Rolf Potts's Blog, page 125

The Mexican city of Puebla has more than one way to satisfy a sweet tooth. The next time your travels take you through the colonial town, don't think the treats end with the chocolate in mole poblano.

The best place to get an eyeful of delicious options is to head straight to Puebla's Calle de los Dulces, or "Sweets Street," which is full of shops selling a variety of treats, two of which (like mole poblano) were created by the nuns of the Convent of Santa Clara.

Camotes de Santa Clara are sweet potato-based candies that come flavored with various fruits (or vanilla) and are hand rolled like cigars and often wrapped in wax paper. Buy them individually, or get a box of mixed flavors to try the entire spectrum. Sweet potato candy may sound weird to those who haven't tried it, but it's got an earthy taste that's akin to the baked heart of the agave plant—which is another thing you should taste in Mexico.

Tortitas de Santa Clara are round, shortbread-like cookies that are topped with a sugar frosting glaze. Just try eating only one. As much as I liked the taste of camote, the tortitas kept me coming back to the sweet shops.

If you decide to bring some Puebla treats home for friends or family, remember to get enough for yourself as well, or those gifts may not survive the trip.

I walk ahead of myself in perpetual expectation of miracles.

The above quote from Anais Nin I have found to have great personal application and significance for myself. Reading it again recently it struck me how well the quote suited the life of a vagabonder, or anyone taking a journey. Travel involves taking a leap of faith that something exceptional will be waiting for us to experience or lay our eyes on. Yielding to these possibilities opens the door to the many unique experiences and circumstances along the road. With each trip we take, we become more and more willing to let these experiences happen to us and shape us. We come to expect nothing short of the amazing while traveling, even if the amazing comes not in some grand event but in a simple personal revelation.

Robert Fitzsimmons

http://www.adventurerob.com

Age: 25

Hometown: Portsmouth, UK

Quote: "Don't try to visit everything, just pick what you like/fancy at the time and ignore the rest."



How did you find out about Vagabonding, and how did you find it useful before and during the trip? The book on Amazon.co.uk

How long were you on the road? Still am after 2 years

Where all did you go? South East Asia, followed by Australia and now Japan

What was your job or source of travel funding for this journey? Various jobs plus online earnings from website.

Did you work or volunteer on the road? Worked in Australia and Japan

Of all the places you visited, which was your favorite? Thailand because it was cheap.

Was there a place that was your least favorite, or most disappointing, or most challenging? Australia because it was expensive

Did any of your pre-trip worries or concerns come true?  Did you run into any problems or obstacles that you hadn't anticipated? I never worried about it. The only problem was when I did not have a job in Australia and the cost of living there

Which travel gear proved most useful?  Least useful?

Most useful – Spork, Laptop, mobile phone

Least useful: black clothing, wind up radio, sleeping bag

What are the rewards of the vagabonding lifestyle? Independence, relatively stress free and enjoyable

What are the challenges and sacrifices of the vagabonding lifestyle? Doesn't really develop much for the future career wise.

What lessons did you learn on the road? Everyone in the world is actually quite similar and has similar ambitions and goals under the surface – to provide for family and be happy.

How did your personal definition of "vagabonding" develop over the course of the trip? It changed frequently as I saw more people doing the same thing. Backpacking and staying in hostels is nothing special. Going on more adventurous trips and avoiding the usual route is much more of an experience worth talking about.

If there was one thing you could have told yourself before the trip, what would it be? Don't try to visit everything, just pick what you like/fancy at the time and ignore the rest.

Any advice or tips for someone hoping to embark on a similar adventure? Save money and make a vague plan, avoid giving yourself time limits.

When and where do you think you'll take your next long-term journey? Israel.

Twitter: AdventureRob
Website: www.adventurerob.com

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Lahore, Pakistan

 

Anyone who travels will commit a cultural error from time to time. But generally speaking, if you want to err in such a way that a national uproar will ensue, it helps to be famous. Take the case of Princess Diana's 1991 visit to Lahore, Pakistan.

Lahore, the Pakistani cultural capital, is home to several national landmarks, including the Badshahi Mosque (above). Completed in 1674 by the Moghul ruler Aurangzeb, the mosque is capable of holding up to 100,000 people. In centuries past it was said to have been the largest mosque in the world; it is still among the largest today.

When Princess Diana walked up the steps with her entourage, removing her shoes as she passed through the imposing Alamagiri Gate, she had a problem that, quite literally, brings us to her knees: her skirt stopped just shy of these said body parts. The outfit, reasonable enough in many other parts of the world, wasn't at all here.

In contrast to the Oscars, where Monday morning fashion quarterbacks employ television and other media to tear apart people whose clothes they didn't like, in Pakistan the judicial system was used (by conservative religious leaders) to bring criminal charges against the mosque's imam. Not only did he allow her inside; he even presented a copy of the Koran to the Short-skirted Highness. The case was eventually dismissed, but the memory of Princess Diana's fashion faux pas would stay on in the minds of many — including, one supposes, the British royal family. When Prince Charles and his wife Camilla visited this same mosque in 2001, Camilla wore an outfit meant to hide even her ankles.

During my own visit to the mosque in 2004, I never saw a female knee (nor, I guess, did I see other travelers). But in other times and places I've seen travelers wearing clothes that said anything but "I respect that I'm a guest in your culture." I remember a young Westerner at a cafe in Hue, Vietnam, for instance, braless and donning a revealing white shirt, whose dress had put an awkward electricity in the air. The Vietnamese people serving her, though courteous, were visibly uneasy. The young woman was traveling with an aspect of her culture or personal style that the workers in this family-run cafe clearly wished she would have left behind.

While Princess Diana's slip-up isn't by any means one of her prominent legacies, it does provide us with a high profile lesson in the importance of dress in cross-cultural settings, especially in places where modesty is highly regarded. Much more could be said about this topic — please share your thoughts in the comment section.

"The question you need to ask travel writers isn't 'where did you go to,' but 'where did you start from.' Observations of abroad often tell you more about the observer and his culture than the people and place he's commenting on."

–A.A. Gill, AA Gill is Away (2003)

Flor Alba Briceño demonstrates her basket-making technique

The best way to get an in-depth look at a culture is to travel to where it is. No guidebook, TV show or movie can replace the experience of being immersed in the daily life of a place. But when it's not possible to go everywhere you'd like, books, films and festivals certainly help.

If you'll be in Washington, D.C., in late June and early July (official dates are: June 30 to July 4 and July 7 to 11, 2011), get a taste of Colombian culture at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Since 1967, the international exposition has featured contemporary living cultural traditions. Admission is free, and it's all laid out on the National Mall for all to swing by and dive in.

I was recently in Colombia, and visited with people who will be attending the festival to share how the country's environment and culture are intertwined. From artisans to architects to actors—they taught me more about Colombia in a short period of time than I would have discovered on my own. And the experience makes me want to go to the festival to see how others react to the wealth of culture that is already drawing me back to visit the country again.

Aside from the focus on Colombia, this year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival also celebrates the people and culture of Rhythm and Blues, and the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. For festival attendance tips, check out the official website and make your plans.

As we prepare for travel it is easy to get caught up in all of the new and beautiful things we will see and experience. It can be enticing to daydream about new foods, the sound of foreign languages, navigating new cities or means of transportation, or gazing at profound shrines or sights around the world. Other times, the nature of some trips have us looking forward to simpler things, like getting away from our typical schedules for a time, or just lazing on a beach with little other objective for a while. A lot of the time, the dreamy anticipation of these things can keep us going through a boring or grueling schedule until we can finally hit the road.

But what about the things we anticipate coming back to after a stint on the road? What are the things that you look forward to having or doing again that are a part of your off the road life. Sometimes it can be large things, like a lover, or a rewarding career or hobby. Maybe it is the small things, like having clean water at the twist of the tap, or your large decadent bed to sleep in every night. For you, what are the best parts of coming home?

"Just about every place worth visiting makes a point of promoting a preserved form of its supposedly pure and undiluted cultural past to tourists. Often it involves aboriginal groups: singing and drumming by the Cowichan people on Vancouver Island, for instance, or Maori dancing in body paint and traditional clothes in New Zealand. But you can also go to resorts in the Caribbean where they all dance around with fruit on their head even though you know darn well that no one carries fruit on their head in the city. Or you can visit the Jewish quarter in Krakow to drink kosher vodka and listen to Klezmer music played by university students from Toronto. The accusation against this sort of cultural preservationism is that it comes at the cost of turning a living tradition into a museum piece. As a Pacific Island dancer replied when asked about his culture: "Culture? That's what we do for tourists.""

–Andrew Potter, "Cultural immersion or imitation?" New Zealand Herald, May 4, 2010

Every month we bring you the latest RTW ticket deals from BootsnAll – and we routinely call them "RTW tickets." If you're paying attention, however, you'll notice that they almost always don't technically circle the globe. What gives?

Instead of being traditional RTW tickets, the tickets we sell on BootsnAll are a series of one-way tickets. This makes them much more flexible (there are no directional requirements or limits on the number of stops), not to mention that you can use them for any multi-stop trip that isn't considered a RTW trip.

You have a few options when it comes to RTW tickets, from the more traditional version offered by airlines or airline alliances to the more flexible ones like BootsnAll offers, and it's best to check them out to see which option works best for your trip. This RTW ticket comparison can help you sort the characteristics of each.

Here are the new special deals on multi-stop airline tickets available through BootsnAll – these deals are good through June 30, 2011:

Canada to Asia Special: Vancouver – Beijing – Delhi – OVERLAND – Bombay / Mumbai – London – Rome – OVERLAND – Paris – Vancouver, from CAD$1599 plus taxes

Budget Destinations RTW: New York – Los Angeles – Auckland – Sydney – OVERLAND – Perth – Bali (Denpasar) – Singapore – Saigon / Ho Chi Minh – OVERLAND – Hanoi – Bangkok – OVERLAND – Phuket – Johannesburg – OVERLAND – Cape Town – Buenos Aires – OVERLAND – Rio de Janeiro – Lima – San Jose – New York, from US$3499 plus taxes

"Company Rule" Tour – London to India: Los Angeles – London – Delhi – Calcutta / Kolkata – Bangkok – Los Angeles, from US$1299 plus taxes

If none of these sample itineraries is what you're looking for in your round the world trip, then start planning the trip that suits you with our RTW trip planner And don't forget to sign up for BootsnAll's RTW newsletter, delivering RTW trip planning advice and resources via email every single month.

Vintage toy cash register. Photo: landofnodstudios / Flickr

As vagabonders, we love the feeling of "getting into the culture." Where you finally understand how the people think, how their society works.

Inc magazine had a fantastic article titled A Constant Feeling of Crisis, about the struggles of entrepreneurs in Argentina. I once talked to Antoni, the New Zealand owner of a gourmet burger restaurant in Taiwan.  I suggested there were different levels of knowing a place:

1) Visiting

2) Studying

3) Working

From my experience of working in a foreign country, you get to know it pretty well.  Especially if you're with a domestic firm, and your boss and co-workers are all locals.  Antoni suggested one further level of immersion: doing business in a country.  He said there's no better way to find out how things work–and often don't work–as trying to keep your enterprise alive.  You're forced to deal with government bureaucrats, local employees, sometimes dodgy infrastructure, the whole lot.

I can see how you would look at a place with clearer eyes if you were more invested (bad pun, sorry).  When you have a stake in a country for your livelihood, you notice a lot of things you'd miss if you were just passing through. A charming dirt path could seem different if you had to rely on that path for transportation and delivery of raw materials.  Delightful traditional houses might not have the electricity and high-speed Internet access you would need to get work done.

From that article, it's painfully clear how entrepreneurs are vulnerable to outside forces beyond their control. A swing in currency rates can wipe out the value of bank accounts. A new government regulation could put assets at risk of seizure via nationalization.

Have any of you started a business abroad?  What were some of the challenges and joys you experienced?  Please share your stories in the comments.