ten-story elevator shaft pouring with water. We're forced to swing into the pounding waterfall, an awkward maneuver that slams us both into the rock. But it's worth it: Standing in a pool at the bottom, we easily pull our rope down.

Below the big boulder the slot closes up, and the silky water flows horizontally along the cavelike chamber back out to the edge of the cliff. We still have a thousand feet of air below us. We rappel directly into the bludgeoning waterfall. Halfway down I make the mistake of looking up, and the blast of water almost tears my head off.

The next three descents are just as extraordinary and drop us into hanging ponds of frigid water, like swimming pools midway up a skyscraper. We backstroke across these ponds, using the dry bags in our backpacks for flotation.

I like adventure travel-- a lot; this however is beyond my capacities these days. I'll stick with the thrill of reading about it in National Geographic... and hoping they filmed it and it winds up on TV. Canyoneering is popular in Tasmania too. Looks easy, doesn't it?

Deadly Earthquake In Sikkim And Nepal

2011-09-18T12:16:00.001-07:00

We are often speculating and ruminating about safety and dangers inherent in foreign travel. Somalia, Yemen and Nuevo Laredo are probably better left unvisited these days. Syria too. But how do you factor natural disasters like earthquakes into your travel plans. Today, for example, had you been walking by the British Embassy in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, you might have been one of the 5 people killed by falling bricks when a disastrous earthquake struck on the Nepali-Sikkim border. Hundreds are injured and 18 are reported dead so far but the death total is expected to rise after the 6.8 magnitude quake.

Or you might have been walking along far from the quake, somewhere in northern India-- the whole region shook-- and been trampled by a panic-stricken mob... which is just what happened to a man in Bhagalpur in Bihar. And then there were the two persons were injured in Kathmandu's Central Jail when they tried to make their escape when the quake struck.

We were just in Nepal. The infrastructure-- like all of it-- is fragile and precarious... at best. And the quake rocked the whole country, which is historically marked by what various earthquakes have done in the past, but still totally unprepared for earthquakes from any perspective. Our favorite part of the trip-- aside from trekking in the mountains-- was our visit to Bhaktipur. Here's a photo from Bhaktipur I just found:

We'll update this post as more news comes in on the damage. Meanwhile, remember, disaster can strike almost anywhere. In March Kiplinger offered a list of the 10 American states most at risk of natural and unnatural disaster. It was done in terms of insurance risk but I guess you can take it into account when you make travel plans as well! Top on the list, predicatbly, are hurricane alley states, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas and #4 is New York (terrorist attacks), followed by-- back to hurricanes-- Mississippi. Now tornadoes and cyclones put Oklahoma at #6, tornadoes (no mention of domestic right-wing terrorism) and they close out with Alabama, California ("floods, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and strong Santa Ana winds that fuel wildfires"), Missouri, and Ohio ("more than 30 earthquakes between 2002 and 2007").

The death toll continues to rise and Monday morning there were 48 reported deaths throughout the region. Rescue operations are hampered by bad weather and impassable roads.

24 hours in and the latest death toll is 74 people in India, Nepal and Tibet. It's expected to continue rising as outside forces make their way to outlying regions.

UPDATE: Kathmandu Earthquake Risk Is Something To Take Into Consideration

I loved Kathmandu when I was there in 1971 and I was eager to go back. In the '90s it wasn't as good-- but which place ever is?-- but still fascinating enough for another trip. This summer I was back again-- and that was the last time. The pollution alone is enough to keep anyone sane away. And now scientists are warning that Kathmandu is "a high-risk city unprepared for the next 'Big One'."

Experts say Kathmandu is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world with an overdue earthquake predicted to kill tens of thousands of people and leave survivors cut off from international aid.

British geologist Dave Petley described the latest tremor, which killed eight people in Nepal, as a "wake-up call" for the overcrowded capital, home to two million people and connected to the outside world by just three roads and one airport runway.

...Nepal is a highly seismic region, lying above the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates that created the Himalayas, and major earthquakes have hit the Kathmandu Valley every 75 years on average over recent centuries.

One quake destroyed a quarter of homes in Kathmandu 77 years ago, and geologists believe the area is at immediate risk of an 8.0-magnitude tremor-- ten times the size of last year's Haiti quake which killed more than 225,000 people.

Downtown Kathmandu is a maze of narrow, winding roads where rickshaws and cars jostle with cows to squeeze past dilapidated clay, brick and timber houses.

"The building stock is not seismically strengthened, suggesting that in a big earthquake there will be large numbers of building collapses," said Petley, of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Britain's Durham University.

GeoHazards International, a US-based research group, has measured the likely death toll from a quake of 6.0 magnitude or higher hitting cities in Asia and the Americas.
Kathmandu topped the list of 21 cities with 69,000 potential deaths, ahead of Istanbul and New Delhi.

The Kathmandu Valley has experienced rapid, uncontrolled urbanisation in the past few years and the lack of infrastructure and deep-rooted poverty leaves it desperately under-prepared for an earthquake, experts say.

Building codes are rarely enforced, few emergency drills are carried out, and the fact that Kathmandu lies on the site of a prehistoric lake filled with soft sediment also exacerbates the risk.

The one single-runway airport and all three access roads would likely be destroyed in a major quake, meaning the city could be stranded.

Mexican Gangsters Have A Warning For Bloggers

2011-09-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

I was still a teenager when I started traveling abroad. My first trip was a harebrained decision to spend a summer hitchhiking to the North Pole with my lovely Alabama girlfriend Chris. We actually made it as far as Montreal. The next hitchhiking extravaganza was to Mexico City with my most adventurous school buddy, Robert. After all of our possessions were stolen by our host in San Antonio while we looked at the Alamo, we were assaulted by a knife wielding desperado at the Nuevo Laredo foot bridge who got Robert's watch. We still made it all the way to Mexico City!

I hadn't thought about that bridge, or Nuevo Laredo for that matter, in a number of decades... until this week. I just finished all the details of a trip to the Yucatán-- from renting a great house in Mérida to navigating the treacherous waters of airline booking. (I paid $540 directly on the Continental Airlines website after a Continental phone rep assured my-- several times-- that the cheapest tickets were $1,260.) This week something far worse than being robbed at knifepoint happened on that Nuevo Laredo bridge. The last time I wrote about Mexico it was to mention how safe the tourism bureau claims it is:

[W]e acknowledge there are some issues in some pockets, in some specific locations. To give you an example, Mexico has 2,500 counties. Eighty of those have issues. So does that mean that the entire country has issues? Of course not. Eighty of 2,500 is less than 5 percent. Ninety percent of Americans go to six destinations. The tourist destinations are very far from where we have these issues.

...For us in Mexico, when we talk about the U.S., we don’t say the U.S., we say Orlando, L.A., Washington. If something happened last week, if there was a shooting in East L.A., does that mean you can’t go to Washington? Of course not.

Apparently Nuevo Laredo is one of those pockets with issues.

Placards left with the tortured bodies of two people hanging from a Nuevo Laredo overpass warn that the same fate awaits social media devotees who keep information flowing by text, Twitter, blogs and other means as gangsters muzzle the news media in much of Mexico.

"This is going to happen to all the internet busybodies," said one of the notes signed with a Z, presumably for the Zetas gang that controls Nuevo Laredo. "Listen up, I'm on to you."

Many Mexican newspapers and broadcasters have self-censored under constant gangster siege. Reporters have been killed, newsrooms attacked. Government officials often prove less than forthcoming with timely and accurate information. Twitter, Facebook, blogs and text messaging all have filled the void, becoming primary news sources in scores of Mexican communities, even for family members in the U.S., as gangs battle cartel rivals and security forces.

The messages found in Nuevo Laredo on Tuesday, with the bodies of a man and a woman in their 20s, directly threatened two popular blogs that specialize in reporting gang-related violence.

A post on one of those blogs, Al Rojo Vivo, counseled readers on Wednesday, "Don't be afraid to inform ... It's very difficult that they know who is informing. They are only trying to frighten society." The blog is carried by the website of the Monterrey newspaper El Norte.

While valuable to many residents, social networkers also spread rumors that have panicked communities. Prosecutors last month jailed and charged two people [a math teacher and a grandmother] with "terrorism" for tweeting false reports of gangster attacks on schools in the Gulf Coast port of Veracruz.

Social media reports of other gangster attacks emptied the streets of Veracruz's capital, Xalapa, and other towns last weekend. Suggesting that the terrorism charges were overblown, Veracruz Gov. Javier Duarte nevertheless announced Tuesday that he would propose a new state law against "upsetting the public order."

But governments elsewhere have turned to social media in efforts to keep people informed. City officials in Reynosa, on the Rio Grande downriver from Nuevo Laredo, began tweeting several years ago to warn residents of gangster roadblocks and shoot-outs, blandly referring to them as "risky situations."

Early this year, mainstream media executives agreed with federal officials to scale back on coverage of the criminal slaughter that has killed more than 40,000 people in less than five years.

Many newspapers no longer print photographs of murder victims nor report the contents of threats or other messages left with bodies or in public places. Executives reason that publishing specifics-- including the beheading, dismembering or flaying of victims-- only encourages the gangsters and helps them spread their propaganda.

But Blog del Narco, the second site threatened by the Nuevo Laredo messages, religiously carries close-up shots of the carnage, as well as messages left with bodies or elsewhere. Many of the blog's anonymous posts seem likely to have been penned either by the gangsters themselves or investigating police.

The blog Wednesday published the text of a banner draped by a local criminal syndicate in the violent city of Apatzingan, in western Michoacan state. The sign warned residents to avoid Thursday night's public celebrations that kick off Mexico's Independence Day.

"Be alert for possible threats from the Zetas," reads the banner, signed by local gangsters who call themselves the Knights Templar. "Together we can guard our city and our people from persons who only want to cause harm."

Bloggers, of course, aren't the only people who need to be alert in regard to the Zetas. Yesterday they killed the family of a policeman in connection to the deadly fire-- 52 people died-- they had set at a casino in Monterrey August 25. Is Mexico becoming a failed state? Is it already a failed state?

The murder of the family came on a day of violence in and around Monterrey, in which at least 15 people were killed.

Monterrey and the state of Nuevo Leon have seen rising bloodshed as the Zetas and Gulf cartels vie for control of trafficking routes to the US.

The casino attack was one of the deadliest episodes of violence since President Felipe Calderon launched his crackdown on drug gangs in late 2006.

Gunmen burst into the crowded casino in broad daylight and doused it in petrol before setting it alight.

Panic ensued as people rushed for the exit. Many were overcome by smoke as the building was engulfed in flames.

The attack caused outrage in Mexico, a country that has become accustomed to drug-related violence, with around 40,000 killed in less than five years.

Urban Gadabout reminder for NYers: James Renner's series of Northern Manhattan walks starts tomorrow (Sept. 11)

2011-09-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Morris-Jumel Mansion, on Jumel Terrace in Washington Heights

by Ken

For six Sundays at noon, starting tomorrow and running through October 16, the official historian of Manhattan Community District 12 is offering walking tours of selected locations in "WAHI," the Northern Manhattan neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood, plus little Marble Hill, which on maps looks like it should be part of the Bronx but is actually part of Manhattan. (I listed the subjects of the individual tours in my last post on the subject.)

Sunday, September 11, 2011, 12:00 noon
JUMEL TERRACE HISTORIC DISTRICT & SUGAR HILL

JUMEL TERRACE HISTORIC DISTRICT & SUGAR HILL are noted for the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Sylvan Terrace and the moes of famous African American entertainers Paul Robeson, Count Basie and Duke Ellington at 555 Edgecombe Avenue. The area is home to a local bookstore and the Washington Heights branch of the New York Public Library. Nearby Coogan's Bluff is where baseball fans watched the New York Giants play at the Polo Grounds at 155th Street.

There is an admission fee to the Morris-Jumel Mansion; $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and students.

DATE: Sunday, September 11, 2011
TIME: 12:00 noon
MEET: 160th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in front of the Library

I've been grappling with scheduling conflicts for a number of the six WAHI tours (which are $15, $10 for seniors and students) but have managed to keep tomorrow clear for this one, which syncs wondefully with the free "Highbridge Park Hike" -- essentially along the upper edge of Coogan's Bluff -- I did in July with expert urban geologist Sidney Horenstein. We started that walk at the lower edge of the park (and the bluff), on 155th Street opposite the northern edge of the famous northern Harlem enclave of Sugar Hill.

Maybe You'd Better Move That Trip To Bangkok Up A Little Sooner

2011-09-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's been following this blog has probably noticed that I'm a big fan of Thailand. I gave up counting how many times I've been there after a dozen. Whenever we go to Asia, we always try to spend some time in Bangkok on the way there or on the way back, like we just did on our trip to Nepal a couple months ago. The people, the food, the varied cultural offerings make Thailand one of the world's-- if not the world's-- best tourist destinations. So I'm sure I wasn't the only person alarmed at the headline in today's Guardian proclaiming the risk of Bangkok sinking into the sea. No doubt Pat Robertson or Michele Bachmann will soon by croaking that it's God's punishment for a pervasive climate of tolerance there-- though no one seems to be addressing God's decision to burn down Texas, despite big-tent prayer events led by the state shaman, Rick Perry. But no matter the craziness of American right-wing politics, the gloomiest assessments are that parts of Bangkok will be underwater by 2030.

Driving into town from the new airport, I'm always struck by the number of new highrises that are always going up in Bangkok-- all those huge cranes... more than I've ever seen in an American city. It's almost like China! But then there are parts of Thornburi on the other side of the river, way up beyond where the tourist hotels are, where life is entirely on the water. We love spending days in longtail boats cruising the canals and getting into the slow pace of life in these parts of the city-- even though it feels like you're in the countryside. Regardless of delusional Republican Party ideology and their bizarre self-destructive dogma, Thai's know why their capital city is sinking.

Several factors – climate change, rising sea level, coastal erosion, shifting clay soil-- are threatening the great city on the Chao Phraya delta, founded in April 1782 by the first monarch belonging to the Chakri dynasty, still ruling today.

The population has greatly increased, with about 10 million people now living in the city and its suburbs. Even the weight of the skyscrapers, constantly on the rise in a conurbation in the throes of perpetual change, is contributing to Bangkok's gradual immersion. Much of the metropolis is now below sea level and the ground is subsiding by 1.5 to 5cm a year.

In the medium to long term more than 1m buildings, 90% of which are residential, are under threat from the rising sea level. In due course the ground floors of buildings could be awash with 10cm of water for part of the year, according to the Asian Institute of Technology.

In the port of Samunt Prakan, about 15 km downstream from the capital, the residents of detached houses along the river already spend several months a year up to their ankles in water.

A joint report published in December by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Japan's International Co-operation Agency highlighted the threat from climate change to three Asian mega-cities: Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila.

Illegal tapping of groundwater is one of the causes of the capital's misfortunes, according to Jan Bojo, a World Bank expert based there. Not all the specialists endorse this view, but they do agree the situation is bound to deteriorate over the next few years. Smith Dharmasaroja, the head of the National Disaster Warning Centre, is predicting that by 2100 Bangkok will have become a new Atlantis. However gloomy this may seem, Dharmasaroja's forecasts are taken seriously. In the 1990s he predicted the fearful tsunami which devastated countries round the Indian Ocean in 2004.

Dharmasaroja maintains that "no decision has been taken" at government level "to stop the problem." And, he adds, if nothing is done Bangkok could be underwater by 2030.

One of the solutions he has suggested is to build a series of dykes along the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, a scheme which would cost well over $2bn. He says work should start immediately, otherwise it will be too late to halt the chain of events leading to disaster.

Anond Snidvongs, an oceanographer and specialist on climate-change impacts in southeast Asia, takes a more cautious line. "No one can predict how long it will take for Bangkok to be flooded and how this process will unfold," he says. He sees no point in building huge dykes. "The rise in sea level is not that great and climate change only plays a fairly small part-- about one-fifth-- in the current scenario," he adds.

"It's pointless," he stresses, "to try to protect the coastline which is being eroded by three to four centimetres a year. But there are plenty of other ways of combating flooding, such as better management of building land in the city."

Urban Gadabout: NY Transit Museum tours announced plus those "WAHI" Upper Manhattan tours

2011-09-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia offers this view of Washington Heights beyond the George Washington Bridge, from the west. For a listing of historian James Renner's upcoming tours of the Northern Manhattan neighborhoods of Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, see below.

by Ken

Since I last wrote, the New York Transit Museum tour schedule has been announced (you can find it on the Calendar of Events page of the website, and the early registration period for members is in full swing. As I mentioned, all the regular tours on the fall schedule are offered at least twice, and some of the especially popular ones, which in the past were generally already offered more than once, are offered even more often.

The four I pounced on start with two led by peerless "urban geographer" Jack Eichenbaum. With Jack you not only begin to understand why neighborhoods and regions have developed the way they have, but you see things you just wouldn't see with less tuned-in tour leaders.

PENN STATION "ECOLOGY"
Saturday, September 17, 10am-12n, and Sunday, October 9, 1-3pm

Constructed in a once squalid are known as the "Tenderloin," Penn Station united rails from Long Island, New Jersey and points south that previously terminated on the other side of the Hudson. Urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum will lead this walking tour through the remnants of the neighborhood's past and look at its proposed future, including the Farley Post Office building, the historic Hotel Pennsylvania, Herald Square, and "Koreatown."

LIFE ALONG THE L TRAIN
Saturday, October 15, 10am-1pm, and Saturday, November 19, 10am-1pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route. We will explore the West Village and Meatpacking District -- including a portion of the new Highline Park -- and on to Bushwick and Williamsburg, noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods.

By the way, Jack has announced some additional fall tours of his own, including an on-the-ground survey of the area he's currently watching with perhaps the greatest fascination, What's New in Long Island City? (Saturday, October 22, 11am-1pm) and one in his home area, which has already undergone an unrecognizable transformation, Religion on the Land: Polytheologic Flushing (Saturday, November 12, 12n-2:30pm). I've already done a fair amount of wandering in both Long Island City and Flushing with Jack, and I can assure you it's a special experience. (I would definitely do LIC with him again if I weren't already registered for the Municipal Art Society tour of the Chinatown-Little Italy Historic District at the same time.)

Jack also invites us to "hold the dates" for a pair of cold-weather tours ("both partially indoors"), with details to be announced: Keeping Off the Streets of Midtown Manhattan (East Side) (Saturday, December 3) and Flushing's Chinatown (Sunday, December 18).

The other two tours I couldn't resist are:

POWER UP! A SUBSTATION INSIDER
Saturday, November 5, 10am-12n, and Saturday, December 3, 10am-12n

As part of subway construction in 1904, the 59th Street Powerhouse was built to supply the massive amounts of power required to move trains and light tunnels in the new subway. Robert W. Lobenstein, former General Superintendent of New York City Transit, will take us inside magical Substation No. 13 and lead a sidewalk tour of the 59th Street Powerhouse.

MOVIN' ON UP: 75 YEARS OF SUBWAYS UNDER QUEENS BOULEVARD
Sunday, November 13, 11am-2pm, and Saturday, December 10, 11am-2pm

Seventy-five years ago the Independent Subway System was extended from Jackson Heights to Jamaica under Queens Boulevard, now a shopping mecca. Ridership at Forest Hills station now ranks 40th out of the system's 468 stations. Ride sections of this line and walk its surrounding neighborhoods with subway historian and retired LIRR manager Andrew Sparberg.

These are all $30 for NYTM members, $45 for nonmembers.

Two perennial favorites are offered four times each but are so popular that they're likely still to be tough to book.

At some point I will definitely do the CONEY ISLAND YARD tour again, and prepare for it better by schooling myself on the various kinds of subway cars that are serviced in this giant maintenance facility, and how exactly they work, to better appreciate this unparalleled close-up view of how that maintenance done. But the pièce de résistance is the visit to the tower where New York Transit personnel oversee the extraordinary coming together at Coney Island of four separate subway lines.

This is a must. It's being offered Tuesday evenings, 6-8:30pm, on September 13, October 11, November 8, and December 13 ($30 for members, $50 for nonmembers), and you're going to need photo ID -- they take security very seriously at the Coney Island Yard. (Anyone who didn't understand how essential the subways are to the life of the city got a demonstration when they were shutdown in anticipation of Hurricane Irene.)

The visit to THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN: OLD CITY HALL STATION is also enormously popular. When the old City Hall station was built, it was the anchor of the original subway line, and the station was built on a decorative scale that was never repeated. You're really traveling back in time here, and the station may be less "wow"-inspiring than you expected. (For one thing, it's not that large. The trains of the time were only five cars, cars that were much shorter than later ones.) But more than anything, you're seeing history here. The station was abandoned both because of lack of use and because the extreme track curve on which it sits could never have been adapted to handle the much larger, multiple-trains that became standard on the NYC subways.

You can glance at the station by staying on a no. 6 train after its last southbound stop at Brooklyn Bridge, when it makes the loop that turns brings it onto the northbound local track of the station -- and you are allowed to stay on the train, we were told, unless Transit personnel tell you the train is going out of service -- but you won't see much. The tour is the only way to get out onto the station platform and actually see what there is to see. This is the one NYTM tour that's members only, and may be itself be reason enough to join, though there seem to me plenty of other reasons, not least all those other tours. (Note that in addition to using my early-registration privilege, I paid $120 for my four tours, which for nonmembers would be $180.)

And oh yes, as I mentioned last time, there's one more of the museum's famous day-long NOSTALGIA RIDES, once again riding the old IRT lo-V cars up the Lexington Avenue line to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx (Sunday, October 23, 10am-3pm; $35 for members, $50 for nonmembers). This time it's offered as a package deal with a box lunch and a tour of this final resting place of some of New York's Fanciest citizens (with cemetery architecture by some of New York's fanciest architects).

And I haven't even mentioned the museum itself, in downtown Brooklyn, which is terrific, both for its permanent exhibitions and the special ones offered for limited periods. (I was grateful at the two cracks that the summer Nostalgia Rides that departed from the museum gave me at the incredible exhibition on the Triborough Bridge, an amazingly thorough documentation with photos, archival documents, models, plans, etc. of how the concept for this complex of structures took shape and how it was executed, including what it displaced.)

Nor have I mentioned the numerous other special events, including all sorts for kids (many of whom are incredibly knowledgeable about the subways; at the Coney Island Yard, the youngsters on the tour knew everything about those trains!). Or the Museum Annex at Grand Central Station, which has free admission and is currently hosting an exhibition called "The Once and Future Penn Station." If you're visiting the city, you should definitely try to get to one if not both locations, and if you live here and haven't been yet, you really should go. For basic information, the Transit Museum website is a great starting place.

"WAHI" TOURS

Well, I've gotten my copy of James Renner's Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, and it's a terrific book. But it didn't register for me before that it's part of the valuable Images of America series, which means it's basically a book of photos. There are lots of fine historical photos, informatively captioned, but alas no, it's no substitute -- as I was hoping -- for the tours I'll have to miss, owing to schedule conflicts, in this six-Sunday September-October series offered by the official historian of Manhattan Community District 12.

By way of overall introduction, James writes:

Washington Heights and Inwood (WAHI) are communities that have, over the years, gained recognition in massive demographic changes. People from other parts of the city are visiting and moving here because of its affordable housing and beautiful parks. These tours will demonstrate to the resident and visitor alike how upper Manhattan has changed and adapted to suit the needs of its new inhabitants and tourists.

You can find the full schedule with tour descriptions here. There are parts of the city it's easy to find covered by multiple walking tours; these aren't among them. The tours on the schedule ($15, $10 for students and seniors) are:

JUMEL TERRACE HISTORIC DISTRICT & SUGAR HILL (Washington Heights)
Sunday, September 11, 12n (additional fee for Morris Jumel Mansion admission)

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER (Washington Heights; 165th to 168th, Broadway to Haven Avenue)
Sunday, September 18, 12n

FORT GEORGE (Washington Heights; 190th to 193rd, Amsterdam and Audubon Avenues)
Sunday, September 25, 12n

SHERMAN CREEK (Inwood)
Sunday, October 2, 12n

TUBBY HOOK (Inwood; Dyckman Street, Riverside Drive and Broadway)
Sunday, October 9, 12n

MARBLE HILL
Sunday, October 16, 12n

Mérida And The Yucatán Peninsula Seem Safe Enough

2011-09-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

We love Mexico. I started going when I was a teenager and I've always found the country awesome and inspiring and beautiful. I love the food and the folks have been kind. Mexico City is a terrific, cosmopolitan megapolis, as is Guadalajara and villages I've been to like San Miguel de Allende have been stupendous. Right now Roland, Helen, Michael and I are trying to decide between Mérida on the Yucatán Peninsula or Oaxaca on the other side of the country for a winter getaway. (And, to make it a little more complicated, Roland threw in the picturesque old colonial city of Cuernevaca in the country's heartland.)

We found a beautiful house to rent in Mérida and I'm really leaning that way right now. All the tour books give the place a big thumbs up. It's filled with gardens and plazas that give it a relaxed, tropical atmosphere and it boasts the oldest cathedral on the continent, built between 1561 and 1598, with stone walls from the ruined buildings of Tihó, the former Mayan city. In fact Mérida is right in the middle of the old Mayan Empire and there are ruins to visit all around, including some really close ones like Dzibilchaltún, founded in 500 BC, just 9 miles away. It covers around 6 square miles and since being rediscovered in 1941 something like 8,000 buildings have been mapped. Still close enough for a day trip are the even more outstanding Mayan ruins at Uxmal, Tulum and Chichén Itzá.

Lately there have been safety concerns in Mexico. But not really in the Yucatán. Last month Mexican Tourism Secretary Gloria Guevara was in the U.S. trying to reassure American tourists-- and U.S. visitors make up 60% of Mexico's tourism visitors-- that, despite warnings from the State Department, most of the country is safe.

[W]e acknowledge there are some issues in some pockets, in some specific locations. To give you an example, Mexico has 2,500 counties. Eighty of those have issues. So does that mean that the entire country has issues? Of course not. Eighty of 2,500 is less than 5 percent. Ninety percent of Americans go to six destinations. The tourist destinations are very far from where we have these issues.

...For us in Mexico, when we talk about the U.S., we don’t say the U.S., we say Orlando, L.A., Washington. If something happened last week, if there was a shooting in East L.A., does that mean you can’t go to Washington? Of course not.

There's More To The Galápagos Than Iguanas, Nazca Boobies And Albatrosses

2011-08-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

My friend Kelly works for a cruise ship line that travels all over the world, including to a place I've always wanted to go but still haven't reached yet-- the Galápagos. I asked him to give us a taste of what it's like and thought we'd wind up hearing a lot about strange animals and birds. Instead, he wrote about an important and wonderful component for any traveller: indigenous music.

Rock the Islands: The Growing Rock Music Scene in Galápagos and Ecuador

-by Kelly Darmer

Over the course of the last 20 years, as it has become increasingly simple to exchange ideas, opinions, and content across cultural and physical boundaries, music has served as a vital conduit for communication. A truly universal language, music is enjoyed the world over, and there is seemingly little rhyme or reason for why a style becomes popular with a particular group. The music that emerges from a particular region or population is often heavily influenced by the indigenous musical roots of that region or population. Over the course of the last twenty years, however, music from different cultures has spread, collided, and mixed to form some very interesting contemporary sounds. Tune into any online radio station and it is as if you have found yourself aboard one of many musical world cruises. This mixing of sounds has become most noticeable in the world of rock. Rock bands crop up in surprising places, and the rock sounds emanating from Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands have a distinct vibe all their own.

The Galápagos Islands and Ecuador are most commonly known for three types of music, Andean folklore, pasillo, and cumbia. Andean folklore is characterized by the use of a bamboo panpipe called a rondador. Go just about anywhere in the world, and at some point in a street market you will probably encounter two or three men with speakers and CDs, playing a rondador arrangement of a Celine Dion hit. The sound of the pipes has become synonymous with the region and their haunting quality has proved popular worldwide. Pasillo is the oldest music of the region and is a close cousin of the waltz. It has fallen out of favor since the late 70s, but has still managed to influence contemporary artists all over Latin America. Cumbia, which was developed in Colombia, is a relatively new form of music in Ecuador and the Islands, and the Ecuadorian population has altered it a bit, creating a rawer, funkier sound that is played everywhere from backyard barbecues to high-end clubs. All three of these musical traditions have had an impact on the sounds of the rock bands of Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. However, what makes these groups so interesting, are the elements of punk, ska, reggae, rap, hip hop, and jazz that have been liberally combined to create some fascinating sounds.

Every country needs some head thrashing rock, and a heavy metal group named Viuda Negra fills that bill. Formed by two friends in the late 90s, the group is known for their heavy music and socially conscious lyrics. They released their first album in 2003 and continue to perform together to crowds as large as 10,000 in Latin America.

The group that has managed to have the most crossover success is Esto Es Eso. With their funky, accessible mix of reggae, rock, hip hop, pop, pasillo, and folklore, Esto Es Eso has toured Europe and the US, and was formed by an Ecuadorian musician and a former Californian. Their sound has been described as “Ecuafornian”, and there is no denying that it rocks. Check out the video below.

Afrik’ns Homosapiens created their own form of rock music under the direction of famed folkloric artist Guillermo Avoyi, also known as Papa Roncon. Combining sounds particular to coastal regions of Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands, including Bunde, Arrullo, Chigualo, Alabao, with ska, reggae, calypso, and other musics of the Caribbean, Afrik’ns Homosapiens developed what is now called Bao. Their slowed down groove is characterized by the use of hand drums, marimba, and other traditional instruments alongside electric guitars and bass. (One of their videos is up top.)

Since 1996, one band has dominated the ska and punk scene in Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. El Retorno de Exxon Valdes was formed in 1996 and fifteen years later, they are still going strong. In the tried and true fashion of all ska/punk groups, their early albums focused on issues of identity and feelings of disassociation. Their lyrics have matured along with the members of the band, and their popularity continues to grow.

If you are headed to the Galápagos Islands, make sure to take a trip to some of the local music venues. There is a long tradition of excellent music making in the region and the energy surrounding the live music sceneis infectious. You never know, you just might stumble upon the next.

Urban Gadabout: NYC tour updates -- breaking news!

2011-08-26T04:15:00.000-07:00

The Bowery in 1896 -- it sure doesn't look like this now, and the long-ago disappearance of the el is almost the least of the changes. The third in Francis Morrone's MAS tours focusing on the East Village (October 9) targets the Bowery.

by Ken

As I wrote Sunday, given how perilously close we're getting to September, the new tour schedules of the Municipal Art Society had to be released momentarily, and now they have been, more or less. I've done some difficult triage and filled in a lot of my fall calendar.

NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM

Again as I wrote Sunday:

In the case of the Transit Museum, the smartest thing you can do for now is to become a member. While it's technically true that very few of its tour offerings require you to be a museum member, in fact members take such advantage not just of the lower members' price but of the early registration period that it's awfully hard to squeeze onto most of the tour lists if you aren't a member.

Members have now received the full fall tour schedule, and the members-only early registration period is set for August 31-September 8, and this time it's going to be doable online as well as by phone. (I've got my sights set on four tours.)

I assume there will be a general announcement of the tour list shortly. I don't feel at liberty to pass on what we've been told, except to note that the cutthroat competition for tour slots should be eased with all of the fall regular tours offered at least in duplicate, and some of the likely most popular ones being offered even more frequently. There is, by the way, another one of the Transit Museum's famous Nostalgia Tours, scheduled for late October.

My advice still is to join immediately, and ask to have the tour list sent to you if it's still not posted.

MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

The September and October listings are now up on the "Tours" page of the MAS website, and there's lots of exciting stuff. I'm conflicted out of a couple I would have loved to do: The Architecture of Literacy: University Heights, the Bronx (Saturday, September 17, 11am, with Jean Arrington), Arts for Transit: Brighton Line (Sunday, October 2, 11am, with Amy Hausmann, registration required -- when I moved to NYC at age 12, the Brighton line from Brooklyn was my lifeline to "the City," as I learned to refer to Manhattan), and Crown Heights North (Sunday, October 16, 11am, with Suzanne Spellen and Morgan Munsey, with whom I did an MAS tour of sections of Bedford-Stuyvesant a month or two ago -- unfortunately that's the day of my Working Harbor Committe Circumnavigation of Staten Island, also mentioned in my Sunday post).

However, in a frenzy of excitement I've already registered for seven tours. Except as noted, the tours are all still $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers.

Dawn Powell and the Greenwich Village of Her Time. Sunday, September 4, 2pm, with Francis Morrone
The World Trade Center: 10 Years Later. On the eve of the anniversary, Saturday, September 10, 6pm, with Francis Morrone, $20
The Architecture of the Garment District. Tuesday, September 20, 5:30pm, with Andrew Dolkart
Starchitecture NYC, 2011, "a concentrated three-hour tour via small motor coach and on foot of some of the city's most talked-about buildings, structures, and spaces," Saturday, September 24, 10am, with Matt Postal (also offered Saturday, October 15 -- I think! the schedule says "Sunday, October 15), $49 for members, $55 for nonmembers
East Village III: The Bowery, the third in a series of East Village tours Francis Morrone is leading. Sunday, October 9, 2pm
Chinatown-Little Italy Historic District. Saturday, October 22, 11am, with Kerri Mulhane

Then there are a bunch of tours offered on a walk-up basis (as I've mentioned, tours director Tamara Coombs likes offering the tours in both formats, to accommodate the widest range of potential tour-walkers) which I've inscribed on my calendar:

Sixth Avenue and the 1961 Code Revisited, the first of two walks looking at the wave of high-rise construction that was build in accordance with the major changes in the code implemented in 1961 (Sunday, September 18, 11am, with Matt Postal)
Battery Park City Evolving, "love it or hate it," focusing on the northern section. Sunday, September 25, 4pm, with Francis Morrone
Catalysts for Change: East Midtown and the 1961 Code, the East Side continuation of Matt Postal's Sixth Avenue walk above (September 18). Saturday, October 1, 11am
Forest Hills: Garden City in the City. Sunday, October 23, 2pm, with Francis Morrone
Downtown's Forgotten Neighborhood, the immigrant-rich "Lower West Side" that remained a multicultural hotbed until it was largely displaced by the World Trade Center. Saturday, October 29, 11am, with Joe Svehlak ("whose family settled here in the early 1900s")

There are also a pair of "Beyond Sight" tours specifically conceived for people with visual impairments (though open to others), stressing "visual description and multi-sensory exploration," led by art historian Sylvia Laudien-Meo (reservations required for both): Grand Central Terminal, September 3, 11am, and The September 11 & Irish Hunger Memorials, October 20, 12n.

And a tour of a project that was never built --

I'm also delighted to see that Matt Postal is once again doing what was my first MAS tour (only last fall!), one I talk about all the time: LOMEX Remembered (Thursday, September 15, 5:30pm) -- a tour of a project that was never built (!), Robert Moses's planned Lower Manhattan Expressway, when a local community threatened with destruction discovered that it could too fight City Hall, in a long series of battles (Moses didn't give up easily; every time the opponents thought they had thwarted the project, he came back with a revised plan and they had to start all over) in which Jane Jacobs's name was heard for the first time.

I STILL HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THOSE "WAHI" TOURS

Sherman Creek seen from the northern edge of Inwood, Manhattan -- target of James Renner's October 2 WAHI tour.

It's a series of six, covering areas of Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, being offered Sundays at noon from September 11 to October 16 by Northern Manhattan historian James Renner, author -- by strange coincidence -- of the book Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill (Arcadia Publishing; I've ordered my copy!) and the official historian of Community District 12 Manhattan. Again, you'll find the schedule here, and the tours are $15, $10 for students and seniors.

I'm sorry to say that after the triage with the NYTM and MAS schedules, plus other tour plans (like, again the Staten Island circumnavigation, which I have no intention of missing!), I'm probably only going to be able to make two of the six, but they're two I'm especially eager for: Jumel Terrace Historic District & Sugar Hill (Washington Heights and Harlem, the first of the series, September 11) and Sherman Creek (Inwood, October 2). I'm hoping that the book will help me plug some of those gaps. And of course I assume James will be offering more tours in the future.

Urban Gadabout: How I spent the earthquake, plus gadding to the North River, SI's Freshkills Park, and Constitution Island (opposite West Point)

2011-08-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

So I guess it was a little before 2 this afternoon. Hey, if I'd known it was going to be history, I'd have checked the time -- I just thought it was, well, I didn't know what the heck it was, but I considered and dismissed "earthquake" as a possibility. We don't normally have earthquakes on the 14th floor of my building in the Financial District (Lower Manhattan) of New York.

So like I said, it must have been a little before 2, and I was at my desk in my cubicle on the 14th floor of a pretty sturdily built building (at least in the 2½ years my company has been here, the building has never moved that I'm aware of), and for a while the floor and everything kind of trembled, and after awhile people sort of looked at one or another, and somebody mentioned that there had been a 5.8 earthquake in Washington. Only I didn't make out exactly what that person said; I reconstructed it later after I found out that there had been a 5.8 earthquake centered in northern Virginia, which was also reported as 5.9 or even 6.0 Online somebody joked that S&P had upgraded the earthquake from 5.8 to 6.0.

Then we were hustled into the conference room to hear our HR director, who happened to be in California (as it happens, our office manager was also out of the office -- coincidence?), via conference call tell us to do whatever we felt necessary for our safety. She also warned us about taking precautions before getting on a subway, but somebody else reported that New York Transit was reporting no service delays. (And New York Transit wouldn't kid us now, would it?)

Me, I figured if an earthquake is coming to get me, I really wouldn't know where to go to escape its clutches. I figure you're just as likely to walk into it as to escape it. When I went back to working on the InDesign file I had been working on, the computer claimed that the file was damaged. I rebooted and tried reloading it, and while the program still voiced suspicion about the file being damaged, it then accepted and saved some small changes, and the asterisk went away. So far the file seems to be OK.

And that's how I spent the earthquake. We're not used to this sort of stuff here, but believe me, I take it seriously. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

STILL, I HOPE MOTHER NATURE ISN'T PLANNING MORE OF
THIS SEISMIC STUFF JUST NOW, WITH URBAN GADDING AHEAD

Constitution Island, viewed from the West Point side

As I write, I'm getting read to leave the office for this evening's Hidden Harbor Tour of the "North" (i.e., Hudson) River waterfront, and then tomorrow I'm actually taking off work for my first look, courtesy of a tour offered jointly by SI 350 (a volunteer group promoting celebration of Staten Island's 350th birthday -- apparently someone thinks Staten Island is 350 years old; I wonder how Mother Nature feels about that) and the NYC Parks Dept., at the work-in-progress Freshkill Parks, built with huge infusions of technology, cash, and manpower on top of the old trash megadump.

The Parks Dept. has been offering tours, but I could never figure out from the website where I would have to get to, or therefore whether I could get there via public transit. This tour, however, is leaving from in front of the library in St. George, the part of Staten Island where the ferry lands -- and that I know how to find.

Then Saturday I'm actually venturing outside the five boroughs of NYC, well up the Hudson River to venture onto Constitution Island, which is opposite West Point on the west bank of the river, and is only open three weekends a summer. I'm expecting to meet up with a Shorewalkers group at the Metro North train station in Cold Spring, on the east side of the river from the island.

While we wait for tour announcements from MAS and the NY Transit Museum, here are some upcoming NY area tours for your schedule

2011-08-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

I was really looking forward to this morning's MAS walking tour of Manhattan's Lower East Side, but no, I was still struggling with my Sunday Classics post on Andrea Chénier. Oh well.

by Ken

I've recovered my wits a bit since the post I wrote yesterday upon return from the New York Transit Museum's subway-and-bus Nostalgia Tour to the Rockaways, and I want to add some information.

First, while I focused on NYTM and Municipal Art Society (MAS) tours, anyone who clicked through to the respective websites would have found the tour cupboards pretty bare. (Well, MAS had an awfully interesting-looking walking tour of Manhattan's Lower East Side scheduled for this morning, but I had to blow that off because I was doing battle with Andrea Chénier.) I should have mentioned that both NYTM and MAS are presumably days if not hours away from announcing schedules that cover September and beyond.

I've been checking the MAS website daily. Oh, even the tours that require preregistration won't sell out that quickly, but I'm kind of out of my mind with excitement to see what MAS's Tamara Coombs has cooked up for us. And for your planning purposes, it's wise to assume that the tours that do require preregistration will sell out well before the tour date. The prices are ridiculous for tours of this quality -- as of the summer offerings, still $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers for most tours. (Longer tours or more elaborate tours are priced higher.)

In the case of the Transit Museum, the smartest thing you can do for now is to become a member. While it's technically true that very few of its tour offerings require you to be a museum member, in fact members take such advantage not just of the lower members' price but of the early registration period that it's awfully hard to squeeze onto most of the tour lists if you aren't a member. I can't wait to see what Luz has cooked up for us, and assuming I have the information in time, I plan to do what I did this summer: call in with my request list as early as possible the morning of the start of the registration period!

WORKING HARBOR TOURS

In July I wrote with great excitement about the first of three Hidden Harbors Tours I was doing, arranged jointly by the Working Harbor Committee (WHC) and Circle Line Downtown this one through the Kill Van Kull, which separates the west of Staten Island from New Jersey, to exotic Newark Bay. The trip was fantastic! Since then I've also done "The Brooklyn Tour," which took us up the East River to the junction of Newtown Creek, then close along the Brooklyn waterfront until we swung across New York Harbor past Staten Island to the opening of the Kill Van Kull and the New Jersey shore, then past the Statue of Liberty and back to the Fulton Street pier. We did much of the trip with lightning flashing, and then a wild thunderstorm broke out just as we passed the Battery for the short trip back to the pier -- it's a shame they can't plan on including this effect all the time!

I mention them now because both "The Newark Bay Tour" (September 13) and "The Brooklyn Tour" (September 27) have one more incarnation coming up for the current season, while the final offering of the "North River Tour" (i.e., the Hudson River, formerly known as the North River) which I haven't done yet, is this Tuesday, August 23. I bought all my tickets online; there's a discount for WHC members.

CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF STATEN ISLAND

For all the tours, the WHC's Captain John provide running commentary along with a guest for the particular tour. One event he has talked about on both the tours I've taken is a circumnavigation of Staten Island, for which the date has finally been announced -- Sunday, October 16 -- and ticket sales begun. A planned WHC Lighthouse Tour sold out before I had a chance to book it, so I wouldn't wait on this one. (As a matter of fact, I didn't!)

FIVE WALKING TOURS OF NORTHERN MANHATTAN

I also wanted to report on an exciting series of tours "WAHI Tours" of Northern Manhattan being offered Sundays from September 11 through October 16 at noon by James Renner, author of Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill (Arcadia Publishing; I haven't had a chance to get my copy yet!), and the official Community District 12 Manhattan historian -- priced at $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and students. I'll write more about them soon.

Urban Gadabout: A year later, I finally made it to the Rockaways Nostalgia Tour

2011-08-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

1) Great Kills, 2) Miller Field, 3) Fort Wadsworth, 4) Canarsie Pier, 5) Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, 6) Floyd Bennett Field, 7) Jacob Riis Park, 8) Fort Tilden, 9) Breezy Point 10) Sandy Hook, 11) Fort Hancock

by Ken

It was full circle for me today, participating in the New York Transit Museum's final Nostalgia Tour of the summer, to the Rockaways -- not so much because I participated in all three of the summer's Nostalgia Tours (the previous ones were to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and Coney Island in Brooklyn), not to mention a slew of other NYTM tours over the last year, bt because it has been a year. It was last summer around this time that I took advantage of a half-price offer for NYTM membership just in time, I thought, to go on its first-ever combined subway-and-bus Nostalgia Tour -- taking a train of vintage cars as far as the subway will take you on the Rockaway peninsula, to Rockaway Park, and then piling onto vintage buses for the additional journey farther west, beyond the residentially settled area of Rockaway to Jacob Riis Park, yet another Robert Moses creation of the '30s.

The problem was last year that I hadn't booked ahead, but knew that there was space on a walk-up basis, but didn't know that they weren't taking credit cards. I had meant to stop at an ATM en route to the Transit Museum that morning, but I was worried that I was running behind time-wise. As it turned out, I arrived in plenty of time, and waited in a long line, only to find out that no, they were taking cash only. Somebody said something about a bank nearby, but I couldn't rally myself.

An inauspicious beginning, but when the next batch of tours was announced, I took advantage of the week's advance reservation period for members, and began a year of discovery, fascination, and wonder in, literally, all five boroughs of New York City. It's a city I've lived in since I was 12 (no, I'm not going to tell you how many years ago that was, but it's a lot, though still on this side of

Via Transit Museum tours I've seen things I literally couldn't have seen any other way: the Coney Island subway repair center and signal tower; behind-the-scenes Penn Station including its ultra-secure command station; the inside of the awaiting-development Farley Post Office. Some of these are things we probably still should talk about. And there were a host of others, thanks to Luz, the indefatigable director of NYTM's tours.

Perhaps the most profound impact was from the tour that introduced me to "urban geographer" Jack Eichenbaum (the Queens borough historian), who took us to and through three subway "nodes," places where two or more separate subway lines intersect -- the ultimate node, Times Square in Manhattan, plus Queens Plaza and Jackson Heights in Queens -- and showed us how the intersection of those subway lines shaped the subsequent development of the areas. It set me on a whole other way of thinking about, well, places. After all, every place where there's human habitation exists where it does for a set of specific reasons.

That has changed my life, and since then I've seized a bunch of opportunities to take tours with Jack which aren't like anybody else's, always showing us places that hardly any other tour leader would think to show people. (I would have to single out the all-day tour of the No. 7 line to Flushing, Queens.) But my life was also changed by a tip Jack gave us: about the Municipal Art Society. I'm embarrassed to say that all these decades it was just a name to me, and I assumed it had nothing to do with me, since I am not what you would call an "art person." But MAS's concern is the municipal art, the art of making a more livable city, and as I've written here, MAS tours have become inextricably with my week-to-week life -- there have been a bunch of weeks when I've done MAS tours back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday.

I would be tempted by pretty much any tour announced to be led by my MAS standbys: Jack Eichenbaum, of course, and the more architecturally oriented Matt Postal and Francis Morrone, and the boundless-spirited and inexhaustibly knowledgeable Justin Ferate. I've been to bunches of places on Staten Island with Justin and Francis (and the MAS's equally indefatigable tour director, Tamara Coombs, who's a Staten Islander herself), where I'd previously hardly ventured beyond the St. George ferry terminal; and lots of places in Brooklyn with Francis and Matt, and learned to look at Manhattan skyscrapers a whole other way with Matt, and . . . well, I could go on and on, but I won't. ditto with all the other tours I've found my way to. It's been quite a year! (Oh yes, when I got a renewal notice from the Transit Museum, I sent my check in that very day.)

I'll just say that Rockaway was a blast today, and it was especially interesting wading in the surf -- real surf, since this is open ocean, in contrast with the beach at Coney Island, which as Joe Svehlak had just pointed out to us in an MAS tour of Coney Island, has the protection of being inside the Lower Bay of New York Harbor. You see how these things all fit together? One of the things I've written about here most often is my fascination with New York as a coastal city, a major harbor.

I know I'm babbling, and have left out all sorts of points I planned to make. But it's been a long day!

Starting The Ball Rolling Towards A Trip To Ethiopia

2011-08-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

Three ladies from the Mursi tribe

I started my adventure traveling before I understood anything about sex. In fact, the first time I ever even had sex was when an older woman-- she was 17 I think, or almost 17-- seduced me in the back of a Greyhound station in Jacksonville, Florida. I had virtually no idea what was going on and mostly all I remember were the big black rubber tires we were surrounded by. I was on my way to visit my grandparents for Pessach in Miami Beach. Later being physically attracted to a people helped determine where I wanted to visit; I've had wide tastes and see beauty in almost every kind of people. But that was a long time ago and these days I'm much more likely to pick a destination because I like the cuisine. Really.

Roland, who is really eager to go to Ethiopia (not to mention Eritrea and Somalia; he's insane)-- and knows my proclivities-- has been trying to talk me into liking Ethiopian food for just around a decade now! He keeps claiming it's "one of the great cuisines of the world." L.A. has a Little Ethiopia about half and hour from my house. There are over a dozen well-regarded Ethiopian restaurants within 2 blocks of each other. The basic building block of the cuisine is injera, a kind of sour bread that he just loves and I never really took to-- until this year. The meal consists of the injera and some wats or stews. Just when I was starting to get used to the taste of the injera I found out it's made of fermented teff, which is totally in synch with my health regime. Teff is a kind of grass, but not wheat-- which I avoid-- and it's not gluten. It's more like quinoa or millet and it's a good source of fiber, protein, iron and calcium-- very healthy.

Anyway, Roland's in Maine for a few weeks and yesterday I went to Little Ethiopia for lunch. My favorite restaurant there-- by far-- is Rahel, which is the only pure vegan place. The others-- Messob, Rosalind's, Nyala, Merkato, etc all serve vegetarian dishes, which are common in Ethiopia, but Rahel makes an art of it. On Saturday's lunch is an all-you-can-eat buffet for something like $12. There are a dozen dishes, all delicious and healthful. So Ethiopia passes the food test and we're in the early stages of planning a trip there. One of my neighbors has an orphanage in Lalibela.

In his enthusiasm, Roland has been feeding me this line about how it doesn't only have "one of the world's great cuisines" but that it's also the "land of eternal spring." I decided to double check, knowing how completely unreliable he is when he's made up his mind. He's been pushing for next June.

When to go to Ethiopia?

The main rainy season is June to end of September. Don't go then unless it is the ONLY period you can take a holiday. it rains pretty well every day-- some is drizzle but much is heavy tropical rain. Things get very muddy. IF you can only go in this period of the Big Rains try to spend some time in lower altitude areas like the Rift Valley Lakes zone, where it will be warmer and a bit less wet...

Best time to visit is mid October to mid March-- the dry season.

Since this coming December we're set on the Yucatan, it'll have to be the following Christmas. Long way... But here's a video I found with an overview of the capital, Addis Ababa, a city with 4 million people that everyone tells me to have a quick look around and then out into the country.

Delta Threatens To Leave U.S.

2011-08-10T16:00:00.000-07:00

Oh boy... 2,000 extra bonus points from Delta, the airline that doesn't let their customers use frequent flier miles! The above ad came as an e-mail yesterday, the same day Delta threatened to follow Blackwater, Halliburton and other extreme right-wing companies out of the U.S. Richard Anderson, who's personally donated tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing politicians-- including heavy contributions to Boehner, McConnell, Romney, McCain and deranged nihilistic teabaggers like Tim Walberg (R-MI), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), John Bircher Paul Broun (R-GA) and Taliban Dan Webster (R-FL)-- told a crackpot Fox propagandist, Neil Cavuto, that he might pick up his toys (Delta) and leave Atlanta (and the U.S.) if he isn't free to keep up his anti-union policies.

Anderson is grumpy because of a change in labor policy that makes it easier for union organizers to win elections.

To understand what's changed you need to know that in the past, when employees were presented with the option of joining a union it wasn't just the "yes" votes and the "no" votes that were counted. The number of people who did not vote was tallied too and those non-votes were considered "no" votes. The philosophy behind this somewhat odd practice is to make sure that a majority of all employees vote for the change, giving a voice even to those workers who don't want one enough to actually cast a vote.

...Certainly Delta is not alone in opposing anything that will increase the likelihood of unionizing. Fed Ex and UPS are also said to be lobbying hard to overturn the new National Mediation Board policy on union elections.

But it's only Delta's top dog who decided to go on national television and threaten the nation with its exodus.

"Capital is mobile" Anderson said in a not-at-all-veiled threat that if Congress comes down on the wrong side of the unionization policy, companies will pack up and move, repeating the threat three times.

Where might unhappy companies like his go you might ask? Anderson cites appreciatively the locomotive-like economies in Brazil and China. Now if Delta is planning to pull up stakes from Atlanta, its home for the last 70 years and carry its kit and kaboodle down to Rio or Shanghai that's news! Unfortunately, and Mr. Anderson surely knows this, a raft of restrictions would have to be changed for a US airline to makes its headquarters anywhere outside of the USA.

Delta's employees are generally so dispirited that the company's service is miserable and Delta is widely considered the worst airline in America. Dozens of groups are boycotting it for dozens of different reasons. Survey after survey show that they rank at the bottom of the heap in everything travelers care about-- and since Anderson took over and made Delta a vehicle for his neo-fascist political agenda, the airline has gotten noticeably worse.

Urban Gadabout: On the waterfront -- two interesting-looking MAS tours, provided the weather cooperates

2011-08-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

Aerial view of Governors Island, off the southern tip of Manhattan
(with the Brooklyn waterfront off to the right)

by Ken

Rain, rain, stay away!

For this weekend I've had a couple of Municipal Art Society walking tours penciled in all summer, and as the dates approach I've grown more and more enthusiastic. The only problem: The weather forecast for the weekend is lousy, with talk of thundershowers both afternoons. Some other time I want to write about the weather factor, something that's obviously wholly beyond the control of tour planners and leaders and yet has so much to do with the success of the walk out come -- not to mention whether there actually is a walk.

But for now I'm hopeful about this weekend's MAS offerings: "Governors Island: Heart of the Harbor," Saturday at 11:45am (meet at the bike rack to the west of the Battery Maritime Building); and "Coney Island: What's Next?," Sunday at 10:30am (meet in Coney Island outside the Stillwell Avenue subway station, on the northeast corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues).

I should go back to that point I made about having these tours "penciled in." MAS schedules its walking tours in two different configurations. Some are booked ahead, by advance (paid) registration; others are offered strictly on a walk-up basis. The idea is to accommodate different kinds of tour-takers, and to make sure that even when the advance-registration tours sell out, as they usually do, there are still tours available on a walk-up basis for people who don't like, or weren't able, to book the other kind. And it happens that both of these MAS tours are of the walk-up variety, which is why I've only had them "penciled in."

Turnout for the MAS walk-up tours is of course wildly unpredictable. On a nice day, turnout may be massive. On a miserable day, it can get mighty lonely. It's only in extreme weather situations that a tour is canceled. (I'm keeping the "hot line" number, 212-453-0050, handy.)

GOVERNORS ISLAND

Saturday, August 6, 11:45 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
Governors Island: Heart of the Harbor
Governors Island offers a singular vantage point from which to see the last 200 years of the life of New York Harbor and a glimpse into the next 200. Join us for a look at the island of today as well as the opposing waterfronts of tomorrow. We’ll also take in the award-winning Harbor School and discuss the opportunities and challenges the island offers as it enters its new life as a public space.
Tour Leader: Carter Craft, civic activist and a leading waterfront planner.
Meet at: The bike rack to the West of the Battery Maritime Building.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour.

The reason I've been getting more excited about this tour is that I did some online investigation of tour leader Carter Craft, who was formerly program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, which was founded in 1999 as an initiative of . . . the Municipal Art Society (!), and then in 2007 was spun off as an independent entity. Carter has carved out a career for himself as a "waterfront planner."

In July-August 2007 he fielded three days' worth of waterfront-related questions from readers of the New York Times's City Room blog, and he's written a slew of column features for Gotham Gazette, among a help of readily available online writings. Of particular interest to me was a piece he did for UrbanOmnibus last summer previewing the Museum of Modern Art's "Rising Currents" exhibition, which (the introduction explained) would "display the design schemes of five interdisciplinary teams, charged with re-envisioning 'the coastlines of New York and New Jersey around New York Harbor and [imagining] new ways to occupy the harbor itself with adaptive "soft" infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology,'” obviously with reference to the expected rise of water levels in the harbor. If you look at Governors Island, just off the southern tip of Manhattan (I reported on my first trip there, in 2006 and returned just a couple of weeks ago, taking advantage of the free ferry service provided all summer), it looks like the damned place is maybe a few inches above the water.

CONEY ISLAND

Sunday, August 7, 10:30 a.m.
Coney Island: What’s Next?
As we explore America’s first great seaside resort, we’ll look for remnants of Coney Island’s “honky-tonk” past, when as many as a million people would visit “Sodom by the Sea” on a hot summer day. View Nathan’s Famous, the popular ballpark, the new amusements, the historic rides and enjoy the boardwalk as we discuss the struggle to designate landmarks and the future of the fabled resort.
Tour Leader: Joe Svehlak, urban historian.
Transit: D, F, N, or Q Trains to Coney Island.
Meet at: Outside the Coney Island/Stillwell Ave. subway station at the N.E. corner of Stillwell and Surf avenues.
Cost of Tour: $15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour. If you want to go for a swim with Joe after the tour, wear your bathing suit!

As for Coney Island, I was just there for the second of the New York Transit Museum's three Nostalgia Ride days (there's one still to come, on August 20, using vintage subway cars and buses, to the Rockaways), and was happy to have a tour of the rebuilt Stillwell Avenue station (opened in 2005), which services four separate subway lines. And I was surprised to see that there have been other changes -- for better and worse. I'm ready for a proper onsite update.

Weather permitting.

The rebuilt Stillwell Avenue station at Coney Island,
where four subway lines come together

Delta Sinks To New Levels Of Passenger Rip-Off

2011-07-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

As usual, Delta won the dubious honor this year of being this blog's Worst Overall Airline... again. They really just suck on every level. Turns out the service is so bad because upper management is such a bunch of greed-obsessed reactionaries. Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution went on and one about how that city's biggest carrier pulled a fast one on its customers after the right-wing ideologues in Congress shut down the FAA. The shutdown keeps the FAA from collecting about $200 million a week in ticket taxes. But instead of letting that accrue to fliers, Delta gobbled it up itself by increasing the base fares it charges.

Airlines have complained for years that taxes added to ticket prices drive up the cost of travel. But when those tax collections stopped last weekend and airlines had a rare chance to give fliers a break, most opted to keep prices the same and pocket the difference.

“It just seems like it was the perfect chance for the airlines to throw a bone in consumer satisfaction,” said FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney.

“Consumers feel like they’ve been nickel-and-dimed in the past, (and) this is a windfall that wasn’t expected... “Why wouldn’t [airlines] give consumers at least half the benefit?” Seaney said.

The suspended taxes include a 7.5 percent excise tax, a $3.70 tax per flight segment and other taxes for international flights.

As the partial shutdown continued this week, some public officials have criticized the airlines’ decision, and two U.S. senators wrote a letter of complaint to Delta’s chief executive, who also is chairman of a major airline lobbying group.

Delta, as always, started whining about the high price of jet fuel. They little windfall at customers expense amounts to between $4 and $5 million a day. In the U.S. Senate, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) lashed out at their greed:

I wish I understood why the policy objections of one company-Delta Air Lines-mattered more than the livelihoods of thousands of people. Last year, the CEO of Delta made $9 million. Delta paid its top executives almost $20 million. Yet, it is fighting to make sure its employees cannot organize for fear that they may secure a few extra dollars in their paychecks. At the same time it is pushing for special interest provisions in the FAA bill, Delta announced it was abandoning air service to 26 small rural communities-leaving many of them without air service.

Delta then had the gall to announce publicly it would seek EAS subsidies to continue this service. Maybe Mr. Anderson and his colleagues could forgo some of their salary to help subsidize this air service. Maybe they could use some of the millions of dollars they are collecting in a tax holiday windfall to pay for this service. Their actions are shameful.

Let me be clear, House Republicans and their Senate allies have thrown nearly four thousand FAA employees out of work, stopped critical airport safety projects, hurt hundreds of small businesses, and gutted the Aviation Trust Fund, all so that Delta Air Lines doesn't have to allow its employees to organize in a fair and timely manner.

The needs of one company should not dictate the safety and soundness of our aviation system. We need to pass a clean extension that will get people back to work, and businesses and their employees back to work building out critical airport infrastructure.

How Important Is Food In Determining Where You Travel? Hygiene?

2011-07-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

I was 15 the first time I hit the road and hitchhiked from Brooklyn to Miami Beach. I had the wanderlust. It never left me. When I was 15 Florida seemed exotic-- and my grandparents were down there for Passover/Easter so I knew I'd have a (free) place to stay. Motivations and destination targeting has changed for me over the years. Delicious food is always an incentive when I think of going to Italy, Morocco, Turkey, France or Thailand. A poor cuisine or an unavailability of healthy food is always a detriment when I think about Egypt, Mongolia, Cuba and, oddly enough, China. (We decided to go to Mali anyway and managed to survive well enough... and then found an absolutely fantastic restaurant-- serving traditional food-- in Bamako.)

China? With it's world famous cuisine? Well, I have to say, I was just in Hong Kong for a few days and every meal was really excellent. I was also in Nepal and... well, no one goes there for the food. And the amebic dysentery I picked up only lasted for 8 or 9 days. But China... David Sedaris put it so very elegantly in the Guardian this past weekend:

I have to go to China." I told people this in the way I might say, "I need to insulate my crawl space" or, "I've got to get these moles looked at." That's the way it felt, though. Like a chore. What initially put me off was the food. I'll eat it if the alternative means starving, but I've never looked forward to it, not even when it seemed exotic to me.

...I think it hurt that, before landing in China, Hugh and I spent a week in Tokyo, where the food was, as always, sublime, everything so delicate and carefully presented. With meals I drank tea, which leads me to another great thing about Japan-- its bathrooms. When I was younger they wouldn't have mattered so much. Then I hit 50 and found that I had to pee all the time. In Tokyo, every subway station has a free public men's room. The floors and counters are aggressively clean and beside each urinal is a hook for hanging your umbrella.

This was what I had grown accustomed to when we flew from Narita to Beijing International, where the first thing one notices is what sounds like a milk steamer, the sort a cafe uses when making lattes and cappuccinos. "That's odd," you think. "There's a coffee bar on the elevator to the parking deck?" What you're hearing, that incessant guttural hiss, is the sound of one person, and then another, dredging up phlegm, seemingly from the depths of his or her soul. At first you look over, wondering, "Where are you going to put that?" A better question, you soon realise, is, "Where aren't you going to put it?"

I saw wads of phlegm glistening like freshly shucked oysters on staircases and escalators. I saw them frozen into slicks on the sidewalk and oozing down the sides of walls. It often seemed that if people weren't spitting, they were coughing without covering their mouths, or shooting wads of snot out of their noses. This was done by plugging one nostril and using the other as a blowhole. "We Chinese think it's best just to get it out," a woman told me over dinner one night. She said that, in her opinion, it's disgusting that a westerner would use a handkerchief and then put it back into his pocket.

"Well, it's not for sentimental reasons," I told her. "We don't hold on to our snot for ever. The handkerchief's mainly a sanitary consideration."

Another thing one notices in China is the turds. "Oh please," you're probably thinking. "Must you?"

To this I answer, "Yes, I must", for if they didn't affect the food itself, they affected the way I thought about it. In Tokyo, I once saw a dog pee on the sidewalk. Then its owner reached into a bag, pulled out a bottle of water and rinsed the urine off the pavement. As for dog faeces, I never saw any trace of them. In Beijing, you see an overwhelming amount of shit. Some of it can be blamed on pets, but a lot of it comes from people. Chinese babies do without diapers, wearing instead these strange little pants with a slit in the rear. When a child has to go, its parents direct it towards the kerb or, if they're indoors, to a spot they think of as "kerby." "Last month I saw a kid shit in the produce aisle of our Chengdu Walmart," a young woman named Bridget told me.

This was the seventh day of my visit and so desensitised was I that my first response was, "You have a Walmart?"

There are the wild outdoor turds of China, and then there are the ones you see in the public bathrooms, most of which feature those squat-style toilets, holes, basically, level with the floor. And these bathrooms, my God. The sorriest American gas station cannot begin to match one of these things.

In the men's room of a Beijing subway station, I watched a man walk past the urinal, lift his three-year-old son into the air and instruct him to pee into the sink-- the one we were supposed to wash our hands in.

My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we've got. On some level we all know this and manage, quite pleasantly, to shove it towards the back of our minds. In China, it's brought to the front, and nailed there. The supermarket cashier holds out your change and you take it thinking, "This woman squats and spits on the floor while shitting and blowing snot out of her nose." You think it of the cab driver, of the ticket taker and, finally, of the people who are cooking and serving your dinner. Which brings me back to food.

If someone added a pinch of human faeces to my scrambled eggs, I may not be able to detect it but I would most likely realise that these particular eggs taste different from the ones I had yesterday. That's with something familiar, though. And there wasn't a lot of familiar in China. No pork lo mein or kung pao chicken, and definitely no egg rolls. On our first night in Chengdu, we joined a group of four for dinner – one Chinese woman and three westerners. The restaurant was not fancy, but it was obviously popular. Built into our table was a simmering cauldron of broth, into which we were to add side dishes and cook them until they were done. "I've taken the liberty of ordering us some tofu, some mushrooms and some duck tongues," said the western woman sitting across from me. "Do you trust me to keep ordering, or is there anything in particular you might like?"

I looked at her thinking, "You whore!" Catherine was English and had lived in China for close to 20 years. I figured the duck tongues were a sort of test, so I made it a point to look unfazed. Excited even.

When I was eventually forced to eat one, I found that it actually wasn't so bad. The only disconcerting part was the shape, particularly the base, from which dangled tentacle-like roots. This reminded one that the tongues had not been cut off but, rather, yanked out, possibly with pliers. Of course the duck was probably dead by then, wasn't it? It's not as if they'd jerk out the tongue and then let it go, traumatised and quackless but otherwise whole.
It was while eating my second duck tongue that the man at the next table hacked up a loud wad of phlegm and spat it on to the floor. "I think I'm done," I said.

The following morning, and with a different group, Hugh and I took a drive to the mountain where tea originally came from. It was late January, and the two-hour trip took us past countless factories. Mustard-coloured smoke drifted into the sky and the rivers we passed ran thick with waste and rubbish. Eventually we hit snow, which improved things visually but made it harder to move about. By the time we headed back down the mountain, it was almost three. Most restaurants had quit serving lunch, so we stopped at what's called a Farming Family Happiness. This is a farmhouse where, if they're in the mood, the people who live there will cook and serve you a meal.

One of the members of our party was a native of Chengdu, and of the five Americans, everyone but Hugh and I spoke Mandarin. Thus we hung back as they negotiated with the farm wife, who was square-faced and pretty and wore her hair cut into bangs. We ate in what was normally the mah jong parlour, a large room overlooking the family's tea field. Against one wall were two televisions, each tuned to a different channel and loudly playing to no one. On the other wall was a sanitation grade-- C-- and the service grade, which was a smiley face with the smile turned upside down.

As far as I know there wasn't a menu. Rather, the family worked at their convenience, with whatever was handy or in season. There was a rooster parading around the backyard and then there just wasn't. After the cook had slit its throat, he used it as the base for five separate dishes, one of which was a dreary soup with two feet, like inverted salad tongs, sticking out of it. Nothing else was nearly as recognisable.

I'm used to standard butchering: here's the leg, the breast, etc. At the Farming Family Happiness, rather than being carved, the rooster was senselessly hacked, as if by a blind person, a really angry one with a thing against birds. Portions were reduced to shards, mostly bone, with maybe a scrap of meat attached. These were then combined with cabbage and some kind of hot sauce.

Another dish was made entirely of organs, which again had been hacked beyond recognition. The heart was there, the lungs, probably the comb and intestines as well. I don't know why this so disgusted me. If I was a vegetarian, OK, but if you're a meat eater, why draw these arbitrary lines? "I'll eat the thing that filters out toxins but not the thing that sits on top of the head, doing nothing?" And why agree to eat this animal and not that one?

I remember reading a few years ago about a restaurant in the Guangdong province that was picketed and shut down because it served cat. The place was called The Fangji Cat Meatball Restaurant, which isn't exactly hiding anything. Go to Fangji and you pretty much know what you're getting. My objection to cat meatballs is not that I have owned several cats, and loved them, but that I try not to eat things that eat meat. Like most westerners I tend towards herbivores, and things that like grain: cows, chickens, sheep, etc. Pigs eat meat-- a pig would happily eat a human-- but most of the pork we're privy to was raised on corn or horrible chemicals rather than other pigs and dead people.

There are distinctions among the grazing animal eaters as well. People who like lamb and beef, at least in north America, tend to draw the line at horse, which in my opinion is delicious. The best I've had was served at a restaurant in Antwerp, a former stable called, cleverly enough, The Stable. Hugh was right there with me, and though he ate the same thing I did, he practically wept when someone in China mentioned eating sea horses. "Oh, those poor things," he said. "How could you?"

I went, "Huh?"

It's like eating poultry but taking a moral stand against those chocolate chicks they sell at Easter. "A sea horse is not related to an actual horse," I said. "They're fish, and you eat fish all the time. Are you objecting to this one because of its shape?"

He said he couldn't eat sea horses because they were friendly and never did anyone any harm, this as opposed to those devious, bloodthirsty lambs whose legs we so regularly roast with rosemary and new potatoes.

The dishes we had at the Farming Family Happiness were meant to be shared, and as the pretty woman with the broad face brought them to the table, the man across from me beamed and reached for his chopsticks. "You know," he said, "this country might have its ups and downs but it is virtually impossible to get a bad meal here."

I didn't say anything.

Another of the dishes that day consisted of rooster blood. I'd thought it would be liquid, like V8 juice, but when cooked it coagulated into little pads that had the consistency of tofu. "Not bad," said the girl seated beside me, and I watched as she slid one into her mouth. Jill was American, a Peace Corps volunteer who'd come to Chengdu to teach English. "In Thailand last year? I ate dog face," she told me.

"Just the face?"

"Well, head and face." She was in a small village, part of a team returning abducted girls to their parents. To show their gratitude, the locals prepared a feast. Dog was considered good eating. The head was supposedly the best part, and rather than offend her hosts, Jill ate it.

This, for many, is flat-out evil but the rest of the world isn't like America, where it's become virtually impossible to throw a dinner party. One person doesn't eat meat, while another is lactose intolerant, or can't digest wheat. You have vegetarians who eat fish and others who won't touch it. Then there are vegans, macrobiotics and a new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching. Take that into consideration and it's actually rather refreshing that a 22-year-old from the suburbs of Detroit will pick up her chopsticks and at least try the shar pei.

I'd like to be more like Jill, but in China something kept holding me back. In clean, sophisticated Japan the rooster blood, arranged upon a handmade plate between the perfect, tempura snow pea and a radish carved to look like a first trimester foetus, would have seemed a fine idea. "We ought to try making this at home," I'd have said to Hugh. Here, though, I thought of the sanitation grade, and of the rooster, pecking maggots out of human faeces before being killed. Most of the restaurants in China to me smelled dirty, though what I was smelling was likely some unfamiliar ingredient, and I was allowing the things I'd seen earlier in the day-- the spitting and snot blowing, etc-- to fill in the blanks.

Then again, maybe not.

While on our trip we ate at normal, everyday places, and sometimes bought food on the street. Our only expensive meal was in Beijing, where we went alone to a fancy restaurant recommended by an acquaintance. The place was located in an old warehouse and had been lavishly decorated. There was a wine expert and someone whose job it was to drop by every three minutes and refill your water glass. We had the Peking duck, which was expertly carved rather than hacked and was served with little pancakes. Towards the end of the meal, I stepped into the men's room to pee and there, disintegrating in the western-style toilet, was an unflushed turd, a little reminder saying, "See, you're still in China!"

Back at the table I asked for the bill. Then I remembered where I was and amended it to "the check". In France, you can die waiting to pay for your meal, which is something I've never understood. "How can they not want me out of here?" I'll think. Ten minutes might pass. Then 20, me watching as the waiter does everything but accept my goddamn money.

I'll say that for China, though-- offer to pay and before you can stab a rooster with a rusty screwdriver someone has taken you up on it. I think they want to catch you before you get sick, but whatever the reason, within minutes you're back on the street, searching the blighted horizon and wondering where your next meal might be coming from.

Asian culture doesn't subscribe to the germ theory. I'll never forget the first time, decades ago, I visited Thailand and watched our beautiful, smiling waitress coming towards us with a huge platter of delicious looking food. She sneezed all over it, and kept smiling beautifully as she served us. My friend Digby, who lived in Thailand for many years, suggests you kill whatever bacteria you can by using plenty of hot sauce... on everything.

Thailand-- The Monks vs The Katoeys

2011-07-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

Thailand has the most wide-open sex trade scene I've ever observed in any country I've visited. I suspect it's why Thailand gets so many millions of tourists every year, tourists from every corner of the world. And now, not just tourists from every corner of the world, but-- a new thing as far as I can tell-- prostitutes from every corner of the world. Russian, Eastern European and African prostitutes are now competing with the native ones in Bangkok's Pat Pong district-- which is, at least superficially, more like a Disneyland than a traditional red-light district. Even without the sex trade, Thailand is one of the most beautiful, varied and rewarding destinations anyone could hope to find anywhere. But, like I said, I suspect all those elderly European single men and determined Arabs aren't in Bangkok to visit Wat Po or sample royal court cuisine. I was a little dubious when Roland told me he saw Russian girls working as "hostesses" in the Pat Pong "bars." A few days later I saw a "masseuse" from Romania offering his services at a gentleman's club in a more staid part of town, the "boy's town" gay bars in Pat Pong long ago having lost any allure for all but those looking for laughs.

In the video above, you see something about how Thais are more accepting of a "gender-bending" approach than red state Americans. But that doesn't mean that it's all clear sailing for Thai katoeys, or ladyboys. Yesterday I found this story about Thai monks trying to teach maleness to ladyboys.

The 15-year-old aspiring "ladyboy" delicately applied a puff of talcum powder to his nose-- an act of rebellion at the Thai Buddhist temple where he is learning to "be a man."

"They have rules here that novice monks cannot use powder, make-up, or perfume, cannot run around and be girlish," said Pipop Thanajindawong, who was sent to Wat Kreung Tai Wittaya, in Chiang Khong on the Thai-Laos border, to tame his more feminine traits.

But the monks running the temple's programme to teach masculinity to boys who are "katoeys," the Thai term for transsexuals or ladyboys, have their controversial work cut out.

"Sometimes we give them money to buy snacks but he saved it up to buy mascara," headteacher Phra Pitsanu Witcharato said of Pipop.

Novice monks' days pass as in any other temple-- waking before dawn, collecting alms and studying Buddhism-- but every Friday attention turns to the katoeys at the attached school.

"Were you born as a man or a woman or can you not specify your gender-- not man or woman?" asked Phra Pitsanu at a recent assembly. "You cannot be anything else but your true gender, which is a man. As a novice you can only be a man."

The temple has a stricter interpretation than others of rules governing behaviour during Buddhist training that is a key childhood experience for many Thai boys.

Pupils are banned from using perfume and make-up and prohibited from singing, playing music and running.

"We cannot change all of them but what we can do is to control their behavior to make them understand that they were born as a man... and cannot act like a woman," said Phra Pitsanu.

The Kreung Tai temple has run the course for boys aged between 11 and 18 since 2008, after former principle Phra Maha Vuthichai Vachiramethi devised the programme because he thought reports of katoeys in the monkhood had "affected the stability of Thai Buddhism."

He told AFP that he hopes the teaching methods will be rolled out to other temple schools to "solve the deviant behavior in novices."

It is an attitude that enrages gay rights and diversity campaigner Natee Teerarojanapong, who said trying to alter the boys' sense of gender and sexuality was "extremely dangerous."

"These kids will become self-hating because they have been taught by respected monks that being gay is bad. That is terrible for them. They will never live happily," he told AFP.

Gay and katoey culture is visible and widely tolerated in Thailand, which has one of the largest transsexual populations in the world, and Natee said the temple's programme is "very out of date."

But Phra Atcha Apiwanno, 28, disputed the idea that society accepted ladyboys and said he joined the monkhood because of social stigma about his sexual identity.

"The reason I became a monk is to train my habits, to control my expression... I didn't want to be like this," he told AFP.

Monks have had limited success in their project-- three of the six ladyboys to have graduated from the school are said to have embraced their masculinity, but the remaining three went on to have sex changes.

Pipop said he has struggled with his sexuality at the temple.

At home in Bangkok he dressed like a girl, putting on make-up and taking hormones until he developed breasts, but he has since stopped the treatment and wears only a surreptitious dab of powder at the temple.

He does not believe he will live up to his family's hopes that he will become more manly.

"I can make them proud even I'm not a man," the teenager said, adding he had given up his ambition to be an airhostess and now aspires to work in a bank.

He thinks he will have a sex change after graduation.

"Once I leave the monkhood the first thing I want to do is to shout, to scream out loud saying: 'I can go back to being the same again!'"

When To Go-- Worth Paying Attention To

2011-07-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

You know how standard travel guides always have a little chapter or subchapter towards the front about when the right time to visit is? There's a reason it's always there and there's a reason it's in the beginning and, most of all, there's a reason we need to pay attention. The first time I was in Bangkok it was in the summer. I mean summer's a good time for a vacation, right? Yeah, but not there. And not Kathmandu either. I sore I'd never visit either in the summer again-- but I just got home from a trip to both.

The trip didn't start out that way. It started out as a trip to Tibet with a stopover in Kathmandu on the way and a stopover in Bangkok on the way home. Two weeks out the government of China, the occupying power in Tibet, suddenly canceled all foreign visas. The smart thing at that point would have been to just cancel the whole trip... or change it to a trip to Ethiopia, a country of eternal spring. But... well who doesn't love Kathmandu?

In 1971, the first time I visited, it really was like some kind of a Shangri-La with a hippie tinge. That was then. Even in the early '90s, the last time I was there, it was still fascinating and worthwhile. A lot has changed. For example it used to not be all that polluted, let alone the most polluted city on earth. And last time I was there it was during an invigorating December. Summers in Kathmandu are steamy, rainy and muddy. It's monsoon season, not a good time to visit. More to the point, Kathmandu's many charms-- balanced with the inconveniences-- is probably best savored just once. It's not a place for a casual tourist to go over and over, not like, say, Bali or Paris.

The best times we had on the trip were all outside the city-- visiting nearby Bhaktipur and Patan and, better yet, trekking in the mountains. I know sloshing around in the mud up in the mountains during a monsoon might not sound wonderful, but it actually was. Being lost, wandering around on unmarked paths at the top of the world, coming across little villages and spectacular temples where no one spoke a word of English except small children has its own special charm. And we had high rubber boots. It doesn't make any sense to visit Nepal without trekking. The Darbar Squares are all nice (photo of me up top at the Patan Darbar Square) but the mountains are what Nepal's really all about. Just avoid the leeches... and better to go when it's not monsoon season.

The civil war drove a million rural people into Kathmandu. There's been no increase in infrastructure. So it's too crowded and verging on uninhabitable. Another big difference is that the tourists aren't western hippies any more. The tourists are now basically all from India and China. And the tourist trade caters to them and to their tastes. It's a big change. Asia's changing that way. It's not as overwhelming in Bangkok because there are so many tourists there and it's such a major cosmopolitan city. But that's also a place best visited during our winter. In the summer, the weather is unbearable. It's sweltering hot and the humidity is beyond anything in Houston at its worst. You step outside and you're soaked in sweat within minutes. And then if you go inside anything-- a building, a taxi, a train... it's bone-chillingly freezing and deadly dry. No one understands the settings on the AC between zero and 10. It's always 10. So you're never dressed properly. Outdoors you want as little clothing as possible. Inside you need to be bundled up. December is the best time to visit, when it's still warm but not sweltering and the skies aren't prone to open up and release sheets of rain every now and then the way they do during the summer.

Urban Gadabout: Newark Bay or bust! (Is there anyone else whose pulse is sent racing by the prospect?)

2011-07-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

A nice overview of the waters in and around New York City (which is in light gray), pretty much all really inlets of the Atlantic Ocean: 1. Hudson River; 2. East River, though the number indicates the wilder upper portion, which has more in common with -- 3. Long Island Sound, to the east (between Long Island and Connecticut); 4. Newark Bay; 5. Upper New York Bay, and on the other side of the Verrazano Narrows -- 6. Lower New York Bay; 7. Jamaica Bay (that big purple splotch along its shore being JFK Airport); 8. Atlantic Ocean. Newark Bay (4) connects via the Kill Van Kull (to the northwest of Staten Island) to the Upper Bay and via the Arthur Kill (to the southwest of Staten Island) to Raritan Bay, at the bottom-left corner of the map.

by Ken

Here's the news in a nutshell: a New York Harbor tour that targets . . . Newark Bay!

I realize it's a pretty small subset of readers who will share even a fraction of my excitement about this news. Newark Bay? The more or less inland harbor -- hidden from view from the outer coast by the big land blob that is Staten Island -- that is the, the industrial hub of North Jersey? Would it help to think of it as the maritime heart of Sopranos country?

It's still not exactly glamorous, but Newark Bay is now where the hottest action of New York Harbor, since despite its remove from the open ocean, thanks to diligent dredging of the Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill, its outlets to that ocean, it can handle all many of the larger ocean-going freight vessels, and its western shore gives them access to the North American mainland, a major saving in shipping costs.

Maybe it's just this thing I've developed, this late-life fascination with the real geography of the harbor,now going beyond the obvious part that's on display from the Battery (the southern edge of Manhattan Island) and from the New York City Department of Transportation's gift to harbor hounds, the Staten Island Ferry. That's the Upper Harbor, 5 on the map --

* lying between Manhattan to the north, Brooklyn to the east, Staten Island to the south, and New Jersey (north to south: Hoboken, Jersey City, and Bayonne) on the west;

* with Governors Island sitting just south of Manhattan and east of Brooklyn, and with Liberty and Ellis Islands just east of the New Jersey coast;

* and with the Hudson River projecting north on the west side of Manhattan, separating it from New Jersey;

* and the East River to the east of Manhattan, separating it from Brooklyn (spanned in these lower reaches by the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges) and as it continues northward separating Manhattan and the Bronx from Queens;

* and just visible from standard Upper Bay outposts, the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island on the northwest from New Jersey (with views from some angles of the Bayonne Bridge over the kill);

Nowadays there seem to be all sorts of boats cruising the upper harbor, and I've done those tours. Mostly, though, they seem to be about what you do besides harbor-viewing, like dinner, or brunch, or fireworks (or sailing on a yacht, or a sailboat, or . . .). In the summer there's now free ferry service to Governors Island. (In fact I'm headed to Governors Island tomorrow.)

I've been trying to fill in my picture of the harbor and the coastline. To the east I did my pilgrimage to Plum Beach, Brooklyn (on Rockaway Inlet, more or less midway between 6 and 7), to observe horseshoe crabs with Urban Park Ranger Andrew. Farther east I took advantage of an Urban Park Rangers walk along Rockaway Beach, and still farther east there was a Shorewalkers walk along Jones Beach.

Farther up the East River, I seized the opportunity of a Municipal Art Society walk to get a close-up view, and actually walk over, Newtown Creek, which forms four-plus miles of the border between Brooklyn (to the south) and Queens (to the North), the NYC boroughs that occupy the western end of Long Island.

For the harbor itself, for Jane's Walk weekend in May, the tour I chose took me to the north shore of Staten Island, with a good view of the working harbor, even on a Sunday -- you're reminded that ships don't get "days off" while they're at sea and under intense pressure to make their schedules), including my best view as of then of the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island and New Jersey, including a pretty good view of the Bayonne Bridge spanning the kill.

By now it should be clear that a major role in the geography of the southern part of the harbor is played by Staten Island, and for that reason, and also for my shocking ignorance of this borough of the city of New York, I've been undertaking a sort of crash course in Staten Island, taking advantage of Municipal Arts Society tours to Snug Harbor, on the Kill Van Kull shore (though we didn't get much of a view of the water): Tottenville, on Raritan Bay, at the southern tip of the island (to which I recently returned for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival), and Stapleton Heights. (In fact, I'm about to head out to an MAS tour of the budding cultural scene in Staten Island's St. George.)

In my mind, at least, all of this was pointing me toward -- what else? -- Newark Bay, but I honestly had no idea how I might tackle it as a destination. That is, until I was, as usual, perusing the week's listings in Time Out New York and found myself staring at this listing:

Hidden Harbor Tour: Newark Bay Tour

South Street Seaport, Pier 16, Tue 6:15pm. Fulton St (at South St)
(866) 977-6998circlelinedowntown.com
Subway: A, C to Broadway-Nassau St; J, M, Z, 2, 3, 4, 5 to Fulton StGet directions
$29, seniors $22, children $15

As one of three of its New York Harbor tours, this trip around Newark Bay on Circle Line's Zephyr includes views of the Red Hook Container Terminal and Bayonne Bridge, a passage through Kill Van Kull, which divdes Staten Island and New Jersey, and an exploration of the busy container ports across the water.

Sure enough, the Circle Line Downtown website lists the three Hidden Harbor Tours:

Tour 1 - The Newark Bay Tour
Feauturing the Kill Van Kull, Bayonne Bridge and The Giant Container Ports of Newark Bay

Tour 2 - The Brooklyn Tour
Featuring Brooklyn's Maritime Heritage & Future - Brooklyn Navy Yard to Sunset Park

Tour 3- North River Tour
The Changing Waterfront of North River - Passengers Ships to Kayaks

There are much more detailed descriptions of each onsite. Still-to-come dates for the Newark Bay Tour, in addition to July 12, are August 9 and September 13; for the Brooklyn Tour, July 26 and September 27; and for the North River Tour, August 23. If there was any financial advantage to booking all three tours, which I was certainly prepared to do, I couldn't find any trace of any, but you better believe I went ahead and booked Tuesday's epic trip to Newark Bay.

Luckily for me, I work within walking distance of Pier 16, so with just a little fudging I'll be able to make that 6:15 departure. I've already printed my ticket, but I'm still supposed to be there 30 minutes before departure time. Can you tell that I'm excited?

Urban Gadabout: Inside the Revolutionary Apple with a co-author of "Inside the Apple"

2011-07-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

James explained that the fence around Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan is not only one of the city's oldest surviving artifacts but a participant in some key historical events.

by Ken

Is there any traveler who hasn't become wholly dependent on the Internet? Whether it's for scouting destinations, gathering information, finding timetables, making reservations -- even for a humble urban gadabout, it's hard to imagine doing it these days without the staggering range of resources online.

Online is how I do essentially all of my planning with my "regular" tour providers, New York's Municipal Art Society, New York Transit Museum, and Urban Park Rangers. I'm so booked up for the summer that I have hardly a weekend "day off," and on a lot of those days I'm doubling up. Still, I'm aware that this only scratches the surface of what's available out there, so Friday, with a thinned-out schedule thinning for the 4h of July Weekend, I did some online searching, and stumbled onto, insidetheapple.net, the blog of Michelle and James Nevius, wife-and-husband authors of a combination history of New York and guidebook called Inside the Apple, and learned that on July 3rd James would be doing a "Revolutionary War Walking Tour" in Lower Manhattan, for which, as of a post from a couple of days previous, they still had places.

So I followed the instructions for e-mailing a reservation request and soon got back a confirmation, which left only the consideration of weather, which today started out dreadful, with intermittent heavy rain and overcast, and a not especially sunny forecast. Nevertheless, James sent out an e-mail to the reservation list expressing the hope that the storms would pass through by our scheduled assembly time, 4pm said, "Thus, I am going to be at the meeting place at 4PM to lead the tour and I do hope you will be too! Bring an umbrella, of course, and good humor, and I'm sure will have a great time."

So as soon as I finished puttering around with Bruno Walter and the Siegfried Idyll, I set out for Peter Minuit Plaza, in front of the Staten Island Ferry, and incredbily, just about the whole group of 25 walkers turned up. (As James pointed out, you're apt to get a bunch of no-shows even in perfect weather.)

And through intermittent, sometimes heavy rain, our hardy band trooped through a host of locales where way back in Revolutionary New York events of significance happened, though as is true of almost all of our two centuries of colonial history, first Dutch and then English, hardly anything except streets (and many street names) survives from that time. (A particular bête noire of James, we discovered, is the relative lack of attention that's been given to our four-century-old city's English century. Everybody loves the Dutch century, he points out, and of course the two centuries-plus since the Revolution are wildly popular. But the English century may be too closely connected with English rule, the city itself having been not just the site of the English military command but a center of Loyalist sympathy and activity.

James himself is wildly charming and personable, and an easygoing fount of information, so the tour was a resounding success. We wound up walking up Broad Street to the corner of Broad and Wall, and the Federal Hall that's not the Federal Hall where George Washington was inaugurated as our first president but occupies the same site (in much the way that what now passes for Fraunces Tavern, a famously favorite hangout of George Washington, is a re-creation of the building from Washington's time. Walkng up Broad Street we passed my office building, 20 Broad, and by then I had learned that there wasn't any great canal-like purpose to the canal that originally ran up the middle of Broad Street, as is described in the history of the street that's engraved in the new curbside that was created when the street was repaved with stones -- and security outposts -- from Beaver to Wall Streets a couple of years ago.

I was happy to buy a copy of Inside the Apple from James (I like the idea of a larger chunk of the purchase price going into the authors' pockets), and am just starting to get to know it. In an introductory note, Michelle and James explain:

The goal of Inside the Apple is to give you a different pathway into the city's long and rich history. While there are many books that focus on New York's notable events and famous people, ours is instead organized around the places where those events took place. By grounding the narrative in sites that you can see and visit, we provide concrete, tangible, connections between the city of today and its intriguing past.

People have long tried to answer the question: What makes New York unique? We feel the answer is deceptively simple: more than any other American city, it is primarily experienced on foot. . . .

As this suggests, the history-based narrative is grounded in places, with lots of cross-referencing to related chapters, and there are 14 full-fledged walking tours at the end. I'm looking forward to getting to know the book better.

Danger In Thailand?

2011-07-02T18:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday night Pat Pong was was relatively quiet. Like all bars in Thailand, Bangkok's tourist-oriented, even Disneyland-like, red light district wasn't serving alcohol... and many of the hostesses and hosts were back in their hometowns to vote Sunday. Sunday is election day.

Sunday voting is a great idea-- working people have the day off-- something American conservatives have always adamantly opposed as a way of holding down participation from the poorer classes. Here in Thailand voting goes 'til 3pm. Public transportation in Bangkok is free of charge Sunday between 6AM and 4pm to encourage voters. Online political messages were banned after 6pm Saturday. Vote buying is widespread. [A 100 baht note is about $3.00.]

Police stepped up efforts to crack down on vote-buying Saturday and arrested three people in Samut Prakan and Maha Sarakham provinces suspected of involvement in the practice.

Somjai Uan-takhop, 55, a grocer in Samut Prakan's Muang district, was arrested for allegedly handing two 100 baht bank notes to Anusorn Thongkon, 51, and asking him to vote for a major political party, according to Samut Prakan police inspector Sonchai Empradit.

In Maha Sarakham, special branch police arrested Thongphoon Sriyowong, who they said was found carrying 64 100 baht bank notes.

Acting on information provided by the suspect, officers then seized a pickup truck containing about 4,000 100 baht bank notes, a pistol and a book with lists of canvassers' and voters' names, and leaflets profiling an MP candidate.

Mrs Thongphoon, a resident of Muang district, allegedly confessed that she received the 6,400 baht cash from three men in a pickup truck.

...The Australian and British embassies have issued travel advisories for Thailand due to concerns over the possibility of unrest and violence during and after the election and the formation of the next government.

The Australian embassy in Bangkok advised its nationals in Thailand to exercise a high degree of caution.

"There is a possibility of civil unrest and violence in the period surrounding the election and formation of a new government," said a message posted on the embassy's website.

"The political situation remains unpredictable after the last April-May incident and further political unrest and violence cannot be ruled out in Bangkok and other provinces," it added.

The British Embassy posted a travel advisory on its website on Friday regarding the "possibility of unrest in parts of Thailand during national elections."

"The Election Commission has until Aug 2 to confirm the election result. There remains a risk that political developments may lead to violence," it said.

Bangkok is an incredibly cosmopolitan city. Look around a Skytrain car and you always see people from every continent. If election season is a dangerous time, tourists and ex-pats don't seem to be paying any attention. Thais have a different perspective:

UPDATE: People Are Voting Now-- But Not Tweeting

Thai election law prohibits sales of alcohol and all political campaigning-- so not just Facebook and Twitter but the law covers the too-- from 6:00 pm the day before a vote until midnight of the election day, even though voting ends at 3pm.

Police on Saturday warned election candidates and citizens not to use web media such as Facebook or Twitter to campaign for the election-- or risk going to jail.

Thai policemen and officials give a final check to ballots and ballot boxes.

"Police will work with hundreds of ICT (information and communication technology) officials to monitor all types of social media activities after 6:00pm," said national police spokesman Major General Prawut Thavornsiri.

"Any candidates or even ordinary people who convince others to vote for someone face a six-month jail term or a 10,000-baht fine ($324) or both," he said.

Trip To Gaza

2011-06-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

No, not me. I try to avoid, at least in theory, places with active armed struggles. My old pal, author Reese Erlich, is the opposite. He goes from one conflict zone to another. The last we heard from him, he was in Egypt, and before that in Cuba and Afghanistan. Gaza isn't exactly a tourist destination. But it's a historical and Biblical place and it can easily be on the route from history-rich Egypt to history-rich Israel... and Palestine. And as Reese told me, Gaza has a lot of potential for tourism, even if that needs to wait for political stability. "It's located along prime Mediterranean seafront. The local folks have enjoyed the sea, beaches and weather for many years. There's even a 5-star hotel built along the seashore, but not opened do to economic problems in Gaza."

There is no foreign tourism in Gaza at the moment because of the Israeli economic blockade. The Israelis restrict foreign travelers to journalists, aid workers, etc. The Egyptians don't allow general tourist traffic either.

The Hamas government is trying to promote what they call "internal" tourism, which means getting Gazans out of their houses and traveling to thebeaches, to parks, etc. The recreational area on the land formally occupied by Gush Katif is an example of internal tourism. It's as much a morale booster as an economic factor. So like everything else in Gaza, real tourism will have to wait until there's an overall political settlement.

Reese was in Gaza recently reporting for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. And it wasn't his first time in one of the world's most troubled areas:

In 2004, I reported from an Israeli settlement in the southern part of Gaza called Gush Katif. The ultra-conservative religious settlers living there told me Gaza was part of historic Israel, and they would never leave. Less than a year later, the Israeli government withdrew from Gaza and forced the settlers out.

A few days ago, I went back to visit the land that was once Gush Katif. The results were pleasantly surprising given my general disagreements with Gaza’s governing party, Hamas.

Back in 2004, I arrived in Gaza on a special road reserved for Israeli settlers and off limits to Palestinians. Gush Katif and other settlements dissected Gaza with settler-only roads. Palestinians couldn’t drive along the coastal highway. Military checkpoints dotted the alternative north-south road. Some days Palestinians got through the checkpoints, and other days they didn’t.

My trip to Gush Katif illustrated why the Israeli settlements are such a critical issue. It’s not just a question of settlers living on Palestinian land and commuting to Israel. The settlements require settler-only access roads, checkpoints and a constant military presence. Under those conditions, Palestinians can’t have sovereignty over their own country. They can’t even drive freely between two neighboring cities.

Since the unilateral withdrawal of Israel from Gaza in August 2005, the checkpoints and settlements disappeared. The coastal road is open. We turned onto a dirt road and there was the former Gush Katif. The city hall, schools and houses were gone. The Israeli military destroyed most of the buildings before departure. Palestinian scavengers walked away with the remaining cement blocks, rebar and other construction materials.

A few buildings still stand, along with the scaffoldings of former hothouses. “We had to rebuild everything,” says Mohammad Thuraya, director of Asda City, which now occupies the land.

The area around Asda City includes Hamas’ TV and radio station, a recreational park and agricultural land leased to local farmers.

In the park, families picnic, a water slide dumps screaming children into a huge swimming pool and a clown jumps around to the kids’ delight.

Outside the park, the Hamas government leased land to local farmers. Saleh Moshen has planted apple trees in the mixture of sand and clay that passes for soil in this part of the world. Within a stone’s throw of the former Gush Katif hothouses, he has several hundred trees.

“I don’t expect to make a profit right away,” he told me. “You need a few years for apple trees to be productive.”

The settlers used to export flowers and vegetables to Europe. Palestinians in other parts of Gaza also exported to Europe until 2006 when Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections, and Israel imposed economic sanctions on Gaza.

The Israeli pressure eased somewhat after May 31, 2010, when a flotilla of passenger boats from Turkey tried to bring supplies to Gaza. During the Israeli boarding of one vessel, nine people were killed and many injured.

The resulting international outcry forced Israel to modify its policies. Today, cement and construction materials can be imported, but only for previously approved UN projects. More food can be imported, and even a few new cars. Palestinian-grown flowers and strawberries can be exported, but in very limited quantities.

Allaa El-Rafati, Gaza’s Minister of National Economy, told me Israel’s policies still hurt ordinary Palestinians. Truck traffic between Israel and Gaza is only about 25 percent of what existed before 2005. “We’re particularly short of medicines and medical equipment,” he said.

Ordinary Palestinians would like to see an end to Israel’s sanctions and a return to normal life, but aren’t expecting that anytime soon.

Urban Gadabout: Back from Tottenville!

2011-06-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

Alas, the Pavilion at Conference House Park was used as a stage for the "musicians," and so was off limits to us Second Annual Raritan Bay Festivalgoers.

by Ken

So I really did it, and it all went off without a hitch -- the subway to South Ferry, the 10:30 Staten Island Ferry to St. George, the Staten Island Railway all to the end, at Tottenville, the walk to the Conference House Park Visitors Center for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival.

It's a good thing I'd been in the Pavilion at Conference House Park on my previous expedition to Tottenville. We ate our bag lunches in the Pavilion -- in the rain -- on that Municipal Art Society tour last month (link for Municipal Art Society tours: mas.org/tours/) led by the remarkable Justin Ferate, without whom I would never have gotten to Tottenville once, let alone wanted to go back, or actually known where the heck I was going. As I explained last night, the view from the Pavilion was so reduced by the dreadful weather conditions that I could hardly see anything.

Today the weather held pretty well. There was a threat of showers, and from time to time the puffy white clouds gave way to gray ones of varying intensity, but mostly it was okay. So today I could see that what I thought looked like a view of the open ocean, but was really Raritan Bay, was no such thing -- the low visibility simply lopped off the Monmouth County shoreline. (Also, I have to say that Perth Amboy, across the Arthur Kill from Tottenville, looks more picturesque in the mist and gray.) Oh yes, the reason I was glad we'd made it to the Pavilion on that first trip: It was closed off to festivalgoers, to be used as a stage for the, er, musicians (I guess any group of people holding noise-making devices attached to amplifiers and speakers qualify as "musicians") scheduled throughout the afternoon.

This time, however, I made it down onto the beach, where I gave a wide beth to the kiddie kayaking that seemed to be drawing most of the crowd that had arrived in the first hour, in favor of the half-hour horseshoe-crab walk offered every hour by a smart fellow from the Staten Island Museum. (This seems to be my horseshoe-crab season.) I scored some cool literature from the tables of the aforementioned Staten Island Museum and a couple of other interesting-themed organizations (even including a free DVD from one, just for signing up for their e-mail list), and by then I'd been there an hour and decided I'd pretty well "done" the festival, and realized I was probably within striking distance of the S78 bus, which I'd scouted on my way to the park and which would take me close to the train station -- and which came exactly, and I mean exactly at the posted schedule time, 1:07, though I didn't take it all the way, realizing that (a) I would wind up getting to the station way too early for the next train, and (b) I would be deprived of the opportunity to fortify myself with some local victuals.

So I got off at the corner of Amboy Road and Main Street, which passes for a bustling intersection in Tottenville, and bought some local specialties at the Main St. Deli -- Sprite Zero and a Little Debbie peach pie (we urban gadabouts know that while gadding you need to provision yourself to last at least to the next deli). Then I walked on to the station and made the reverse trip again without a hitch. Since I was going to be home so much earlier than I expected, and from the ferry terminal had the whole of the city at my (and my unlimited MetroCard's) disposal, I did allow myself an only slightly out-of-the-way detour to Manganaro's Hero-Boy on Ninth Avenue between 37th and 38th. It was easy to set my sights on s chicken parmigiana hero. The agonizing part -- all the way from the ferry terminal to Manganaro's, in particular the walk from Seventh Avenue to Ninth -- was whether to eat in, as I normally do, or get the sandwich to go, so I could really celebrate the early return. (It was a tough call, but in the end I chose the "to go" option.)

Total travel time, deducting the added stopovers, was just over seven hours door to door. Which means roughly six hours traveling for one hour of festival. Is that a good ratio? You might not think so, but I thought it was a pretty swell adventure.

And the sandwich was, as always, wonderful. You'd think you wouldn't want to schlepp a chicken parmigiana hero around for another 45 minutes, but in fact, great as it is when you eat it freshly made and hot, when you let it sit like that, so it cools off and gets a little mooshy, it's just as good. The flavors mingle or something.

Urban Gadabout: To the end of the island (Staten) -- I'm headed back to Tottenville (weather permitting)

2011-06-24T18:00:00.000-07:00

If you look out onto the water from Conference House Park in Tottenville, at the southern tip of Staten Island, you can imagine you're looking onto the open Atlantic Ocean, but off to the east skinny Sandy Hook juts northward from the Monmouth County shoreline, forming the eastern boundary of Raritan Bay. (For a larger view, click on the map.)

by Ken

If you don't have anything planned tomorrow between noon and 5pm, plus whatever travel time it would take you to get to Tottenville, at the southern tip of State Island, why not hie on down for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival?

It's going to be quite a schlepp for me from the northern reaches of Manhattan -- upwards of three hours if I do it the cheap way, by subway to South Ferry, Staten Island Ferry to St. George, the full length of the Staten Island Railway to Tottenville, then a 15-minute walk to the Conference House Park Visitors Center at Hyland Boulevard and Satterlee Street. I can cut a chunk of time off if instead I catch the X-1 express bus from Lower Manhattan across the Verrazanno Narrows Bridge, connecting with the S78 bus on Hylan Boulevard virtually to within a block of the Visitors Center, but I have to be prepared to spend the $5.50 express-bus fare.

THE "CONFERENCE" IN THE CONFERENCE HOUSE

A conference took place there on Sept. 11, 1776, in the hope of resolving the unpleasantness (you may have heard of it -- the American Revolutionary War) between the newly-declared-independent Americans and their erstwhile colonial masters, the British. The Americans were represented by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge; the British, by their military commander in America, Admiral Lord Richard Howe, who was then occupying the house of Col. Christopher Billopp, which had been built in 1680 by his grandfather, British naval Capt. Christopher Billopp. (That's a reenactment in the photo, not the original event!) The conference doesn't seem to have accomplished anything. After the war, the actively Tory Billopp family was stripped of its properties.

Actually, I'm kind of looking forward to doing the walk between the SIR station and Conference House Park in at least one direction, which will be retreading old ground, from a Municipal Art Society walking tour to Tottenville led by the inexhaustibly knowledgeable Justin Ferate, on which we actually got to the Pavilion in Conference House Park, and also in the course of our tour visited a stunning private home where we got to meet a special guest, the preeminent historian of State Island, Barnett Shepherd, author of the 2010-published Tottenville: The Town the Oyster Built, published by the Tottenville Historical Society. (To put it another way, or maybe more or less the same way, the town was built on, and prospered from, the rich harvest of oysters in surrounding waters in the 19th century, until pollution put an end to its oyster trade.) Barnett had had quite a schlepp himself -- from the other side of the island, we were told, on an island that developed as a plethora of separate communities, where it's frequently not so easy to get from there to here.

On the May MAS Tottenville walking tour we made it to the Pavilion in Conference House Park at the southern edge of Staten Island, with a view across the Arthur Kill (separating Staten Island and New Jersey) of Perth Amboy, NJ.

The one downside to that trip was the weather, which was mostly rotten. By the time we got to Conference House Park, the overcast and mist were so heavy that, while we could see across the Arthur Kill, which separates Staten Island from the North American mainland, to picturesque Perth Amboy, NJ, we couldn't see much else, and it wasn't exactly an ideal day for exploring the shorefront.

A ferry used to join Tottenville to Perth Amboy, nestled between the Arthur Kill and the Raritan River ("perhaps the major drainage channel along the ice front throughout the Wisconsin glaciation," according to Wikipedia) Now they're linked by the Outerbridge Crossing, whose name derives not from a geographical description, as most of us initially suppose, but from Staten Island resident Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge, the first chairman of the Port of New York Authority. It's called "crossing," it was explained to us, because how goofy would "Outerbridge Bridge" sound? There are decent views of the bridge from the Tottenville railway station, by the way.

The Outerbridge Crossing over Arthur Kill, from Tottenville

For tomorrow the Conference House Park Conservancy is promising 45-minute shoreline walking tours (hourly, at 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30) plus "local musicians on two stages, crafts, exhibitions from maritime organizations and historic societies, and plenty of entertainment for children, including a petting zoo and water rides."

Provided the weather cooperates, of course. I mean, I've already seen the view from the Conference House Park in crappy weather, and it's not worth six hours' combined travel time for that again! (At the moment, NY1.org is holding out: "Morning clouds/fog. Partly sunny in the afternoon. Spot thunderstorms." Uh-oh.)

An aerial view of the Pavilion in Conference House Park

Kathmandu Essentials: Flying, Breathing, Eating

2011-06-24T08:00:00.001-07:00

Look really hard and maybe you'll catch a glimpse of Kathmandu

Did you think I was exaggerating the other day when I mentioned Kathmandu's air is the most polluted of any big city on earth and that it's dangerous to go out without a carbon-filter mask? See that photo above? When I first started visiting Nepal in 1971, you could actually see the Shangri-La-like city from the ridge of mountains that sound it. Now you're just as likely to see... filthy air.

And it turns out that it's even dangerous to fly in the soupy mess. The top story in today's English-language newspaper, Republica is ominously entitled "Smoggy Skies Threaten Aviation in Kathmandu."

Many times, environmental issues are sidelined with the assumption that its consequences will be gradual and hence can be dealt with in the future. The question is, how long though?

“We could’ve been killed in that flight. The air pollution in Kathmandu has gotten so bad that if people don’t act now, we’re putting lives in danger here,” Kevin A. Rushing, the former USAID Mission Director to Nepal, commented in a recent conference.

“Just when our plane was about to land in Kathmandu, due to thick smog over the Valley, we couldn’t see the runway, we couldn’t see anything.

The plane then had to divert all the way around, reroute and keep flying in such a condition despite the turbulence risking the lives of all people on board.” He added, “If things don’t improve, you’d really think twice about flying to Kathmandu.”

Captain Vijay Lama, a pilot with Nepal Airlines who has been flying for more than two decades, says that Rushing’s anxiety is valid.

“The flying conditions in Kathmandu have become terrible, especially during winter”, he says. “In winter, when fog combines with smoke and other pollutants in the air, the resulting smog worsens the visibility, and it’s far worse than when it’s foggy.”

According to Lama, the rising pollution can have drastic effects on visibility on both land and in air. “There’s an increase in the number of flights being backlogged, and there are always delays after delays.

It’s all because of the smog and haze condition,” he says. “As the smog is heavier, it settles in lower altitude, and with the amount of smoke and dust particles that adds on with the moisture in the air, it becomes denser, making it impossible to fly.”

Whereas smog is mostly formed in the winter due to the mixture of smoke and fog, haze often occurs in pre-monsoon seasons that have relatively dry air, combining with the smoke and dust or particulate matters or total suspended particles (TSPs) in the air.

The chemicals which contribute to formation of smog also include harmful man-made and naturally occurring compounds, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and ozone.

As reported by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), when these components of smog mix up, they can create dust clouds, black soot and gray fog. This can result in a smog cloud that can reduce visibility by 70 percent.

Captain Lama stresses that if the situation in the Kathmandu Valley isn’t addressed soon, the flying conditions will just get worse, and with the risks involved, the future of aviation in Nepal could be very bleak.

According to the 2006 report “Urban Air Quality Management Strategy in Kathmandu Valley” by Jitendra J. Shah and Tanvi Nagpal, atmospheric visibility data from Kathmandu’s airport, analyzed onwards from 1970, show that there’s been a very substantial decrease in the visibility in the Valley since about 1980.

The number of days with good visibility around noon has decreased in the winter months from more than 25 days per month in the 1970s to about five days per month in 1992/93.

“Visibility is the measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly distinguished or seen. In aviation, it can differ with the aircraft type,” says Mishri Lal Mandal, Deputy Director of Air Traffic Services (ATS) Division of Tribhuvan International Airport Civil Aviation Office (TIACAO).

Basically, for Visual Flight Rules (VFR) or visually aided flights, the minimum visibility to be maintained is 5km.

This means the pilot has to be able to clearly distinguish an object as far as five kilometers away with his eyes whereas for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) or instrument aided flights, pilots can fly even with the visibility is 800 meters while taking off and 1,600m for landing, he informs.

As helicopters in Nepal only operate with VFR, it’s more risky for helicopter pilots, according to Captain Nischal KC, helicopter pilot at Air Dynasty.

“When there’s haze or smog, it gets very difficult for pilots not just in terms of visibility but they also get disoriented and nauseous at times,” says KC “As helicopter pilots don’t have an instrument landing aid, we have to fly by considering the artificial horizon, and a lot of experience is required.”

KC adds that it’s the reason why during pre-monsoons and winters, when haze and smog problems are at its peak, new pilots aren’t allowed to fly without experienced co-pilots.

Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, General Manager of TIACAO, says, “Instrument flights for the Kathmandu Valley are more complicated with its hilly terrains. (So) We’re planning to bring Required Navigation Performance Authorization Required (RNPAR) technology that can help flights operate even in poor visibility as it operates through satellite signals and follows a specific path and reduces pilot workload.”

Suman shares that the increasing trends in poor visibility conditions result in flights being diverted or stranded. Then, as soon as the conditions become favorable, flights start piling up, and there’s more load than the capacity of the terminal building.

"Safety is our first concern. So we don’t authorize any flight to operate in poor visibility," says Suman. "Besides that, we also lose out on a lot of revenue when flights have to be cancelled, diverted or rerouted due to poor visibility."

KC, however, points out that flights and helicopters are also given the go ahead if there’s a visibility of more than 1,000m. From then on, it’s the pilot’s decision whether to fly or not.

In the article "Are Nepali Skies Safe?" by Amish Raj Mulmi and published in the Kathmandu Post in August 2010, Lama also mentioned that there is pressure for pilots to fly no matter what the weather condition or visibility is like. And the pressure came from everywhere-- political leaders getting late for a meeting, to airline operators losing out on revenues.

...As air pollution in Kathmandu worsens and its skies become obscure with layers of haze and smog looming in its atmosphere, nothing is being done to assure the safety of the thousands of passengers flying in and out of there everyday. Civil aviation remains at risk, and if these conditions remain unchanged, it can only get worse.

Health impacts, Dr Arjun Karki, Chest Specialist at Patan Hospital, says that the primary effects due to smog or haze would obviously be on respiratory health.

"Lung diseases can become chronic, proportionate to the concentration and density of smog," he says. "And if the gases present in the smog comprise specific toxins, the harm could be even greater."

According to Karki, on one hand, smog and haze can aggravate the health of people who already have respiratory problems, like asthma, it can also trigger lung disease in healthy people as well.

"Besides, it also depends on the length of exposure," he says. "Besides respiratory health problems, it can also cause eye irritation for some people."

However, Dr Mukunda Prasad Kafle, physician and Lecturer at the Teaching Hospital, says that while the unhealthy effects of smog or haze in particular can be many, not enough studies in this regard have been conducted here.

"As smog and haze come under air pollution, we can deduce that the health problems are similar to the ones caused by air pollution, like lung diseases and other respiratory problems. And smog can have its own adverse effects as well."

Safe to fly into Nepal? Not anymore safe than breathing the air when you get here. And this week, the tarmac at Tribhuvan International Airport buckled, "developed" potholes, and collapsed, delaying all international and domestic flights to and from and within the country for at least three hours. There seems to be a consensus that the board of Nepal Airlines is responsible.

Lucknow's nearby & Kathmandu's Kakori offers fabulous Awadhi cuisine

Now what about the restaurants? Nepal isn't a culinary destination. The best that can be said about the restaurants in Kathmandu is that they're pretty good... for Kathmandu. The acclaimed tourist spots in the tourist ghetto of Thamel are universally mediocre, although some are rated less mediocre than others. But there's no reason to ever visit one twice, unless you're just looking for fuel for your body. There were three stand-outs and I'll leave the best for last, since it's the only restaurant in the country that's actually good, not just "good for Kathmandu.

We had dinner twice in what used to be the best Indian restaurant in town, Ghar-e-Kabab in the Hotel de l'Annapurna on Durbar Marg (Kathmandu's sad version of 5th Avenue). It's relatively fancy and formal although, by our Western standards, pretty inexpensive for a quality meal. Like all restaurants we visited, around half the menu catered to vegetarians and they're very aware that most westerners are afraid of spices. If you tell them you like it spicy, they give you a normal Indian meal.

We also ate in a few of the tourist-only Nepali restaurants that serve authenticish Newari food (surprisingly decent with music and dancing). The best one was Bhojan Griha on Dilli Bazaar, a medium walk from Durbar Marg. It's in an historic old house and the hospitality is wonderful. The set meals are fine and they offer an à la carte menu as well. We found the food much better than in Thamel House, an old hippie standard, or the newer Utsav, which-- at least the night we were there-- seems to cater primarily to tourists from China.

Now, the one world-class actually excellent restaurant in the whole city is Kakori, an Indian restaurant in the Soaltee Crowne Plaza Hotel, far the hell away from anywhere else in town-- a 200 rupee taxi ride (less than $3). It was briefly called the Bukhara, having been developed and run by the folks from the restaurant of the same name in New Delhi's Sheraton, probably the best high-end restaurant in India. I reviewed it when I ate there in 2007. Kakori serves Awadhi cuisine (from Lucknow) and the restaurant's menu was developed by Nawab Sayed Nazir Haider Kazmi, grandson of Great Nawab Mir Wazir Ali Kazmi of Kakori, Uttar Pradesh's princely family. We had as good a dinner as we would have had in a fine Indian restaurant in India or London and at a fraction of the price, though expensive by Nepal's standards. And if you read my review of the ultra-rich dahl they serve in the Bukhara in Delhi... yes, it's pretty much the same-- not exactly but at least just as good.

We're staying at the Yak & Yeti and their signature restaurant, The Chimney-- which I remember as Boris'-- serves Russian and "continental" cuisine. The menu didn't appeal to us and we passed it up this time around. My tip: acclimate yourself to the fact that Nepal has other traits than great cuisine (or air) to recommend itself and... bring some of your favorite bars with you as a backup.

UPDATE: Tourist Plane Crashes Near Kathmandu

Both times I went to get a look at the Himalayas, I walked. This last time, we noticed there were flights-- really expensive ones-- that take a couple dozen tourists for a ride around Mount Everest. One of them crashed today, killing everyone on board.

A plane carrying tourists to view Mount Everest crashed while attempting to land in dense fog in Nepal on Sunday, police and eyewitnesses said. A witness said 18 bodies were pulled out of the wreckage of the plane, which was carrying 19 people.

The Beechcraft-made plane belonging to Buddha Air was carrying 16 foreign tourists and three crew members and crashed in Bisankunarayan village, just a few miles (kilometers) south of the capital, Katmandu.

...An eyewitness, Haribol Poudel, told Avenues Television that the plane had hit the roof of a house in the village and that 18 bodies were pulled out. He said a man who appeared to have survived was taken to a hospital.

Poudel said it was foggy, and that visibility was very low in the mountainous area... The plane had taken the tourists to view Mount Everest and other high peaks and was returning to Katmandu. The “mountain flight” takes tourists over the Everest region, and passengers can view some of the world’s highest peaks from the airplane windows.

Most of the tourists on board were Indian-- most tourists in Kathmandu are from India-- but there were two Americans on board as well.

The Failed States Of South Asia-- India's Unhappy Neighborhood

2011-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

In some ways India and its neighborhood is about as different from the U.S. as you can possibly be. I've been writing about that since I first went there in 1969. But, viewed from Kathmandu-- where the tourist scene these days is almost all Indian and where the English language TV channels are all Indian-- India is very much like the U.S. Oh, not that India... the other one, the 21st Century one. That one watches Glee, How I Met Your Mother, HBO and Indian TV shows that display a culture so disgustingly celebrity-oriented that it even puts our own to shame... well almost. I don't know what they call Madison Avenue in Mumbai but, God do these guys ever run the show.

I just watched an episode of a popular show, India's Most Desirable. I don't recommend it... but go ahead:

India has (another) problem. It's surrounded by the world's most failed states Africa's worse. Somalia's #1. Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, and the Congo, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Niger, Burundi, Kenya, Guinea Bissau, even Ethiopia are right up there among the world's most vulnerable countries. But none of those places are as much like our country as India is. And India's neighbor's... every single one of them is high on the list of the most failed states index:

#7- Afghanistan
#12- nuclear-armed Pakistan
#18- Myanmar
#25- Bangladesh
#27- Nepal
#29- Sri Lanka
#50- Bhutan

India doesn't have any other neighbors-- except Tibet, which isn't considered a country, but a region of China. But the occupation forces there apparently feel there's a problem. They just pulled all foreigners' visas for a month. I know. I was supposed to be there now.

On Pakistan, the report said, "Pakistan has long been dubbed the world's most dangerous country in Washington policy circles" and "yet Pakistan isn't just dangerous for the West-- it's often a danger to its own people."

On Bangladesh, the report said, two of five Bangladeshis live under the poverty line. Any improvements will also be fighting the environmental clock. If sea levels rise just by 1 metre, scientists warn, 17 per cent of the country could be submerged.

"Nepal is the poorest country in South Asia, according to the United Nations, and that's unlikely to change until the peace process is implemented and security restored. There are signs that the Maoists may be losing patience-- and thinking about going back to the trenches to fight for more," the report said.

On Sri Lanka, it said, "The government's final push against the rebels relied on the shelling of civilians and other atrocities, according to a 2010 report by the International Crisis Group.

"The most recent statistics from last year indicate that some 327,000 are still displaced from the conflict."

"Despite the pronounced fractures still lingering, the Sinhalese-dominated government in Colombo seems eager to forget the past," it added.

I've visited almost all these countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1969 and 1972; Nepal 3 times, Sri Lanka in 1970 and again in 1997, Myanmar in 2007. I tried getting into Bhutan this month but it was so complicated and bothersome-- and the monsoon is so awful-- that we decided to go to Nepal and Tibet instead-- a bad idea (at least the Tibet part) because China was able to pull the rug out from under us suddenly after a year of planning. Do I feel like I'm in a failed state when I'm visiting these places? HELL YEAH! They're all unsafe on one level or another, usually more than one level. Some I affectionately refer to as hellholes. Even if we don't wind up in an airplane mishap here or get caught in the crossfire between the Maoists and garden variety Communists, Roland is certain we're taking a year off our lives just by breathing the air in Kathmandu.

Kathmandu, Not #1 For Much... Except Pollution

2011-06-22T08:00:00.001-07:00

I'm guessing anyone will look this dirty if they walked around Kathmandu for a day or two

I don't remember Kathmandu being especially more polluted than any of the Asian cities I visited in the late '60s and early '70s. Even in 1991, the last time I was here, the air quality wasn't especially unbearable. It is now. If there's one item not to forget when you plan a trip to Kathmandu, let it be as high a quality face mask as you can find. I've got one with a carbon filter by a company called I Can Breathe! I wouldn't go out of my hotel without it. Think I'm exaggerating? A couple weeks ago the Vancouver Observer published a feature by Linda Solomon, Air Pollution in Kathmandu Off The Charts.

She starts by pointing to a World Health Organization report that declares Kathmandu is now the most polluted city in Asia. The air here can kill you.

WHO scientists estimate 537,000 people in Southeast Asia and the Pacific die prematurely each year due to air pollution. The level of PM10 in the air of Kathmandu is 120 microgram per square meter. As per the standard of the World Health Organization, the level of PM10 should be 20 microgram per square meter. The level of PM10 is higher than the official standard in most of the places of Kathmandu valley.

The air in several Asian cities will kill you sooner of later: Beijing, Dhaka, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kolkata, New Delhi, Shanghai... But Kathmandu is worst of all, a big development since our report on the world's worst city air in 2009. In the list from 2004 Kathmandu didn't even show up in the Worst 20. Solomon knew it was going to be polluted but she wasn't prepared for how terrible it is now. No one could ever be.

Kathmandu in the dark on the way to the hotel from the airport had been hard to evaluate, beyond the obvious: people were poor. Millions. And the air stank and didn't go down easily into the lungs. It was as bad or worse than the air I breathed in New York City right after 9/11. I had fled from post-World Trade Centre attack air, because I couldn't inhale it, and I believed it would do serious damage to my children's health. And people here were much breathing worse, like it was normal. They were stuck in it.

I had certainly HEARD about the pollution in big cities in the developing world. I'd experienced it in the nineties. But between the nineties and now, pollution had taken quantum leaps. I thought of my friends in Canada working so hard to fight climate change. By comparison Canada seemed so pristine. Here was where the real work would need to happen. Cities in the developing world. Cities like Kathmandu.

The noise pollution is easily the worst I've ever heard. All drivers honking all the time. It's almost unbearable to be out in traffic. That's why everyone who comes to Kathmandu can't wait to get away from the valley as soon as possible.

Nepal Heading Backwards On Same-Sex Marriage?

2011-06-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was especially glad I've been taking my Rhodiola Force 300, which purports to help you feel more energetic and improve your mood, mental alertness, memory, and physical endurance but was recommended to me by an L.A. herbologist as something to help with altitude sickness. It's derived from Rhodiola rosea or Rose Root, an exalted herbal stress “adaptogen.” It thrives in high altitudes and in nature’s most challenging climates and is supposed to enhance concentration and endurance and support optimal immune, adrenal and cardiovascular function under conditions of severe stress. It's advertised as being "widely used by Russian athletes and cosmonauts to increase energy, Rhodiola delivers the promise of an inner oasis of peace and energy in our hurly-burly world... Those phytonutrients include numerous and unique anti-stress compounds like rosavins, salidrosides and other biologically active compounds." I spent yesterday trekking in the Himalayan foothills at around 8,000 feet. And I felt great, even in the rain. We were wandering around, looking down at the clouds, in knee-high rubber boots, sure we were protecting from the leeches. That was why we came to Nepal. That and... well this very accurate description by Frommer's that updates my own first memories of the place from a far more tranquil (and less "developed") 1971:

Kathmandu. The very name conjures up images of snow-covered peaks, snake charmers and mountaineers, holy men and sacred cows. Perhaps no other city on earth has seemed so mysterious. This city, capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, lies in a wide valley hidden behind a wall of nearly impenetrable mountains. Today, winging into Kathmandu on an international flight, the Mahabhaharat Range slides by below as the Himalayas shimmer in the distance. The jumbled landscape doesn't give the appearance that it could ever provide a level surface large enough to land a Boeing or Airbus. Then, as the peaks below grow uncomfortably close to the belly of the plane, mountainsides give way to gentler slopes and terraced hillsides, which are dun-colored in the post-monsoon months favored by trekkers. Brick houses dot the fields of a seemingly idyllic rural setting. Suddenly the city comes into view-- uniformly brown and low-rise, it sprawls across the valley floor. There's a quick glimpse of a huge white hemisphere in the distance, and suddenly the plane is on the runway. The passengers breathe a communal sigh of relief for having safely landed amid the Himalayan peaks. The excitement is palpable as passengers wait to deplane. Through the door lies Kathmandu, city of mystery, the most exotic city in Asia.

However, as feet hit tarmac, the reality of modern-day Kathmandu immediately comes to bear. The arrivals hall is a zoo and no one seems to know what to do. Guards want to inspect your bags as you leave the arrivals hall. Outside, hordes of taxi drivers, porters, and hotel touts block the exit door. Beyond the airport gates, the streets are chaotic at best. Clouds of blue-black smoke billow from diesel trucks, buses packed like sardine cans stop in the middle of the road, cows wander aimlessly, and horns blare incessantly. The smoke of funeral pyres mingles with the stench of garbage. Women in colorful saris dash out of the way of your careening taxi as it bounces upon potholes large enough to swallow a car.

However, once you have settled into your hotel, you can venture out onto the streets of old Kathmandu, where a different picture slowly begins to emerge. Kathmandu is a city of alleyways leading into the unknown, a city where roadside shrines are sprinkled with marigold petals and aging temples double as produce markets. Strange odors--a melange of incense, cow dung, and rotting garbage-- drift through the streets. Eerie discordant music-- the tinny jangling of cymbals, the drone of a harmonium, the pulse of drums-- might fill a nearly deserted square at nightfall as musicians sit hunched over their ancient instruments on the floor of a tiny temple. In the market, vendors swaddled in woolen shawls sit behind baskets full of mandarins and radishes. Kathmandu has been called a medieval city, and it is hard not to think of it as such as you wander its back streets. The lanes are narrow, and in the oldest parts of town, there is little traffic (though the few cars and motorcycles that venture into these ancient alleys make frequent use of their horns). People do the heavy work here, not vehicles. They carry heavy-laden baskets on their backs or slung from poles across their shoulders. Perhaps time has not completely stood still in Kathmandu, but it certainly has not passed as swiftly as it has in other parts of the world.

For more than a hundred years Kathmandu was cut off from the outside world by a government that wished to keep the country isolated. When the royal family was restored to power in the mid-1950s, Nepal opened its borders and the painful process of entering the 20th century began. Today, Kathmandu has much of the Western world's technology, but alas, many of its environmental and social woes as well. There are cars and computers, fax machines and factories, cellular phones and satellite TV. There are also traffic congestion and smog, deforestation and unemployment. However, with the help of the West, Nepal is working to overcome these problems. Kathmandu is certainly no Shangri-la, but it is one of the world's most fascinating cities, nonetheless.

Last year we saw how Nepal had moved so far as to legalize same-sex marriage after the people dumped the monarchy, like anywhere a bastion of conservatism, and embarked on a new progressive path. Well, we're not here to get married and it probably wouldn't have even crossed my mind except when I was in our hotel's business center I tried to access a post Ken wrote at DWT about the politics of same-sex marriage in the New York State Senate, a place not nearly as advanced as Nepal. There's nothing "sexy," let alone prurient about the post. But it was auto-blocked on the public internet. (I can access it in my room over the same wireless system.)

There's a Communist primer minister, a Maoist revolutionary opposition and one of the world's most vibrant revolutionary atmospheres in Nepal now. But there are also second-thoughts about the legalization of same-sex marriage, now three years old.

Gay rights activists are alarmed by a new bill that could become law soon if approved by parliament as part of the government's bid to modernise the legal code-- Muluki Ain, or law of the land-- formulated in 1854 first.

The law and justice ministry, in consultation with judges, has completed the drafts of a new criminal code and a civil code of law, which were submitted in parliament recently after being approved by the council of ministers. ... The marriage clauses in the new codes define the union as only that between a man and a woman, treating homosexual unions as "unnatural sex offenses."

"The proposed civil and criminal laws contain provisions to re-criminalise so-called 'unnatural sexual offenses'," [said Manisha Dhakal, a transgender and senior member of the Blue Diamond Society, Nepal's pioneering gay rights organisation]. "These attempts by the law ministry are a clear sign not to follow international human rights standards, a clear intention not to implement the Supreme Court's decision and also go against the spirit of the interim and new draft constitution of Nepal."

In November 2008, Nepal's Supreme Court recognised homosexuals as a "natural people" and asked the government to ensure that they received the same rights and considerations as any other citizen. In the landmark judgment, the court also ordered the government to enact laws to allow same-sex marriages.

...Since 2008, Nepal has established itself as a gay rights haven with people flocking to the Himalayan nation for same sex unions.

In the past, couples from India and Britain have tied the knot in Nepal and during the monsoon, the Blue Diamond Society has planned a public wedding between a lesbian couple from the US.

The weddings are part of the community's effort to draw gay tourists to Nepal and have been welcomed by Nepal's tourism ministry, which is celebrating 2011 as Nepal Tourism Year with the target of bringing in one million air-borne visitors.

On my way to Nepal, I stopped over for a couple days in Hong Kong, one of the world's most modern cities. In many ways it's more modern, at least superficially, than any city in the U.S. But not in a gay way. There was a big to-do over the city-state, a semi-autonomous part of China, hiring a "gay conversion expert" to "cure" government employees.

Hong Kong has hired a prominent local psychiatrist who claims he can "re-wire" homosexuals as a trainer for its social welfare staff, sparking outrage among gay rights activists on Friday.

Critics said the move could be the world's first government-sponsored training session on gay conversion therapy, which includes prayer, cold showers and practising abstinence as a way to avoid same-sex relationships.

"The government seems to think that homosexuals are possessed by evil spirits and needed to be 'cleansed' or 'cured' through conversion therapy," Joseph Cho, a spokesman for gay rights group Rainbow Action, told reporters during a protest outside the city's Social Welfare Department Friday.

"They are criminalising people with same sex orientation-- this is an international joke," he added. ... Despite its reputation as an international financial hub, critics said Hong Kong remains a conservative city when it comes to gay rights, only decriminalising homosexuality in 1991.

A government survey in the 1990s concluded that most Hong Kong residents were "not ready" for laws banning discrimination against homosexuals, and the city had made little headway since to protect gays, said Dora Choi, director of the Gender Studies Committee at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"(But) this is very bizarre that the government would sponsor classes like these," she told AFP.

"It is the first time the government has publicly taken a stance on this issue. (It) should be neutral but it is obviously taking sides," she added.

Maybe both these countries are ready to write off gay tourists and eager to invite evangelicals instead. Good luck with that!

UPDATE: This url is blocked here!

I guess "same sex marriage" triggers an auto-blocking mechanism. But this one isn't just blocked in public areas but in my own room! I feel like I'm back in Myanmar!

Urban Gadabout: Two toxic-waterway tours in a single week -- does it get any better?

2011-06-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

Scenic Superfund site: Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal

by Ken

The tease on the contents page of this week's Time Out New York got me: "Explore Newtown Creek and Gowanus Canal, two of NYC's Superfund wonders." I confess that both of these industriaily befouled NYC waterways have fascinated me for ages, and I've become increasingly curious about having more or less direct contact with me.

Newtown Creek is the western segment of the boundary between the borough of Queens to the north and Brooklyn (which is Kings County, of course) to the south. Gowanus Canal is the man-expanded expansion of a onetime tidal inlet which links the onetime industrial heartland of central Brooklyn to Upper New York Bay. Both are massively polluted, and have been anointed Superfund sites, though it's my understanding that so little action is being taken on so many sites ahead of them on the list that one might not want to hold one's breath till the fund gets to them. One might, however, wish to hold one's breath around them for other reasons.

There has been increasing attention paid, and actual visitation, to both. Hence my response to the TONY tease. But imagine my horror when I thumbed ahead and found an entire magazine page devoted to a pair of events dedicated to these woebegone waterways, and it turned out that the events in questions are tours offered by the Municipal Art Society (MAS; the website is an incredibly easy-to-remember mas.org), which I already have marked as "must do"s on my calendar:

* Crossing Newtown Creek, this Wednesday evening (June 15), led by one of my most valued tour leaders, urban geographer (and Queens borough historian) Jack Eichenbaum.

* Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, this coming Sunday (June 19), led by MAS mainstay Matt Postal, an architectural historian with whom i've done countless tours, most recently day before yesterday: a tour of the skyscrapers of Park Avenue (starring Lever House and the Seagram Building, of course).

Now I hope it's blindingly clear that the horror to which I referred above is no reflection on the tours themselves. Let me stress that it would take some sort of personal crisis or mighty extreme weather (of the kind that would probably cause tour cancellation anyway), to keep me away from either of these tours. No, the horror is purely selfish. I'm just concerned about the effect this outstanding (and well-deserved) advance publicity is going to have on attendance.

You have to understand that the Municipal Art Society organizes its walking tours around the city, which it's been doing for 55 years now, in two ways -- some by advance reservation and payment, some by and pay-at-tour walkup. I have a personal fondness for the preregistered tours, which (1) put a cap on the number of registrants and also let me assure my place. In the mere eight months I've been a member (and it was, as I've mentioned, Jack Eichenbaum who first clued me in to MAS, when I did a sensational New York Transit Museum tour with him visiting three NYC subway nodes, which is to say places where two or more separate subway lines intersect, and seeing how being a transit hub has shaped those areas' development), I've learned to haunt the MAS website as the time approaches for announcement of the next two- or three-month bloc of scheduled tours, and to pounce on it and do a slew of online registrations.

DID I MENTION THAT THE STANDARD PRICE . . .

. . . for MAS tours is a paltry $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers? Longer tours are priced accordingly. For example, this Saturday (June 18) I'm doing a half-day visit to Staten Island's Stapleton Heights with the amazingly well-informed and informative urban historian Justin Ferate, with whom I did a truly memorable most-of-the day tour last month to Tottenville, the southern tip of Staten Island. The Stapleton Heights tour, which is by reservation, and for which I think there may still be places available, is $20 for members, $25 for nonmembers.

By the way, an MAS individual membership is only $50, and benefits include a chit for a free nonreserved tour.

Speaking of the nonreserved tours, I've done plenty of them in my eight months too. The thing is, if the weather is good, and especially if the tour has been picked up by one of the big-reach media outlets -- I sometimes wonder how many zillions of people who just don't know about these tours, the way I didn't for so long, would show up if they knew about them -- the group can get pretty large. (Sometimes there's simply no explaining why people do or don't come out. In March I did a tour of Brooklyn's Crown Heights North with Matt Postal, who's doing the Gowanus Canal tour, on a not especially pleasant-looking Saturday, a tour that Matt indicated hadn't gotten much media notice, and the turnout was huge. Fortunately, Matt is extremely good with large groups, keeping them organized and in good hearing range.) It's another mark of what a bad person I am that after the big TONY spread, maybe the weather won't be so great Wednesday evening and Sunday morning.

AS IT HAPPENS, I'VE ALREADY MISSED THE
"CROSSING NEWTOWN CREEK" TOUR ONCE

We'll actually be crossing the Pulaski Bridge from (r to l)
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to Long Island City, Queens.

It was in early November, not long after my Transit Museum tour with Jack Eichenbaum, and I had joined MAS and gotten my free-tour chit in time to make this my first MAS tour. What's more, I even worked out the formidable transit logistics of getting from the way north of Manhattan to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and arrived at the tour location what I considered a perfect 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled start time. Or it would have been if the tour was Sunday, when I arrived. Unfortunately, it was Saturday, so instead of being early, I was 24 hours late, or maybe 23 hours and 45 minutes.

(And wouldn't you know, there are not one but two other events Wednesday night that I dearly want to do, one of them a class I had previously scheduled and had to cancel when for medical reasons, the other something that's not likely to be repeated this year. I spent a couple of weeks going back and forth between them, even trying to figure out whether I could attempt to do both, which fortunately prevented me from registering for either, whenl I finally looked at the calendar and realized it's the same night as "Crossing Newtown Creek.")

As it worked out, my actual first MAS tour, later in November, was one with Matt Postal, and as I think I've mentioned here, it's still perhaps my favorite from a conceptual standpoint: a walk along the route of Robert Moses's never-built Lower Manhattan Expressway.

For those who are curious about what TONY dubbed "Postindustrial waterfront tours," for each, writer Andrew Frisciano begins with sections on "Where it is," "The history," and "How polluted is it?"

NEWTOWN CREEK
Wednesday, June 15, 6pm-8pm

Will hanging out there kill you? Probably not, although small amounts of harmful vapors have been detected. “When you get down to the water’s edge, the creek itself is pretty dismal,” says Eichenbaum. “But it’s not completely dead -- I’ve seen cormorants sitting on the side of Newtown Creek. They dive for fish, so there have to be some there.”

What you’ll see on the tour: Eichenbaum will stop at the nature trail that surrounds NCWTP [the Newtown Creek Water Treatment Plant]: The walkway, lined with sculpted concrete walls and native plants, features an amphitheater-like area for admiring the water. “Once you’re down at the creek level, the city opens up and becomes a much more horizontal landscape,” he says. The tour also visits the Pulaski Bridge to visit Long Island City’s Gantry Plaza State Park, which sits next to a cluster of shiny new condos. “You’re seeing resurgence in all kinds of industrial neighborhoods,” says Eichenbaum. “The artistic community has found new niches in these places.”

Check it out! Crossing Newtown Creek walking tour; meet at northeast corner of Greenpoint and Manhattan Aves, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

GOWANUS CANAL
Sunday, June 19, 11am-1pm

Will hanging out there kill you? No, but you’ll probably get a whiff of something gross. “I notice [the smell] around Union Street or Butler Street,” says Postal. “There’s nowhere for it to go.” In 1999, the city repaired a flushing tunnel, which brings fresh water into the canal, to help ameliorate the stench. “There’s no question that it’s better than it was ten years ago,” says Postal. Plus, a recent study turned up an array of fish and even crabs -- though eating them isn’t advised.

What you’ll see on the tour: Postal will point out historic landmarks, including the retractable Carroll Street Bridge, built in 1889 and still functional today. He’s also interested in how the neighborhood’s residents interact with the canal’s industrial origins; off-the-grid types have built homes on the canal, while creative spaces embrace the canal’s less-than-pleasant past. “Proteus Gowanus [a stop on the tour] has an area of their building called Hall of the Gowanus, which is a kind of artistic response to the history of the area,” Postal says. 

Check it out! Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal walking tour; meet at northwest corner of President and Smith Sts, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

Summer Travel Plans-- The Price Of Gas To Last Minute Reservations At The Best Restaurant In Hong Kong

2011-06-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

Although Hutong has the best views in town, it's even better known for it's incredible kitchen

A political polling firm, Anzalone Liszt Research, usually spends its time helping elect Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats. Perhaps because their client base was so badly decimated in the last election, they recently turned to examining how Americans plan on spending their time off, and their concerns about summer travel. Actually what they did was interpret the Trip Advisor survey that predicts that "despite a still-weakened economy and rising gas prices, a majority of Americans plan on getting away this summer, many of them by car"-- 86% of us. (up from 83% last year).

USAToday found that 61% of Americans believe that it is important to get away from home this summer, including 36% who said that it is "very" important. Despite this, CNN cites a Reuters poll that found that only 57% of US workers take off all the days they are entitled to.

A plurality of Americans will travel within the US, finds an AOL users poll (49%), and they are traveling with family (40%) compared with 36% who are not. In May, AAA's Memorial Day study found that 88% of Americans said they would travel via car for their trips that weekend, and TripAdvisor finds that 63% will travel by car for their summer travel plans. TripAdvisor also finds that 50% of Americans traveling this summer are heading towards a city destination, and New York City, Boston, and Washington DC top the list of cities. Closely behind cities are ocean destinations (40%), and then national parks (18%) and lakes (16%).

Cost is a concern among American travelers this year, and they expect to pay more this year for their travel. USA Today finds that 71% expect to spend more on transportation costs for their trips this year, and a AAA survey finds that 39% have scaled back their own vacation plans because of the rising gas prices. AAA finds that gas prices are already nearly a dollar more expensive than last year-- last Memorial Day weekend the average gas price was $2.85/gallon; this year it was $3.91. Americans expect prices to continue to climb this summer, and 76% believe they will hit at least $4.50. Twenty-six percent expect them to reach $5, and 13% see them exceeding $5.

Rising airfare costs are an additional cause of irritation to American travelers, tying the cost of gas for their biggest pet peeve when traveling (37%) according to AOL. Twenty-one percent of Americans say they would be willing to drive up to 10 hours to save money on airfare, and 43% have had to book connecting flights to reach their destination to stay within their travel budgets. Airline fees also frustrate travelers, and nearly half (46%) believe that the checked baggage fee is the most annoying, followed by 24% who believe seat selection fees are, and 18% who are most annoyed by the carry-on bag fees. Regardless of their irritation, 72% of Americans expect fees in general to rise during the remainder of the year.

Me... I'm making the last minute touches to my summer travel plans. I e-mailed the hotel in Kathmandu and persuaded them to give us a free upgrade to a two room suite. It's low season and there's an incipient revolution in Nepal and I knew the rooms wouldn't be in great demand. It just took two e-mails to convince them. I also made dinner reservations for my first night in Hong Kong-- I'm stopping on my way to Nepal to get my Asia sea legs-- at my all-time favorite Kowloon restaurant, Hutong. I e-mailed them for a table; they e-mailed me back with a reservation for 90 minutes at one of the most sought after tables in town. Then lunch the next day at Yan Toh Heen. And... on a more mundane level, if you print out your on-demand Nepal visa application, fill it out, stick on a passport-sized photo and have your $30 cash in hand, you don't have to wait on line at the airport. So I did that too.

Planning A Trip To Tibet?

2011-06-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

St. Regis, Lhasa-- guests complained when they ran out of lobster

In 1971 I trekked up near the Nepali-Tibetan border and wondered if I'd ever get across it. Back then no Americans were allowed. Now, China encourages American tourists... kind of-- and sometimes. There's even a 5-star hotel there now, as China works to turn Lhasa into a kind of Disneyland destination for the wealthy.

For decades, the hardy travellers who braved the icy roads and 2,000-kilometre drive to Lhasa from Sichuan have been greeted with austere monasteries filled with crimson-robed monks and the terrible taste of yak-butter tea.

But the Chinese government, which defends its mandate to rule over Tibet by claiming to have brought economic prosperity to the region, is determined to make life more luxurious for today's pampered tourists by opening Tibet's first five-star hotel--The St. Regis Lhasa.

Guests arriving at Lhasa airport are whisked away in Mercedes-Benz limousines to one of the 150 suites or 12 private villas. Personal butlers escort guests to their rooms and give tips on life at Lhasa's 3,600-metre altitude. Guests are told not to shower on their first day, since hot water is believed by the Chinese to open up blood vessels and suck oxygen away from the brain. Each room, meanwhile, is equipped with oxygen tanks, just in case.

Downstairs there is a spa, a swimming pool, a restaurant boasting Cantonese and Sichuan delicacies, including yak meat, and a wine bar with hundreds of bottles specially flown in, including Château Lafite-Rothschild. Any guests wanting to taste "more basic Tibetan fare, such as yak butter and boiled noodles" will have to leave the premises, the hotel's website flatly states.

Tourism is now responsible for almost 15 per cent of Tibet's economy and more than six million tourists visited last year. Four more five-star hotels, including a Shangri-La and an Intercontinental, are to open in the next four years. Beijing is planning to introduce a luxurious train service to Tibet, with tickets costing as much as $9,000 per person.

I just spent the last six months or so planning a trip to Tibet, though the St Regis wasn't on our itinerary. A trip to Tibet isn't easy, not like getting on a plane and flying to Bamako, renting a jeep with a driver and going on an excursion through Mali's Dogon country and then on to Timbuktu. China makes it a lot more difficult-- and expensive. But in the end-- after lots of hassle and lots of weighing of conflicting moral perspectives-- it was all set. Then a few weeks ago, I got an e-mail that all foreign visas were canceled for the period I was planning to be there in June and July. They don't tell you why. But we knew.

There's been some trouble in paradise; the natives are restless. And the Chinese are cracking down again. Journalists are already banned from Tibet and they don't want any tourists there to bear witness to their brutality. For one thing, Beijing's nemesis, the Dalai Lama, has formally ceded any political role. The Dalai Lama will still be Tibet's spiritual and religious leader and a symbol of national unity but the Tibetan exiles' parliament has elected a Harvard scholar, Lobsang Sangay, to be the head of government (prime minister) based in Dharamshala, India.

Although the Dalai Lama will retain the more significant role of spiritual leader and will still be influential when it comes to major policy-making decisions, the transition will make Sangay a far more prominent figure than his predecessor as prime minister.

The Dalai signed amendments to the constitution of the Tibetan government-in-exile at the weekend to formally cede his political role. ...The Dalai Lama's political successor represents a major shift from the historic dominance of Tibetan politics by older religious figures.

The spiritual leader's move is part of an effort to strengthen the Tibetan movement's democratic structure so it can guide the movement following his death.

Sangay has publicly backed the Dalai Lama's policy of seeking "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet under Chinese rule.

But his former membership of the pro-independence Tibetan Youth Congress has fueled speculation he may take a more radical stance and embolden the political strategy of Tibetan exiles toward China.

Beijing considers the Dalai Lama as a separatist bent on fomenting unrest in his homeland.

By late this month expect to hear more unconfirmable rumors about more oppression in Tibet.

Delta Airlines-- Still The Worst Carrier In The Skies... But Even More So

2011-06-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

Delta has been the #1 worst U.S. airline every year in a row since the founding of this blog-- and that's just based on their service. Turns out, though, there's more to Delta's unsuitability as a reliable travel partner than how badly the management runs their operations. As yesterday's Wall Street Journal pointed out, the airline is a bastion of right-wing anti-worker extremism. No wonder their employees always seem so down in the dumps and resentful! The National Mediation Board is now investigating charges by flight attendants that Delta, the only non-Union U.S. airline, illegally interfered in unionization elections by pressuring employees to vote against the unions. As Joe Sudbay observed at AmericaBlog yesterday, "Delta is like the Scott Walker of airlines. It wants to be known as anti-worker."

We can probably expect even more skullduggery from Delta in the coming weeks as they double down in their anti-union jihad. They've been a lead driver in pushing Republican extremists in the House to rescind fair election rules for air/rail workers for elections conducted under the National Mediation Board. For progressives who care about keeping elections fair, giving workers the choice whether or not they want to join a union, and supporting companies who operate under basic standards of decency, there are a number of reasons for progressives to be outraged about Delta Airlines:

• Open advocacy against fair American elections: Delta issued a press release commending the news that Darrell Issa's deranged Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will investigate the NMB’s 2010 decision to conduct union elections for air/rail workers the same as all other types of American elections. Mike Campbell, Delta’s executive vice president of H.R. and Labor Relations said, "This investigation is an important victory for Delta people because it will finally allow the facts to speak for themselves.” Unfortunately for Delta, the facts aren’t on their side-- there’s no reason to conduct NMB elections differently from every other form of election, union or non-union, in the nation. If congressional and Senate elections were conducted under such rules, in which non-participating eligible voters were counted as having voted, then zero Members of Congress would have won their last election.

• Bumping paying customers…so Delta employees can lobby: Delta is so committed to its anti-union ideology that it offered its employees the chance to travel to Washington to lobby against fair union elections under a provision that may bump paying customers. Talking Points Memo reported that the group No Way AFA, “a coalition of Delta employees who want to deliberalize union rights,” came to Washington the week of the House vote on the FAA Reauthorization bill to lobby against fair election standards... and potentially bumping paying Delta customers in the process. According to the article, “A Delta spokesperson said No Way AFA operates separately from the company itself, but that the company "allow[s] employees to travel positive space to D.C. when supporting legislative efforts that the company supports.” According to TPM, this means that “the "positive space" fly-in could squeeze out seating space for regular travelers.”

• Free upgrades and lining the pockets of policymaker friends: An investigative journalism piece in Georgia recently found that leading Republican lawmakers in Georgia’s state legislature received free upgrades from Delta to platinum status, valued at approximately $10,000 to $15,000 per year. Valued as campaign contributions, the piece noted that Delta low-balled the reported value of the platinum upgrades in state ethics records. Unsurprisingly, Delta has a long history of being generous to lawmakers like Rep. John Mica, who have voted the right way in Delta’s eyes by seeking to return NMB union elections to the old, undemocratic rules.

I've long been going out of my way to look for alternatives to flying on Delta just because of the lousy service and their refusal to let people use frequent flier miles, but now I can see there are even more reasons to avoid the worst airline in the skies.

Is It Safe To Eat Or Drink Anything In China?

2011-05-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

This morning at DWT we tried to make the point that the very nature of commerce in China-- in Asia really-- is built on fraud and corruption. Reactionary American politicians like Pat Toomey (R-PA), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and John Boehner (R-OH) admire China so much-- Communism or not-- because their financial and commercial system embodies the very depths of caveat emptor taken to the extreme. In two weeks I'll be back in China and, I have to admit, I know I have to be warier than in most places about what I consume. What's in the bottled water? How safe is it to eat in a restaurant, even a highly rated one?

So it was with some interest that I noted yesterday that China will be handing out the death penalty for food safety violators. An announcement like that presupposes some real problems that need to be addressed. Their highest court has ordered lower court judges to toughen up the sentences for people violating food safety standards "amid deepening public concerns over the country's food safety following a wave of recent scandals." If someone dies because of food safety violations, the death penalty is now in order-- and government officials taking bribes to protect the criminals will also be facing harsher penalties.

From milk laced with melamine, pigs fed with performance-enhancing drugs to watermelons juiced up with growth-stimulating chemicals, a series of recent scandals have outraged Chinese consumers, despite ramped-up government crackdown and state media campaign against food safety violations.

From last September to April this year, Chinese courts have tried and convicted 106 people accused of violating food safety, including two who received life imprisonment last month in a "melamine milk" case, Xinhua reported.

As vegan as I can be-- especially when traveling in dodgy countries-- I'm not worried about being fed dog meat disguised as something else. Although others probably should be.

Authorities say a battle has been escalating in China between the country's dog lovers and those who consider the animals a mealtime feature.

The controversy is more evidence of China's changing social landscape, where dog meat has been a coveted food item for centuries but pet ownership has burgeoned in recent years as a booming economy created a middle class with both money and time for four-legged friends, the Washington Post reported Saturday. ... China has no laws against cruelty to animals, and animal activists estimate as many as 10 million dogs, some strays and some stolen pets are sold for human consumption each year.

But I am interested in the new organic food movement started to sprout up in China's cities. Can it be trusted? Maybe...

In recent years China has been hit by a number of food scandals and fears about safety have lingered. In 2008, 300,000 babies became seriously ill and six babies died after being given formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. In April this year, police seized 40 tons of beansprouts which had been treated with dangerous growth promoting chemicals and hormones, while this month, watermelons started exploding in the fields because they had been treated with too much accelerant.

In March health officials discovered pork that glowed and iridescent blue in the dark because it had been contaminated by a bacteria.

Amid the scares it was reported that China's government departments were running their own organic farms to feed staff, sparking criticism that officials were putting their own safety before that of the people. ... [O]rganic farmers and a host of co-operative schemes that lease small parcels of land to urbanites who want to feel the soil under their fingernails-- not unlike British allotment schemes-- report business is suddenly booming.

Peng Xunan, the founder of the "Farmlander" allotment scheme that has 200 sites across China said the plots were being rented in ever-growing numbers, and no longer just be pensioners looking to occupy their time.

"I'd say it was split three ways between families who want to teach their children where food comes from, older people in their retirement, but in recent months definitely a growing number worried about food safety concerns after all these reports of lax food safety," he said.

Interestingly, the other China-- Taiwan-- is having a similar situation, with legislators urging tougher penalties for tainted food and better regulations for factories manufacturing food products, particularly sports drinks, juices, tea drinks, fruit jam or syrups, tablets or powders, all of which have been found to be poisoned with plasticizers.

A legislator of the ruling Kuomintang proposed yesterday to revise regulations to levy stiffer penalties on suppliers of food products that threaten consumers' health, establish an information system for all products, and change the listing of plasticizers in the second category of toxic chemical products.

...Chang pointed out that the current law only stipulates fines between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000 for using plasticizers like carcinogen di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) or other toxic substances in food and beverages, not enough to deter unconscionable food processors and suppliers from harming consumers.

An integrated registration mechanism should be set up to record all information concerning raw materials, components, additives, manufacturing and packaging to help manage every step of the food and beverage supply chain, Chang said.

Such a product identity system will also help to track products, he added.

Oh-- and the crackdown and regulations... that's not what Toomey, Johnson and Boehner admire about China.

Beaches (in which within some 17 hours I set foot on two NYC area beaches for the first time)

2011-05-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

You should be able to click on this to enlarge, and if you do, I won't have to repeat what it has to say about horseshoe crabs. Oh, I may anyway.

by Ken

I didn't see the above Yahoo notice until just now, when I was scrounging online for "illustrative" material regarding Brooklyn's Plum Beach. (You'll notice here that it's sometimes spelled "Plumb Beach," but the general usage seems to be that it's Plum Beach, named for beach plum trees that are supposed to grow in this marshy area on Rockaway Inlet, east of the mouth of Sheepshead Bay (and, therefore, of the eastern extremity of Coney Island). But it gives a pretty description of the event I surprised the heck out of myself by taking such a journey from the conceptual-theoretical stage ("you know, I could actually do this, and it might be interesting") to the actual-journey stage. It was a journey that, from way-northern Manhattan, took more than the two hours I had allotted on the route I'd worked out (the no. 1 train to the no. 2 train to the B44 Limited bus to its terminus, then hoofing it) -- almost two and a half hours, in fact.

And at the several "junction" points, as it became clear that I wasn't going to come close to making it by 8pm to this place I'd never in my life heard of before let alone been to, I told myself that the sensible thing to do would be to chalk it up to a noble effort and head back home. Some other time I could complete the journey -- the beach, after all would still be there.

Yes, but would the horseshoe crabs?

But I didn't, and at nearly 8:30, when I finally saw up ahead what looked to be a bunch of people gathered in front of what I seemed quite likely to be the Plum Beach Comfort Station, the designated meeting place, I began to imagine that perhaps I hadn't entirely missed the event. And indeed I hadn't.

I missed the start of Urban Park Ranger Andrew's discussion of horseshoe crabs, explaining that their habitat extends . . . oh, I don't remember, but something like from the Gulf of Mexico all they way up the east coast of North America (there are also Pacific horseshoe crabs, we learned, on the west coast of North America and the east coast of Asia), and whatever it is, it's also a basic bird migration path, because horseshoe-crab eggs, which apparently chock full of body-building fat and protein, are super-good eats for our feathered friends. And in our area, the salt-marsh beach of Plum Beach (Andrew thinks of the whole coastal region that is now Greater New York as essentially a giant salt marsh, albeit a now-much-compromised one) is prime mating territory for the horseshoe crabs during their mating season, which locally runs about two and a half months, from April to mid-June, with moonlit nights especially favored, not for romantic reasons, of course, but for the help it provides them in finding their way to the beach and finding each other, the only reason they come onto the beach.

As the sun set, we set out in search of these ancient creatures -- who, by the way, can go a full year without eating -- and found a lonely male, but also what looked to Andrew to be a mass of horseshoe-crab eggs, which matched the description he had just given in response to a question of what the eggs look like, but surprised him because normally the female (who's way larger than the male, by the way) buries the egg clusters in the sand to provide them some protection from predators from air, sea, and land. However, someone with a smart phone was able to provide googled confirmation horseshoe-crab eggs were indeed what we were looking at.

Considering how much Andrew was able to tell us about these remarkable creatures -- and there were lots of good questions from the assembled horsehose-crab voyeurs -- it was cheering when he wasn't sure about the answer and allowed that he doesn't know everything about horseshoe crabs. As darkness set in, the crabs became bolder about venturing onto the beach, and Andrew was able to pick up mating pairs of them, who disengage with great reluctance. By the time the official presentation drew to a satisfying close, and Andrew said he was going to continue walking the beach and anyone who wanted to join him was welcome to, a shrewd hard core of us -- more, apparently, than he expected -- eagerly clustered around him, and the best part of the night, with full darkness (but a few people carrying small lights so we could see something), ensued. The horseshoe crabs were doing it all over the beach, and we were privileged to witness an important piece of the hemisphere's ecological balance taking place before our amazed eyes.

I'm embarrassed to say that I've only recently become aware of New York's Urban Park Rangers, who are a treasure. They perform all sorts of functions for the city's Parks Department, but one of them is conducting terrific tours like this throughout the city's parks. (In the only one I've taken so far, of the water course of Brooklyn's Prospect Park, on a grimly overcast Sunday afternoon, I wound up having a one-on-one tour with Ranger Vinnie, which was shortened only a bit by an ensuing downpour. The Urban Park Rangers, I had been told, come prepared to do their thing come what may.)

The return trip from Plum Beach again took nearly two and a half hours, even with a spectacular connection to the returning B44 Limited bus. I wasn't even sure I knew where the return route started, but no sooner did I think I had found the correct bus stop than the correct bus rolled in to confirm it! Fortunately, with the holiday today, I didn't much care how late I got home. And while I know I spent nearly five hours in transit, what a night!

Then I was awakened about 5am by what I realized after a moment was a torrential downpour outside, which seemed to constitute a dramatic thumbs-down on some possible activities I'd scouted for Memorial Day. I could have done one or both of a pair of Central Park tours, in areas and/or from perspectives that would be new to me. Or there was a link I'd found to a walking tour of Jones Beach, the beach that Robert Moses build on an island off the south shore of Long Island in the '30s. In nearly 50 years of living in New York, for as much as I've heard the storied name of Jones Beach, I'd never set foot there.

When I tuned in a weather forecast, it seemed pretty insistent that the rain was over, and we had a good, sunny day in store, and so I duly dragged myself to catch the 11:10 Long Island Rail Road train to Freeport, successfully met the Shorewalkers group, and was eventually able to crowd onto an N88 bus, which I was delighted to discover took my regular unlimited Metrocard, and which duly slow-mo-ed its way along the parkway (also built by Robert Moses, naturally), on what had indeed developed into a prime beach day for the first weekend of "the season," and was eventually disgorged at the western side of the Jones Beach State Park.

It's a lovely spot, though less crowded than I would have expected. Just wait till Fourth of July, I was thinking. But I won't be there. It's a lovely spot, and I'm glad I did it, in the company of people familiar with the place, and it was even worth the $16.50 round-trip train fare to do it once. It's a beach. A nice beach, but just a beach. I can cross it off my "things to do, maybe" list, though.

And tomorrow it's back to work. Sigh. Well, at least I did something this weekend. And how was your holiday weekend?

Most Peaceful, Least Peaceful Countries-- But Are They Safe For Tourists?

2011-05-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Different kinds of danger in different societies

We planned our trip to Nepal and Tibet all year. We've been to Nepal a few times before-- starting in 1971 for me-- and there's no need to make an extraordinary preparations for a trip there. Easy as pie these days, especially for a place so totally exotic. But Tibet is another story. You can't just jump on a plane and fly to Lhasa and walk around and take a look. Tibet is chafing under the control of China and China makes it very difficult to get in and puts extremely tight controls on anyone who does go. It's complicated and expensive and fraught with rules and regulations. Two weeks ago, China announced that no foreigners would be allowed into Tibet during late June and early July, just when we were going to be there. We had to cancel all of our hotel reservations and our serpentine, costly permitting procedures. And our airline tickets.

Only Air China flies from Nepal to Katmandu. They don't like refunding tickets. It took some maneuvering to get them to agree... I think. I think? Well, they say they'll return most of the money. We'll see if they do.

Meanwhile, we're extending our time in monsoon-ridden Nepal. That may be a mistake. Aside from daily torrential rains, it looks like there might be a civil war brewing again. The Maoists against the Communists. Everyday Roland reads the Indian newspapers to gage how safe it is to fly into Kathmandu-- above and beyond his intelligence that there is no functioning radar system in the country's only international airport, Tribhuvan. Checking for political peace is relatively new thing for American tourists who want to have a nice vacation. It never used to bother us much. Now we're always second-guessing Mexico, the Middle East, Morocco, even... Arizona.

Maybe the 2011 Global Peace Index, which was released yesterday, can be helpful. The key findings were that:

• The world is less peaceful for the third straight year

• Due to an increased threat of terrorist attacks in 29 nations

• A greater likelihood of violent demonstrations in 33 countries

• Arab Spring unrest heralds biggest ever change in rankings, Libya tumbles 83 spots

• Iceland bounces back from economic woes to top ranking

• Somalia displaces Iraq as world’s least peaceful nation

• Violence cost the global economy more than $8.12 trillion in 2010

According to the report, Iceland, New Zealand and Japan are the three most peaceful countries-- and in that order. I remember Iceland being filled with rowdy drunks when I was there... but that was in 1969 and maybe they're quieter now. All the Scandinavian countries are filled with drunks and they're all rated among the 10 most peaceful on earth. Europe in general is rated as the most peaceful place and sub-Sarahan Africa as the least peaceful. Somalia's the worst of all, with Sudan close on its tail. The U.S. improved from 85th most peaceful to 82nd most peaceful. Canada, by way of comparison is 8th most peaceful. I think it's that gun thing in places like Arizona and Texas that screws up the U.S. ranking.

If the world had been 25% more peaceful over the past year the global economy would have reaped an additional economic benefit of just over US$2 trillion. This amount would pay for the 2% of global GDP per annum investment estimated by the Stern Review to avoid the worst effects of climate change, cover the cost of achieving the Millennium Development Goals, eliminate the public debt of Greece, Portugal and Ireland, and address the one-off rebuilding costs of the most expensive natural disaster in history-- the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

Nepal's #95 on the list-- unless your a monarch, in which case, you could easily be shot. Here's the whole list, from best to worst and these are the 15 least peaceful places. I'd avoid most of them, although I keep wanting to visit Moscow and St Petersburg. I think Colombia is on the list mostly because they shoot union members there. It just beats out... Yemen and Lebanon!

The State Department Wednesday issued a travel alert warning U.S. citizens in Yemen of a "high security threat level" in the country. The agency said Americans should not travel to Yemen and urged U.S. citizens in Yemen to depart immediately because of "terrorist activities" and "civil unrest."

At this time, a U.S. government-facilitated evacuation will not take place because commercial travel options remain.

U.S. citizens choosing to stay in Yemen are advised to limit nonessential travel and enroll their stay in the country through the Smart Traveller Enrollment Program (STEP). Registrants will be prompted to provide their current contact information and next of kin or emergency contact information.

The U.S. also ordered all non-essential American diplomats and all diplomats' families out of the country immediately.

Preparing For Nepal-- What About The National Carrier?

2011-05-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

Akash Bhairab-- the 2 boys are fine; the 2 goats... not so much

We've flown-- reluctantly-- on Royal Air Nepal in the past. And we're about to again-- although the name has been changed, with the abolition of the monarchy to Nepal Airlines. Roland panics; I'm fatalistic. There hasn't been a fatal crash in a decade. But this morning he sent me some old news reports. The one he was the most worked up over had to do with the head honcho at the airline being jailed for corruption. The only part that surprised me is that he was jailed. In Asia you really have to assume that everyone is corrupt-- and pray that its under control and that, for example, he isn't pocketing the money that's supposed to go for engineer maintenance.

I was more interested in live goat sacrifice to Akash Bhairab, the Hindu god of sky protection.

Officials at Nepal Airlines (formerly known as Royal Nepal Airlines), Nepal’s state-run airline, have sacrificed two goats last week to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god (who is actually painted on the fuselage of the aircraft), following a long series of technical problems with one of their Boeing 757 airliners due to which Nepal Airlines has had to suspend some services in recent weeks (it was probably a noticeable part of their international services as it is one of only two mid-haul aircrafts at the airline – the domestic market is served by seven Twin Otters).

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft on Sunday at Nepal’s international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said. They hope that after this sacrifice there will be no more (or not as many) technical problems to be fixed with this particular aircraft, and thus there will be less interruptions to their operations due to aircraft maintenance. ”The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been. Local media last week blamed the company’s woes on an electrical fault. The carrier runs international flights to five cities in Asia, and this particular flight arrived to Hong Kong safely after the ritual. It is common in Nepal to sacrifice animals such as goats and buffaloes to appease different Hindu deities.

UPDATE: And If That's Not Enough... How About A Maoist Revolution To Interrupt Your Holiday Plans?

Always worrying, that Roland. This morning he wasn't thinking about airline maintenance but revolutions and sent me this pleasant news from the Times of India about political trouble brewing again in Nepal... as I rush to do all my last minute preparations for the trip.

Last year, as Nepal's Communist-Congress ruling alliance failed to draft a new constitution within the stipulated deadline and sought more time, the main opposition Maoist party paralysed the republic for six days, calling a general strike to pressure the then prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal into resigning.

One year later, the turbulent republic continued to suffer as cruel history repeated itself. This time, it was the Nepali Congress, booted out of the alliance by new communist PM Jhala Nath Khanal and sitting in opposition that flexed its muscles in the capital on Friday, holding a mass meeting where its top leaders demanded the resignation of Khanal.

"We are here with 10 demands," said Nepali Congress prime ministerial candidate and former deputy prime minister Ram Chandra Poudel. "No party will be allowed to play the politics of arms. The Maoists have to surrender their arms and give up their fighters. Nepal's king Birendra was wiped out along with his family because they made themselves above law. The Maoist army cantonments have also put themselves above law and that is bound to lead to catastrophe."

They may be backing away from the brink... a little. I sure hope so. We'll be there soon. Communists vs Maoists-- so strange.

Time To Put Orbitz On Hold For A While

2011-05-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

Orbitz is financing fascism in the United States by advertising on Fox News. Drop Fox is making frequent travelers aware of Orbitz's advertising policy and what that has been doing to our country. Several other organizations have backed them up and here's the letter LGBT groups like Courage Campaign, GLAAD and Equality Matters sent to Barney Harford, CEO of Orbitz:

Dear Mr. Harford,

It has recently come to our attention that your company buys advertising on Fox News Channel. Orbitz prides itself on being a good friend to the LGBT community, and we are writing you to raise our concerns about your association with a network that advances destructive anti-gay rhetoric.

Your gay-specific travel site has been warmly received in the gay community, has resulted in higher quality service for the LGBT community and has achieved an increase in growth for Orbitz. Additionally, in the last few years, leading LGBT organizations Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD have recognized the great work that Orbitz has done in partnering with and catering to the LGBT community.

In that same time period, Fox News demonstrated an indefensible bias in its coverage of core issues for the LGBT community. An analysis of coverage on everything from gay marriage to the repeal of DADT to gay individuals supports a conclusion that Fox's coverage is driven by a political agenda and cannot be considered an objective news source.

Here are a few examples of where Fox News acted in clear opposition to the best interest of the LGBT community:
Fox News gave Mike Huckabee his own show despite a history of comparing homosexuality to drug abuse, incest, pedophilia, and necrophilia. Huckabee has repeatedly used his Fox platform to campaign against gay marriage, even insultingly suggesting that marriage equality poses a threat to stable society.

Bill O' Reilly has repeatedly used his popular and prime time show to warn against the "dangers" of allowing gay people near children, to assert that same-sex marriage could lead to nuptials with turtles, ducks or dolphins, and to baselessly claim that implementing a hate crimes bill could protect pedophiles.

Fox News repeatedly perpetuated lies that repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell would impact troop readiness and morale, despite multiple reports-- including the Pentagon's-- to the contrary.

These campaigns of misinformation, smears, and flat-out lies-- which are propagated throughout Fox News' programming, including its so-called news shows-- do real damage to our families and communities. They also call attention to the fact that by supporting Fox News, Orbitz is supporting an organization committed to advancing an agenda that demeans many of your customers and advocates limiting their civil rights. It also undermines Orbitz's laudable support for the LGBT community.

Given the tenacity with which Fox is committed to this agenda as demonstrated by an enclosed compendium of its coverage, it is our sincere hope that you will rethink your decision to support them financially through ad revenue.

We welcome the opportunity to discuss this further.

Financial support from Big Business allowed for the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. The time to nip it in the bud is now, not when it's too late. Please consider signing the Courage Campaign petition here and please consider using another service until Orbitz stops financing all the hate on O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck and the rest of them. Fox News’ history of destructive anti-gay language and actions includes:

· Giving Mike Huckabee his own show despite Huckabee’s history of comparing homosexuality to drug abuse, incest, pedophilia, and necrophilia. Huckabee has repeatedly used his Fox platform to campaign against gay marriage, and he has suggested that marriage equality poses a threat to stable society.

· Bill O’ Reilly repeatedly using his popular prime time show to warn against the “dangers” of allowing gay people near children, to assert that same-sex marriage could lead to polygamy, nuptials with turtles, ducks or dolphins, and to claim that implementing a hate crimes bill could protect pedophiles.

· Perpetuating the claim that repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would impact troop readiness and morale, despite multiple reports-- including the Pentagon’s-- to the contrary.

“Orbitz loves gay dollars and, we hope, LGBT people, but by funding homophobes and charlatans like hosts Bill O'Reilly and Mike Huckabee, Orbitz sends the wrong message,” said Courage Campaign Founder and Chair Rick Jacobs. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can go to plenty of other travel sites. We count on Orbitz to do the right thing and stop buying advertising on Fox News Channel so that LGBT people can continue to shop with Orbitz. The alternatives are clear.”

Pakistan's Hottest Tourist Destination?

2011-05-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

The fabulous Ilyasi Mosque in Abbottabad

Right after the extra-judicial execution of Osama bin-Laden (ex-post facto sanctioned by retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens), DownWithTyranny, my other blog, ran a post that mentioned Pakistan was considering obliterating the bin-Laden hide-out in Abbottabad to keep it from becoming a shrine. It looks like there's an equal likelihood it could become an amusement park. Forget for a moment that the slimy corporate whores at Disney have taken it upon themselves to trademark Seal Team 6, Pakistani attorney Rashid-ul-Haq Qazi, who visited the compound, had a suggestion of his own: charge people to look inside. "It would be wiser to print some tickets and charge an entry fee," he said.

Now as we now, Pakistan isn't a safe tourist destination for Americans even in the best of times. And this is pretty much the worst of times. That said, Abbottabad has always been a domestic tourist destination and the locals see a pot of gold for themselves in bin-Laden's recent demise in their fair town. I missed it when I drove, in 1969. from the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, Rawalpindi, the Islamabad building site, Gujrat, and Lahore and onward to Amritsar and New Delhi, but Pakistani tourists treasure it as a base for trips to the beautiful Kaghan Valley and the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation recommends as "places worth visiting in and around Abbottabad" the Ilyasi mosque with its water spring (photo above), the Shimla view point and Thandiani hill resort.

Pakistani hoteliers in the now notorious town where Osama bin Laden was killed by elite US forces are praying the views and balmy weather still reel in bumper tourist numbers this year.

Considered one of the quietest towns in the northwest, nestled in pine-dotted hills and popular with day-trippers from the capital, Abbottabad is listed on Pakistan's official tourism website as a "popular summer resort."

...Officials say the bin Laden episode might not dampen the inflow of tourists, since the peace of the city was barely disturbed and business has continued as usual. Indeed, said one, it might even be a bonus.

"I believe that tourism will not be impacted-- rather, more people are coming to see the place where the incident happened," provincial secretary for tourism and culture Azam Khan told AFP... Hoteliers were upbeat, saying prospects for this summer were good.

"Praise be to God, we are doing good business and expect a full season," Hummayun Khan, manager of the Alpine hotel, told AFP.

"I don't think the recent incident will have a negative impact, because the city is still normal and peaceful and people are doing business without any fear."

Jibran Mirza, a manager at Gilani's guest house, said some people may this year prefer to go to Murree, another resort town north of Islamabad, but he did "not see any downslide" in business.

"Murree is overcrowded, so families prefer Abbottabad," he added.

I can even see an HGTV House Hunters International featuring charming Abbottabad, which "is popular not just with visitors but with those looking to relocate. Its weather, peaceful reputation and the perceived security of a garrison have drawn many from other cities to work or educate their children."

Pakistani tourists are lining up to get their pictures taken in front of the nondescript walls that hid bin-Laden for 5 years. International tourists haven't flocked to it yet but curious families from Islamabad, Lahore and even Karachi have. Next up will be tourists from the Gulf states.

Best And Worst U.S. Airlines-- Short Version: They're All Pretty Bad These Days

2011-05-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

The June issue of Consumer Reports rates the best and worst U.S. airlines. The best news didn't have anything to do with the sorry state of the collapsing airline industry itself but with the fact that the Department of Transportation announced a series of very minimal protections for consumers in April, including:

• Disclosing fares and fees. Airlines and other ticket sellers will be required to disclose all fees, including baggage charges. All fees and taxes must be included in advertising.

• Refunding baggage fees. Airlines will be required to refund those fees if your bags are lost.

• Extending tarmac delay rules. The DOT's 2009 ruling on extended tarmac delays is being strengthened and expanded. The current regulation requires domestic flights to return to the gate after three hours, and passengers must be provided with adequate food, water, working lavatories, and medical treatment. This rule will now include U.S. carriers operating international flights, as well as foreign airlines operating out of U.S. airports.

• Compensation for bumping. If you are involuntarily bumped from a flight, new regs will provide increased compensation, in some cases doubling the current amounts.

• Limiting fare increases. Airlines will not be allowed to raise your fare after you’ve purchased your ticket.

All stuff we used to take for granted... used to. Anyway, the Consumer Reporters survey included almost 15,000 readers and they were not kind. Eight of the ten airlines rated received low scores for seating comfort-- exceptions being JetBlue and, incongruously, since their seating sucks, Southwest. These two airlines also topped the overall list.

Other quality-of-flight measures also got low marks from our readers, including cabin-crew service, cleanliness, and in-flight entertainment. The proliferation of added fees further contributes to passengers' low opinion of today's flying experience, and even to their decision of whether to fly at all, as we explain in Carriers continue to squeeze with fees.

But some carriers have done a better job than others, as evidenced by a wide difference in overall satisfaction scores, from Southwest's lofty 87 to US Airways' lowly 61. Southwest was the only airline to receive top marks for check-in ease and the service provided by its cabin crews. Passengers also gave the airline high grades for cabin cleanliness and baggage handling. The latter might reflect the fact that Southwest is the only airline we rated that lets you check two bags free of charge. But bags three, four, and beyond will cost you $50 each. And like most other carriers, Southwest charges extra for items over its size and weight limits. (Our survey was conducted before Southwest's well-publicized problems this past April with cracks in several of its planes.)

JetBlue, which ranked second in overall satisfaction, was the only airline to outscore Southwest for seating comfort, possibly because it gives passengers more room than they're accustomed to in this era of tightly packed planes. JetBlue's coach seats are 32 to 38 inches from the seat directly ahead, while coach seats on most other carriers are just 31 inches apart. JetBlue was also the lone carrier on our list to earn top scores for in-flight entertainment; its seatback TV screens offer passengers 36 channels.

Bottom-ranked US Airways occupies the same unenviable spot on our list as it did in 2007, when we last assessed airlines. In addition to its low overall score, survey respondents gave it the worst marks of any airline for cabin-crew service.

Our own annual airline rating places Delta at the bottom of the heap again, but the came in 8th (of 10), worst of all the majors. Here's a little clip that only takes safety into account, for those who worry about that kind of thing:

Seeing America-- Free Walks

2011-05-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

"The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations."

-- Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American
Cities, the epigraph on the 2011 Jane's Walk USA website

by Ken

Really, I'd be curious to know what people did and saw around the country in this weekend of free walks (yes, free! celebrating and keeping alive the memory of that pioneer of modern urban life Jane Jacobs (1916-2006), author most famously of The Death and LIfe of American Cities, timed to her birthday (which was Wednesday).

On the Jane's Walk USA website there's a list of 25 cities represented this year: Anchorage, Austin, Baton Rouge, Brunswick (ME), Boston, Chattanooga, Heber Valley (UT), Houston, Jackson (MS), Kansas City (MO), Mesa (AZ), New Orleaans, New York City, Oakland (CA), Orange (NJ), Philadelphia, Phoenix, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Scranton, Syracuse (NY), Tempe (AZ), Waterbury (CT).

On the actual birthday, the Municipal Arts Society has an annual tour, "Her Village," in which architectural historian Matt Postal leads participants through sites associated with Jane's life and causes in the neighborhood, and winding up in front of the modest little three-story house on Hudson Street (down the block from the White Horse Tavern) which she and her husband bought and in which they raised their two sons and a daughter until pulling up stakes for Toronto in 1968, unwilling to allow the coming-of-age Jacobs boys to be subject to the draft for the Vietnam War, which they vehemently opposed.

I think my very first MAS tour was one of Matt's, which remains one of my all-time favorites from a "concept" standpoint: a walkthrough of a project that never got built, thanks in part to the activism of Jane Jacobs. It was the legendary Robert Moses's first major defeats, planned as another of his slash-and-destroy neighborhood-killers, the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have provided a direct vehicular link between the Holland Tunnel on the west and the East River bridges to Brooklyn on the east, at the cost of a neighborhood filled with the kind of people that neither Moses nor the business community that supported him cared about.

Every time Moses was pushed back, he came back with an altered version of the plans, until finally community groups discovered -- with Jane Jacobs playing a major role -- that they really could fight City Hall. (Moses wore so many public hats that fighting him was in effect fighting a united wall of bureaucracies.) The strategic breakthroughs involved in the LME fight(s) involved organizing community resistance and finding ways, normally through the standard media, to make a "story" of that opposition.

It was a stark reminder of the gulf between Robert Moses's way of looking at cities and Jane Jacobs's. If you look at Moses's plans for the city of the future, you see high-rise building containing hermetically sealed dwellings that the dwellers left only to go to their cars to drive on Moses's highways to . . . well, destinations, including Moses's parks and other recreation facilities. Left out was any kind of human interaction, any kind of community -- the very thing that counted for so much in Jacobs's thinking, that and the idea that people living and working in neighborhoods are entitled to a say about the use made of their neighborhoods.

Jacobs famously loved low-rise buildings with stoops, which encouraged neighborhood interaction, and buildings with stairs rather than elevators. She was an obsessive observer, getting out "in the field," seeing what made neighborhoods work, what made them active and vital, and what made them work less well. She was correspondingly distrustful of top-down planning by people who didn't know, or often didn't care, how people actually live their lives.

My only regret about the Jane's Walk weekend was how many interesting-looking tours were scheduled in New York which I wasn't able to go on. I was out of commission Saturday because I wasn't going to be deterred from another Queens tour led by Jack Eichenbaum, with whom I've done both New York Transit Museum and Municipal Art Society tours and last week his own spectacular all-day "World of the #7 Train" tour (for which in the end he had to turn away eight would-be registrants). I didn't imagine I'd have another opportunity to walk "The Right-of-Way of the Flushing Central Rail Road" (under the auspices of the Queens Historical Society), which for some seven years in the 1870s connected Flushing to Hempstead, Long Island, and "lives on in a swath of parkland and streets," of which we walked the portion from Flushing to Fresh Meadows.

BY THE WAY, JACK EICHENBAUM HAS A WHOLE
SERIES OF QUEENS TOURS COMING UP

One of the things that makes Jack, as an "urban geographer," such an interesting tour leader (he's the current Queens borough historian, by the way) is his fascination with how and why areas and neighborhoods have developed and continue to develop, and one of his current fascinations is the incredibly rapid evolution of Long Island City in the wake of a major zoning overhauls by the city. He has five tours of the area coming up next weekend ("Daylight Loft Buildings in Long Island City," Saturday, May 14, and "Long Island City Shoreline to the Noguchi Museum," Sunday, May 15), the following Wednesday evening (" Queensboro Plaza to the Waterfront at Sunset," May 18), and the following weekend ("Long Island City Studio Strolls," Saturday and Sunday, May 21 and 22). The sunset walk to the waterfront is also part of an extensive series of Wednesday-evening tours Jack is doing from May through July under the heading "Changing Cultures of Queens: A Walking Anthology," including "Flushing's Chinatown" (this Wednesday, May 11) and "Sunnyside to Jackson Heights" (May 25).

They're all $15, and no advance reservations are required. For more information, check Jack's website.

THE JANE'S WALK I FINALLY CHOSE FOR TODAY

In addition to the Saturday Jane's Walks I couldn't take, but tried to keep track of in case maybe someday I can try to do them on my own, there were a number on Sunday I might have done, but in the end I opted for "The Draw of a Vibrant Waterfront," a tour organized by two New York Harbor-obsessed bloggers, Will Van Dorp (of Tugster, recently profiled in nytimes.com's City Room), an English professor by day who thinks of the vast working New York Harbor as the city's "sixth borough"; and Christina Sun (of Bowsprite), an artist whose passion is directed toward the people who work the harbor -- people who mostly from someplace else. On a picture-perfect day, with just enough clouds to add drama to the blue sky, our small but hardy band took the noon Staten Island Ferry (it was a difficult decision, knowing how unpunctual people are these days, to depart on time rather than wait the half-hour till the next ferry), then headed west from the St. George ferry terminal along the north shore of Staten Island, with spectacular views of the Upper Bay from the Kill van Kull (which separates Staten Island from New Jersey) on the west to the distant Brooklyn shore on the east.

As excited as I was by my recent Municipal Art Society outing to Staten Island's Snug Harbor Cultural Center, farther around the bend on the Kill van Kull, I had one regret: that of necessity, by taking the short bus ride from the ferry, we zoomed past that magnificent shoreline. So I couldn't resist returning in the company of people who could help point me at and explain what there was to see from that wonderful vantage point, and Will and Christina (and their tugboat-savvy friend Burke) were splendid guides, and our small group included terrifically interesting people. I had a grand time.

Thanks to Will and Christine. And thanks of course to Jane.

Is It Safe To Fly on Delta?

2011-05-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there's a totally reasonable explanation for why all the U.S. carriers now offer the worst service in the skies and why Delta is even worse than the other U.S. airlines. I've long given up on Delta-- and even hesitate to use the American Express credit card that is attached to it's frequent flyer program-- and always look for an alternative when I'm flying. After Friday's blatantly bigoted outrage in Memphis, I would think a lot more Americans will stop flying Delta as well.

I suppose if you're some provincial, bucktoothed bumpkin who's never seen a Muslim cleric, one look at the two Muslim scholars boarding the Delta flight to Charlotte would be enough to ensure a panic attack. Fortunately the pilot restrained himself from shooting them and merely kicked them off "his" plane (before it took off). It didn't matter that they had been searched and body-searched not once, but twice. They had Muslim beards and hippie clothes.

Masudur Rahman, a professor of Arabic at the University of Memphis, and Mohamed Zaghloul, Imam at the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis, were asked to deplane Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 5452 from Memphis to Charlotte. They were subjected to additional security checks after the plane had pushed back from the gate, Rahman told Reuters by telephone.

After additional screening, the two men were cleared by Delta representatives to re-board the plane, but were then told the pilot would not take them, Rahman said.

Rahman said both men had been cleared for check-in and boarding by airline and Transportation Security Administration officials during normal pre-flight procedures.

According to a TSA spokesman, the decision to remove the two passengers was made by the airline.

Delta apologized-- to the non-Muslim passengers who were inconvenienced by the delay. The two Muslims were, ironically enough, headed for a conference on Islamophobia, where they were scheduled to lead prayers. They were 9 hours late for the conference. Delta couldn't be doing a better job if they were being paid directly by al-Qaeda. In fairness, I need to point out that Delta doesn't just discriminate against Muslims; they hate musicians (especially violinists) as well-- and musicians have joined the Delta Boycott. I hope the world's 1.5 billion Muslims do as well.

Group Travel "Survival" Strategies-- Guest Post By Pete Mandra

2011-05-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

This is the final episode in Pete's series about his travel adventures in Africa. I hope everyone has enjoyed them as much as I have. The book is even better!

I’ve precariously canoed past watchful crocodiles and anxious hippo pods on Africa’s Zambezi River.

Mere feet separated me from a skittish Black Mamba, a snake so deadly its venom is 100% fatal to a bitten man within an hour.

Unpredictable elephants, always-opportunistic lions, and stealthy leopards demanded your full awareness when spotted in the African bush.

But as stress-filled as those truly memorable moments of my African journey were, nothing compared to the trials of group travel.

Don’t get me wrong-- signing on with a group travel tour, just as I had to visit southern Africa (and later Egypt and Jordan), is an effective way to navigate across a country while taking in its highlights. You not only eliminate the hassle of getting from Point A to Point B, but it’s generally much more cost effective than if you were to attempt it by yourself.

The challenge, though, arrives when your tour takes you through a less-developed country like Africa, where personal safety, and few diversions like museums and shopping, dictates the group spending time together for seemingly every waking moment. It is then that a strange, almost magical transformation occurs-- you stop acting like a group and start acting more like a dysfunctional, slightly manic family, filled with just enough underlying tension to drive one another crazy. In Africa, we fought over food, relaxed every ambition imaginable a little too much for comfort, and almost purposefully got on each other’s nerves. Though I can’t share all of the sordid details here, suffice to say I did start to wonder, after that whole experience, how any of us could once again function in normal, everyday society.

OK-- so I exaggerate a bit. Then why, you’re probably asking yourself, after my trying experience traveling with a group through Africa, did I participate in another such trip shortly afterwards through Egypt and Jordan? Because Africa taught me what I refer to as essential ‘mental survival strategies’ for group travel, essential to enjoying your trip and dealing with the sometimes difficult group mentality.

The following, then, are my 5 tips for mentally ‘surviving’ a group travel tour:

1. Grab alone time (when you can get it!). There’s nothing wrong with retreating to your tent or room for a little bit if you need a break. Don’t think that just because others always hang out that you are required to, also.

2. Protect that personal space! In Africa, the seat you grabbed on the truck that first day was yours for the next six weeks. It sounds crazy, but on group tours, your instinct is to protect all space in that immediate vicinity as your own, so you don’t feel too crowded and have room for your gear. Only remove gear from the truck that you need for that particular moment, using the rest as a personal space holder.

3. Stay connected with family and friends back home. Receiving an email, video chat, or just hearing the voice of a loved one has a way of bringing you back to reality, especially when you need a break from present company. And best of all, you can find an Internet café in even the most remote places in the world (though you may have to deal with a dial-up connection).

4. Zone out. Bring that music-loaded Ipod for those long road trips when you don’t want to spend another 4 hours (again) talking to your seat mate. Or be really devious and only pretend you’ve fallen asleep.

5. Go with the flow. Will the group annoy you at times? Absolutely! So expect that you may not get along with everyone, and accept that you’re personal freedom may seem compromised from the outset as you (often) follow rigid schedules and full days to take in all the sites. A mantra may help, too. Whenever I wanted to strangle someone, I took a deep breath and repeated to myself you’re on vacation…you’re on vacation. It usually did the trick.

Hopefully, after reading this you aren’t scared off if you were considering signing on with a group tour in a less-developed part of the world. Following my own advice on my Egypt and Jordan trip proved extremely helpful, so I’m confident, if you have any such concerns, these same strategies can work for you, too.