Daisann McLane's Real Travel
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Daisann McLane's Real Travel
Packing, again
I'm packing again. It feels like I always am. I suppose I should be grateful for a life that lets me run footloose, but I never fail to get stressed out when confronted with an empty suitcase (or two) and a pile (or three) of folded clothing. I suppose this is another form of the leaving anxiety that I write about in my column in this month's issue of National Geographic Traveler.
The happy thing, though, is that this whole process made me remember an old Real Travel column I wrote about bags. It's from 2005, so it's not recent enough to be up on the magazine's online website with my other columns. So I've reproduced the text below, for your reading pleasure.
Real Travel: Pack Mentality
by Daisann McLane
The other day I was reaching, on tiptoe, for a box on the top shelf of my hall closet when something black and shapeless came tumbling out and landed at my feet: my 25 year old Tumi ballistic nylon foldable carryon super-sized suit and dress bag. When I saw it, covered in dust bunnies, pangs of guilt overwhelmed me, just like when you suddenly bump into an old friend you've neglected to check in on lately. I hadn't taken the suit bag on a trip with me since..well I wasn't sure. Ten or fifteen years? The crumpled paper tags--MIA and LHR--still clinging to the handle offered some clues. The quick trip to London for a business meeting in 1989, or maybe that job interview in Miami in 1990.
It made me sad to think of my old faithful travel buddy, the suit carrier, no longer living the glamorous life flying around the world in airplane storage compartments. But when your life as a traveler changes, so must your bag. The Tumi was with me during the years when most of my traveling was business related--and, most importantly, when airlines allowed economy passengers to carry such a bulky item onboard and store it in a hanging compartment. The rules, as we know, changed. And so did my travel style. Eventually I started going on longer trips to faraway places where it didn't matter if my suits and dresses arrived wrinkled. Where, indeed, it didn't matter if I'd packed suits or dresses at all. I moved on to other kinds of journeys, found other kinds of bags to get sentimental about.
A bag--whether it's a backpack, suitcase, carryon, wheelie, or hard valise--is not a teddy bear or a security blanket, but to me it sometimes seems that way. Because when you travel a lot, especially for long stretches of time, the bag is the only real constant in your life. It is my home, best friend, steady companion, and more: my entire life edited down to basics and compressed into a bundle. I became so close to the royal blue Patagonia soft-sided nylon carryon with convertible backpack straps that I lived with for three months in India, that I can still trace in my mind the irregular splotch of the curry stain that, one month into the trip, disfigured the bottom end (a messy lunch near the railway station in Trivandrum). I can remember the panic I felt when, in another Indian train station, a wizened stick figure of a fellow snatched the blue bundle from my arms as I stepped down from the carriage to the platform, and began to scurry off with it towards the exit (as it turns out, the elderly man was the station porter, and he wasn't about to wait for me to decide whether I needed his services!).
In Thailand and Malaysia, the Patagonia magically expanded to fit stacks of silk fabrics and batik sarongs; without complaint it swallowed guidebooks, the cheap tripod I bought on Khao San Road, and a set of four shiny brass chargers I picked up in Bangkok's Chatuchak market. By the time I boarded the last leg of my flight home, my bursting "carryon"no longer passed the airline's muster, and, to my chagrin, I had to check it. It arrived at New York's JFK, but when I pulled it off the baggage belt, I discovered that a careless baggage handler had caused one of the zipper heads to rip off. When I took it back to the Patagonia store to see if they could fix it the clerk just shrugged and said, "You have a guarantee, so we'll replace this one, but you have to leave the old one with us."
I stood there paralyzed for a moment, not wanting to part with my curry stained, broken-zippered India travel pal. Then, pragmatically, and feeling foolish, I accepted the replacement.
I have traveled with the shiny new replacement bag exactly twice.
What is it, about certain bags, that makes you want to use them forever, like a pair of well-worn shoes? Design is part of the equation, and so is style, but for me the crucial element is simplicity. I have spent hours researching and exploring baggage that has a million separate compartments dedicated to everything from wet laundry to spare housekeys. But I never buy any of these bags: they are too rigid, too strict. I prefer the bag that allows you to discover new ways it can be used, that the extra compartment on the side, when stuffed with socks, makes a perfect pillow to rest on between flights in a lonely airport, or that the shoe compartment is a good place to put your trashy paperbacks.
Actually, nowadays I seldom spend much time thinking about my travel bags, for the airport luggage rules adopted in the last five or so years have put an end to the days when I could comfortably carry everything I needed for a long trip onto the plane with me. Once I prided myself on never checking a bag; now I check everything, since it is too annoying to have to drag it through security checkpoints. Besides, my carryon these days needs to fit all of the comfort items--pillows, a blanket, food, water, noise-cancelling headphones-- that no longer come with most economy class fares .
At the airport counter you will have no trouble spotting me, for I am the traveler with the cheap, functional black suitcases on wheels, the ones purchased for less than $30, usually in some American discount mall or Asian bazaar. If they turn out to have too many compartments or annoying features, I ditch them; if they turn out to be to small, I buy another, larger one in the market in Beijing, or in Buenos Aires. That's my traveling life right now, and that's my bag: global, pragmatic, inexpensive, ruthlessly efficient.
Still, I miss my other travel lives. The other day, from the pockets of the 25 year old Tumi hanging suiter, I recovered an ancient TWA boarding pass and a receipt from a Miami Beach hotel that no longer exists. And then I dusted and cleaned the Tumi, inside and out--and put it back up on the shelf. Maybe this bag would never hit the road with me again. But I didn't want to tell that to my old friend, at least not just yet.
The happy thing, though, is that this whole process made me remember an old Real Travel column I wrote about bags. It's from 2005, so it's not recent enough to be up on the magazine's online website with my other columns. So I've reproduced the text below, for your reading pleasure.
Real Travel: Pack Mentality
by Daisann McLane
The other day I was reaching, on tiptoe, for a box on the top shelf of my hall closet when something black and shapeless came tumbling out and landed at my feet: my 25 year old Tumi ballistic nylon foldable carryon super-sized suit and dress bag. When I saw it, covered in dust bunnies, pangs of guilt overwhelmed me, just like when you suddenly bump into an old friend you've neglected to check in on lately. I hadn't taken the suit bag on a trip with me since..well I wasn't sure. Ten or fifteen years? The crumpled paper tags--MIA and LHR--still clinging to the handle offered some clues. The quick trip to London for a business meeting in 1989, or maybe that job interview in Miami in 1990.
It made me sad to think of my old faithful travel buddy, the suit carrier, no longer living the glamorous life flying around the world in airplane storage compartments. But when your life as a traveler changes, so must your bag. The Tumi was with me during the years when most of my traveling was business related--and, most importantly, when airlines allowed economy passengers to carry such a bulky item onboard and store it in a hanging compartment. The rules, as we know, changed. And so did my travel style. Eventually I started going on longer trips to faraway places where it didn't matter if my suits and dresses arrived wrinkled. Where, indeed, it didn't matter if I'd packed suits or dresses at all. I moved on to other kinds of journeys, found other kinds of bags to get sentimental about.
A bag--whether it's a backpack, suitcase, carryon, wheelie, or hard valise--is not a teddy bear or a security blanket, but to me it sometimes seems that way. Because when you travel a lot, especially for long stretches of time, the bag is the only real constant in your life. It is my home, best friend, steady companion, and more: my entire life edited down to basics and compressed into a bundle. I became so close to the royal blue Patagonia soft-sided nylon carryon with convertible backpack straps that I lived with for three months in India, that I can still trace in my mind the irregular splotch of the curry stain that, one month into the trip, disfigured the bottom end (a messy lunch near the railway station in Trivandrum). I can remember the panic I felt when, in another Indian train station, a wizened stick figure of a fellow snatched the blue bundle from my arms as I stepped down from the carriage to the platform, and began to scurry off with it towards the exit (as it turns out, the elderly man was the station porter, and he wasn't about to wait for me to decide whether I needed his services!).
In Thailand and Malaysia, the Patagonia magically expanded to fit stacks of silk fabrics and batik sarongs; without complaint it swallowed guidebooks, the cheap tripod I bought on Khao San Road, and a set of four shiny brass chargers I picked up in Bangkok's Chatuchak market. By the time I boarded the last leg of my flight home, my bursting "carryon"no longer passed the airline's muster, and, to my chagrin, I had to check it. It arrived at New York's JFK, but when I pulled it off the baggage belt, I discovered that a careless baggage handler had caused one of the zipper heads to rip off. When I took it back to the Patagonia store to see if they could fix it the clerk just shrugged and said, "You have a guarantee, so we'll replace this one, but you have to leave the old one with us."
I stood there paralyzed for a moment, not wanting to part with my curry stained, broken-zippered India travel pal. Then, pragmatically, and feeling foolish, I accepted the replacement.
I have traveled with the shiny new replacement bag exactly twice.
What is it, about certain bags, that makes you want to use them forever, like a pair of well-worn shoes? Design is part of the equation, and so is style, but for me the crucial element is simplicity. I have spent hours researching and exploring baggage that has a million separate compartments dedicated to everything from wet laundry to spare housekeys. But I never buy any of these bags: they are too rigid, too strict. I prefer the bag that allows you to discover new ways it can be used, that the extra compartment on the side, when stuffed with socks, makes a perfect pillow to rest on between flights in a lonely airport, or that the shoe compartment is a good place to put your trashy paperbacks.
Actually, nowadays I seldom spend much time thinking about my travel bags, for the airport luggage rules adopted in the last five or so years have put an end to the days when I could comfortably carry everything I needed for a long trip onto the plane with me. Once I prided myself on never checking a bag; now I check everything, since it is too annoying to have to drag it through security checkpoints. Besides, my carryon these days needs to fit all of the comfort items--pillows, a blanket, food, water, noise-cancelling headphones-- that no longer come with most economy class fares .
At the airport counter you will have no trouble spotting me, for I am the traveler with the cheap, functional black suitcases on wheels, the ones purchased for less than $30, usually in some American discount mall or Asian bazaar. If they turn out to have too many compartments or annoying features, I ditch them; if they turn out to be to small, I buy another, larger one in the market in Beijing, or in Buenos Aires. That's my traveling life right now, and that's my bag: global, pragmatic, inexpensive, ruthlessly efficient.
Still, I miss my other travel lives. The other day, from the pockets of the 25 year old Tumi hanging suiter, I recovered an ancient TWA boarding pass and a receipt from a Miami Beach hotel that no longer exists. And then I dusted and cleaned the Tumi, inside and out--and put it back up on the shelf. Maybe this bag would never hit the road with me again. But I didn't want to tell that to my old friend, at least not just yet.
Bangkok, Dangerous?
Saturday night in Bangkok. I stop to watch the moon's reflection in the Klong Rupkrung, the little canal that separates Samsen Road from the old Phra Arthit neighborhood on the Chao Phaya riverside. At 10pm the night is hot enough to cause a few beads of sweat to trickle down the back of my knees. Still and sleepy, the neighborhood moves to a languid, sticky and slow beat.
About two miles away, I know, protesting Thais--the "Red Shirts" are camped out and occupying the city's main intersection. The situation is grave, the politics complicated, and the sides deadlocked. There's been violence: a few weeks ago, on April 10th, 11 people were killed in the political clashes, and hundreds wounded.
That's when many foreign goverments--including mine--issued tourism advisories warning their citizens to avoid travel to Bangkok.
I came anyway. Walking down Phra Arthit road on Saturday night, busy with young Thai kids strolling in the park, hanging out in streetside bars and coffeehouses, listening to folk singers playing guitars, I was glad I did. Without the crowds of backpacking tourists, who seem to grow more numerous every year, this lovely old corner of the Bangkok riverside felt completely--and wonderfully--Thai.
Do I recommend ignoring travel advisory warnings? Yes--sometimes. Too often government advisories are written as a "one size fits all", and pitched to the least experienced, most fearful, traveler. Also, governments tend to hoist warning signals these days at the slightest of provocations. You almost wonder whether govenments are trying to protect tourists, or avoid trouble for themselves (for if something does go wrong, the government may have to finance evacuations and/or arrange flights out of a troubled area for its nationals).
Still, when a warning sign does go up, I do pay attention.
And then I do my own research.
I didn't really worry much about going to Bangkok in the middle of a political crisis. I've been to the city dozens of times, know it well, follow the politics closely. I knew that the demonstrations were happening in two distinct and well-defined areas of the city that I could easily avoid if need be (Bangkok is a sprawling city of separate neighborhoods.)
Most importantly, I have local friends I can rely on (one of them is even a policeman). Before buying my ticket, I phoned them to see what things were like on the ground. And they said: It's fine. But traffic is bad and the shopping malls in Siam Square are closed.
The traffic, I laughed, is always bad in Bangkok. And the closed shopping malls sounded like a big plus to me (and to my pocketbook).
For a traveler on a budget like me there are advantages to traveling where you're not "supposed" to go. I got a great deal, nearly 40% off, on a hotel room. Taxis were easy to find, restaurants not crowded. (The tourist advisories are killing small businesses in Bangkok. I tipped extra, everywhere.)
But the real bonus to traveling against the grain isn't financial. It is an empty lane, a quiet moon over the canal, and the sound of laughter and Thai folk music floating in the velvet Bangkok night.
Empty road near the Pra Sumen fort, Saturday May 2nd, Bangkok.
Leaving: The Soundtrack
My latest Real Travel column, "Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow" has just been posted on the National Geographic Traveler website. It's also in the magazine's May/June issue--on newsstands now.
Leaving is one of the most emotional experiences I have as a traveler. As the old song goes, I "Never can say goodbye...no no no!" I'll share more thoughts about separation anxiety in the next few days, but first I wanted to try something new--a soundtrack that goes along with this month's column.
In the essay, I talk about how the theme of arrival, rather than departure, dominates most travel writing. And how little in the travel writing canon deals with the subject of going. (One notable exception comes to mind: this essay by Joan Didion, which isn't exactly travel writing, but it's certainly the most memorable door slam on New York that's ever been written.)
Travel writers may not like to deal in the farewell, but songwriters sure do love their sorrowful partings. Musicians really have a handle on this subject, and curiously, so many of these musicians are Canadians. From Ian and Sylvia to (the late, lamented) Kate McGarrigle, to Neil Young, they pretty much rule the turf in the land of bittersweet
Does Canada have the cultural edge on the farewell? I don't know, but the goodbye songs in the following videos are absolutely guaranteed to give me a good cry. (Good thing that Joni's not crying--she'd ruin that magnificent eyeliner she's wearing!)
Towers of Dreams
Another essay by me, from Singapore Airline's magazine, Silverkris. The editors asked me, Pico Iyer and two other writers to talk about our favorite travel discovery of 2009. I didn't have to think about that for very long: I chose to write about the wonderous, mostly abandoned Chinese towers, or diaolou, that dot the rice fields and farms of Guangdong Province. The diaolou, recently added to the list of worldwide UNESCO heritage sites, knocked me for a loop when I went there with my friend Ping and his sisters last winter. So much so that I had to go back a second time, just to see them again. Get there soon, before the Chinese local tourism machine rolls over them.
Here's my Silverkris Magazine article, with some additional pictures from me after the jump:
Here's my Silverkris Magazine article, with some additional pictures from me after the jump:
Asia, Imbibed
In my latest Real Travel column for National Geographic Traveler I talk about how I always like to sample the local brew (or grape) when I travel--it's one of the fastest ways I know to dive into another culture.
Usually, I'm doing my tasting in the same place where the drink is made--wine tasting in Mendoza, warm cans of beer at a football match in London, tequila in Mexico, etc. But lately, in Hong Kong, I've been using spirits to explore far away places.
Hong Kong doesn't really have an alcoholic drink to call its own. (In this hyper-intense business and finance city, our hometown drink of choice is yun yeung cha, coffee mixed with tea and boiled milk. It's like Red Bull times twenty). When cocktail time rolls around, we drink the rest of the world. The British left their mark on local drinking culture--beer is the number one choice for our "Happy Hours" (which have the distinction of being the longest such "hours" in Asia-- in my neighborhood, most bars clock HH from 3pm until 9pm).
But, thanks to an adventurous pal from Malaysia (hi Yvonne), I've found a new drinking culture here. That's why, on many Tuesday nights, you'll find me sitting at the horseshoe shaped bar of an Okinawan izakaya, hidden away on the 13th floor of a non-descript office building in Causeway Bay, holding a hand-tinted blown glass tumbler containing ice drizzled with an extraordinary clear liquid made from distilled rice: awamori.
The appeal of Ku-Suya Rakuen (that's the name of this place) isn't just the wonderful drink, which looks like clear sake but tastes like a light herbal whiskey. (Awamori is around 25-30 proof, stronger than wine and sake, but far less alcoholic than scotch or vodka). It's the atmosphere. From the moment you step into the place, with its rough-hewn wooden bar and stools, and its collection of ceramic jars holding 100 different kinds of awamori, Hong Kong disappears. A buzz of Japanese fills the air. You are in Okinawa.
Hanging out at Ku-suya has gotten me to thinking about the way we travelers never stop traveling, even when we're supposed to be settled down somewhere. In New York, I seek out those dark little corner bars and diners where Hispanic working men drink Presidentes from the bottle, while they fill the jukeboxes with quarters, playing their favorite bachata tunes...I am in virtual Santo Domingo. Other friends sate their wanderlust at uptown Irish pubs where the Guinness flows freely. Or cultivate their Francophilia over Cote du Rhone at a pitch-perfect Parisian-style corner bistro on Smith Street in Brooklyn.
I love being in Hong Kong, where I find a little adventure nearly every day. But every now and then it's nice to have a shot of something--and someplace-- else. And so, awamori. I haven't yet been to Okinawa, but I have to say that, thanks to the local drink, it's now in my top ten "next trip" list....
And, speaking of great local drinks...what makes them taste even better is when they have a cuisine built around them! Ku-Suya Rakuen is as much about the food as it is the drink. There, you can order some really extraordinary little dishes to accompany your awamori. Yvonne's favorite menu item is: "Mascarpone Cheese with Fish Guts".
And here's mine: pickled sea grapes. They look like little jade pearls and taste salty like the ocean. When you wash them down with awamori, it's like inhaling the fragrance of herbs on a moist summer breeze. Eat, sip, savor the spirit...ahhh, Okinawa.
Comfort Food, A Tale of Three Cities
I've been writing essays lately for Silverkris, the magazine of Singapore Airlines. They don't have an online site, so the only way to read my magazine articles is to take a flight on Singapore (highly recommended!). But that's not always possible, so I'm going to share them with you here, after they've flown around the world in the seat pocket for a few months.
This one is my meditation on comfort food in three of my favorite cities: New York, Hong Kong and Bangkok:
I thought I knew everything about som tum--the yummy shredded papaya salad that's one of the most famous dishes in Thai cuisine. But that was before I invited my friend Tip out to lunch.
Tip lives in Bangkok, in a soi, or lane, off Samsen Road that straddles a muddy canal near the Chao Phaya river. But her roots are in the Northeast of Thailand, the dry rice-growing region called Isaan, where som tum is almost as ubiquitous as rice itself.
Overthe years, migrant workers from Isaan have moved to Bangkok, and brought their taste for som tum with them. Now, when you walk down lanes in certain Bangkok neighborhoods (like Rangsam Road, near the Victory Monument), it's almost a guarantee that you'll be greeted bythe melodious thunk! thunk! thunk! of stone pestles gently pounding green papaya, garlic, tomatoes, salt, sugar, fish sauce, dried shrimpand hot peppers into a scrumptious snack.
Tip is a skilled practitioner of traditional Thai massage, and she'd just cured the pain in my back that had defeated two doctors, a chiropractor and an acupuncturist. To thank her, I had invited her to a fancy lunch at Senses cafe in Gaysorn Plaza, Bangkok's upscale shopping mall. I've eaten at Senses a lot, and I thought their som tum was pretty good, soI ordered some, since I figured Tip, being Isaan, would like it.
But I noticed, as we were eating, she barely picked at it. "Isn't it spicy enough?", I asked.
She answered, reluctantly. "It's okay...just not...right," she said.
Her answer intrigued me, since I couldn't taste anything wrong with this som tum. The papaya was fresh, the tomatoes ripe, the flavors balanced perfectly at the intersection of salty, hot, sour and sweet. The restaurant even served the dish with its traditional accompaniment,sticky rice. Still, Tip had been eating--and making--som tum all her life. I could appreciate the dish, but Tip was the cultural authority who knew it. So I wondered, what was she tasting that I was not?
Curious,I asked Tip to lead me to some som tum that was "right". She pulled out her cellphone, called her boyfriend, and soon the three of us were weaving in his car through traffic choked streets on a quest for the best som tum in Bangkok.
Food is, more often that not, the key ingredient of my best trips. I like to travel in a way that allows me to share and explore other cultures, and have found that eating local food--preferably with local people-- is a sure way to break the ice.
One thing I've discovered along the way is that most big cities have a "signature" food. It's usually something simple and homely, inexpensive yet utterly satisfying, and almost always you can eat it in on or near the street. In Shanghai, itis the little handmade dumplings called xiao lan bao, that steam in wicker baskets everywhere. Tokyo has the onigiri, the ball of rice molded into a triangle, then wrapped in crisp norimaki seaweed.Denizens of Madrid stand at busy counters and nosh little sandwiches of the delicious Spanish jamon serrano.
There's another thing I've discovered about these urban signature foods--you don't really "know" a city until you've staked your position in the eternal argument over where the "best" is to be found, whether it is croissants(Paris), cheesesteak hoagies (Philadelphia), roti (Port of Spain,Trinidad) or falafel (Tel Aviv).
I know these contentious discussions well. My adopted city is Hong Kong, where we engage in a constant battle that I call the "Won Ton Wars." That is, in which of the city's tens of thousands of noodle joints can you get the mostperfect, most delicious, most "traditional" bowl of won ton mihn, theclassic Hong Kong noodle soup with hand-wrapped shrimp and pork dumplings?
The won ton wars rage on the websites devoted to Hong Kong food connoisseurship, like openrice.com, and the China forums of chowhound.com. They also simmer, more quietly, in the prejudices and particular habits of my Hong Kong Cantonese friends. David, for instance, shuns the venerated Wellington Street institution calledMak's Noodles, even though its soup broth is a dense, complex wonder of shrimp and pork flavors, its won tons are tightly wrapped and perfectly bite-sized, and the kitchen uses as garnish the more expensive white chives instead of the cheaper green ones. "The bowl is too small forthe price," he sniffs. "You finish and you're still hungry."
David,and our friend Leung, prefer a little storefront on the edge of WanChai, near the Bowrington Market, called "Freedom Noodles." It does not appear on any of the connoisseur websites, and to be sure, its broth is not nearly as exquisite as the fine wine of Mak's (although its wontons, each one containing a whole shrimp, are little bundles of treasure). But in the universe of signature cuisine, "Freedom Noodles"has an important edge with my friends--there's an emotional connection.David is a schoolteacher, and the noodle shop is in the building directly beneath a teacher's union headquarters where he has spent much time over the last years. He's been a "regular" at Freedom for tenyears. When he comes in, they don't even have to take his order, and inthe won ton wars, familiarity counts at least as much as white chives.
I'm not a native born Hong Konger, but I've lived there long enough to form my own noodle soup opinions, which I'll admit, have emotional as well as culinary bases. My favorite won ton minh is served in Wing Wah, a modest storefront shop on busy Hennessey Street in Wan Chai.
Icould say that Wing Wah won my allegiance because of its noodles, which is partly true. This is one of the few noodle joints left in Hong Kong that makes its wheat noodles on the premises, pulling them out on a bamboo-pole in the old-school method. But the real reason I became a Wing Wah partisan has to do with the way I was introduced to the place.One night, shortly after I moved to Hong Kong, I went out to a pub with two interesting local characters, a writer and a politician. After we'd been chatting and drinking beer for a few hours, the writer realized it was past midnight. "Let's eat," she said.
Hong Kongers love to"sik siu yeh", to eat a late night snack. After midnight, almost any of Hong Kong's most famous snacks--curry fish balls, grilled cuttlefish on sticks, stinky tofu--can be found in stalls or storefronts if you know where to go. Sharing siu yeh with your buddies is a local tradition, a rite of passage.
And my first siu yeh was won ton minh at Wing Wah. If I had to judge the place like a restaurant critic, its broth would fall short of Mak's. But for me Wing Wah's soup will always be deliciously connected with that wonderful Hong Kong ritual of late night snacking, of friends, and shared good times--and of my initiation into the life of a city not my own.
New York is my native city. We New Yorkers are no different from the Cantonese who turn up their noses at a bowl of too-salty won ton noodles. We cherish, savor and argue over our local "signature"foods--the cheesecake, the knish, the hot dog. But the "local" dish that we hold most dear is a beloved import from Italy: pizza.
In New York, we prefer to eat our pizza standing up, by the slice (which always seems to cost exactly as much as a subway fare). We even have a special way to eat it. When I'm at my neighborhood pizza joint in Brooklyn (it's called "Pizzatown") I always buy a "regular" slice. When it comes out from the big steel oven, I take it, and fold the triangle in half, upwards, so I can take the first bite without losing any of the cheese topping (or burning my mouth).
Lately, New York's pizza has gone all gourmet and trendy. One of the famous old handmade pizza stands, Di Fara's, has even raised the price of a single slice to$5. New pizza restaurants are springing up everywhere. These places boast wood-fired ovens instead of the usual gas-fired ones. They use artesanal and sometimes organic ingredients. And instead of costing the same as a subway fare, the pizza in these new New York joints have aprice that's closer to a cab ride.
The best of these new artesanal pizzas can be sampled at Franny's, a popular place in Brooklyn with lines outside that are almost as long as the selections on its fine wine list. The crust is super thin, a bit blackened at the edges, redolent of woodsmoke. Fresh buffalo mozzarella and just-snipped basil leaves adorn this crusty canvas. You wouldn't dare fold this pizza--it's made for a knife and fork. I lift a bite to my mouth:everything about it, from the tang of the tomato sauce to the crunch of the crust, is impeccable.
And yet, I hear the echo of my Bangkok friend Tip's voice in my ears: "It is okay, but just....not right."
A city's signature food is more than the sum of its parts. The "best" wontons, or steamed dumplings, aren't just the products of a great chef or a perfect recipe. They are little bites of local culture, morsels of emotion. I eat pizza and remember how I shared slices with old boyfriends; in Hong Kong, my friends do the same thing, only with noodles.
And in Bangkok, on a hot humid night, Tip's boyfriend drove until we reached a narrow busy street called Rangnam Road, and asmall restaurant with an open facade called, in Thai, "Isaan Rotdee",which means "Northeast Taste". As he parked, I could already hear the familiar thunk! thunk! of the mortar and pestle. Tip placed her order,instructing the som tum maker exactly how much dried shrimp, pepper and peanuts she wanted in the papaya mix. She grabbed handfuls of longbeans and Thai basil as side accompaniments.
We ate the som tum out of plastic bags in the car. Tip showed me how to press the sticky rice into small balls, to soak up the juices.
"This is right," said Tip, smiling. "Tastes just like when I lived on the farm in Isaan."
Thesom tum was, indeed, tasty. And what made it "right" wasn't just the ingredients or the preparation. It was the Bangkok night, the moment of sharing with friends, the experience.
Someday, I hope I will have the chance to teach my friend Tip to fold a New York slice of pizza.
Signature Food: in Bangkok, Hong Kong and New York
Won Ton Soup in Hong Kong
Wing Wah Noodle Shop 89 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong, China. Tel: +8522527 7476
Freedom Noodles G/F, 15 Canal Road West, Causeway Bay
Mak's Noodles
77 Wellington St., Central, Phone: 2854-3810 Tip lives in Bangkok, in a soi, or lane, off Samsen Road that straddles a muddy canal near the Chao Phaya river. But her roots are in the Northeast of Thailand, the dry rice-growing region called Isaan, where som tum is almost as ubiquitous as rice itself.
Overthe years, migrant workers from Isaan have moved to Bangkok, and brought their taste for som tum with them. Now, when you walk down lanes in certain Bangkok neighborhoods (like Rangsam Road, near the Victory Monument), it's almost a guarantee that you'll be greeted bythe melodious thunk! thunk! thunk! of stone pestles gently pounding green papaya, garlic, tomatoes, salt, sugar, fish sauce, dried shrimpand hot peppers into a scrumptious snack.
Tip is a skilled practitioner of traditional Thai massage, and she'd just cured the pain in my back that had defeated two doctors, a chiropractor and an acupuncturist. To thank her, I had invited her to a fancy lunch at Senses cafe in Gaysorn Plaza, Bangkok's upscale shopping mall. I've eaten at Senses a lot, and I thought their som tum was pretty good, soI ordered some, since I figured Tip, being Isaan, would like it.
But I noticed, as we were eating, she barely picked at it. "Isn't it spicy enough?", I asked.
She answered, reluctantly. "It's okay...just not...right," she said.
Her answer intrigued me, since I couldn't taste anything wrong with this som tum. The papaya was fresh, the tomatoes ripe, the flavors balanced perfectly at the intersection of salty, hot, sour and sweet. The restaurant even served the dish with its traditional accompaniment,sticky rice. Still, Tip had been eating--and making--som tum all her life. I could appreciate the dish, but Tip was the cultural authority who knew it. So I wondered, what was she tasting that I was not?
Curious,I asked Tip to lead me to some som tum that was "right". She pulled out her cellphone, called her boyfriend, and soon the three of us were weaving in his car through traffic choked streets on a quest for the best som tum in Bangkok.
Food is, more often that not, the key ingredient of my best trips. I like to travel in a way that allows me to share and explore other cultures, and have found that eating local food--preferably with local people-- is a sure way to break the ice.
One thing I've discovered along the way is that most big cities have a "signature" food. It's usually something simple and homely, inexpensive yet utterly satisfying, and almost always you can eat it in on or near the street. In Shanghai, itis the little handmade dumplings called xiao lan bao, that steam in wicker baskets everywhere. Tokyo has the onigiri, the ball of rice molded into a triangle, then wrapped in crisp norimaki seaweed.Denizens of Madrid stand at busy counters and nosh little sandwiches of the delicious Spanish jamon serrano.
There's another thing I've discovered about these urban signature foods--you don't really "know" a city until you've staked your position in the eternal argument over where the "best" is to be found, whether it is croissants(Paris), cheesesteak hoagies (Philadelphia), roti (Port of Spain,Trinidad) or falafel (Tel Aviv).
I know these contentious discussions well. My adopted city is Hong Kong, where we engage in a constant battle that I call the "Won Ton Wars." That is, in which of the city's tens of thousands of noodle joints can you get the mostperfect, most delicious, most "traditional" bowl of won ton mihn, theclassic Hong Kong noodle soup with hand-wrapped shrimp and pork dumplings?
The won ton wars rage on the websites devoted to Hong Kong food connoisseurship, like openrice.com, and the China forums of chowhound.com. They also simmer, more quietly, in the prejudices and particular habits of my Hong Kong Cantonese friends. David, for instance, shuns the venerated Wellington Street institution calledMak's Noodles, even though its soup broth is a dense, complex wonder of shrimp and pork flavors, its won tons are tightly wrapped and perfectly bite-sized, and the kitchen uses as garnish the more expensive white chives instead of the cheaper green ones. "The bowl is too small forthe price," he sniffs. "You finish and you're still hungry."
David,and our friend Leung, prefer a little storefront on the edge of WanChai, near the Bowrington Market, called "Freedom Noodles." It does not appear on any of the connoisseur websites, and to be sure, its broth is not nearly as exquisite as the fine wine of Mak's (although its wontons, each one containing a whole shrimp, are little bundles of treasure). But in the universe of signature cuisine, "Freedom Noodles"has an important edge with my friends--there's an emotional connection.David is a schoolteacher, and the noodle shop is in the building directly beneath a teacher's union headquarters where he has spent much time over the last years. He's been a "regular" at Freedom for tenyears. When he comes in, they don't even have to take his order, and inthe won ton wars, familiarity counts at least as much as white chives.
I'm not a native born Hong Konger, but I've lived there long enough to form my own noodle soup opinions, which I'll admit, have emotional as well as culinary bases. My favorite won ton minh is served in Wing Wah, a modest storefront shop on busy Hennessey Street in Wan Chai.
Icould say that Wing Wah won my allegiance because of its noodles, which is partly true. This is one of the few noodle joints left in Hong Kong that makes its wheat noodles on the premises, pulling them out on a bamboo-pole in the old-school method. But the real reason I became a Wing Wah partisan has to do with the way I was introduced to the place.One night, shortly after I moved to Hong Kong, I went out to a pub with two interesting local characters, a writer and a politician. After we'd been chatting and drinking beer for a few hours, the writer realized it was past midnight. "Let's eat," she said.
Hong Kongers love to"sik siu yeh", to eat a late night snack. After midnight, almost any of Hong Kong's most famous snacks--curry fish balls, grilled cuttlefish on sticks, stinky tofu--can be found in stalls or storefronts if you know where to go. Sharing siu yeh with your buddies is a local tradition, a rite of passage.
And my first siu yeh was won ton minh at Wing Wah. If I had to judge the place like a restaurant critic, its broth would fall short of Mak's. But for me Wing Wah's soup will always be deliciously connected with that wonderful Hong Kong ritual of late night snacking, of friends, and shared good times--and of my initiation into the life of a city not my own.
New York is my native city. We New Yorkers are no different from the Cantonese who turn up their noses at a bowl of too-salty won ton noodles. We cherish, savor and argue over our local "signature"foods--the cheesecake, the knish, the hot dog. But the "local" dish that we hold most dear is a beloved import from Italy: pizza.
In New York, we prefer to eat our pizza standing up, by the slice (which always seems to cost exactly as much as a subway fare). We even have a special way to eat it. When I'm at my neighborhood pizza joint in Brooklyn (it's called "Pizzatown") I always buy a "regular" slice. When it comes out from the big steel oven, I take it, and fold the triangle in half, upwards, so I can take the first bite without losing any of the cheese topping (or burning my mouth).
Lately, New York's pizza has gone all gourmet and trendy. One of the famous old handmade pizza stands, Di Fara's, has even raised the price of a single slice to$5. New pizza restaurants are springing up everywhere. These places boast wood-fired ovens instead of the usual gas-fired ones. They use artesanal and sometimes organic ingredients. And instead of costing the same as a subway fare, the pizza in these new New York joints have aprice that's closer to a cab ride.
The best of these new artesanal pizzas can be sampled at Franny's, a popular place in Brooklyn with lines outside that are almost as long as the selections on its fine wine list. The crust is super thin, a bit blackened at the edges, redolent of woodsmoke. Fresh buffalo mozzarella and just-snipped basil leaves adorn this crusty canvas. You wouldn't dare fold this pizza--it's made for a knife and fork. I lift a bite to my mouth:everything about it, from the tang of the tomato sauce to the crunch of the crust, is impeccable.
And yet, I hear the echo of my Bangkok friend Tip's voice in my ears: "It is okay, but just....not right."
A city's signature food is more than the sum of its parts. The "best" wontons, or steamed dumplings, aren't just the products of a great chef or a perfect recipe. They are little bites of local culture, morsels of emotion. I eat pizza and remember how I shared slices with old boyfriends; in Hong Kong, my friends do the same thing, only with noodles.
And in Bangkok, on a hot humid night, Tip's boyfriend drove until we reached a narrow busy street called Rangnam Road, and asmall restaurant with an open facade called, in Thai, "Isaan Rotdee",which means "Northeast Taste". As he parked, I could already hear the familiar thunk! thunk! of the mortar and pestle. Tip placed her order,instructing the som tum maker exactly how much dried shrimp, pepper and peanuts she wanted in the papaya mix. She grabbed handfuls of longbeans and Thai basil as side accompaniments.
We ate the som tum out of plastic bags in the car. Tip showed me how to press the sticky rice into small balls, to soak up the juices.
"This is right," said Tip, smiling. "Tastes just like when I lived on the farm in Isaan."
Thesom tum was, indeed, tasty. And what made it "right" wasn't just the ingredients or the preparation. It was the Bangkok night, the moment of sharing with friends, the experience.
Someday, I hope I will have the chance to teach my friend Tip to fold a New York slice of pizza.
Signature Food: in Bangkok, Hong Kong and New York
Won Ton Soup in Hong Kong
Wing Wah Noodle Shop 89 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong, China. Tel: +8522527 7476
Freedom Noodles G/F, 15 Canal Road West, Causeway Bay
Mak's Noodles
Som Tum in Bangkok
Tida Esarn Restaurant
1/2-5 Rangnam Road, Rajthevee, 0 2247 2234
Isaan Rotdee
3/5 Rangnam Road, Rajthevee, 0 2246 4579
Senses Restaurant
999 Gaysorn Plaza, 1st Floor
1 Ploenchit Road
Pizza in New York
Franny's 295 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn (718) 230-0221
V&M Pizzatown, 85 5th Ave, Brooklyn (718) 789-4040
DiFara's
1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn (718) 258-1367
Unfortunate Bedspreads and Other Travel Delights
We've just entered our "Worst of Travel" nominations in Doug Lansky's The Titanic Awards.
Including: World's Worst Hotel Bedspread
(From my book, Cheap Hotels )
Including: World's Worst Hotel Bedspread
The Meandering Real Traveller
And best of all, you will never, ever find yourself far from delicious food.
Last month I bought a round trip ticket from Hong Kong to Bangkok for about $200. I wasn't sure where I'd go from there, but there were a lot of options and I packed for every possibility. I brought some salwar kameez outfits, in case I ended up in India (there's an Air India Express flight from BKK to Calcutta that costs around $200 r/t). I brought assorted light cotton blouses and sarongs for Thailand's islands. I dug in my drawer and found some Thai bhat, Malaysian ringgit and Indonesian rupiah from previous trips, and stuck them in my wallet, just in case. (The ringgit is the official currency of the meandering traveler..check out the design...)
And, as always, I brought a flashlight, a stack of good books, a package of detergent, and some plastic twine. Because, as you will read in a forthcoming Real Travel column, it isn't a real trip, unless I am doing my laundry.
stay tuned....more to come.
Global Spam (and Skippy, too)
a jar of genuine American Skippy peanut butter sells for $58.60 (about $8) in Hong Kong!
A couple of years ago, a fellow American expat told me about a little-known basement-level supermarket here in Hong Kong called Gateway, that sells nothing but brand-name American supermarket staples, and junk food, to homesick expats.
I tucked that information away in case I ever woke up in Hong Kong with a craving for Cocoa Puffs or Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese. But it hasn't happened. In fact, I spend an unhealthy amount of time wandering the aisles of Hong Kong's giant gourmet emporium, CitySuper, where you can find amazing foodstuffs from all over Europe and Asia.
Talk about choices! It sometimes takes me more than an hour to work my way past the jars of Taiwanese garlic and chili flavored dipping sauces for hot pot feasts, the eight different kinds of Japanese soba noodles, each made from a different grain, the fully stocked sake section. Who needs Joy or Dove to wash your dishes when you can choose between Hong Kong's own Axion, Japan's LiOn, and Britain's Waitrose?
Me, I've become a huge fan of the Hokkaido milk that CitySuper imports from Japan's northernmost island--the milk is said to be sweeter because of the climate and the Japanese cows that "grow in Nature at ease."
In my January Real Travel column, I wrote about how visiting supermarkets in a foreign place is great way to get a quick immersion into local culture. Many of you wrote in to agree--and to share your stories about the unusual gifts and inexpensive treasures you were able to pick up in foreign aisles.
Given the amazing variety of super supermarket stuff available in Hong Kong, I couldn't imagine at first what would draw customers to Gateway, a badly lit basement--sort of a mini Sam's Club-- filled with corrugated boxes of Pringles, Kool-aid and jumbo-sized boxes of Tide.
I scouted around to see who was shopping. Three customers were in Gateway when I was there, an Indian couple and a Chinese housewife. The checkout staff and the manager were all Chinese.
It suddenly occurred to me that the all-American supermarket staples offered by Gateway might be as thrilling as a Taiwanese garlic chili sauce to someone who hadn't grown up in a Land o' Lakes and Birds Eye frozen vegetables. Thousands of miles overseas, my nation's supermarket staples are exotic transmitters of a "sense of place" far away from their familiar surroundings.
And maybe more than that. I secretly hope that the Indian customers are adding their crumbled Pringles into their Channa Chat snacks, Filipina cooks are dicing up SPAM to toss into their pancit, and that Hong Kong housewives have discovered that Skippy makes the most perfectly smooth peanut sauce for Sichuan cold noodles.
In The Tunnels
The other day, on a beautiful morning in Hong Kong, I decided to go and have a walk and a late breakfast in Kowloon City, an old neighborhood of low-rise buildings across the harbor from where I live. As I mentioned in my Real Travel column in this month's National Geographic Traveler, I'm big on walking as a way to really get to know a place.
Kowloon City is well worth exploring, for it has a fascinating history. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was the site of a lawless, walled state-less enclave within the British Colony, where gangsters ruled, and criminals took hiding. (You can read more about the old Kowloon Walled City in Martin Booth's wonderful childhood memoir, Gweilo.) The Walled City was torn down in 1993, but the surrounding area still has lots of terrific old Art Deco architecture, a thriving Thai immigrant community, and lots of the great little Hong Kong lunch counters we call cha chaan tengs.
The other reason why Kowloon City has such a wonderful sense of place is that it happens to be located in the flight path of Hong Kong's old Kai Tak airport. Huge planes used to swoop low and terrifyingly over its rooftops (check out this great video) on their way to a Kai Tak landing. For safety reasons, the government banned the construction of tall buildings in the area. And so, Kowloon City remained relatively untouched by the intensive urban development that has changed Hong Kong's landscape so dramatically in the last fifteen years.
Since Kai Tak airport closed in 1999, the developers have been circling, and high-rises are going up--along with new highways and overpasses that create a more modern kind of wall around Kowloon City. When I got off at the nearest bus stop and started walking towards the center of the neighborhood, the first landscape I encountered had zero sense of place--was I in Sofia, Bulgaria, Seoul or London?
My Saturday morning slog through this grim pedestrian walkway came to mind today when I read this letter from a reader responding to something I wrote in my Real Travel column. I'd mentioned how a friend and I had found it impossible to escape on foot from her new Hong Kong hotel, which had been built isolated from the nearby neighborhood, surrounded by ramps and highways. My reader took issue:
Hong Kong is one of the most walkable cities in the world! Downtown or Central has miles of overhead walkways that connect all major government, office and shopping centers. [...] The walkways pass directly into and through shopping areas, also even the post-office and many major hotels. On Kowloon there are literally miles of underground walkways....He's right--Hong Kong is a lot more accessible to walkers than many cities. Overhead pedestrian bridges and underground subways make it possible to cross busy Hong Kong highways on foot, which is admittedly a lot more than you'll find in big American car culture cities like Los Angeles. The network of raised catwalks and connections between Hong Kong's downtown shopping malls and offices is a unique urban landscape, a real Vertical City.
Yet, as I make my way around Hong Kong on foot, I often find my mood turns frustrated and irritible. Yes, I can get across the six lane highway, but the bridge that allows me to do so requires me to take a senseless three block detour. On a sunny, beautiful day, I must abandon the comfort of huge banyan trees to plunge into a dark, tunnel. The walkways bear the mark of the planner's drafting pencil, included as an afterthought to segregate pedestrians from the all-powerful and potent highway drivers. Fences and gates make sure I won't be wandering off from the "approved" path.
Part of the pleasure of foot travel is that it is spontaneous. When I travel, I walk with the expectation I will discover something I wasn't looking for. I walk with the secret hope that I will get lost.
What makes a city a great walking city? Accessibility is only half the equation. The parts of Hong Kong that I love to walk around have the life and chaos of a streetscape that developed organically from the ground up--the bustle of people on foot, tending to their storefront businesses, hauling things in their pushcarts.
In streets like these, with a little imagination, a traveler can wander back into another time.
But in a pedestrian subway, I know I'm not going to encounter any epiphanies, or any surprises (at least not the pleasant kind!). They are just a means to an end, put there as an afterthought to the freeways.
Fortunately, in Kowloon City as elsewhere in Hong Kong, there's almost always light (or, even better, a cha chaan teng) at the end of these tunnels!
