WRITE FOOD, WILL TRAVEL

(Or is it write travel, will eat?)

Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern of The Travel Channel are two lucky people. Both love to travel, write, and eat - and do all three things simultaneously and get paid for it.

As to the rest of us, travelling and eating are all a matter of paying.

Which is why everytime I travel, I do my homework. I read food critics' and consumers' reviews, look for Zagat ratings, and listen to words-of-mouth, of restaurants in the places I have to go to. This way, even if I pay, every cent has to be worth it.

I like restaurants that speak for the city. Food is a great sub-cultural barometer, and you can tell a place's "otherness" (or sub-culture) from the type of eateries therein popular. San Antonio, Texas has great German restaurants - and this tells you something about the city's populace other than Mexican. Washington, DC is probably where you can eat the best Ethiopian dishes that side of Africa - and again it gives you a good presumption of the presence of Ethiopians, diplomats or not, in the country's capital.
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I love Vietnamese food. Everytime I go to Manhattan, I make it a point to eat at Saigon Grill at least everyday, har, and it doesn't stop me to wonder, if Vietnamese food is so good at Saigon Grill, how else will I describe Vietnamese food served in Vietnam? I'll probably go to Cam Ranh and drown myself in pho ga while analyzing the different nuances of broth, hmmm, this is anise, yum, here is cinnamon!
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Miami is a melting pot of Latin cultures, and this means that to be in Miami is to be a student of Latin food. Make no mistake. Even if Latin countries learned their food lessons from conquering Spain, their traditional dishes are way too distinctive from one another. Which is why for a start, visiting different Latin eateries and trying their small staples are a great idea: Tamales from Colombia are different from Uruguay's. Empanadas from Argentina are not similar with those from Cuba.
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One time my Uncle B (Mom's brother) came to visit us in Miami and I brought him to a small Nicaraguan eatery called Fritanga Managua. Uncle B, who was 72 years old, jumped with joy like a kid after getting out of the car. I asked why, and he said, Makakalibre tayo sa pagkain. I asked him, How so?, and he said, Ayun, di mo ba nababasa?

Free tanga.

50, TAKE ME THERE

No, I'm not talking about age 50. I'm still climbing uphill and hopelessly hoping for traffic along the way. 50 here is 50 states, and like my co-worker Rick who had been to each and every star represented on Old Glory, I, too, longed to set foot on every member of the united.

How do I love thee, let me count the states: Illinois, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississipi, Louisiana, Nevada, Arizona, California, and of course, Florida. That's 22. 28 more to go.

I could have been to Washington. When we arrived here and I was wandering like a little boy lost, my childhood chum J offered to give me a little change of scenery, a little company, a little refuge, and lots of beer - all expenses paid to and from Tacoma - but before we came to a final date I got a call for a job interview. Washington trip was washed out, and J was probably all the wiser and a plane ticket richer for it.

I could have been to South Carolina. One springtime and we were at Savannah experiencing the midnight between good and evil, we had a spur of the moment plan to cross the bridge at Savannah River and head to Charleston the following morning. One other person had a spur of the moment plan of his own, and it was to steal the license plate of my car. I was so upset and afraid to roam farther away from my turf without any identifying mark on my car, and so we cancelled the trip and headed back home.

I could have been to Wyoming. Ten summers ago my sister brought the idea of spending one week of that summer in the area of the Grand Teton, living the life of cowboys and cowgirls - horses, ranches, babyback ribs and all - for the amount of $1,000.00. I told my sister I'd rather fulfill my fantasy of living the life of Native American first (Lakota Sioux, preferrably), and so I passed, even if the stronger truth for my passing was that I have no $1,000.00 then. Then as now.

I could have been to Texas. But when I learned from my brother-in-law that I have to drive a U-haul from Houston to Ft. Lauderdale, I feigned some kind of sickness. I can't remember what, but I think I told him I had a cold. Or was schizophrenic or something.

Finally, I could have been to Kansas and Oklahoma. Years ago I was sending a kid from Monterrey, Mexico to school pursuant to my favorite Church-based charity; part of this program was a pilgrimage from Kansas to Monterrey, and as benefactor I got a personal invite from the head of the organization to join the fun. When I realized later that the journey was on foot, I thought, my foot! there's no way I can do it. I passed, which was better than passing out had I summoned my machismo and joined the brouhaha.

Still, there are states I can't wait to visit.

There is New Mexico for its blue skies and Carlsbad caverns.

Montana, for its sweeping expanse.

Iowa, for its covered bridges.

Arkansas, for the Ozarks.

Vermont, for fall foliage and Baptist Churches.

Idaho, for Snake River and prospects of flyfishing.

23, here I come!

OF LIES & WONDERS

When I was in grade school my books and teachers, as mouthpieces of my government, made me proud - and they did it through a lie. In a convincingly honest voice they told me the Banawe Rice Terraces - rice paddies carved from the side of the mountains in the northern island of Luzon, the Philippines - was the 8th wonder of the world.

No need to say that that grade school moment was so long ago, light years removed from the Internet, and the pupils of our netforsaken age looked at books and teachers as portals whose words were our own version of Wikipedia.

And so I carried that lie - that pride - with me in my nurturing years when love of country was love almost second to none. I thought with so many greats sites in any given country, and with so many countries in the world, it was unfathomable that the 8th most wondrous spot in the world, in all of history, was found in my country.
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Of course you and I know that a lie is a lie, and the pronouncement that the Banawe Terraces is the 8th wonder of the world is a fat stinking lie. In fact it was so fat and so stinking that I took the shame personally for not being wise enough to realize that the world only think in sevens (seventh heaven, seven seas, ikapitong bundok), and that those seven wonders were of the ancient kind - so ancient that six of these seven had long ceased to exist when some young, imaginative minds may have pointed to those mountains in Luzon and boasted, Hmmm, I wonder if we could carve those mountains and make them like stairway to the skies.
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Stairway to the skies. Years ago a Department of Tourism guy went to Miami to sell Philippines 2000's tourist spots, one of which was the venerable Banawe Rice Terraces. The idea of the presentation was to show slides of, and give interesting facts and figures about, the country's tourist spots. For Banawe Rice Terraces, the facts given were that 1) it was considered the 8th wonder of the world; and 2) if the paddies were put one on top of the other, they could very well reach the skies.

I was mortified. If number 1 was a lie, number 2 was a joke.
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The Banawe Rice Terraces are indeed beautiful. And even if I have not seen it in person, I have read and heard enough truths about it to give my own opinion that they are certainly one of the most beautiful sites man had ever seen. Of all the international heritage sites, the Banawe Rice Terraces stand out because they serve a life purpose - where the others provide food for the soul, the Terraces provide food for the mouth as well.

My American friend J, an eco-tourist who had been around the world, went to see the Terraces years ago and was overwhelmed by what he saw and learned. He was so fascinated how the geniuses who initially carved these paddies - most probably by hand - could adopt and develop a perfect system of irrigation to allow for a good flow of water and feed the seeds and stems that became the country's premier staple, rice. And to think they were standing there long before agriculture became a formal discipline.
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Today, in Lisbon, the world will have a new set of seven wonders. After months of voting in this global competition to select a new set to replace the ancient set (the Pyramids of Giza are the only ones remaining, and will be automatically part of the list). My own choices were The Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal in India, Machu Picchu in Peru, Petra in Jordan, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and the Pyramids of Egypt. That would be six. Seventh should be the Banawe Rice Terraces, but of course we won't find the name in the official list because the people at the Department of Tourism did not make a good push for it nomination as they were probably content with its ranking as the 8th wonder of the world.

HELLOW STRANGER

That is not exactly how I greet myself before the mirror in the shoddy spirit of my awakenings, though I could rightfully say so with the awful demeanor of my hair and spooky attitude of my face. In whatever time of day, I simply have to remind myself the need for strangeness to this earth if only to shy away from the correlative result of the domestication of a wildman.
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The poet Czeslaw Milosz, in A Book of Luminous Things, states that while a visited place becomes our temporary home, we continue to preserve a sufficient distance to it to feel its strangeness not perceived by those who live there permanently. Milosz, of course, was talking about travelling as a great human endeavor where the desire to visit foreign or strange places is brought by a rudimentary inclination to unravel anything mysterious. And so he quotes the great passage Navigare est necesse, vivere non est necesse, To sail is necessary, to live is not - because we continue to live and think like the ancient Roman sailors in their seafaring journeys through tempestous weather. Then as now, we seek adventures. Then as now, we break routines.

I remember watching Anthony Bourdain in his Travel Channel show where, while doing a Conradian journey upriver in the wilderness of Sarawak, Borneo, he mentions the great gift bestowed upon a travel writer: the thrill of the unknown. And so through Bourdain's narrative, we transcend his own strangeness and nurture in the strength of his intellect; with him we saw the jungle and everything about it's raw and distinguishing power. (In one scene, he mentions and points to at local guide who, he was told, was an ex-militiamen who beheaded a number of Communists. Bourdain, a New York chef, sheepishly smiles and says before the camera of his need to keep his left-leaning politics to himself. The guy was smart enough to acknowledge his place in the hot Bornean sun.)
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Summertime is a great travel time. An so, with our collective quest for adventure, this blog will soar on to a new chapter that dwells on the spirit of travel. Grab your tickets and ride on.