Matador Network's Blog, page 2138

Tito's yearly mota-run across Oaxaca

Photo: Munir Squires

“Now if anybody asks, if anything happens — which it won’t — you don’t know anything, you hear? You know nothing. You’re just a friend of mine, hitching a ride.”

“Yeah ok. I’m a hitchhiker you picked up.”

“No c’mon now, girl! You’re smarter than that, I know you are. Don’t go telling lies. You’ll need ten more lies to cover it up and one day you’ll forget it all and then you’ll really be in some hot water, you know? OMISSION,” he said, shaking his pointer finger at me while I worried his hand had left the wheel. “O-MISS-SION. Now that’s how it’s done.”

These were some of the first words of wisdom from Tito,* the 74-year-old Louisiana gentleman turned Mexican Papi who was, as he spoke, taking hairpin turns through the Sierra Madres as if he had been born to drive them, which — for all intents and purposes — he had. Tito, born Timothy Beaufort Laurent in a wealthy Louisiana family, had been living part-time in Mexico for nearly 40 years, full-time for the last 12. Twice a year he made the pilgrimage through the barren Oaxacan desert, dotted with mezcal plants and cartoon-inspiring cacti forests, to stock up on marijuana that he purchased from his friend in Mitla. “There’s mota in Tonala, of course,” he said. “But not like they have in Mitla.”

The truth that Tito was encouraging me to tell, if (in the off-chance, he assured me) the authorities stopped us and they found the pound of marijuana he was planning to carry back in his underwear, was that I was a friend of his. The friendship was albeit a very new one. I had only met Tito the week before, through the people for whom I was volunteering on a mango farm in Chiapas. Never one to turn down a road trip in a vintage Westfalia van with a man who had more stories than Hemingway, I had decided to accompany him on the trip.

It was 7am when I hopped into the rattling, unassuming Volkswagon, just as the sun was beginning to stretch her golden legs across the Sierra Madres. The bustle of the early-rising pueblas slipped away behind us into saffron morning light as the van rumbled through the largest windmill farm I’d ever seen. Tito lit a joint as soon as we passed the first military checkpoint, and turned up José José’s crooning. “Now we’re on our way, girl,” Tito shouted over the music, smiling and nodding. “Now we’re really on our way.”

The Sierra Madres look like a cross of rural Southern California and South Dakota’s Badlands, but with bizarre patches of Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. Tito recounted stories of driving through Oaxaca in a red Corvette in 1960, diving with the first Mexican scuba diver in Cancun, flying politicians to Acapulco in his private plane just weeks before the first luxury hotel opened on the beach, and how lawless Tonala had been in the 1970s. I soaked in his stories and the colors of the Mexican desert; sweet winter air whipped my hair and chapped my cheeks.

“Girl, this is where Mother Earth just really ground it all up, you see that? Ground down, spit up, crumpled that soil. This is her warm-up to the mountains,” Tito pointed out the window, again making me nervous he didn’t have both hands on the wheel. “See that creek-bed there? Now just wait ‘til we get to the mezcal fields. I can guarantee you haven’t seen anything like it.” He was right.

We stopped at a roadside stand where a woman prepared the best damn quesadilla I’d ever had (being from New York, I had assumed I “knew” Mexican food — how wrong I was). Across the valley, red and purple flowers lilted idly in the dry breeze. Hens clucked in a hand-made cage behind me as old women served horchata to truck drivers making the daily haul through the hills. Somewhere in the distance floated the sticky sweet romance of traditional Mexican ballads. There was something simple and unassuming about Mexico that I hadn’t felt in South America, or in any of my travels in the East — something pure and colorful and clean.

When we got to Mitla — a quaint little mountain town with typically colorful adobe construction, plastic flags that look like rainbow paper snowflakes spanning cobblestone streets, tuk-tuks lazily cruising the strip for passengers — Tito made his phone call and confirmed plans to meet his man at the pool hall later that evening. Like most Mexican pueblas, the streets of Mitla are lined with concrete walls, behind which are multi-house compounds where several generations of one family live. The modest cement walls betray what’s behind them: these compounds are usually immaculate, decorated with rich vegetation, framed in flawless and often intricately carved wood. The pool hall was the entranceway to one of these compounds, and we laughed with Eddie in the late afternoon sun under a hibiscus tree, sampling his product and sipping Coronas. After shooting a couple games of pool, Tito’s mission was accomplished.

The next day we got back into the old Westfalia and took a day trip to the Hierve el Agua, a natural rock formation outside of Mitla that resembles a frozen waterfall, calcified over thousands of years by drops of mineral-rich water streaming off a cliff. At the top of the cliff are several manmade pools the color of polished turquoise, buffered by delicate salt formations akin to those in Death Valley, pockmarking the mountaintop like the surface of the moon. In all my travels I’d only come across such a bizarre landscape a handful of times.

The area is extremely remote; when we arrived in the early morning we were the only visitors. Tour buses from Oaxaca showed up midday, and gringos in wide-brimmed hats sat out the heat in one of the handful of taco stands set up around the entranceway. Eddie’s wife had packed us a lunch at Tito’s behest, and we wandered past the food stalls to an abandoned group of cabins, a project Tito claimed was the result of government graft. We ate fried pork sandwiches slathered in pickled jalapenos and avocado, toasting cold white wine under the shade of a straw palapa.

“This is the life, girl, I’m telling you,” Tito said, stretching out his feet and surveying the purple tints of the valley hillsides.

That night we sampled mezcal at Alejandro’s shop, where his family had been distilling for nearly 100 years. Alejandro took us out back to show us the antique distillery that still functioned; how he’d take the giant seed of the mezcal plant and how to extract its juice. The warmth of the liquor and the stress of the sun mixed in my tired bones and rocked me immediately to sleep that night, despite the wire boning poking through my lumpy mattress.

We weren’t asked to stop once at any of the many military checkpoints on the ride back to Tonala. “Ahh, jefe! Buenos tardes, permiso por favor?” Tito said through the window, barely slowing down, either oblivious to or uncaring of the guards snickering at his poor accent. The risk of the business and the instruction of what to say “if when” never came into play.

“You can have all the brains in the world but if you don’t have experience, you have nothing,” Tito told me, as he pulled into the mango farm to drop me off. “And this, girl, let me tell you, THIS was an experience.”

I couldn’t agree more.

*Names have been changed for the safety of characters involved. The author’s name is her real one.

37 signs you're a millennial in NYC

Photo: Jorge Quinteros

1. You never got to try a cronut. You were too poor and too hungover to wait in line.

2. Your ass looks fantastic after walking up and down five flights of stairs to your apartment.

3. You don’t actually “know” anyone who was born and raised in NYC. It just feels like after ten years, everyone is automatically a native New Yorker.

4. You know where the best $1 pizza slice places are.

5. Your sleeping habits are all kinds of cray. It’s just so hard to sleep when you can order pancakes from the diner at 10pm, or catch a burlesque show in a Williamsburg basement at 3am.

6. You think Bushwick is the best part of Brooklyn. It’s not, but it’s cheap, and it’s probably the first place you moved when you came to New York, so of course it seems awesome.

7. You took an unpaid internship. Mainly because you didn’t think paid internships for Birchbox or NBCUniversal existed.

8. You struggled with your first job. We all started out as someone else’s bitch, making $10 an hour to feel worthless and cry into our $3 Happy Hour vodka sodas.

9. You’ve had to explain how to “Tweet” something to your boss at PwC. Yes, getting paid to run Morgan Stanley’s Facebook page is an actual job.

10. You scour the “Missed Connections” section on Craigslist, hoping to find a romantic depiction of you riding the subway.

11. You share an apartment with at least two other people. Roommates are fun, it’s like you’re still in college but there’s no homework and you all get your own room.

12. You have attended and / or helped plan a few weddings for your LGBT friends. And you thought it was completely ridiculous that Gay Marriage didn’t exist in NYC prior to 2011.

13. You have friends who grew successful businesses from a Kickstarter campaign, having a celebrity patron, or creating a sexting app.

14. You buy everything from your local bodega. Toilet paper, fruit, alcohol…it’s all there. Whole Foods might have gluten-free donuts, but it doesn’t have a one-eyed cat standing guard over the Poland Spring bottles.

15. You helped Liza Dye pay for her medical expenses after she got hit by a subway car. That girl is so fucking funny and she needs to come back to NYC STAT!

16. You made the mistake of getting into an empty subway car. And you’ll never do it again.

17. You don’t have dishes because ordering from Seamless is easy and more delicious than whatever you could possibly cook.

18. Your apartment looks something like this:

19. Or like this:

20. You’ve traveled to Randall’s Island for the Electric Zoo, Governor’s Ball, or a Dave Matthews Band concert.

21. You pay extra to have someone else do your laundry. It’s just easier to pay $9 per pound until you can live in an apartment building that has a laundry room in the basement.

22. You have read and sympathize with every NYC-centered article on Thought Catalog. You were there all through Ryan O’Connell’s romanticized NYC, and when he got burned out and ditched this place.

23. You have no aspirations to own property anytime soon. Why commute to the city, when you could already BE in the city?

24. You danced on a rooftop somewhere after Obama was re-elected in 2012.

25. Your name is on every mailing list for all of the places in town offering one-hour open bar lotteries or free drinks on your birthday.

26. You or someone you know participated in Occupy Wall Street.

27. You justify trips to the Crocodile Lounge because there is “nothing to eat” in your fridge. Because free pizza tastes better than pizza you have to pay for.

28. You get overwhelmed by Tinder. You have to slide through 73 people, and that’s just the people who live within a two-block radius of your apartment.

29. Your Sundays consist of Bottomless Brunching on the Lower East Side.

30. You have perfected the art of never paying full price for anything. SoHo sample sales and secret consignment shops keep you looking fabulous.

31. You relate more to the characters on Broad City than the characters in Girls.

32. You know someone who has slept with James Franco.

And they probably went to NYU.

33. A lot of your friends work in Food and Bev.

And sometimes, they do improv.

34. You only use cabs when you’re drunk.

Or are super lazy.

35. You don’t think you’re part of the gentrification problem.

36. Places like Queens and The Bronx freak you out. Unless you live there, in which case it’s really no big deal.

37. You constantly complain about how broke you are…as you sip on a $14 cocktail at PDT.

Visit Arizona for Spring Training

1. You’ll experience the game as it used to be.

Photo: Austin Rutledge

Catching a game at Spring Training is like getting a peek into the past, a glimpse of an honest relationship between the game and its fans that no longer exists during the regular season. Corporate sponsors and big stadiums have made Major League Baseball less intimate than ever from the months of April to October, but March still belongs to the fans who fell in love the first time they heard the crack of the bat on a warm, summer afternoon.

At Spring Training, “good” seats are not only great seats, they’re affordable. The small stadiums allow you to hear the whipping of the bat through the air from the on-deck circle and the crunching of cleats in the dirt. You can see the expressions on the players’ faces and hear the calls of the umpires — all experiences that have gone by the wayside with the creation of the mega-stadiums used during the regular season.

2. You get to ditch winter for better weather.

Tempe Diablo Stadium. Photo: Dave Nakayama

While most of the country is still coated in winter’s chill, Phoenix enjoys an average high temperature of 74.5 degrees in March. Enough said…

3. You can visit all the cities that make up Phoenix.

Photo: Jerry Ferguson

Sprawling across 60 miles of desert from tip to tip, Phoenix is a city made up of cities. Glendale, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, and even “downtown Phoenix” stand on their own two feet as individuals that together make up the big picture.

With stadiums located throughout these municipalities, baseball fans get the chance to explore as they catch games. You’ll check out Tempe, home to Arizona State and loved for its college-town atmosphere and social scene along Mill Avenue. And then there’s Scottsdale, spring home of the World Champion San Francisco Giants and some of the city’s best shops and restaurants.

4. You’ll be on the doorstep of Arizona’s world-class outdoor adventures.

Photo: Daniel Weinand

Despite all the attention the Grand Canyon receives, Arizona remains one of the most overlooked states when it comes to adventure travel. From the red-rock “energy vortex” of Sedona and southern Arizona’s “sky-island” mountain chains, to the beauty of the Sonoran Desert and the water-based adventures of Lake Havasu, there’s plenty to explore after the games are over, all within striking distance of Phoenix.

Check out more in 8 incredible natural areas in Arizona you’ve probably never heard of.

5. You can get the jump on your golf game.

Photo: Phil Sexton

Golf season might be over for the ballplayers, but with over a dozen golf courses within city limits, yours is just beginning. The TPC Scottsdale has bragging rights as the home of the — the largest-attended golf tournament in the world — while Troon North Golf Club’s lush greens and fairways beautifully contrast with the surrounding Sonoran Desert. Just watch out for cacti when you inevitably land in the rough.

If you don’t have a ton of time between baseball games, check out Bellair Golf Club in Glendale, known for its short par-3 and par-4 holes.

6. There are oases in the desert.

The view from Paradise Valley’s Sanctuary Camelback Mountain Resort & Spa

The purpose of Spring Training is to prepare for the long road ahead. That, too, should be your mission. A wide range of resorts and spas can provide respite after a long day in the sun — try Wigwam Resort & Country Club, Talking Stick Resort, or the Phoenix Marriott Tempe at the Buttes, all within easy striking distance of Spring Training stadiums. Or relive the old days of Hollywood and check into Scottsdale’s Hotel Valley Ho. Opened in 1956, it was originally a hideaway for LA’s rich and famous.

7. Phoenix redefines the concept of urban hiking.

Photo: Andrew A

“Urban hiking” is often used to describe the act of turning a city into an outdoor playground. Take San Francisco, for example, where the hilly streets act as trails that lead to various lookouts. Phoenix, on the other hand, brings the true outdoors right into town. South Mountain, the largest municipal park in the country, offers 51 miles of trails for hiking and biking. Even closer are the trails of the iconic Camelback Mountain, visible throughout the valley and a popular workout spot for locals.

8. The craft breweries here are amazing.

Photo: Four Peaks Brewery

You’ll want to drink a lot of water, for sure, but what goes better with baseball than beer? Four Peaks Brewery, named after the nearby Four Peaks Mountain, is the city’s most heralded operation. Cut through a hot day with the award-winning flagship brew, the Kilt Lifter (Scottish ale with caramel flavors), or the easy-drinking Sunbru (Kolsch style ale). Locations in both Scottsdale and Tempe make this a great spot for pre- and post-game socializing. Bring it on.

This post is proudly produced in partnership with the Arizona Office of Tourism. Visit their site to start planning your Arizona spring training adventure today.

American habits I lost in Germany

Photo: Jonas K

1. Idle chit chat.

During my first days of work in Germany, I made sure to be super friendly to all of my coworkers. Whenever anyone passed me in the hallway, I would grin maniacally, wave, and yelp, “Hi! How’s your day going?” The responses ranged from bemused looks to a total lack of reply. Confused but not discouraged, I continued trying to work my charms on my new friends.

One morning, I passed Roger, the department’s statistician. I laser-beamed him with my eyes and yelled out my usual “How are you?!” He paused for a moment, staring at me bewilderedly and scratching his fluffy, mad-professor hairdo.

“Do you really want to know?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Uh, yes,” I stammered, unsure of what to make of this.

Twenty minutes later, he was still going strong on a breathless diatribe about how the students’ inferior grasp of basic stats and unbearably messy datasets were contributing to his ever-increasing workload.

Eventually sensing my discomfort, Roger paused and gave me a blank look. “Well you asked,” he muttered, rolling his eyes before continuing down the hall to his office.

2. Thin skin.

Germans don’t like small talk, and they don’t like bullshit. Idle comments and feel-good messages have no place here. German flirting is particularly brutal; “Your big nose looks good on your face” is about the best compliment you can expect to get in Germany.

3. Fear of nudity.

Especially in the former East, Freikörperkultur, or free body culture, is an important part of German identity. Decades of oppression led to a particular appreciation for the experience of freedom and nudity without a direct relationship to sexuality.

This can sometimes be difficult for Americans to buy, particularly when your coworkers casually invite you to the office’s nude sauna or suggest a naked swim in a nearby lake. Adjusting to this culture without getting weird took some grit, finesse, and more than a few awkward encounters.

4. Expectation of safety above all.

The pervasive fear of litigation that infuses most public activities in the United States is virtually nonexistent in Germany. Germans take a much more casual, reasonable approach to public safety. On a hike in Sächsische Schweiz, a beautiful, mountainous region of Saxony, I once commented on the lack of guardrails and warning signs surrounding the steepest cliffs. “Only an idiot would fail to realize that a steep cliff is dangerous,” my German co-worker stated matter-of-factly.

A few months later, after a particularly brutal snowstorm, I remember seeing an older gentleman faceplant on the ice while waiting for the tram. He stood up, casually wiped the trickle of blood from his forehead, and resumed his position on the platform without so much as grimacing.

I love this attitude.

Every year, a local artist would put on a crazy party called “Bimbotown” in one of the warehouses in the Spinnereistrasse neighborhood of Leipzig. The party was crawling with machines that this artist made — giant metallic worms slithering across the ceiling, bar stools that would eject their occupants at the push of a button from across the warehouse, couches that caved in and dumped you into a secret room, beds that could be driven around the party and through the walls. It was an incredible event that would have never been allowed to happen in the US because of all the safety violations — someone could hit their head, fall off a bed, get whacked in the eye. And it was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to.

5. Assumption of others’ guilt.

Unlike Americans, Germans are often more concerned with protecting others than they are with shielding themselves from the mistakes of other people.

When I was filling out rental paperwork for my first apartment in Germany, one of the secretaries in at my office asked me if I’d purchased insurance yet.

“Oh no,” I said, “I don’t really own anything worth insuring, to be honest.”

“It’s not for you,” she replied, puzzled. “It’s to protect other people, in case you damage their property in some way.”

6. Frenetic pace / work above all.

Moving to Germany meant an inexorable slowing of the pace of my life. Particularly in Saxony, there are strict rules about when stores can remain open. Most businesses are closed in the evenings and all day on Sunday. Additionally, Germans benefit from frequent holidays and typically at least a month of paid vacation.

This gave me some anxiety at first, particularly when I forgot to leave work early enough to get groceries or didn’t have time to go to the bank. Over time, however, I learned to both plan my days and to enjoy the break from chores rather than obsessing over lost time. After a few months, I was occasionally leaving work at 3pm to go watch the football game with friends instead of trying to cram in a few more hours of work. I still got as much done as usual, but I felt much happier and less burned out.

7. Rule breaking.

In Boston, jaywalking is a way of life. The streets are so crazy and the lights so uncoordinated that you’ll die of old age waiting for the crosswalk. When I moved to Germany, I took this attitude with me but quickly found that it was not a universally acceptable behavior. Even if it’s late in the evening and no cars are in sight, crossing the street without the right of way will get you some heat from native Germans, with “Think of the children!” being the top rebuke hurled your way.

Same deal with “forgetting” to pay your tram fare — if you get caught, the icy stares heaped upon you by an entire car full of people will be enough to freeze your blood. The German system relies on people contributing to the common good even when no one is watching, and so freeloaders and rule-breakers are heavily sanctioned in German culture.

8. Buying on credit.

Credit cards are also virtually nonexistent in Germany. This presented a problem for me when my American bank account decided to shut down after my first “suspicious” attempt to withdraw money in Leipzig, but once I got that squared away, being required to plan my expenditures and live on a cash-only system helped me keep my finances under control.

9. Assumptions about Germans.

A few months into my time in Leipzig, I started really feeling like I had the hang of things. I knew my way around, I was pretty well set-up at work and home, and most importantly, I felt like I had the German attitude figured out.

One morning, I was biking to a conference and felt like it was unusually difficult to keep the bike moving. “Jesus, I’m out of shape,” I thought, heaving my shaking legs around the wheels as I tottered slowly down the street.

While I was waiting at a red light, a man on the sidewalk flagged me down. “Ich spreche kein Deutsch,” I hissed, tired and irritated.

“Your tire is flat,” he said in perfect, clipped English, gesturing at my pitiful heap of a bike.

“I know that,” I lied, aggravated by this typical German statement-of-the-obvious. I tensed my foot on the pedal, ready to hurl myself forward as soon as the light turned.

The man paused and looked at me for a moment, unsure of whether to continue. “It’s just that, I have a pump,” he finally stammered, waving his hand almost apologetically at his backpack. “I could pump your tire for you.”

Surreal hyperlapse of Seoul

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IN THIS INCREDIBLE HYPERLAPSE, Scott Herder expertly captures Seoul’s frenetic energy. Shot from sunrise to sunset and way into the night, Herder says, “I wanted to share all the places that I would take you to see if you had one day in Seoul with me.”

From jutting mountains to slinky skyscrapers, traditional hanoks to the crowded streets of Myeongdong, if you’ve ever been to Seoul, get ready for a huge and happy blast of nostalgia.

The most impressive part? Inspired by timelapse master Rob Whitworth, Herder had just 12 weeks to learn timelapse and film the capital before leaving South Korea for good. And the results are awesome.

What to do in Vietnam in your 20s

Photo: Khánh Hmoong

1. Take a backroads motorbike trip.

When a tourist or expat tells you they took a motorbike trip up or down Vietnam, 99% of the time they’re talking about taking Highway 1 (sometimes referred to as AH1) along the coast. It’s the only major thruway connecting all the large cities, so it makes sense. But taking AH1 also means you’ll just be packaged like a sardine, staring at the glorious view you have of a semi’s backend the entire time.

There are backroads that meander all the way along the length of Vietnam too, and they’re way more precarious, deserted, challenging, and worthwhile. Trade that generic experience for ancient bridges made out of fallen logs, “toll booths” manned by seven-person villages, and muddy, dusty orange footpaths masquerading as “roads” on your atlas that even give your 1967 Honda a run for its money.

2. Then proceed to get lost…

Because you will. The back roads of Vietnam often wind serenely and severely along cliff faces and miles of farmed, hilly terraces, splitting into forks Rand McNally never thought would come in handy. You won’t realize you’re lost for a few hours, and by then it’ll be nightfall. But that’s okay — you’ll have just spent the afternoon driving through jungle, gazing upon untouched multi-million dollar views Rupert Murdoch would kill to own, and only passing the occasional monk in burnt orange robes.

3. …And sleep on a stranger’s floor.

Though getting lost was definitely worth it, you’ll eventually have to face nightfall and the fact that you’re in the middle of nowhere. You’ll also have to end up settling for the next “town” you come to and stopping every single person that’s out at night for directions. When you ask them, “Khách sạn ở đâu?” (Where is a hotel?), they’ll inevitably tell you there isn’t one anywhere nearby, but you’re more than welcome to sleep on their floor. Don’t be surprised when they spend minutes perfecting your pile of blankets, plastering you with hot tea, or when they wake you up in the morning with the scent of fresh hủ tiếu. If you leave in the morning without getting their phone number (unprompted, of course) and giving them your autograph, something went wrong.

4. Get drunk on a plastic stool surrounded by cockroaches.

If you’ve done basic research on Vietnam or even just scrolled through images on Google, you’re probably familiar with the scene: hoards of tourists, expats, and locals on red plastic, playset-like stools lining the edge of the road, throwing back beer after beer after beer. These are called bia hơis, and the beer served is cold, weak, and super cheap (just cents on the dollar).

You can get more recognizable beer, too, if you’d like. But whether you’re drinking Saigon Đỏ, ba-ba-ba, or the local water, consider yourself hazed. Let the young girls come around to ice your glass as the sweat drips from your forehead, and take bets on the cockroaches running around on your feet. Hint: always bet on the fattest one. Bonus points if you don’t jump as it wiggles across your toes.

And remember to cheer with at least one group of inebriated locals, “Một, hai, ba, yo!”

5. Talk to a Vietnam War veteran.

One of the first questions you’ll inevitably be asked when you’re in Vietnam is what nationality you are. If your answer is American, sometimes things will get a little weird. If a man with one eye smiles at your response, points at his non-eye, mock fires a gun with his hands, and says, “America!” know that you won’t be the first one this has happened to. It’ll be weird until he tops it off with “America, number one!” and then it’ll get weirder.

Take a moment to think about what this generation went through, what they saw, and the progress they’ve made since then. As you wander the hills, the tunnels, and the beaches, you may begin understanding why your parents freaked out when you said you were going here. But you know better now, and you know a different country.

6. Live like fucking royalty.

Sure, some of us 20-somethings are mega-millionaire entrepreneurs that sip champagne at weekly galas and dine with bigwigs in high rises on feasts of caviar and Lobster Thermidore, but the rest of us aren’t. If you hold down a job, do your own dishes, and buy your clothes from stores, know that a better world exists out there and it’s called Vietnam. Stay long enough to acquire an address, hire a maid for $50-100 a month, and get all your clothes made by a local tailor.

7. Go into the Mekong for a reality check.

In the big cities, you’re going to be bombarded with new money and capitalism, capitalism, capitalism. Vietnam is growing like a 12-year-old boy out of his Nikes, at least in urban areas. To get the whole picture, be sure to visit the outskirts of small delta towns like Sóc Trăng for a glimpse into the true hardships of the past.

You’ll be regaled with stories that will remind you of your grandfather’s — remember how he joked about walking nine miles in two feet of snow to school every day? Things like that are true in the Delta, but this time it’s nine miles in two feet of water. Some places have only had the privilege of electricity for months now, and modern technology is only just starting to rear its ugly-but-useful head. You’ll be in awe of those who grew up there, and it just may make you look at your bottle of water and air-conditioned bus a little differently.

8. Wear a Vietnamese “kiss” like a badge of honor.

Nope, that’s not a Vietnamese guy or girl’s tongue in your mouth. That’s the name for the resulting mark on your shin when you lean up against the scalding hot exhaust pipe of a motorbike. And with enough time, inevitably you’ll get one. It’ll be round and bluish-purple, and you’ll carry it around for years. All the cool kids do it. When your future children point to your leg and ask “What’s that funny mark on your leg?,” you’ll get to tell them, “Well, that one time back in ‘Nam…”

9. Get diarrhea.

This is just step one of the hazing process. You’ll be fine in a day or so.

10. Test the bounds of your appetite.

Vietnam cuisine is a mouthwatering fusion of French and Asian foods, but it’s also a great opportunity to knock back plenty of Fear Factor-esque foods from your to-eat list. Duck egg fetuses, fresh fish having the life fried out of them in front of your eyes, crickets, and dog meat are just four of the culinary options at your feet. How deep of an experience do you want?

11. Experience it now before it goes away.

A decade or so ago the country was overrun with bicycles and mom-and-pop phở stands, but that way of life is slowly getting replaced by cars and KFC. Starbucks and McDonald’s are now on the scene too, and bia hơis are losing out to showy beer clubs that come complete with bathrooms that double as vomitoriums. While vestiges of the culture will always remain and smaller towns are clinging tight, the experience you have pictured in your head is slowly becoming the stuff of a generation ago. If this country is on your bucket list, book those tickets as soon as you can. You’ll be glad you did.

You've been too long in the Outback

Photo: moviebuff5

1. You’re no longer surprised to find wildlife in your washing machine.

From green tree frogs to cane toads and even snakes — they can find their way into a washing machine and set up home until you open the lid. Finding a frog is surprising, but nothing compares to finding a snake hanging out in there. Lesson learned — don’t make the assumption that a snake could never get into a washing machine, despite what long-time locals tell you.

2. You believe a swim is as good as a shower.

When your day involves pumpkin picking in 40-degree heat, nothing beats a swim in the pool at the end of the day to cool off — which then turns into beers by the pool, dinner at the local pub, by which time a proper shower has been long forgotten.

3. You automatically check the toilet for frogs.

In addition to various wildlife found in the washing machine, green tree frogs will often make themselves at home in the toilet bowl. I had friends from the city visit me a year after I moved to the Outback. I’ll never forget the look of fear on their faces when I told them to make sure they checked before sitting down. They went to the toilet in pairs for their entire visit.

4.You don’t expect cold water to actually be cold.

When I first moved here, I’d turn the cold tap on and wait. And wait. The water is never cold up here. It’s closer to lukewarm, which isn’t surprising considering the temperature can still hover around 30 degrees Celsius at midnight.

5. You reach for your jacket when the weather drops below 25.

Moving from Canada back to Australia I thought I’d never feel cold again. When I then got a job in the Outback, naturally I didn’t bring anything but summer clothes. Stupid mistake. Temperature is relative — when it’s been 40 degrees for 2 weeks, 25 feels positively freezing.

6. You don’t flinch at a $20 cocktail.

The Outback is by definition the most remote part of the country, meaning freight is expensive. Which in turn makes everything you buy, really expensive. On a recent trip to Sydney, I went out with a friend for drinks. When the cocktail list came around, the prices varied from $20 to $30. While my friend complained about how expensive Sydney is, I felt right at home.

7. You only know two seasons: wet and dry.

The seasons don’t vary much here. It’s either hot, dry, and dusty or hot, wet, and humid. Then there is the torturous buildup which precedes the wet — when temperatures hover in the high 30s to low 40s, the humidity sits somewhere between 80 and 90%, and the promise of a thunderstorm to cool everything down is months away.

8. You constantly smell like a combination of sweat, bug spray, and sunscreen.

Wearing perfume is futile. Once you’ve been outside for more than 10 minutes your fragrance has been diluted by sweat. Never mind that it’s competing with the sunscreen you slathered on before stepping outside, and the bug spray that’s necessary unless you want to be feasted on by march flies, mosquitoes, and sandflies.

9. You’ve become used to not having too many options.

When there are only two supermarkets, two pubs, and five restaurants around, you’re not exactly spoilt for choice. Deciding where to do your grocery shopping? Coles or Tuckerbox. Deciding where to go for a drink on Friday night? The Hotel or The Tavern. When you find yourself in a city being overwhelmed with joy at the sight of McDonald’s, it could be a sign it’s time to move on.

8 songs to help with the transitions in your life [playlist]

Photo: ARDE mag

I’ve struggled with transition since I was five-years old, when I had to leave the protective nest of home to travel one mile to kindergarten. To me, the journey was huge.

TRANSITIONS by Matador Network by Matador on Grooveshark

In the past few months, my travels and leaps have been larger. This fall, I drove across the country, from a sublet in Oakland to my boyfriend’s house in West Philly.

The destination? A life of stability and permanence — 9-5 job, live-in partnership, and all of it just two and a half hours from my home town. I left the beach and artisan comfort food for a steady paycheck, seasons and, of course, a much stronger relationship.

But still, change isn’t easy. It’s hard to square things when literally every aspect of my life is different now than it was six months ago, so I’ve made a special playlist to help myself land. It’s not universal by any means. These are songs that are personally important. My playlists are like little autobiographies. My hope is that this list can lend you some resilience as you come down from travel, relationship fluctuations, or those stubborn unchangeable facts of life.

CHVRCHES — “Recover”

I think I subconsciously fell in love with this band because their electro-pop reminded me so much of desert sojourns I’ve taken to Southern California. To my surprise, they hail from Scotland. Proves how much I like to project.

Transitions are sticky; you’ll need a jam like this to jumpstart things a bit.

Fakuta — “Guerra con las Cosas”

This Chilean pop princess is destroying it in the Southern Cone. Every time I turn around she’s doing a new radio performance, releasing a much-hyped music video or winning a prize for amazing songwriting. The song title refers to feeling at war with everything, a common sentiment during those messy first months of a major change.

Beyoncé — “7/11″

This song is medicine. Thought up in some bruja’s dream in New Orleans, passed down in the prayers and candles Bey’s grandmothers lit, filtered through Houston heat, and delivered neatly to an iPod near you. Delivered in the vernacular of Beyoncé flow, written in the spirit of pure play. I can’t even tell you how often this track has ended a lover’s quarrel or just made me feel a bit lighter.

A Tribe Called Red — “Burn Your Village to the Ground”

I was so stoked when A Tribe Called Red released this track around Thanksgiving. This native DJ group mixes the painful with the ironic — like making music about the historical traumas of indigenous people while sporting Redskins jerseys.

In this cut, they sample Wednesday’s monologue from the 1990s Addams Family movie. In her summer camp Thanksgiving play, she makes fun of post-Reagan wasp culture — “My people will have pain and degradation, your people with have stick-shifts!” She tells horrified parents, “The Gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said do not trust the pilgrims. And for all these reasons, I’ve decided to scalp you, and burn your village to the ground.”

Jolie Holland — “Mexico City”

Let’s dial it back a little with some sadness, shall we? Jolie Holland is a musician’s musician. She crafts slow-creeping songs that require a few listens before you fully receive their grandeur. Her songs tell big stories but never come right out and explain anything. Instead, you feel the addiction, self-deception and boozy summer nights that form the psychic backdrop of her writing.

“I’m just back from Mexico City,” she croons, almost conversational. “I came back north to Texas, to rest my weary head.” It’s a song crafted in transition, about sweet in-between spaces.

Kendrick Lamar — “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe”

Beautifully produced, West Coast hip hop. “I can feel the changes,” could serve as the beginning of a non-judgmental life mantra.

Javiera Mena — “La Joya”

Another Chilean, 1980s-inspired pop artist, because I just can’t stop. Javiera Mena is one of the only openly queer artists in Latin pop, and her bravery in coming out in the last few years will surely pave the way for others.

Joni Mitchell — “Down to You”

One of this master composer’s greatest musical works, IMHO. From the rise and fall of her piano, to the lyrics, “Everything comes and goes/ like my lovers and styles of clothes,” it’s a song that creates a lovely symmetry. I wanted to end this list on a reflective note, to remind you that it won’t always be easy, but it is of course, down to you.

Epic Alaska freeskiing video

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TEARING IT UP in the male-dominated world of big mountain skiing, Angel Collinson takes on some of the world’s biggest slopes in this epic Alaska segment of Almost Ablaze.

The first women to ever open a TGR ski film, Collinson makes black runs the world over look puny as she pushes the edge of freeskiing in the steeps of Juneau. No wonder she was made a finalist at the Banff Mountain Film Festival and nominated for Best Female Performance at this year’s Powder Awards.

To cut straight to the action, start at about 02:45. But trust us, you’re going to want to watch the whole thing.

Mexican 'mota' market collapses

Photo: mookielove

As President Barack Obama trumpets that the United States economy is back on track, industry groups are shouting over who’s growing faster.

The accounting sector boasted 2014 growth of 11 percent, computer systems of 14 percent, and real estate of a whopping 23 percent, says financial information group Sageworks.

However, one industry may have beaten those hands down: legal marijuana.

According to a new report by The ArcView Group, a cannabis industry investment and research firm based in California, legal marijuana sales rocketed 74 percent in 2014 to a new high of $2.7 billion. And with more states legalizing weed — Alaska, Oregon and Washington, DC, voted to join the legal stoners in November — it predicts this growth pace could continue for several more years straight.

However, winners in some places often mean losers in others. And the losers appear to be south of the Rio Grande: Mexican marijuana growers, who’ve provided the lion’s share of cannabis for American smokers for decades.

In 2014, the US Border Patrol saw a plunge in seizures of pot heading northward. Its agents nabbed 1.9 million pounds of ganja, a 24 percent reduction compared with the 2.5 million seized in 2011 — before Colorado and Washington State first voted to legalize recreational marijuana.

Capturing less drugs doesn’t necessarily mean less drugs are coming over. Agents could be working less or focusing more on other problems. Yet one sign they are as vigilant as ever is that they made increased seizures of some other drugs, especially crystal meth, which was busted in record quantities.

Mexican security forces have also noted a dive in marijuana production. In the most recent figures released in September, the Mexican government said that it had seized 971 metric tons (1,070 US tons) of cannabis inside Mexico in 2013, the lowest amount since 2000.

View image | gettyimages.com

“In the long run, it looks like the US market for illegal Mexican marijuana will keep shrinking,” says Alejandro Hope, a drug expert in Mexico. “The logic of the legal marijuana market is that it will force prices down. This would take out the big profits from the illegal market. A good way to make some money could be to short the prices of marijuana.”

As well as price problems, Mexican producers also have to compete with quality.

The legal US suppliers focus on high-grade weed, selling brands with glamorous names like “Skunk Red Hair,” “Sky Dog” and “Super Haze” in the S section of the shelves, to “Hypno,” “Hindu Kush” and “Himalayan Gold” if you look under H.

They are often labeled with their exact amount of THC, the ingredient that gets you intoxicated. They are also graded for their mix of indica, the strain that makes users stoned in a more knockout way, and sativa, which hits people in a more psychedelic way.

On the other hand, Mexican marijuana, known here as “mota,” is a mass-produced lower-grade crop, grown mostly outdoors in the mountains. It doesn’t have a fancy brand name, or tell you how spaced out or sleepy you will feel; it will just get you wasted.

Hitting the cartels

When advocates campaigned to legalize weed in Colorado and Washington states in 2012, they argued it was better to take the cash away from Mexican cartels and put it into taxes.

Former President Vicente Fox also made this case after leaving office when he visited a university in Boulder, Colo., in 2011.

“The drug consumer in the US yields billions of dollars, money that goes back to Mexico to bribe police and money that buys guns,” Fox said. “So when you question yourselves [sic] about what is going on in Mexico, it depends very much on what happens in this nation.”

If Mexican marijuana is now sinking, it could indeed be reducing cartels’ budgets to commit mass murder. Mexico’s total homicides have gone down during the time that some US states legalized grass. Killings reached a peak in 2011 of 22,852, and then dropped to 15,649 last year, according to the Mexican government’s numbers.

However, other aspects could have played a role, too. Among them are the capture or killing of some of the most brutal drug lords, including Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano, the head of the Zetas cartel whom Mexican marines gunned down in 2012.

Mexican gangs also have a range of other businesses. Not only do they traffic crystal meth, heroin and cocaine, they have also diversified into crimes from sex trafficking to illegal iron mining.

Mexican meth and heroin appear to have gone up as marijuana has dropped — at least, if narcotics seizures are the gauge. Last year, the US seized a record 34,840 pounds of methamphetamine at the Mexican border.

Still, longtime experts in illegal markets say there may not be any correlation between the hikes in some drugs and dives in others.

“There are lots of variables at play here, complicated factors of both demand and supply that create the markets in these drugs,” says Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at Washington’s Institute of Policy Studies.

“One reason for the rise in heroin use is that many doctors have over-prescribed opiate drugs to patients,” he adds, referring to legal pain treatments. “The patients have got hooked and have later turned to the illegal heroin.”

But there’s another factor that could seriously affect marijuana market trends: Mexico could itself legalize it. In 2009, the country decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs, including marijuana. And citizens here as elsewhere were amazed when Uruguay became the first entire country to legalize weed in 2013.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has spoken against legalization but says he’s open to debate.

Former President Fox is an advocate and even said he would like to team up with an American entrepreneur to import it to the United States.

If Mexico did legalize the plant, its cheaper labor costs could give it an edge over US producers. And while some consumers could want the higher-grade California strains, others could still choose the cheapest price.

“Cannabis is not unlike wine,” Tree says. “I can buy a $200 bottle of wine, if that is what I am after. But many people will prefer the cheaper, mass-market product. And if all the prohibition factors are taken out, then marijuana is really just an herb that can be produced very cheaply.”

By Ioan Grillo, GlobalPost

This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.