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What's in Your Backyard?
Tell dem cats they don't know where I'm at, cuz I be pushin' twenty-fours on the Huffy with some cheeba in my backpack.
On Friday afternoon, I set out on my bike and headed east, climbing a mile or so to a water tank that sits atop a hill. It’s the highest point accessible by bike for a large radius, or at least the highest point with a view—and the view is spectacular. A few miles to the south and west the Philippine Sea laps gently at the coastal mangroves. Several small limestone islands flank the coast. To the south, separated by several miles of ocean, you can see the island of Koror, Palau’s capital, and the bridge that connects it to the big island of Babeldaob (where I live). To the north and east, a dense forest of dark green blankets innumerable hills and valleys. Here and there the forest has been cleared and the hills are covered only with high green grass.
Crossing the bridge
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Leaving the hotel in Gongshan, I look up at an old woman gaping down from her balcony resembling a bobaloop of sorts in her thick pillowed silk turban. I wish her thoughts would penetrate my conscious as I regain my focus to the steps below. Descending into the daily market street the sights are now becoming as common to my eye as my alarm clock. Every cube of business greets its customers with the same raised garage door releasing a few lucrative products out into the street. The filmstrip of stores lining the streets goes something like this…First the common market furnished with yoru choice of double mint gum, cigarettes, Sprite, Pepsi, water, RedBull (god they are an incredible company) or a surprisingly delightful nutrient milk containing Melamine (kidney stones beware). Open air produce markets sprawl from every alleyway flourishing with peeling oranges, surprisingly bland bananas, delicious crunchy apples, dwarfed watermelons (perhaps the size of a healthy watermelon without the help of artificial growth hormones) , and more mysterious fruits of various colors and shapes only found in these nomadic marketplaces…….and of course, SUGAR CANE, my guilty pleasure.
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It seems to me that the fundamental difference between tourists and travelers who aren’t tourists is that tourists stay, or at least try to stay, within their respective comfort zones. Non-tourists, on the other hand, seek out adventure in the form of spontanaeity and uncertainty. Of course, nothing is absolute and there’s a little bit (or a lot) of tourist in all of us, but I’ve noticed that the more you travel outside of your comfort zone, the wider that comfort zone becomes, so that I’ll often see or do things now and take no notice at all—things that just a couple years ago would have been unthinkable.
I moved to California when I was seventeen, and it took me a good three years to work up the courage to try menudo, which is just a Mexican soup made with beef tripe. Menudo, I guess, was my “gateway food,” and from there it was inevitable that I’d move on to harder stuff, like cow tongue, or pickled pig’s feet. When I started leaving the country, however, things started to get really interesting.
Balut, Eating Balut, and Intestines on a Stick. Yum.
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