Lyn Fuchs's Blog, page 14

Twisted Vagabondage Tale From The Philippines III

After the solitary and starlit night previously related, some guests arrived at Bantayan Island beach resort. There were those cockfight enthusiast Norwegians, a Swiss couple working in the area, plus a German businessman with a cement company. He had spent many years in Colombia and said it was not as dangerous as people assume, strangely adding, “Of course, you have to hire private bodyguards.”

There was also a Harvard student and a Let’s Go editor, who was wary of international terrorism an...

Twisted Vagabondage Tale From The Philippines II

In our last episode, we wondered aloud why cockfighting abounds in this remote part of The Philippines. As a supplier of millions of chicken eggs, Bantayan Island (also called Egg Island) offers byways punctuated by ubiquitous wooden coops and the best breakfasts in Southeast Asia. We're not just talking eggs and bacon, but the national dish of chicken adobo, which to my untutored eye resembles cannibalism on sticky rice. There are over 5 million roosters and hens on Bantayan, despite over 15...

Twisted Vagabondage Tale From The Philippines I

The roosters swaggered around like Mick and Keith, with dangerously sharp spurs attached to their legs. While these apocalyptic poultry sussed each other out with alpha-male malice, the excitement began to build. My two new Norwegian backpacker friends snapped photos and placed a sizeable bet, to the tune of your average Filipino office worker’s annual salary, on the seemingly more aggressive bird.

Without placing a bet, I also rooted for Mick.

The bare-chested Filipino casador (bookie), circ...

Travel Lit & Animal Racism

Today, I sit on my Mexican ranch with a warm sun overhead and a fresh breeze rustling the cornfields all around. My black labrador Jack rolls and yawns luxuriously. I'm reading a Macmillan lit collection called simply Travel Stories while fading in and out of a bliss coma. Sometimes, it's nice to sample classic journeys without committing to entire books.

This compilation joins Graham Greene in Mexico, Eric Newby in India, Ewan McGregor in Mongolia, Michael Palin in Tibet, Bill Bryson in Norwa...

Twisted Vagabondage Tale From Paris

Back when I lived in Paris, one of the comically incongruous things I saw was a most pathetic Pere Noel with a guelle de bois (face of wood = hangover), peeing in the snow with a painful grin, on the legendary Boulevard St. Germain (namedropped ad infinitum in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast). Verily, Father Christmas in France takes some getting used to.
Pere Noel is neither plump nor merry. Yes, he sort of resembles jolly Saint Nick, but he isn’t that fat bastard with a foot-long beard we’...

Librarians Have Nice Racks

It isn't just the library books that are well-stacked.Librarians have nice racks. Yet, these nice bookracks are getting even nicer, since many now stock Fresh Wind & Strange Fire, thanks to a recent review in the illustrious Library Journal. It seems librarians dig me. After years of being shushed by hot-but-sexually-repressed librarians for lounging in the reference room, holding a magazine upside down, and asking cute girls what they're reading, I'm finally catching a break from th...

New Life In A New Year

Two enormous pyramids jut from the sun-baked land like mother earth wearing my grandmother's conical bra. An eagle shrieks overhead. By the time of the Aztec empire, this ancient city was already a deserted enigma with empty streets so precisely laid-out that even fierce Mexica warriors found it downright spooky. Thus, Teoteohuacan was dubbed "birthplace of the gods."

The divine sun actually rises at this site, when viewed from the Aztec capital that became Mexico City, plus who could've left...

Sexiest Elf of Christmas Evangeline Lilly

The new Hobbit film is a fun and eye-dazzling expansion of the classic book. Plus, Evangeline Lilly makes it truly worthy of the name Fantasy Lit. Tolkien geeks who think Lilly shouldn't have been inserted into the storyline should be thrust back into their mothers' basements. (Eight or ten frames of Evangeline should be inserted into every film ever made and eight or ten inches of me should be thrust.... No good can come from completing that sentance.) Lilly is Canada's best export and proba...

Wandering Mystic Meditation From Senegal

Two years ago, I became a Peace Corps trainee, which now feels like a billion years ago. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and searching for... something. It sounds cliche and it is, but the only thing I knew for sure I wanted to do was run away and experience the world - good or bad, pretty or ugly, rich or poor. Today, I'm less bright-eyed, my tail is a bit singed, and my rose-colored fantasy glasses are shattered beyond repair. Still, I couldn't be happier.

I'm happy because I have faced r...

Mexico Mike Nelson Overlooks My Infidelity

When I first drove across the border from Anglo-America to Latino-America, three items comforted me like adult teddy bears: my passport, the gun in a metal box under my seat (Yes, weapons can get you arrested, but on those rare occasions when smoozing and negotiating accomplish nothing, I prefer to be judged by one than carried by six. If you have no clue of what I mean, God bless you my child.), and "Mexico" Mike Nelson's bestseller Live Better South of the Border.

The Wall Street J...