Unhygienic travel stories

 

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It’s lucky that most of us do our heavy-duty adventure traveling while we’re young. We’re more resilient, and can take it in stride, more or less, when strange things happen. (And we know that it’ll make a kick-ass story when we get back home.)

 

 

For example: my student assistant Jennifer told me that, in China, you can use a dirty public toilet for free, but you have to pay to use a clean one.

 

 

But that’s nothing.

 

 

How about the time I chased a rat down the hallway in Morocco, until I saw it jump into the toilet and disappear?

 

 

How about the time I was having kamounia at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Tunis, and found weevils cooked in with the couscous? (I just picked them out and put them on the side of the plate. I didn’t complain. I’d just paid twenty-five cents for dinner; I certainly didn’t expect the Waldorf-Astoria.)

 

 

How about those kvass dispensers in the USSR back in 1978? (Kvass is a light beer, very refreshing, and I wish they sold it here. I think they make it by soaking bread in water and fermenting the result.)  It was sold in drink machines, just like soft drinks and coffee in the US, except that everybody used the same glass. (There was a little water-spout you were supposed to use to wash the glass out when you were done.)

 

 

But the best story of all belongs to my friend Mike, back in Morocco, as follows:

 

 

He moved into a simple house in El-Jadida, a beautiful beach town on the Atlantic coast. The house had no toilet; you had to use a privy out in the garden.

 

 

His first night there, he went out in the dark to use the privy. As he sat, he could hear an odd rustling around him. This gave him the creeps, so he finished his business, went in the house for a flashlight, and came back out to see what the noise was.

 

 

It was bugs. The walls and ceiling of the privy were alive with insects, mostly huge flying cockroaches, more than he’d ever seen.

 

 

He shrieked, ran back in the house, grabbed the insect spray (which, in Morocco in 1984, was probably straight DDT), and ran back to the privy to kill the bugs.

 

 

Do you see the flaw in his reasoning?

 

 

He went into the privy and started spraying, and they all started dying. And as they died, they fell, by the dozens and the hundreds, all over him.

 

 

I still twitch whenever I think of that story.

 

 

I dare you to top it.

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Fubar

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I read the most delightful article a while back in a publication called “ChinaWatch,” which seems to be a sort of Chinese Chamber of Commerce thing.  It’s full of cheerful articles about Chinese industry and the Chinese economy, always upbeat, never negative.  I have the latest issue right here, and let’s see, we have articles about the Chinese lavender industry, the local market for jade, a pass between China and Kazakhstan which has become very internationalized, green energy in China, solar energy in China, soccer teams in China –

 

 

But here.  Just wait.

 

 

Here’s an article about a nice young Irishman named Manus McMahon, who set up a Western-style bar in Urumqi, one of the larger cities in the Xinjiang region of western China.  They serve imported beers and pizza, and are (according to the article) very successful, although (inexplicably) the building is being torn down, and Mister McMahon is moving on to Central America to establish another Irish-style pub.  (You think that’s strange?  So do I.)

 

 

Anyway, the Urumqi bar is named “Fubar.”

 

 

“Fu,” in Chinese, denotes fortune and good luck.  “Fu Bar,” get it?

 

 

Well, no.

 

 

Seriously.  Do you know what “fubar” means in Standard English?  (See here if you don’t.)

 

 

So: someone was having a nice little joke when they named the place.

 

 

(Postscript: I mentioned this to one of my student employees, Jennifer, who has studied and worked in China over the past few years.  She looked startled.  “I’ve been to that bar!” she said.  “Not in Urumqi, but in Beijing!”)

 

 

("They had pizza?" I asked numbly?)

 

 

("Yeah," she said.  "Pizza and beer.)

 

 

(Omigod.  It’s a franchise operation.)

 

 

(Oh, kids, how small the world is.)

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Sunday blog: Spring in Xinjiang

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From time to time we need a change of pace.

 

 

 

Here's an Uighur ensemble playing “Spring in Xinjiang.”

 

 

 

I like the tune, and the instruments that look like intergalactic bottle openers, and (most especially) those cunning little hats they’re all wearing.

 

 

 

 

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