I’m a big fan of massages, though I rarely get them. I think I like them as much as 50 Cent thinks fat kids like cake. So when I went to Thailand, a place that is known for said pleasure for a fraction of the cost, I was thrilled. And after lugging myself around Bangkok for a few days with the extreme heat and crowding that makes New York City look like uncharted territory, I was ready for a rubdown.

The thing was, I didn’t need all my muscles to be attended to. So my two friends and I began our mission to find an authentic Thai massage, free of happy endings. We were told if the place was legit, it wouldn’t be down a back alley. It ended up taking us three frustrating hours to find somewhere that would not leave us with the parting gift of an STD. Finally we were all led to a clean, good-sized room and told to strip down and put on our robes.

We lay down on our mats and three miniature Thai women entered, chatting away with each other. With little more then a smile in our direction, they got to work molding our backs to their whim, never stopping their chatter. And it was a good thing they kept talking because they drowned out our moans of happiness. When I was turned over on my back and the woman started walking to the very top of my inner thigh, I learned I was tense in places I hadn’t even thought about. It was intimate enough that I felt like we should share an after-massage cigarette and take a nap together.

By the time the women were done, the three of us were puddles of relaxation. It literally took everything we had to get dressed. And while the experience was a bit odd, it wasn’t nearly as strange as an Indian ayurvedic massage a friend told me about. Apparently for that experience you’re completely naked, they lube you up with so much baby oil that the person giving the massage hangs from a rope, and then they massage you with their feet. When the masseuse started massaging her breasts with her well-worn hooves, the girl slid right off the table and out the door faster then you can say Kamasutra.

I guess there’s something to be said for an authentic, foreign massage, but the cost of getting out there without being emotionally scarred, well, that’s priceless.

- by Emily Epstein of b’scuse me? fame.

By Ian MacKenzie. Courtesy of Brave New Traveler.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I boarded the plane at Vancouver International Airport, on our way to Costa Rica. I was flipping through the in-flight magazine, she was watching other passengers mill about, until everyone was in their seats.

The flight attendants closed the doors, checked all overhead compartments, and our plane geared up to pull out of the gate. We made it about 10 feet before the electrical system died.

Yes, died.

The plane hushed and came to a stop. The passengers glanced at each other with obvious surprise. A moment later the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom:

“Uh, yes, it seems our electrical system has conked out on us. But don’t worry folks, this is actually our secondary system, which we only use to taxi in and out of the gate. We don’t use this system in-flight. We’ll just restart the engine and be on our way.”

My wife reached over and clamped her hand around mine. Needless to say, our comfort towards flying did not increase.

Runaway Anxiety

I used to be okay with flying. There was a bit of nausea during takeoff and landing, but otherwise, I never quite let the cold, clammy fingernails of terror trickle down my spine.

But the incident above was not the only one during our trip. All four of our flights experienced complications: from the air-conditioning malfunctioning, to electrical storms, to closed airports, to emergency diversions for refueling.

Could it be we just have bad luck? Not so, I realized, considering Rolf Pott’s described a similar situation in a recent World Hum post:

We started flying in circles. Then the pilot kept coming back on saying, “Another 20 minutes.” Then he said we were running out of fuel so we were going to have to land in Baltimore. In this day and age, when you get these cryptic messages from your pilot, you get a little nervous. We were coming in for a landing in Baltimore and were about 10 feet off the ground when we pulled up again. That was a little freaky.

And consider this sobering statistic reported by Chris Elliot:

Buried in the latest government figures about the airline industry is one number that is bound to fill every air traveler with dread: Complaints are up an eye-popping 77 percent from a year ago.

“In April, the Department received 1,246 complaints from consumers about airline service, up 76.7 percent from the 705 complaints received in April 2006,” it says. “But 4.9 percent fewer than the 1,310 filed in March 2007.”

Flying really has gotten worse…

Read the entire post at Brave New Traveler

Step 1. Find a girlfriend whose aunt has a condo she is not using in West Palm Beach. (Note: A boyfriend would work here as well, depending on sexual preference, availability of condo, etc.)

Step 2. Plan on what dates you would like to go. Leave ample time for planning. For example, in February, plan on going the first weekend in April.

Step 3. A week before your set date, begin preparations. Realize that you have left yourself no time for the planning stage. Convince your girlfriend that this is part of the plan and that Florida is more fun in May. Then actually begin preparations.

Step 4. Buy the flight first. Allot approximately two days for the process. Begin by opening four internet browsers, one for each discount travel website. Start searching for the cheapest weekend to go. Do not develop a system or create any sort of organizational charts. Simply plunk in information at random while rotating through the sites with increasing frustration. Jot down numbers on Post-It notes which will mean nothing to you when you reference them later.

Step 5. Gather all the information into your memory. Write a vague, imprecise email to your girlfriend asking for her opinion. Act more confident than you are. This is not considered deception because you are paying. When she writes back, “Whatever you think is best,” resist the urge to reply, “Blow me.”

Step 6. Wonder how people got anything done before the internet.

Step 7. Realize that you have now spent three hours trying to save $40. Feel ridiculous, but not so much that it compels you to quit searching. Try utilizing different departing or arriving airports even though doing so will add immeasurable inconvenience. Curse.

Step 8. Take a break from searching for flights by going to Priceline to name your own price for a rental car. Try to score a convertible for $30 a day even though the computer, a machine with no logical capabilities, tells you this will not work. After two more unsuccessful tries at $33 and $36, settle on a compact – one step above an economy, because you are classy. So classy that you have a rental car 1,000 miles away and no way to get to it.

Step 9. Renew your search for plane tickets. Go to JetBlue as a last resort. Be utterly entranced by the simplicity of the website, the narrow-mindedness of the pricing and the little televisions in the back of the seats. Book your flights even though it is probably more expensive.

Step 10. Quell the urge to feel nostalgic for times before the internet when people placed orders for goods and services with other people; when they wrote down dates and confirmation numbers on paper with ink. Email your girlfriend and tell her all the plans are set. Pack up your bag, shut off your computer and leave work with a glowing sense of accomplishment. Drink as needed.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

If you find yourself in Cambodia and wanting for English conversation with the locals, just head to the nearest temple and find yourself a novice monk. If of course they don’t find you first, which most likely they will.

When backpacking in Cambodia several years ago, I found the novice monks – often in their late teens or early twenties – the most outgoing and curious people. And most of them speak English amazingly well.

Wherever I traveled in Cambodia, there were monks. And I began to think of them as the unofficial symbols of the country – more relevant, more alive than the image of Angkor Wat emblazoned on the national flag. All I would have to do was wander into a temple complex to admire the Khmer architecture, and sure enough a novice monk in his bright orange or dark maroon robe would appear and address me in English.

Walking back from the Russian Market in Phnom Penh one evening, I caught a glimpse of an elaborately tiled temple, Wat Tuol Tom Pong, hidden behind a tall gate. As I maneuvered my camera between the bars to snap a photo, a monk approached me from the street. Buddhist etiquette varies from country to country, and in Cambodia, although monks aren’t allowed to touch women – even to shake hands – they are permitted to speak with females. In surprisingly fluent English, the monk introduced himself as Bunsinat and offered to show me around the temple grounds.

After the tour, he led me to a classroom in an austere building near the pagoda, where he introduced me to his English teacher, who invited me to stay as a guest instructor. For the next hour, I fielded students’ questions, most of which involved life in America and what I
thought of Cambodia. Most students seemed to be studying English so they could get jobs in tourism, which is second only to the garment industry in Cambodia.

Bunsinat, one of two monks in the class, was no exception. “Many monks, like me, they come from the countryside to the temple in the city to learn English. For the monk the English class is free,” he said. Other students pay about $5 per month.

“For many years I will study the life of the Buddha, but later I want to find a job in a hotel or a bank,” he continued, “I want to make a lot of money.”

One student asked me, “Do people plow the fields for work in your country too?” He meant with water buffalo, not machinery. Although I was the teacher – the so-called wise Westerner – I am quite sure that I am the one who learned the most that day.

- by Terry Ward

I don’t believe in souvenirs. Useless trinkets with memories attached are still useless trinkets that take up valuable space. A few months ago, when moving for the third time in four years, I lugged with me, for the third time in four years, a bag full of Mardi Gras beads. I can assure you, as I attempted to shove them in the top of my closet (and, failing to do so, they rained down upon my head), I wasn’t thinking about how much I loved New Orleans.

I prefer more ethereal keepsakes. For example, I just got back from West Palm Beach yesterday. I brought back with me the following things: sand, a heavy depression, a sunburn and roasted cashews. The sand, for the most part, is spread liberally and with much spite across my apartment floor. Some people call this “taking a piece of Florida with you,” but there’s a reason Florida isn’t in New York and it’s because I can’t afford a maid.

The depression stems, of course, from going through “lazy withdrawal.” This is a diagnosed medical disorder wherein a normal, healthy, middle class person tastes briefly the deliciousness of a life completely unobserved and thinks, “I need this.” Then it is all taken away, just like that. I like to think of my vacations like whirlwind romances. For a few days, it was the best of times. Then I realize there is no legitimate future with her, so I pick up and leave. Once I get home, I drink for a few days and look at her pictures, cherishing memories. Then Lost comes on and I forget all about her. Needless to say, the last thing I need is for her to leave some of her things behind.

The sunburn, though, is the only lingering reminder. Like love, it hurts at first but then fades from irritant into a nice, flattering tan. And, just like girls, I can never avoid sunburns. Call me a romantic. The second my pale, New York skin steps off the plane in warmer climates, the primal urge to undress and bask in the skin-damaging UV rays is overwhelming. More, hotter, harder, faster. (What am I talking about again?) Even knowing the omnipresent dangers of skin cancer, I am utterly brainwashed by warmer climates. Put me on a beach chair and I can’t help but think, “A couple of wrinkles and I’ll look like George Clooney. Oh Dan, you sure are handsome! I’m hungry.” But I digress. The point is, even when I am already burned and resort to slathering myself with the only available moisturizer (baby lotion) my equally brainwashed girlfriend convinces me to forge ahead. “I’m a 28 year old woman,” she says. “The smell of baby lotion turns me on.”

Until all I’m left with is a small bag of roasted cashews, courtesy of JetBlue. Though even those, over the course of writing this article, have been consumed. I’m ready for my next vacation, with no baggage to check.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

I was thrilled to bag Andorra, my 62nd country. The Andorra stamp in my passport is one I’d been after for years. And there it was, plain as day, right on its own page in my passport.

Andorra is a mountain valley with 70,000 inhabitants, all of whom speak Spanish that’s spelled with a lot of Xs and Qs. Andorra is the only all-native Catalan-speaking country in the world. It’s a beautiful, refreshingly sophisticated country with architecture that reminds you of Switzerland, not Southern France. It seems a million miles from Toulouse. And it has over 3,000 stores.

Andorra is the duty-free capital of Europe – people flock here to shop from all over the continent. There are always lines at customs going in and out of the country. I pictured people buying cigarettes and alcohol, but I was wrong. They were buying every brand you’ve ever heard of.

It’s now 7pm. The stores are closing in 30 minutes. I need a pair of boxer shorts and a new t-shirt for tomorrow. I manage to get them just in time (Italians, by the way, don’t wear boxers, and few French men do; I don’t know about Spaniards). I head back to the hotel for a nice shower.

Then I go for dinner. It’s the usual cheeseless pizza, but this one was memorable. I’ve never had a thinner-crusted pizza. This pizza’s crust was about as thin as a piece of shirt cardboard and extremely tough. I had to use a steak knife and bear down on it to break the crust into small enough pieces to eat. Easily the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten, and I was starving. And I was upset, because I’d just dropped my camera.

I had been tired after a long day. I was wearing my clean underwear and my new t-shirt, and I was hungry and looking at restaurant after restaurant trying to find a place to eat. It got a bit chilly so I went to put on my sweater. My right hand thought it was giving my camera to my left hand, and my left hand though my right hand had it. I dropped the camera onto the hard sidewalk and glass shattered all over. I pick up the camera and notice that the lens was pretty much okay. I’d shattered the UV filter I had on the front to protect it.

My friend John landed in Japan yesterday (or today, depending on how much you believe in the conspiracy of time zones). After working for a certain financial firm for over five years, he was finally sent to Tokyo on his first business trip. I would be very happy for him, if I wasn’t so busy being jealous.

When other kids were growing up dreaming of being sports stars and fighter pilots, I dreamt of being a powerful businessman. This was long before I knew what business was or that capitalism was a term of questionable integrity. All I knew from watching TWA commercials and primetime television shows was that there existed a profession in which well dressed men got flown all over the world for free. They even sat in a different part of the plane, and while I wasn’t exactly sure what they did with all the women they met at the hotel bars, I assumed it was fun.

Unfortunately, my life took a different direction. Somewhere between “I like to read; I’ll major in English” and “You want me to be at work how early?” I made a wrong move. Or several. I settled into a small law firm where I learned to appreciate traveling to such exotic places as Midtown and, once, Staten Island. I got to take a ferry there. It was a pathetically exciting day.

I don’t regret any of my choices, but part of me still longs for the opportunity to use the phrase “in town on business” – to show up in a city you’ve never been to before, to meet people you normally wouldn’t meet, and do the same thing you’ve done every other day of your normal office life only with everyone around you going about their normal office life. It is a type of travel unlike any other – not for education or relaxation or celebration, but for a purpose. Where perhaps in other circumstances you might feel compelled to linger in front of David, when you are in town on business you cast only a sideways glance. You are busy, and have no time for the distractions provided by a change of scenery.

In a way, it is the most pure form of exploration – not a contrived trip to a museum or guided tour of an ancient battleground, but a rapid absorption of a new and strange place simply by being yourself. To not go out in search of the place, but to let the place come to you. And, of course, to get paid to do it.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

When you live in Manhattan, it is only natural to crave space. On weekends, residents flock to Central Park like it is Vermont. I’ve been in “huge” New York city stores that would fit in the remote corner of a Target parking lot. It’s reflexive – if humans really do want that which we can’t have, then forget happiness, I want square footage.

Which is why when I travel I typically prefer open-air settings over just another version of my own cramped hometown. So when my family and I decided to go to Italy, instead of a hotel near the Duomo in Florence or outside the Vatican in Rome, we chose to stay in rural Tuscany.

We rented a villa with nine bedrooms and five bathrooms (seven if you count the two in the one-bedroom pool house, which is bigger than my entire apartment), which cost us less than a three star hotel in a major city would cost. The villa was located outside the small town of Cetona, which boasted three restaurants, four gelato cafes and a host of other small shops that, taking riposo (the Italian “siesta”) into account, were open for about two hours a day. But if you managed to get to the food store a stock up on food and wine (which is hard because portions are about one-quarter the size of American portions), then holing yourself up in the house with a bottle of Chianti (or, at 3 euro per, a case) was the best you could hope for out of an Italian vacation.

When I first heard that Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta personal injury lawyer, had brought a particularly strong strain of Tuberculosis into the United States with him when crossing the Canadian border, my first thought was, “How ballsy of him…”

I mean, back in college when I went to Montreal with a few friends of mine, I smuggled some Cuban cigars back home with me and thought I was the next Pablo Escobar. But even contraband from a politically sanctioned Communist nation is nothing compared to a deadly infectious disease.

Although I actually know someone who brought back their own infectious disease from Guatemala. She was there working with a non-profit organization to help the children of poor families gain access to American colleges and universities. Unfortunately, she got typhoid (which is why I always say that charity work doesn’t pay).

She didn’t know it at the time, but as she started to feel worse she decided to fly back to Boston. By the time she got to the hospital, she was convinced that she had typhoid. (It was a topic of discussion amongst the locals where she was living.) When she told this to the doctor, he replied quizzically, “Typhoid, hmm?” He proceeded to look it up in some medical books and on the internet, explaining, “We don’t see much typhoid around here.” Finally, a call was placed to a doctor who was off that day. Apparently, he was old enough to know how to diagnose typhoid. When he arrived at the hospital at 2:00AM, grumpy and in his sweats, he took one look at my friend and said, “Where have you been?”

“Guatemala,” she replied
“That’s too bad. You have typhoid,” he said.

I take the N and it’s always fast, clean and on time. I don’t know what Diana is talking about (see stage 1)... – cb

I caught subway envy in Washington D.C.

As a New Yorker, I had gotten used to the Metro’s shortfalls: frequent delays, unannounced service changes, dilapidated stations, foul smells, and mysterious stains on seats that are best left unquestioned. It’s dirty, inefficient and bustling. New Yorkers complain about the subway, but we tolerate it, since it’s our primary mode of transportation from point A to point B (except for those lucky few with a bottomless cab fund). Newcomers may experience culture shock getting jostled by beggars making their way through cars, or seeing their first foot-long rat run across some platform. But pretty soon we all get used to it. C’est la vie.

This complacent attitude is jolted when New Yorkers travel to other cities with public transportation. In Washington D.C., the subway reminded me of cleanliness I thought was only possible in foreign cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore. The modernist arched ceilings in all the stations screamed of a city that placed aesthetics on a pedastal. And electronic counters that showed the minutes until the next arriving train? Priceless.

And thus began the 5 Stages of Subway Envy:

1. Denial – I don’t see any electronic counters.
2. Anger – We had a billion dollar surplus last year! Why don’t we have those for our trains?!
3. Bargaining – I wonder how much apartments are in D.C.
4. Depression – But moving is such a pain.
5. Acceptance – When the bus back from D.C. pulled into Port Authority at 1 a.m., I was exhausted, cold, and had $2 in my pockets. Home was 110 blocks away. I was glad for any train that ran at 1 a.m. on a Sunday night, smells and stains and all.

- by Diana Kuan of Indietrekker fame