Warning From Frommer's: Arizona Too Dangerous For Americans?

Some people check the State Department's website for their list of the most dangerous countries, places they're suggesting Americans avoid-- like Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Mali, Algeria. Arizona isn't on the list. But it's on one that makes more sense: Frommer's. First off, I don't know if Arthur Frommer, the guide book magnate, is a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. It never even crossed my mind. On Wednesday, though, he indicated he's not a teabagger.

He's not advocating a boycott of Arizona (yet) but he does say that he's "shocked beyond measure by reports that earlier this week, nearly a dozen persons, including one with an assault rifle strapped about his shoulders and others with pistols in their hands or holsters, were openly congregating outside a hall at which President Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars."

For myself, without yet suggesting that others follow me in an open boycott, I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest. I not only believe such practices are a threat to the future of our democracy, but I am firmly convinced that they would also endanger my own personal safety there. And therefore I will cancel any plans to vacation or otherwise visit in Arizona until I learn more. And I will begin thinking about whether tourists should safeguard themselves by avoiding stays in Arizona.

What Frommer didn't mention is that Arizona is also home to a bizarre bunch of crackpot right-wing extremists who are very, very dangerous. It's a violent part of the country and he's worried tourists will wind up getting shot. Pam Spaulding brought a whole other perspective on this climate of crackpot violence today. Tempe fringe "pastor," Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church has been urging that gay people be executed: "The same God who instituted the death penalty for murders is the same god who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals, sodomites and queers... Our country is run by faggots. You know who was the man who was the architect of the bailout? His name is Barney Frank, he is a pedophile..."

And he doesn't stop with Barney Frank. He thinks Obama should be killed too: "God Hates Barack Obama, I hate Barack Obama. I hate Him. God wants me to Hate Barack Obama... Someone who commits murder should get the death penalty." I don't hate Arizona. In fact, I love Arizona. And most people are know from that state are probably as mortified about this kind of crap as you are.



UPDATE: Almost Three Years Later

What a mess! Arizona is, if anything, even worse and even more dangerous for civilians and tourists. Just today, another mass shooting by a local crackpot neo-Nazi! Anti-immigrant fanatic and vigilante lunatic "T.J." Ready murdered 5 people, including an infant before committing suicide. He wa shoping to run for Pinal County sheriff. Probably safer to visit New Mexico or California.

Boycott Travelocity For Underwriting Racism And Bigotry

I try not to mix this blog too much with my political blog Down WithTyranny but sometimes... it's just hard to resist. Americans are boycotting Travelocity and several other companies and I want to make sure Around The World Blog readers know why. Travelocity-- like GEICO-- has been keeping racist inciter Glenn Beck on the air spewing his divisive hatred, They pay for his air time. Unlike GEICO-- which just pulled all their advertising today-- Travelocity refuses to stop underwriting the hatred and racism. Please don't do any business with Travelocity until they stop spending money on Glenn Beck's Fox News HateFest. Kayak.com is a way better site anyway. MediaMatters did a short video clip that puts it in perspective:



UPDATE: Roaming Gnome Relents... Dumps Glenn Beck

The same thing happened to Travelocity that happened to Blue America. Like us, they just did a cable buy and wound up with some of their ads going to underwrite the hatred, racism and violence being incited by Glenn Beck. And like Blue America, Travelocity has asked the cable systems to stop running their ads on the hate shows. After all, how many racists like to travel anyway? Where would they go? From C&L:

Dear Roger - We did not specifically place our ad on the show. We basically buy ads in bulk and then they are placed somewhat randomly. However, we have now specifically asked that our ads do not appear during this show. Thank you for your concern,

Sincerely,

Amanda

Healthy Eating In Bangkok and Bali

I was happily surprised to find so much health food consciousness in Bali. Wherever you looked, at least in Ubud, restaurants had signs that said "No MSG" and "organic food." Ubud has several that serve raw vegan food and there really was a lot of options for people concerned with good nutrition. Putu and Made, our cooks happily made delicious, healthful meals everyday combining organic Balinese vegetables with raw food preparation techniques and, homemade food is always better than restaurant food. Still Bali Buddah and Kafe always had good, healthful food including raw dishes.

I was even more surprised when I got to Bangkok. I have to admit I had some anxiety knowing my favorite Thai restaurant had closed this year. I'd been eating at Bussaracum for decades. Last year I even wrote a post, Lunch In The Same Bangkok Restaurant Everyday For A Month-- Bussaracum, The Best Restaurant In Thailand. Where would I eat? The food in Bangkok isn't always so wonderful and a number of my favorite restaurants have closed down or moved away to locations miles away.

Looking back over my own 2006 Bangkok restaurant guide, I was reminded that someone had told me about a raw food restaurant called the Rasayana Retreat. I ate there today. HEAVEN!

Clean, beautiful, wonderful vibes and the food... unbeatable. The food was very seriously raw and health oriented and SO DELICIOUS! I had lasagna and key lime pie and I can't wait to go back tomorrow to try some more. Here's their raison d'etre:

From the moment that a fruit or vegetable is harvested it undergoes change in it’s chemical and nutritive make up. The fresher a fruit or vegetable is, the higher it’s nutritive content. When you cook food a huge percentage of available nutrient is destroyed, and its chemical make-up is altered, in essence stripping the food of the very nutrients that your body is requesting when it signals hunger to your mind and stomach. Nutrient stripped food does not satisfy the body’s hunger, leading to overeating and dissatisfaction with food for many people. But there are also much greater consequences.

In order for the eliminative systems and organs of the body to function optimally a person must eat at least an 80% alkaline diet. The majority of alkaline foods are fruits and vegetables. The majority of acid foods are animal products, such as meat and dairy, or processed foods that have been heated (as in cooked), ground and separated, and/or have added sugar, salt, preservatives, stabilizers, colorings and many other additives as well. If acidic foods are the greater part of the diet, elimination from the bowels, lymph, kidneys, respiration and skin becomes sluggish, allowing a build up of toxins to collect in the organs and tissues of the body. This ultimately leads to unpleasant symptoms and chronic disease.

Eating raw food is like giving yourself high-octane fuel so that your body can be energized, run efficiently, cleanse efficiently, think clearly and work out toxins so that health and beauty can be a reality instead of a distant goal. On a cleansing program a 100% alkaline diet is a necessity if one wishes to get maximum results from the cleanse. A cleansing diet treats food like medicine, using food to assist the body in healing and rejuvenation. A wonderful aspect of this is that Living Food also tastes good.

It's open everyday. It's real close to the skytrain that runs down Sukhumvit. And it is very inexpensive.

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.