Matador Network's Blog, page 2133

Heaven in the Korean DMZ?

View image | gettyimages.com

TAKE a good look at the picture above. Would you like to live there? How about here?

View image | gettyimages.com

Seems nice enough, right? A nice, slow-paced agrarian way of life. Some tractors and some hay. Sturdy houses.

Careful, that’s exactly what North Korea wants you to think.

Both these pictures are of a place called Kijong-dong, a village inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas that is meant to lure South Koreans across the border.

Why someone would choose to live in North Korea over South Korea is beyond me, but I suppose it could happen. It’s not like it’s all roses in the South, but it’s clearly pretty good.

Anyway. The fact remains that North Korea believes it can be done and is putting a tremendous amount of energy and resources into a place it calls “Peace Village,” but is widely known as “Propaganda Village.”

Indeed, the whole place is thought to be a decoy, a stage set devoid of human life that is orchestrated to look nice and prosperous.

The official line of the North Korean government is that Peace Village is a farm collective home to 200 residents, but observers in the South say:

The buildings are actually concrete shells with no glass in their windows, electric lights operate on an automatic timer and the only people in sight are maintenance workers who sweep the streets to give the impression of activity.

We’re onto you, North Korea. We’re onto you.

By: Emily Lodish, GlobalPost

This article is syndicated from GlobalPost./

10 signs you were born to travel

ARE YOU THE TYPE of person who wants to get a tattoo of the word “wanderlust” on your wrist? Do you spend most of your time at home daydreaming about the next time you’ll leave? Do you want to make your work revolve around your vacations, and not the other way around? You may, in fact, be born to travel.

Here are some of the signs you’re a natural traveler.

All images were created by the author using Canva. Other images are attributed.

7 things that happen in Cape Town

Photo: Robert Schrader

1. The Mother City will show you her love and her wrath.

A soft warm breeze may hug you on the boulders of Bakoven beach, but a strong South Easter (called the “Cape Doctor” for cleaning the city) can break an open window in your City Bowl apartment. The summer sun will kiss your forehead when it sets over the Atlantic Ocean, but winter darkness and incessant rain may leave you longing to fly north.

Cape Town is a “fisherman’s village” compared to larger harbour cities — you can take a scenic walk or a single bus ride to most places of interest — but you’ll learn to be vigilant to street crime when you do.

2. It’s possible to feel like an insider and outsider at the same time.

When your friend from out of town asks you if it’s difficult to make friends in Cape Town, you’ll tell them: “Ja, the Cape Townians can be quite cliquey — most of my friends are from out of town.”

But when your local friend complains about all these unfamiliar, summer holiday license plates, you’ll commiserate: “Damn tourists!”

3. You’ll need to learn how to drive all over again.

The first challenge of driving in Cape Town will be to keep your eyes on the road. You can turn any bend and be confronted by another beautiful view of Table Mountain. Its imposing presence will leave you in awe and steal your attention away from more pressing issues.

You’ll learn to navigate with your gut or your nose or something else, because only the CBD has proper signage for street names. Surrounding neighbourhoods have those clever twists and turns that add to the mystery and steep inclines. You’ll have to hone your hill-start skills (or insurance claims skills) quickly.

4. And drive without road rage.

You’ll need to stop swearing at local motorists and acquire the virtue of patience, because “the fast lane” is one of the most elusive concepts in this city.

5. Kaapstad is a slaap-stad.

Cape Town is a sleeping town. After a while, you’ll start to accept that no one’s at an office after 3 pm on Friday, and it may serve you better to have a glass of local red.

You’ll get into the habit of buying booze before 5 pm on a Saturday, as liquor-store owners snooze on Sundays due to a prohibition on alcohol sales. You may lie in too if you spent a late night on Long Street — a place that buzzes on a Saturday, but come Sunday morning, looks like an abandoned Western film set — only waking up in time for brunch.

6. Nothing beats having the outdoors on your doorstep.

Surfer friend: “Golden hour surf after work?”

You: “Stoked.”

Jogger friend: “Beach run before work?”

You: “For sure.”

Climber friend: “Let’s climb Table Mountain!”

You: “Psyched!”

7. It’s possible for everyday hair to look as good as in a shampoo commercial.

Despite the periodic unforgiving weather, people in Cape Town manage to showcase the most fabulous hair. This doesn’t seem significant? It will once you experience a superb ‘do bend the space-time continuum as the person sporting it struts by in a seemingly slow-flowing-motion.

After a while, you will give up trying to get them to reveal their haircare secrets and accept the obvious fact that they belong to some cult.

Knowing when NOT to travel

Photo: Claudia Salazar

On a recent drive home from the Cleveland airport, my friend described the foundation of happiness as legs on a stool. Happiness, she said, is held up by different “legs:” health, social support, financial stability, satisfaction with work. If you kick out one of the legs, the stool can still stand. But when two or three go…

“Your life shits the bed,” my friend said flatly, her gaze fixed on a towering flame shooting out of a smokestack on Cleveland’s skyline.

By some odd twist of fate, I’ve wound up in the same medical school as this friend, except three years behind her and just when she’s no longer living here. I still haven’t hit the point of feeling “at home” but my friend’s short visit helped me unpack why I’m still feeling so unsettled.

I feel like the legs on my stool are mostly a pile of splinters lately. I don’t know anyone here. I just broke up with my boyfriend of three years. I’m living on an ever-growing mountain of loans. I’m subsisting off ramen noodles and haven’t exercised in months. School is the only leg that’s hanging in there, and even that feels a little weak.

I know I need to get a grip. This is Cleveland, not Somalia. The legs I’m talking about aren’t life-and-death. They’re about comfort, familiarity, and living a meaningful life.

The more I think of it, the more I come to this conclusion: In the long run, there’s something good about getting those legs kicked out. Often. When you have to reassess and rebuild, your legs don’t get mossy. And you realize that you can live without them for a while.

Traveling kicks the legs out by placing you in a totally new environment, where you need to build new relationships, figure out new ways to take care of yourself, and periodically reassess your own values in the light of new perspectives. You learn to constantly improvise, and to make sharp distinctions between yourself and your surroundings. When you’ve spent all your life in the same place, how can you know how much of you is you and how much is your environment? But when you throw yourself into new territory and test your response to new challenges, the excess is chipped away until only the core remains.

This wanderlust is mostly rooted in change-lust. And realizing that this need to chip away at myself, to improve, and to clarify what’s really “me” is what lies at the core of what drives me, I am able to reframe what I’m doing here in Cleveland.

I know that Cleveland isn’t that bad. I know that the only way to find happiness here is to get out in this new environment and figure out why it isn’t as bad as I think it is. The real point of travel — experiencing new ways of life, appreciating different perspectives, building a strong identity rooted in open-mindedness — isn’t served by only traveling to “exotic” or obvious places.

I’ve spent the past year feeling an increasing pull to keep all of my legs in place. For the first time in my adult life, I began to want a stable home and a family of my own. What I’d learned during my adventures had started to inform the direction I wanted my life to take. To uproot again, somewhat unwillingly this time, was a new and unsettling experience.

No amount of traveling ameliorates the sense of waiting, of yearning, of something just ahead. That anticipation is in me, regardless of where I am. I felt it in Boston seven years ago, suddenly overwhelmed with tears while driving downtown with my then-boyfriend, seeing the long stretch of how predictable my life was becoming. I felt it a year later in New York, at a party on a friend’s roof deck in Brooklyn in March, trying to decide whether to move to Germany for grad school. It’s the reason I didn’t apply to any schools in New York; I loved it too much and didn’t want to get complacent by putting down roots. I felt it on trains across Europe, in in-between places where I was able to pause and let my movement catch up with me, to simultaneously feel the fear of freezing up and thrill of rushing along. This need for something new always drove me to push forward.

This wanderlust is mostly rooted in change-lust. And realizing that this need to chip away at myself, to improve, and to clarify what’s really “me” is what lies at the core of what drives me, I am able to reframe what I’m doing here in Cleveland.

I didn’t always want to be a doctor. When I traveled to Ethiopia in 2010, it was as a field biologist. I went to Ethiopia to observe baboon social behavior, but I wound up learning a lot more about human infrastructure. Access to basic needs — food, clean water, education, and medical care — was very limited, and as a result, several people I worked with and grew close to became very ill.

Their experience with a crumbling stool was lightyears away from my own.

My coworker’s two-year-old nieces both contracted malaria, and he had to sheepishly ask me for $20 to buy them medication. The fact that my job was to collect monkey shit for genetic analysis — while two-year-olds were dying of preventable, cheaply treated diseases — seemed utterly absurd. Our cook’s brother died of a brain tumor because treatment was too expensive. Every day, more debilitating conditions popped up from things that are so easily and cheaply treated in the US.

When I returned to Germany, these stories gnawed away at me for months, ultimately prompting me to quit my PhD, move back in with my parents in a Boston suburb, and spend the next three years taking premedical classes in preparation for medical school. So now I’m here in Cleveland, battling conflicting feelings of boredom, motivation, and uncertainty, trying to hash out and stay close to what really matters to me. Just trying to keep my legs rooted without losing sight of why I came here.

For some people, travel isn’t the end-goal; it’s a method by which you learn your place in the world. Somewhat paradoxically, having your legs kicked out through travel can lead to periods of both physical stillness and mental and emotional growth. Knowing that there’s a reason for the debt, and the breakup, and the ramen noodle diet — that these challenges are a necessary part of the path to becoming a doctor — help me feel a little more at peace with being stuck in Cleveland.

Guide to Nevada's craft distilleries

Las Vegas Distillery – Henderson, NV

Photo courtesy of TravelNevada

Photo courtesy of TravelNevada

After watching millions of Vegas bro trips, bachelorette parties, and ballin’ high-rollers push mass-market hard liquor through their livers by the bottle, Las Vegas residents have gotten thirsty for something better.

All about that hootch, Vegas was right there midwifing the birth of the craft distillery scene in Nevada. When George Racz founded Las Vegas Distillery, he bumped up against Nevada’s Prohibition-era three-tier alcohol distribution laws, which made it nearly impossible for him to serve samples or sell his products out of his distillery. A huge supporter of all things local, Racz teamed up with a few other Nevada distillers to co-draft the bill that paved the way for up-and-coming craft distilleries in the state. So next time you’re leaving a Nevada distillery with a couple bottles of craft booze under your arm and a shot in your belly, you know who to thank.

Las Vegas Distillery, in the spirit of friendship and cooperation, values keeping business within their Nevada neighborhood and sources most of their grain from Winnemucca Farms in the north of the state. Check them out for a free tour (from George himself) or to smell, see, and catch a little buzz off their range of Vegas-born gin, vodka, whiskey, rum, something crazy (or genius) called “Rumsky,” and the very first Nevada bourbon ever created.

Seven Troughs Distilling Co. – Sparks, NV

Photo courtesy of TravelNevada

Photo courtesy of TravelNevada

Seven Troughs is all about keeping it old school; their process relies on the same methods George Washington used to operate 1799’s most popular distillery. The brick-stove and pot-still setup that gives rise to their Recession Proof Moonshine produces super small batches of just 12 gallons at a time — all of which is manually bottled in mason jars and labeled by hand.

This kind of historical accuracy is probably not the quickest way to make a fortune, but owner Tom Adams’ main concern is producing consistently great-tasting booze infused with Nevada’s Old West spirit of self-reliance. Their grains are from Winnemucca Farms, their malts are sourced locally, and even the spent grain stays in-state — most of it’s donated to hog farmers in Yerington, while the gnarliest methanol-rich portions get sent over to a neighbor who repurposes it into additives for tractor and hot rod fuel.

In addition to literally hand-crafting their inaugural white lightning, Seven Troughs has also recently added their Reno Rodeo vodka, Black Rock Rum, and Seven Troughs Bourbon to the roster. Pay them a visit in Sparks for a lesson in distilling history, a sample of their spirits, and to personalize a barrel of Nevada Bourbon that you can age under your own supervision.

The Depot Craft Brewery Distillery – Reno, NV

Photo: The Depot Craft Brewery Distillery

Photo: The Depot Craft Brewery Distillery

If there’s anything that makes train travel even more awesome, it’s booze. The Depot Craft Brewery Distillery opened in Reno’s historic Nevada-California-Oregon Railway headquarters building just this year (well, technically their debut was on New Year’s Eve).

Paying homage to their Nevada roots, everything that goes into The Depot’s whiskey is sourced from neighboring fields and farms to be milled, cooked, fermented, and distilled on-site. Then, out on the floor of their restaurant, you can sample the final product multiple ways in some of the most elaborate and creative cocktails you’ll find in this part of town — or in any town, really.

And because it’s Reno, they’ve brought some of the microbrew scene into the mix. The Depot is the first combined brewery and distillery in the state, which means happy drinking for everyone in your party. Yes, even you, grandma.

Frey Ranch Estate Distillery – Fallon, NV

Photo courtesy of TravelNevada

Photo: Jeff Dow Photography

Frey Ranch takes drinking local to a whole other level. Every single ingredient used in their spirits is grown and harvested right there on their own 1,200-acre farm, making it Nevada’s only “estate distillery” (and only the second in the country).

The Frey family’s been growing grain in Nevada for 150 years, but until they opened their 4,000-square-foot distillery, their farm wasn’t producing an actual product to showcase their labor. Now you can sit back and sample some Frey Ranch Vodka with the source in full view right outside the distillery windows.

And because Nevadans love helping their neighbors, Frey Ranch provides several other local breweries and distilleries a Nevada-grown grain source. But while you can get your taste of Frey Ranch in bottles distilled elsewhere, there’s just something cool about knowing the second you cross the threshold of their property with a bottle of their vodka in hand, that’s officially the farthest any ingredient in that bottle has ever traveled.

Verdi Local Distillery – Verdi, NV

Photo: Verdi Local Distillery

Photo: Verdi Local Distillery

Verdi Local Distillery, at 774 square feet, just might be the smallest distillery in America, if not the world. (We’re waiting to hear back from the good people at Guinness World Records.) It’s more laboratory than distillery, and taking a tour here is something akin to walking around a friend’s living room and marveling at their ingenious boozy science projects.

Inspired by Fireball whisky, Jeremy and Katey Baumann of Verdi Local set out to create flavored whiskey concoctions — but ones that actually don’t taste like burning hot mouthwash. The end result, their Apple Cinnamon Whiskey, hit the mark so hard with its deliciousness that it’s better known locally as BOJ, or blackout juice. Also in the works are a black licorice whiskey, an experimental hop-filled whiskey, and an orange peel gin.

Yes, good things do come in small packages.

This post is proudly produced in partnership with our friends at TravelNevada.

Signs you learnt to drink in England

Photo: Perfectance

1. You’ve burned your pubic hair after a Flaming Sambuca stunt went wrong.

2. Pissed ONLY means drunk, not angry.

3. Bladdered, blotto, lashed, mullered, pickled, pie-eyed, plastered, sloshed, smashed, sozzled, squiffy, wankered, wasted and wasto are just 14 out of 141 ways to say you’re getting pissed (see above).

4. Add “off me trolley” to that list, as well.

5. A piss-up means a party, not actually weeing to defy gravity.

6. Your first hangover, age nine, was cider-induced and you puked all over your mum.

7. But you threw up then carried on drinking, you trooper. And it was your mum who cracked open another can of Scrumpy for you.

8. Faking your DOB on an NUS card was a rite of passage.

9. And then going down the pub instantly became less fun once you turned 18.

10. With age, you’ve learnt that drink choice is based solely on colours (patriotic red, white/transparent and blue) and numbers (%).

11. You swear by the old adage: “Eating’s cheating.”

12. And view those who don’t consume alcohol with suspicion.

13. “You can hold your drink” is the ultimate compliment you can give or receive.

14. The only temperature for a lager, bitter or ale is “warm”.

15. A beer garden is a sanctuary for summer fun and wholesome frolicks, until some twat gets sunburnt, picks a fight, spills some pints, breaks some glasses then vomits on himself.

16. You have to finish a drink even if it tastes like rat’s piss, but looks like a Cosmopolitan.

17. That’s because price is always an issue, and pride’s always at stake.

18. You can open a beer bottle 23 different ways, including with your bum, your armpit and your wonky English teeth (we have charming smiles, innit).

19. You let your stiff upper lip relax when sipping a tipple; if you didn’t, there would be unnecessary waste.

20. A nightcap is not a head garment.

21. Dutch courage? ENGLISH courage!

22. We always buy a round, then take over a table, much like we used to take over other countries.

23. Darts, pool, and quizzes are legitimate sports.

24. Exercise is paramount. Spend all your cash on booze + no money for a taxi = the walk of shame home.

25. A landlord or landlady is the person you give money to for booze, not rent.

26. You frequent your local so often, your salary gets paid straight into the landlord’s bank account.

27. Bald Faced Stag is the name of your local, not an insult.

28. Your kids are called Carling, Stella and Newkie.

29. Your grandchildren are called chardonnay, Pinot grigio and merlot.

30. Your dog’s called Beefer.

31. That’s B for Boozer.

32. Drinking whisky — or indeed any alcohol — from a porcelain teacup is the norm.

33. That’s whisky from Scotland without an ‘e’ — none of that rye bullshit.

34. When you drink Boddingtons, it’s mandatory to wipe your mouth with the back of your hand then say “By ‘eck.”

35. We’re all lords when it comes to getting drunk.

36. Wearing beer goggles is a licence to get off with anything, pulse or otherwise.

37. Wearing a bollard bonnet is the funniest thing in the world, especially after 15 pints of lager.

38. You go out at night without a coat in minus-degree temperatures because queuing up at the cloakroom is a waste of valuable drinking time.

39. Shandy is an acceptable tipple, particularly in summer.

40. So is a lager top.

41. Trampagne is also an acceptable tipple, at any time of the year.

42. It simply isn’t a good night out without an honest, passionate yet slurred declaration of love. And take it seriously: this is as emotional as we English get.

43. It simply isn’t a good night out without balling your eyes out for no apparent reason.

44. Boozy games #1: Minesweeper — locating leftover champagne at weddings.

45. Boozy games #2: Buckaroo — where you place objects on a passed-out drunk and wait for them to buck them off.

46. Boozy games #3: Dance of the Flaming Arseholes is also a fun group activity.

47. The best way to make friends on your first day on a new job is take your colleagues down the pub at lunchtime.

48. The best way to keep friends on your first day on a new job is take your colleagues down the pub after work.

49. You fall asleep cuddling a pint of warm ale.

50. You wake up with an empty pint of warm ale and think you pissed yourself.

51. That’s ‘wee on yourself’ and has nothing to do with parties or getting drunk.

52. Buying a doner kebab — with chips and all the sauces — for the journey home is mandatory.

53. And you know that last night’s doner kebab is a more than an adequate breakfast.

Signs you're culturally from Delhi

Photo: THINKGlobalSchool

1. You refer to everyone (bar your actual family) by the title of close relatives

Including Aunty, Uncle, didi (sister), bhaiya (brother).

2. And you have an ongoing love/hate with relationship with your landlord

(Aka Aunty / Uncle) who in turn refers to you only as beta.

3. You no longer eat “curry”

No, you eat dal makhani, chole bhature, and palak paneer, washed down with chai, not tea.

3. You can (and do) get everything delivered straight to your door

I’m talking alcohol, cigarettes, aspirin, and a single bar of chocolate. Oh, and some ice. And a sponge. And milk.

4. You have a drawer full of ‘visiting cards’ for every sort of service professional you may at some point in your life require

Doctor, carpenter, taxi driver, massage therapist, tailor, electrician, removal man, ironing man, bamboo man; the list goes on.

5. You know you shouldn’t, but you eat roadside food at almost every dhaba
6. And Jugaad has become so much more than just your favourite Hindi word

It’s a philosophy and a solution to almost every problem.

7. You’ve mastered the Indian head wobble

An aqueous head motion with no accurate translation, it’s merely an ambiguous affirmation that you have said something.

8. Weddings are no longer a boring affair

They are an almost week-long matrimonial marathon of wardrobe changes and buffets big enough to feed an army…attended by 1000 of your closest friends and family.

9. You find yourself speaking “Hinglish”

“Have you reached?”

“Actually, I will take some time: ‘office time’ traffic”

“Well I’m glad we didn’t pre-pone!”

“I’m 5 minutes away, only”

“Do one thing, call and cancel”

10. Almost nothing, bar the city’s dodgy wiring, can shock you

Even three generations and the family goat cruising down the NH8 on a scooty.

How to insult like the British

BRITS KNOW HOW TO make fun of each other. And themselves, for that matter. For much of the rest of the world, their insults and slang are impenetrable, though, which is why the internet gave rise to shows like Anglophenia. Host Siobhan Thompson picks a different British topic to cover each week — usually covering language or dialect — and tears it apart. Give the whole series a watch, if you have the time, but if not, check this one out.

Never again will you have to be confused if someone calls you “thick as two planks,” or a “berk.” And you might pick up a few things to use if you ever want to simultaneously insult and confuse a fellow non-Brit.

This is the world's coldest town

Photo: Maarten Takens

SO you live in Maine or Michigan or Canada and you think you have it rough in the winter. That’s cute.

Out in the middle of Russia’s vast Sakha Republic, an area that spans over 1 million square miles, is the world’s coldest city, Yakutsk. It’s built entirely on permafrost and the average winter temperature is -30 F. The cold has been described by visitors as physically crippling, like something grabbed their legs, wrapped around them, and would not let go.

Photo: Reiward

The city, with a surprisingly large population of 270,000, is constantly covered in a heavy fog. The mist from people’s breath, from car exhaust and from factory emissions never dissipates. It just hangs there, day and night.

Photo: Magnús H Björnsson

While the majority of the city’s population are indigenous Yakutian, many ethnic Russians and Ukrainians moved to Yakutsk in Soviet times, lured by high wages for working in the harsh climate. You won’t find the locals cowering inside by their fireplace, either. Yakutsk has a stadium, restaurants, many nightclubs, and concert halls.

So the next time you think your winter is unnecessarily harsh or long, think of the badass inhabitants of Yakutsk and go get on with your life. At least summer comes eventually where you live.

Stop ivory-funded terrorism [vid]

A simple question: When you buy something made of ivory, where does the money go? The answer may surprise you.

After guns, drugs, and humans, ivory smuggling is the world’s fourth-largest illicit trade. Poaching and illegal sales of ivory have grown so widespread — despite international condemnation — that we may see the end of elephants in the wild in our lifetimes. There’s really only one solution — end the demand. Stop buying ivory and spread the word about this trade, or say goodbye to elephants.