Being Fair To The Other Bali

Maybe I haven't been fair to the southern part of Bali-- Kuta, Seminyak, Legian, Jimbaran Bay, Sanur, the sprawling tourist ghetto surrounding the airport, where upwards of 90% of the tourists who come to Bali stay. And I mean stay.

To me Bali is everything but this consciously created tourist ghetto. I go for places that don't have fast food restaurants, don't have economies based solely on tourism and don't have hordes of pastey tourists looking for they know not what. I've always preferred quiet places or places where peoples' interactions with me aren't necessarily based on the previous interactions they've had with thousands of others "just like me."

I've never eaten in a Wendy's or a Kentucky Fried Chicken or a McDonald's or any of those poisonous industrialized food substitute feeding places and I tend to find little in common with people who do. The tourist ghettos have them woven into their existence, the other 90% of Bali doesn't. I write about the other 90%. But is that fair?

I met a young German the other day who's been living in Bali for the last few years. He's staying on the outskirts of Ubud helping a friend refurbish a house. But he lives in Seminyak. "Ubud," he told me, "is the most boring place in Bali. Everything is closing when I'm getting ready to go out and party." He loves Seminyak, a real party town. You can drink and find plenty of cheap sex there. The Australian partiers are exact duplicates of the American spring break crowd that makes places like Cancun and Cabo so absolutely avoidable. Avoidable to me. There's no doubt that far more people like those places than the quiet kinds of places I prefer.

So let this serve as a warning; most people prefer a very different Bali-- and a very different Mexico-- to the one I prefer. I once went to Athens with a friend and every morning when I'd being going out to see the Acropolis and the sights that drew me to Greece, he'd be dragging his ass home from a night of cruising the sights that drew him to Greece. Who am I to say my way is superior or more worthwhile? He had a great time. Personally I'd rather spend a day on the slopes of Mount Agung or white water rafting on the Ayung than spend a night of club hopping in Kuta. And I basically eat a variation of vegan Nasi Campur or gado gado everyday. I'm sure it's not right for everybody. And I'm sure Disney World and the Atlantis Paradise Island are a million times more popular as travel destinations than the kinds of places this blog covers.

When we got to the Amankila the other day, the security guards searched underneath our car with a huge mirror, the way it's done in much of the third world. We didn't think it looked very effective. I wonder if someone did the same at the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott in Jakarta today, each of which was bombed. Noisiest thing around ole Ubud is the roosters crowing away day and night... and the mosquitos buzzing.

Anyone Ever Offer You A Cup Of Mongoose Crap Coffee?

I never drank a coffee in my life and I resisted the temptation to try yesterday when Roland, Helen and Michael sampled some coffee made from mongoose crap. Sound enticing? We spent the day traipsing around northern and eastern Bali seeing sites from the Batur volcano and Bali's mother temple on the slopes of Mt Agung to an aboriginal village, Tenganan, known for intricate books painted on palm leaves, and the ancient kingdoms' hall of justice at Klungkung with wonderful paintings of punishments all over the ceiling. Roland especially liked the one depicting demons sawing into someone's head who had been disrespectful towards his parents. But the highlight of the day was probably the trip to a coffee and spice plantation where one is able to sample some Kopi Luwak.

As a preface just like me say that I'm a huge fan of argan oil from the Essaouria region of Morocco. The oil is pressed from the undigested pits of a fruit that grows on the argan trees which are eaten by tree climbing goats and then pooped out. (See the photo at the link above.) So it isn't poop-processed food per se that turns me off. And the mongoose poop coffee doesn't really even come from a mongoose. The creature is a civet cat. Here's how Wikipedia describes the concoction we're talking about: "Kopi Luwak, also known as caphe cut chon (fox-dung coffee) in Vietnam and kape alamid in the Philippines, is coffee that is prepared using coffee cherries that have been eaten and partially digested by the Asian Palm Civet, then harvested from its feces."
Sound unappetizing? Roland, who used to work at Starbucks and is a coffee addict said it's strong but "bueno."

If you want to add a bit of a fear factor moment to your coffee morning with your friends, ask them to drink some civet droppings with you. It will be quite a test of courage for some of them. Really though, there is nothing to be alarmed at. You are actually serving them coffee, but it is coffee that went through a more exotic process than your regular cup of Joe goes through.

It is called civet coffee. What makes this coffee most unusual is that it literally is the dropping of the palm civet. These furry little creatures love coffee cherries, particularly the reddest ones. They do have excellent taste, don’t they? They swallow them whole. While in their stomach, the cherries are processed by the civet’s stomach acids and ezymes. After a while the beans exit the civet body. The fruit has been removed but the beans are whole.

The resulting bean is has an aroma and flavor distinctly its own. The beans are cleaned and dried before roasting, if that’s on your mind. When roasted it results in oilier beans. The oilier the better is what the experts say. The result is coffee that tastes rather like dark chocolate with a hint of hazelnut.

Civet coffee has more than one source. The best known is Indonesia where it is called Kope Luwak. This exotic coffee sells for about $600 a pound.

Roland claims it's $1,000 a pound and that the British royal family and Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel pretty much buy it all up every year between them. The cup he, Helen and Michael shared cost them $10 in the middle of the jungle and the place where we got was also selling a small jar of the beans for $35 (enough to make 2 cups back home; we all passed on that).


UPDATE: I Forget To Mention...

With all the talk about mongoose shit-- or civet shit-- I should have remembered to mention that we have our first shit meal since we got here. We have two great cooks and normally we eat breakfast and lunch at home, simple, wholesome, delicious food. And for dinners we've been eating in health-conscious vegetarian-oriented restaurants around Ubud. They're friendly, pleasant, organic and incredibly cheap. A dinner is never over $10. So yesterday we decided to pop in on the best hotel in Bali-- and Bali has a couple 4 Seasons, a Ritz Carlton, 3 Amans and a Bulgari-- the AmanKila, in the northeast, far from anything. It was voted the #1 best hotel in Bali and the least expensive room is $750/night. (They go way up from there.) We decided to have lunch there.

They told us that 19 of their 40 rooms and suites are taken When I visited in 2004 there were fewer guests. We were the only people having lunch. The view was beyond stunning-- mountains, ocean, islands, jungle, manicured gardens, triple-decker infinity pool... And that's what you pay for. The bill isn't that outrageous compared to a first rate U.S. restaurant. Our lunch for 5 was just a bit over 2,300,000 rupiah, around $230. But the food was so deadly dull and uninteresting that Anwar, our driver who told me he had never eaten in a place like that before, was thinking that rich people are crazy. (In way of comparison, an average weekly salary in that part of Bali is 800,000 rupiah.) Roland and Helen said some kind of decadent 5-texture flourless chocolate cake they had was a 10 on a scale from 1-10. Everything else lacked flavor or anything that some crotchety old tourist might complain about. This one is "a must avoid."

A Day Of Being A Tourist In Bali

t's tempting to just never leave the villa. It's cool and breezy inside and like living in the Garden of Eden. But now that my friends have joined me, everybody wants to go and see Bali. It's all beautiful and Anwar, the driver I met in 2005 knows all the best places to go and has enough sensitivity about individuals' peculiarities to know where to take us and what to skip-- although it's a diverse group and he must be getting confused by now.

Our first day out with him was to the mountains in north central Bali and Danau Bratan (Lake Bratan, site of a famous temple). We headed southwest from Ubud to Mengwi, site of another famous temple, Pura Taman Ayun, a huge and beautifully kept up complex built in 1634. It's got a huge moat and a couple of landscaped courtyards and a big climbable bell tower. Climbing it is the only way to get a look at the inner sanctuary.

From there we drove through lush green rice fields for a couple hours, along mostly uncrowded narrow roads straight north into the mountains towards Bedugul. On the western shore of Lake Bratan is Candikunning where you can get your picture taken holding a giant bat, a huge python or some kind of a monitor before moving on to the Buddhist-Hindu temple, Pura Ulun Danu Bratan. It appears to be sitting in the water and it's very picturesque. If it wasn't so far from where all the tourists are it would be far more overrun. It's overrun enough as is. From there we headed to Munduk up in the misty mountains. We parked a trekked up and down the mountains to a gorgeous, isolated waterfall in a forest of spice trees. After that it was some amazing mountain top restaurant with a view of the whole world and then a trip to the vast Bali Botanical Gardens (Kebun Raya Eka Karya Bali) with whole areas dedicated to ceratin species like bamboo and orchids.

I was more than ready to call it quits after that but Anwar knew everyone (else) would want to see the temple in the Indian Ocean at Tanah Lot, so we headed south again for the sunset ceremony, the most touristy thing imaginable. When Roland started growling at me (as if it was my fault we were surrounded by hundreds of Australians and Ma and Pa Kettle) I pointed at that this would be the most beautiful spot on earth if there were no people around. After we left it was just about an hour and a half back to Ubud and straight to Kafe, one of our two favorite organic restaurants for dinner.

If you're coming to Bali, you can e-mail Anwar (anwarmar24@yahoo.com) and tell him you heard about him from Howie and he'll help you with whatever you need-- from a villa or a diving expedition to a guided tour around the island.

The Soft White Underbelly Of Paradise

I'll leave out the mosquitos since they don't seem to be bothering anyone but me. (I'm, literally, a bitten up mess. Helen was wearing a sleaveless wisp of a dress last night and I was wearing a tight-wristed black hoodie and they bit right through my clothes and never went near her.) Last time I was in Bali I never saw a mosquito; this time they're like a Biblical plague but not for anyone else.

On the other hand, 2 nights ago the next door neighbor's 15 year old son-- along with 4 friends-- were in a fatal car accident. For the last 2 days hundreds of friends and relative have lined the lane to our house-- and our front courtyard-- in mourning. It's very sad, horrific. Anyone who has a car or motor scooter can drive; no age limits are enforced. Bizarrely, each night scores of men come to the house and gamble way into the night, laughing and... not very mournful. They want it to be noisy and less scary we were told.

A warning to travelers: one of our party arrived yesterday and was immediately told he would be put back on a plane and deported. Why? He and several other foreigners were being shaken down. One guy's passport only had 5 months left on it. Why this should matter for someone on a 2 week vacation. Deported! Another didn't have enough empty pages. He avoided deportation by giving a million rupiah to the government official as a bribe. (The guy tried shaking him down for more but when he drew the line at a million, the guy smiled, told him not to ever tell anyone and stamped over another page and let him in-- after a half an hour detention.)

And then there are the geckos and monitors... Roland wants to see if he can find someone serving komodo dragon sate.

Bali: A Day At The Cremation

Funerals aren't my thing. I go to great lengths to avoid them. So when Made, the cook, invited me to come to her grandmother's cremation, I was a little hesitant. Last time I was in Bali people talked about how unique and fascinating the ceremonies are but I never did go. I felt though that one right in the household I probably shouldn't miss. And it turned out, it wasn't one in the household; it was two. Putu, the housekeeper, also had a grandfather being cremated at the same time. In fact, we drove to a small rural village a bit less than an hour from Ubud-- Pejeng, I think-- and we got there just as a mass cremation was beginning-- 15 people.

When someone dies, the body is temporarily buried until the family finds an auspicious date and the money for the cremation ceremony (something like 5 million rupiahs, $500 in our money, but quite a lot for an ordinary Balinese family). Chipping in with a bunch of other families in the village helps everyone handle the cost.

We got to the village crossroads-- the fount of all evil from the Balinese Hindu perspective-- just as the gigantic, colorful towers holding the bones of each of the deceased was manhandled noisily around in circles, "confusing" the evil spirits of the unclean corpse to prepare for the setting free of the soul from the material world. The towers were carried by dozens of men to the cemetery while hundreds of villagers followed along, merrily.

The whole scene is one of joy, not sorrow. The souls of the departed were being liberated so they could evolve to a hopefully higher state. At the cemetery, the bones are transfered into huge colorful sarcophagi-- bulls, lions, fish... depending on caste. Then hundreds of family members and friends march by, many chanting, carrying offerings, piled all around the sarcophagus. People are eating and drinking and socializing for hours while this goes on and suddenly the pyres start being set ablaze and the whole area turned into a conflagration, ashes flying everywhere.

I was happy to get home and jump in the pool. It's Saturday, 7pm now, getting towards my bedtime. Tomorrow night (well technically Monday morning) Michael and Helen get here around 4am. A few hours later Roland arrives from Bangkok. Once they all shake off whatever jet lag they have I expect my laconic idyll will have ended and we'll be going to temples and volcanoes and beaches and botanical gardens, villages off the beaten path, whitewater rafting, and plantations that grow vanilla beans and cinammon. I'm always up for anything that doesn't bring me within eyesight of a McDonald's or Burger King. The Lonely Planet Guide Bali & Lombok has been useful in helping me get oriented and figure stuff out. And, by the way, that's a photo Michael took of Made and Putu on the left.

Small World-- Adventures in Bali: Wayan Nuriasih, Healer

Right now there's virtually nothing that attracts me to leaving the grounds of the villa I rented on the outskirts of Ubud in central Bali. The villa itself is gorgeous-- far more beautiful than the website-- but the grounds... it's like being in the Garden of Eden, tropical flowers everywhere, orchid petals blowing by when there's a breeze, birds singing, the most fabulous outdoory showers ever, a beautiful swimming pool, plenty of privacy... and WiFi. And two wonderful cooks who have been preparing raw vegan food. Soon enough Roland and Helen and Michael will be here and we'll be running all over the island with Anwar, our trusty guide and driver, seeing temples and the volcano and herb plantations and beaches and little villages without roads. But now I have the place to myself and I don't want to move.

But I did. The grandmother of one of the cooks died and the cremation ceremonies take about a week culminating in a huge to-do on Saturday (to which she invited me). Meanwhile, I'm on my own for dinners. The good news is that just down the road a bit is Bali Buddah, the legendary organic restaurant that serves raw food. In fact, there are at least 2 raw food restaurants near the villa-- that's more than near more house in L.A.! So I ate at Belly Buddah a few times and loved it and across the road I saw what I casually took to be a healthful massage place run by a woman named Wayan Nuriasih. At Belly Buddah the other night they were playing the beautiful chants of any old college friend, Jeff Kagel, better known to the world as Krishna Das and it made me feel so high that I popped into Wayan's and asked for a massage. She told me to come back the next day at 1pm.

Well, it was healthful and it there was a massage involved but it turned out that Wayan is one of the most famous healers of Bali. I arrived at 1pm and left just after 5. I feel terrific and she threw in some stuff to make my hair grow back and something good for mosquito bites! While I was having my totally delicious multi-vitamin lunch, a senior from Brigham Young walked in with her grandmother and cousin. They mentioned that Wayan is one of the stars of Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Eat, Pray, Love. Never heard of it. So they started telling me about it and then I remembered-- my friend Cynthia was raving about how great it was a few months ago.

Anyway, it was definitely more than a massage. I had a full blown diagnostic session, spiritual and physical, tons of potions and herbs and oils and then hours of massage which often entailed 6 hands working me over at once. Look, if you come to Bali you'll certainly be able to find a less expensive massage, but you'll never find something as good or as unique. Highly recommended!-- and explained at the BaliSpirit website.


UPDATE: Another Day, Another Massage

Don't get the idea that I'm not doing anything in Bali but getting massages. I also swim, relax and blog. But I did hear about an incredible masseur from an American masseur who swore by this guy. So after a refreshing swim I ambled over to the Nur Salon on Hanoman about 15 minutes from where I'm staying and asked for Young Made (pronounced Madi). If the massage at Wayan's was an integral part of a spiritual healing session, this was pure physical. And one of the best massages of my life. An hour was $10 and I'm going back everyday.

I'm Certain I'll Never See Afghainstan Again

I left home when I was very young and started traveling. When I was 13 I hitchhiked from NYC to Miami, a practice run for my Great Escape, a couple years later, to California (by thumb) in order to stow away on a boat to Tonga. (I got caught on the ship in San Pedro Harbor.) Eventually I made it over to Europe, bought a VW van and drove to India. I had an awesome 6-7 years. When anyone would ask me what country I liked most I would always say I would have to take pieces of Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan to find my ideal country. (Afghanistan was because of the people.) But since I visited, all three have been torn apart in brutal civil wars. I've been back to Sri Lanka and Nepal but I'm certain I'll never see Afghanistan again. Although... Lonely Planet actually has a new travel guide to Afghanistan out now!

Robert Greenwald-- brave, dedicated soul-- visited Afghanistan last month. This film he shot gives you an idea why it's not a place Americans can go any longer. It should also give you an idea about why DWT has been so adamant about defeating the $97 billion War Supplemental. What we were doing to the Afghan people was unspeakable when it was Cheney and Bush. It's no better now that it's Obama and Rahm Emanuel. It has to stop.

Preparing For Danger In Foreign Travel-- Is There Anything To Worry About In Bali?

Most of the e-mails I get about this blog ask me how safe it is to travel to Morocco or Mexico or India or Mali... even Buenos Aires. It's safe, it's safe... almost every place is safe-- if you take the same kinds of common sense precautions you would take as a matter of course everywhere you go outside of the gated community.

Today NY Times writer Nicholas Kristof did a column on evading bandits in foreign countries. I've encountered my share of them too-- machine gun toting militia in Afghanistan in 1969, dacoits in Kerala in 1970, hippie-hating Texas Rangers near Waco in 1967, small time hoodlums, more annoying than dangerous, in Tangier, Fez and Marrakech almost every time I've been to Morocco, a crooked landlady in Buenos Aires in 2006... Luckily I missed the domestic terrorism incident outside a church in Wichita, Kansas today (inspired by Republican Party propagandist Bill O'Reilly on his Fox TV terrorism show).

Kristof has 15 tips "for traveling to even the roughest of countries-- and back:"

1. Carry a “decoy wallet,” so that if you are robbed by bandits with large guns, you have something to hand over. I keep $40 in my decoy wallet, along with an old library card and frequent-flier card. (But don’t begrudge the wallet: when my travel buddy was pickpocketed in Peru, we tried to jump the pickpocket, who turned out to be backed by an entire gang ... )

2. Carry cash and your passport where no robber will find it. Assuming that few bandits read this column, I’ll disclose that I carry mine in a pouch that loops onto my belt and tucks under my trousers.

3. Carry a tiny ski lock with a six-foot retractable wire. Use it to lock your backpack to a hotel bed when you’re out, or to the rack of a train car.

4. At night, set a chair against your hotel door so that it will tip over and crash if someone slips in at 4 a.m. And lift the sheet to look for bloodstains on the mattress-- meaning bed bugs.

5. When it gets dark, always carry a headlamp in your pocket. I learned that from a friend whose hotel in Damascus lost power. He lacked a light but was able to feel his way up the stairs in the dark, find his room and walk in. A couple of final gropes, and he discovered it wasn’t his room after all. Unfortunately, it was occupied.

6. If you’re a woman held up in an isolated area, stick out your stomach, pat it and signal that you’re pregnant. You might also invest in a cheap wedding band, for imaginary husbands deflect unwanted suitors.

7. Be wary of accepting drinks from anyone. Robbers sometimes use a date rape drug to knock out their victims-- in bars, in trains, in homes. If presented with pre-poured drinks, switch them with your host, cheerfully explaining: “This is an American good luck ritual!”

8. Buy a secondhand local cell phone for $20, outfit it with a local SIM card and keep it in your pocket.

9. When you arrive in a new city, don’t take an airport taxi unless you know it is safe. If you do take a cab, choose a scrawny driver and lock ALL the doors-- thieves may pull open the doors at a red light and run off with a bag.

10. Don’t wear a nice watch, for that suggests a fat wallet and also makes a target. I learned that lesson on my first trip to the Philippines: a robber with a machete had just encountered a Japanese businessman with a Rolex-- who now, alas, has only one hand.

11. Look out for fake cops or crooked ones. If a policeman tries to arrest you, demand to see some ID and use your cell phone to contact a friend.

12. If you are held up by bandits with large guns, shake hands respectfully with each of your persecutors. It’s very important to be polite to people who might kill you. Surprisingly often, child soldiers and other bandits will reciprocate your fake friendliness and settle for some cash rather than everything you possess. I’ve even had thugs warmly exchange addresses with me, after robbing me.

13. Remember that the scariest people aren’t warlords, but drivers. In buses I sometimes use my pack as an airbag; after one crash I was the only passenger not hospitalized.

14. If terrorists finger you, break out singing “O Canada”!

15. Finally, don’t be so cautious that you miss the magic of escaping your comfort zone and mingling with local people and staying in their homes. The risks are minimal compared with the wonders of spending time in a small village. So take a gap year, or volunteer in a village or a slum. And even if everything goes wrong and you are robbed and catch malaria, shrug it off-- those are precisely the kinds of authentic interactions with local cultures that, in retrospect, enrich a journey and life itself.

I'm not vouching for any of that, although in my preparations for a rapidly approaching trip to Bali and Thailand, I did dust off my "decoy wallet." Most of my preparations for Bali, though, are even more mundane. The best time to visit: dry season is between April and September, although last time I was there, it was November and December and it may have been more muggy than it is in June and July but I recall it being pretty uniformly gorgeous every day. I know I swam every day too.

I would have rented the same house I rented last time but it isn't available this year. So I asked a friend of mine who lives there to find me something similar-- away from the tourist hellholes on the south coast, up near Ubud closer to the center of the island. He came up with the Villa Di Abing. I made sure the cook can work with vegans and raw foodists-- the house actually has a dehydrator and a VitaMix!-- and then I booked my ticket, bought some sun block and we're ready for our trip. (The villa has a security guard.)

British Air Phasing Out First Class Service

At one time I worked as the president of a division of TimeWarner. I was always very proud that I never-- not once-- used one of the corporate jets to fly someplace, something my peers all did. I was happy to fly with them on their trip but I always had the feeling that using a corporate jet was a tremendous waste of shareholders money and that it could be used for more productive endeavors. And I was perfectly satisfied with first class on British Air, my favorite airline. The flight from L.A. to London left at night, so you could change into your pjs, settle into your relatively private cubicle, have a fantastic dinner, read for a while, get a perfect night's sleep on a comfortable flat bed and wake up in the morning in time to get to your first meeting rested and without a trace of jetlag. All for $10,300 (roundtrip).

Now that I'm retired. I've discovered the allure of business class. Apparently I'm one step ahead of my former flying companions-- or at least the ones without corporate jets at their disposal. According to yesterday's Guardian, the British Air first class cabin is going the way of the way of the dodo bird.

Business class passengers famously draw envious glances from the herd in economy by turning left when they enter a plane, but it is the first class ticket holders who are the most pampered. On British Airways' 747s they ascend to their Kelly Hoppen-designed cabin and don their free pyjamas and slippers before supping on the likes of lobster thermidor, pan-seared wild Scottish salmon or roasted Cornish game hen, then slip between the sheets of their roomy-- and extremely flat-- bed.

Now, however, this most opulent form of travel is under threat.

The global downturn has devastated demand for expensive seats, and even Hollywood stars and bankers are shying away from BA's extravagant first class prices. The airline, stung by a slump in premium bookings that helped push the company into its worst-ever loss of £401m, has removed first class accommodation from four of its new long-haul planes, and is to review seating plans for other new aircraft.

"The long-haul aircraft that we take delivery of this year will not have any first class cabins in them," said Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive. He insisted there was no direct link to the recession, but he added: "Longer term we will review the configuration of [all] new aircraft." BA is also launching a service this year from Heathrow to Las Vegas, a prime destination for high-rollers, with no first class option.

First class is the last remnant of the more romantic days of air travel when BA's predecessor, British Overseas Airways Corporation, offered first class tickets alongside the more down-at-heel tourist or economy cabins. Its upmarket reputation has become even more rarefied over the years following the introduction of slightly less luxurious business class seats in the late 1970s, and cut-throat competition on the transatlantic market.

Walsh admitted that the cost of ripping out seats in the existing fleet is too great to get rid of first class in existing planes, leading industry watchers to speculate that upgrades for economy class travellers might become a more common occurrence... The cost of refitting an aircraft, at millions of pounds per plane, means that airlines will have to turn to riskier strategies such as overbooking flights until their new aircraft orders arrive. Airlines can guarantee strong revenues from economy class passengers if they overbook the back of the plane. Under that scenario, any passenger who is the victim of an overbooking could be upgraded to one of the many empty seats in business class, or bumped to another flight.

Of course, there's always Air Emirates. I'm not sure if this price includes tax or not, but the L.A.-London run is $24,916.97. In any case, the food looks like it's probably not that different from B.A. Business class on B.A., by the way, costs $4,274 and you'd be surprised how comfy it feels when you think of the $6,000 you save by forgoing First Class (or the $20,000 you save by avoiding Air Emirates).

No Reservations Needed In Mexico During The Swine Flu Epidemic

El Zócalo, the heart of Mexico City's historic center, is generally packed

I wonder if PIA has reduced the number of flights into the Swat Valley's Saidu Sharif Airport this week. I suspect hotel rooms are going begging-- unless the Taliban militia has requisitioned them all. They don't need to though. Thousands of residents have been fleeing in every direction as the Pakistani Army prepares for a decisive military confrontation just a few hours northwest of the country's capital. Now Mexico is also in a touristic pickle. (The Swat Valley was one of Pakistan's most beloved tourist sites until the Taliban took it over and started brutalizing, raping and beheading women without head scarves and men without beards.)

In the midst of the drug-related violence and the swine flue epidemic, American Airlines is following the rest of the airline industry reducing the number of flights into Mexico. The tourist industry there is also in bad shape. Starting Friday and for the entire month of May and early June, American will reduce daily roundtrip flights from 42 to 31, citing "weaker demand." Continental is still flying, just using smaller planes and United is cutting its 64 weekly flights between the U.S. and Mexico to 24.

Generally flights to Mexico have been empty and flights back to the U.S. have been full, although today's NY Times is reporting that things are kind a/sorta getting back to normal-- if you think calling off Cinco de Mayo has anything to do with normal.

The authorities have been seeking to strike a balance between the health risk of widespread shutdowns and the economic cost of keeping parts of the economy shuttered. In Mexico, the nationwide impact on industries, including tourism, has cost about $2.3 billion, or between 0.3 percent and 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, Finance Minister Agustin Carstens said Tuesday.

The BBC reported this morning that there virtually is no tourism industry functioning in Mexico City right now. And its nearly as bad in the rest of the country. There are no foreign tourists at all and cruise lines have been canceling stops there.

Walk into the crisp, modernist lobby of the Camino Real hotel in the upmarket district of Polanco, and you will be treated as a bit of a novelty. Guests are far outnumbered by staff. The hotel has over 700 rooms. Less than 40 are occupied. The World Health Organization is the only regular customer these days.

...The closure of restaurants and other entertainment areas in the capital alone is costing as much as 100 million US dollars a day.

The Mexican economy, already devastated by a drop off in remittances from Mexican workers in the U.S., the second biggest source of income (between oil and tourists), is absolutely devastated now. This positively just kills the millions of low wage service workers involved with tourism-- waiters, musicians, maids, cooks, etc-- and it's spreading through the entire economy, which was already weakened by falling petroleum prices. The hotel occupancy rate in Mexico City is around 5%. That's also the estimated percentage that the economy is likely to contract by. Bloomberg is reporting that the swine flu epidemic is costing the Mexican economy about $145 million a day in gross domestic product. It's estimated that Mexico’s tourism revenue could fall 43 percent to $7.58 billion.