Matador Network's Blog, page 2281

Why it's so hard to learn English

I’m told English is one of the hardest languages to learn, and this has always surprised me. As a native English speaker, I have no frame of reference: I’ve been fluent since I was about 3 or 4 years old, and it’s always seemed natural and easy to me. On top of that, my second language, Spanish, has always felt pretty similar in structure and was relatively easy to learn. So I just assumed English was, too.

But Mitchell Moffit, creator of the YouTube channel AsapTHOUGHT, has broken down some of the many crazy, inexplicable quirks and difficulties of learning the English language.

The speech he gives is taken from Richard Lederer’s Crazy English and Richard Krogh’s “The English Lesson,” but I first heard it through the late, great folk singer Pete Seeger, who you should check out if you want the musical version.

The post Here’s why it’s so hard to learn English appeared first on Matador Network.

28 incredibly useful packing hacks

Packing for travel is an art, and it’s a minimalist art. Experienced travelers will have, over time, developed either a system for packing lightly and efficiently, or insanely strong back, arm, and neck muscles. But if you don’t want to look like Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, then there are a bunch of other little tricks — other than just cutting back on clothing or shoes you aren’t going to need — that can help make you a more space-efficient traveler.

Lately, many budget airlines, like EasyJet or Ryanair, are charging pretty outrageous amounts for bags that exceed a certain size. Most luggage stores will know what their luggage requirements are, and will sell you a decent bag within their “acceptable” range, but it’s still not a ton of space. Here’s how you can get a full week’s worth of clothes into that bag:

Vacuum seal

As a courtesy to those of you out there who just frantically Googled “packing tips” the night before leaving for your trip and found this page, we’ll start with the vacuum seal, because it’s the last resort — if you can’t arrange and jam your stuff into your luggage otherwise, vacuum sealing is the way to go. There are a lot of products for sale that can help you vacuum pack your bags. Vacuum packing is never a bad idea for packing tightly, because a good chunk of the space in your bag is going to be empty air. First, you can get the specialized bag and pump.

It works for sure, but then you’re carrying the pump everywhere you go. This is solved if you get the space bags, which basically allow you to put your luggage in the bags and then roll the air out of them manually.

Here’s another, not altogether horrible option, but you need to spend on the bags themselves. A third option — probably the best for the budget traveler — is the DIY vacuum seal. There are a couple of good ways to do this:

The dip-it and zip-it

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First, fold and put your item into a regular, sealable plastic bag. Then dip it in a sink or tub full of water. This forces the air out, and you can seal it yourself. This is a technique usually used for food, and you might be constrained when it comes to larger items.

If you don’t want to risk the possibility of getting all of your clothes wet, try this instead:

The ghetto vacuum pack

Put your item in a Ziploc bag, leaving it slightly open. Then, put that bag in a larger Ziploc bag, and insert a regular vacuum hose, sealing the larger bag around it as much as possible. Turn the vacuum on, and it’ll suck the air out of both bags. Close the smaller bag manually (without taking it out or turning the vacuum off), and voila!

The issue with vacuum packing is that it’s going to either be time consuming, expensive, equipment-dependent, or it’s going to get your shit all wet. So here are some other tricks to conserve space.

Packing efficiently

There are a lot of schools of thought about how best to pack a bag. I’m going to leave that up to you — I don’t think there’s a definitive way. I tend to be in the “make space at all costs” school, but some people are more concerned with neatness preventing wrinkles, and there’s an entirely different set of rules for that. That said, here are some space savers:

Roll ‘em up.

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Sure, it can wrinkle the clothing, but veteran packers know that rolling all of your clothing up makes it way more space efficient than laying it in flat. An additional tip is to wrap the clothing in rubber bands to make sure it’s not loose, and to keep some semblance of organization in a bag full of rolled-up clothes.

Wear what you can’t fit.

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Travel with as much of the bulky clothes on as you can. Even if you prefer light clothes on planes, remember that you aren’t limited in how much clothes you can be wearing on a plane, and you can take off a couple of layers and put them in the overhead compartment or under the seat if you have to. All it’s doing in your luggage is taking up space.

Use all of the space. Even in your shoes.

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If you must pack an extra pair of shoes, remember that there is space inside of them for socks and underwear.

Shaving cream is not necessary.

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If you don’t want to bring a bulky thing of shaving cream, you can use soap, conditioner, or sunscreen as shaving cream instead.

Underwear is your #1 priority.

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When you’re trying to figure out what to take out and what to put in, remember this: Unless you’re on a business trip, you don’t need more than one nice set of clothes. But you will absolutely need a lot of underwear. Seriously, guys — trust me on this.

Light clothes go on top.

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Flight attendant Heather Poole suggests putting your heavy clothes and shoes in first, and then moving up towards the lighter clothes. That way, when you have to close the suitcase, you aren’t trying to push down on the bulkiest items.

Finding good containers

If you don’t want to buy handfuls of “travel-size” items when you already own the stuff you need, just in too large of a container, you can use regular household items to fit stuff in.

Everything fits in medicine bottles.

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Q-tips and bobby pins will fit nicely into medicine bottles, as will jewelry. I would suggest finding a more opaque bottle for jewelry, or possibly lining it with paper if you don’t want it to get stolen. Another obvious use is just put in more pills — possibly multivitamins. But make sure you can explain that you don’t need a prescription for the multivitamins.

You’ll find shampoo. You won’t find moisturizer.

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Though I can usually find shampoo or conditioner to use while traveling, unless I’m staying in a nice hotel, I always have a hard time finding moisturizer.

Make your own dry toothpaste.

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Toothpaste really isn’t a worry when you’re traveling — you can find it anywhere. But if you really want to give yourself that little extra space, the site Her Packing List suggests making little non-liquid toothpaste capsules. Simple enough: Squeeze a drop of non-gel toothpaste onto a sheet of foil, sprinkle it with baking soda, and then wait a few days until it’s dry and pop it into a bag. When you’re using it, just pop it in your mouth, rub it against your teeth with your tongue, and then brush.

If you don’t want to catch your luggage on fire.

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If you need to straighten your hair and then leave before it has time to cool down, use pot holders.

Keeping things clean and orderly

One of the problems with packing so tightly is that if something smells, then in a very short while, everything will smell. Another problem, with all of the jostling, is that you might squeeze that toothpaste right out of its tube and all over your clothes and toiletries. Here are some tricks to help prevent that:

Take no chances with fluids.

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Before leaving, unscrew your bottles with liquids or gels inside them, cover them in cling wrap, and then screw the cap back on. Not only does this help the lids stay on tighter, but it provides another layer of defense between the gel and all of your clothes.

Jewelry tangles. Straws don’t.

To keep jewelry from tangling, try running it through a straw.

Keep your collar straight.

If you want to keep a shirt collar neat and not smashed, you can wrap your belt around the inside. It also creates a nice spot for your belt.

Keep your earrings from falling into the deepest crevice of your bag.

Earrings can be held together using buttons.

Protect your clothes from your shoes.

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Stinky or dirty shoes? Put them in a shower cap. It’s not a perfect seal, but it’ll keep them together and will be at least a slight barrier between them and the clothes.

Protect your clothes from wrinkling.

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To keep clothes from wrinkling, roll it or fold it over tissue paper.

Protect your clothes from travel stink.

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You can avoid a bad-smelling suitcase by throwing in a couple of dryer sheets.

Keep your headphones untangled.

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Headphone wires wrap nicely around paperclips / binder clips.

Hiding / smuggling valuables

Look, we’re not advocating smuggling things into countries (have you seen Locked Up Abroad? It’s terrifying.). But sometimes, you don’t want people to be able to easily find what’s in your luggage.

Hide your money and emergency numbers.

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The website Instructables suggests hiding emergency money and phone numbers inside emptied lip balm sticks or magic markers.

Protect (and hide) your wine.

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A wine bottle will fit nicely into a pair of gym shoes. Note: X-ray machines can see through your shoes.

Hide your jewelry.

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Small valuables can go into daily medicine containers.

Space-saving gadgets

For the most part, I’m not an advocate of getting travel gadgets. They take up extra space, are wasteful, and don’t really help all that much. But there are a few gadgets that are spectacularly useful in terms of space conservation when it comes to travel.

Get an e-reader.

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The e-reader is essential for people who like to read when they travel. I’ve had a Kindle for about 4 years now, and it’s my favorite possession on the road. The newer versions fit into most jacket or cargo pockets, and they can replace hundreds of books, which used to be the primary source of excess luggage weight when I traveled. If you go the tablet route, you’re further combining your computer and music into the same device.

Use one plug to charge all devices.

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There are a number of universal travel adapters out there, and they tend to be on the pricier side — usually at least over $100 — but if you spend enough time traveling, and if you travel with a lot of electronics, it’s worth getting. It’s a single adapter for your computer, your tablet, your phone, your e-reader, your electric shaver, and so on.

A final bonus cheat

Okay, this is a little shitty, but you can game the system, and it will keep your luggage from being harmed and will also get you out of baggage claim faster.

Label it “Fragile.”

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Luggage listed as “fragile” is placed on top of the pile of luggage, and thus, is the first luggage off the plane.

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North Korea is perfect for Americans

Technically it’s illegal, but it seems not everyone knows that. Here’s the grocery bag full that I bought in a market in Rason for about 80 cents.

If you’re pro-Obamacare, just wait till you get a load of Kimcare. Tourists who’ve sustained accidental injuries while visiting North Korea have received free and surprisingly high standards of medical care at the country’s elite, private hospitals.

North Korea inherited their brewing technology by way of 19th-century German colonists in East Asia, and the beers here were better than anything I tried in neighbouring China.

From a purely tourist perspective, you’ll never travel anywhere as safe as North Korea. Excepting the possible outbreak of a nuclear war, you’ll be given the royal treatment from start to finish.

Sure, your ‘minder’ might not be a sexually attractive member of your preferred gender, but once paired up, you can rest assured they’ll never stray from your side.

There’s absolutely no chance your minder will allow you to wander off on your own anyway, so leave that map in the hotel! Oh yeah, right…they don’t give you a map.

Here, you can just assume that Kim Jong-un’s got his best guys on it.

Perhaps because of the aforementioned point, in North Korea you’ll never see a room full of people paying more attention to their smartphones than each other.

At the karaoke bar in Pyongyang, the catalogue features singalong classics such as Slipknot, Pearl Jam, and Nine Inch Nails. Although, at the time of my visit they politely explained that the disks had been taken elsewhere for cleaning. Just bad timing, I guess.

It’s strictly illegal for locals to enter into a romantic relationship with foreigners.

All photos by the author.

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Killing German stereotypes in Berlin

Photo: Gustavo Gomes

German sounds horrible!

It might be true that more typical languages English learners tend to go for — like French and Spanish — can sound pleasant to listen to even if you don’t understand them, but it’s better to think outside of those limitations. Comparing German to Italian, for example, is like comparing ice cream to pizza. The most enjoyable food doesn’t have to be “hot,” and certain aspects of communicating in German can be more pleasant than in other languages.

English and German are in the same language family (Germanic), so a lot of what makes German sound “different” can actually be its similarities that we don’t notice in English and may not expect to encounter in other languages. Listen to this video of what English sounds like to non-natives (from an Italian perspective), and you’ll get a better idea of how strange it can be!

English also has weird strings of consonants that can cause problems to non-natives but seem totally normal to us. Words like “catchphrase” and “thousandths” have several consecutive consonants that German doesn’t outdo much (definitely not as much as a language like Czech).

The tone and musicality of German is actually something that makes it much easier to understand and leaves less room for misinterpretation, as is the case in other languages. The clear separation of words vastly helps you to understand them (compared to French, for example, where words are merged together when spoken). I find the discussion of whether this is “pretty” or not to be totally irrelevant. We may as well argue about which colour is the “best.”

Why are they so angry?

This superficial argument is like saying you understand what the elephants are thinking as you see them through binoculars on safari. Without the right context and understanding of how German works, any conclusions you might make may amount to nothing remotely close to the truth.

The clear way Germans speak is something we would tend to do in English if we were angry and wanted to make it clear what we were angry about. For example, you can imagine an angry mother sternly warning her son: “Don’t — you — dare — do — that!” clearly enunciating each word.

This is a style of expressing anger in English. Applying it to German just doesn’t work in the same way. In understanding what they were saying, I can generally say that from my (albeit limited) experience, Germans lose their temper way less than many English speakers do. In fact, Germans tend to be way more patient from what I’ve seen. What sounds harsh to the untrained ear can actually be a funny joke or helpful advice, etc. when you listen to the actual words.

When you actually pay attention to what they’re saying, rather than applying the wrong nonverbal cues (using English tone and body language rules) to imagine what you think they’re saying, you’ll see that Germans are talking about the same things you and your friends talk about in other languages.

They all speak English and will never help you with your German.

As expected, when I announced I’d be in Berlin for this mission (rather than some small unknown village), many people told me I’d find it extremely difficult to convince Berliners to help me with my German, since they all speak “perfect” English.

Like in other places, there are people who did poorly in school or don’t expose themselves to foreigners enough to maintain a good level. But for the most part, they do indeed have a better level of English than southern Europeans or some Asian countries.

Despite this, it was extremely easy to convince Germans to help me. Even in my first week I was successful, and for the main three months of the mission I almost never spoke English with Germans — the few times I did were because other foreigners (not learning German) were present, or in my final weeks before leaving. When they saw how devoted I was to my project, they were happy to give me lots of encouragement to boot!

This confusion is another issue that results from the Germans being accused of something that’s actually entirely the lazy learners’ fault. Germans are usually really helpful, so if you look like you’re undergoing medieval torture as you struggle to speak the language, they’ll want to save you from that discomfort and may speak English because of that.

I made sure to make it clear that I was enjoying myself, that I was devoted to making serious progress, and used all my usual social (Language Hacking) tricks when out and speaking with new people, and without exception I never even had to work hard to convince anyone to help me, even when my level was quite poor. They simply went with the flow. Sadly, the flow many expats command is, “German is too hard and Germans don’t want to hear me try,” and that mantra becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

German is one of the hardest languages in the world.

Since I’ve also learned other “hardest languages” in the world, like Hungarian and Japanese, I will discuss this ridiculous concept another time soon. But first, I can confirm that German itself isn’t particularly inherently harder than many other languages in the world. It all depends on the learner and his/her attitude.

Expats I met who had been living in Germany for a long time would complain about how German is too hard to speak, and I could see very clearly and told them very frankly that this complaint and devotion to believing in it was what was actually holding them back from speaking it.

I was attempting the exact same language as they were — the main difference I see is that they simply focus on the negative and look for more reasons to prevent them from speaking it. An optimistic approach can dramatically change their potential to make progress. What helps me get through languages quicker is not some magic part of my brain that’s sprouted up in recent years to turn me into a language-guru — it’s actually the ability to focus on the positive and have new information about the language help me to progress rather than hinder me.

But simply telling someone, “Chin up! It’s not that bad!” is not enough, since there are aspects to the language that can seem intimidating at first, especially if it’s your first foreign language and if it’s explained to you in dull, traditional academic ways.

Because of this, I will be writing in great detail about Why German isn’t as hard as you think and will take all the “hardest” aspects of the language and attempt to explain them in such a way as to turn some pessimists into optimists and help struggling learners dramatically improve their progress by attacking what I feel is the source of the problem for a lot of them: the wrong attitude that German is hard.

I learned German for five years in school, and the wrong attitude kept me believing that aspects of German were too complicated for me to get my head around, and so I did poorly in my exams and never truly dived into properly speaking German until this year. Starting over fresh and forgetting the overly technical way that the language was explained to me in school saved me from being doomed to never speaking it.

Sometime soon I’ll be releasing a guide to hacking the German language: giving shortcuts to get around seemingly difficult aspects, explaining a better way to look at the Accusative-Dative-Genitive problem, and seeing that the word order and remembering vocabulary is actually way easier than people think it is. Sometimes all you need is to hear these things explained in the right (non-overly-technical) way and it all makes perfect sense. This guide will not attempt to replace any courses, but augment them for learners already vaguely familiar with the language but feeling intimidated by it.

I am positive that what I have to say can help people progress in their German, as I have been giving this advice to other learners throughout my time in Berlin to help those struggling with the language themselves and it worked to help some of them get out of their shell and finally speak.

If you’d like me to mention any aspect of German you find particularly hard, let me know! More on that guide soon…

Are Germans strict / rude?

There are many stereotypes I won’t even dignify with a response, but the strict one comes up a lot. I imagine this is influenced by the “German sounds harsh” idea, and perhaps gets combined with the Germans’ fame for efficiency. How well they design cars was the least of my concerns for my time there, though.

I did find it curious that Berliners would almost always wait at red traffic lights before walking across the road, even when there were no cars for miles. Most other places I’ve been would have people “jaywalking” in this situation quite frequently (I personally consider the red man a suggestion rather than a rule; it’s a good suggestion only if cars are actually on the road).

You will also see bus stops indicate the minute the bus is expected to arrive at any given stop — I remember how hilarious Brazilians found this concept when I mentioned it to them, but I think things like this are helpful and it’s something I’ll miss in other countries. Conveniences like this have come so naturally to me over the last few months that I simply consider other countries as doing it wrong, to be honest.

One thing that may influence the idea of them being “rude” is that I did find Germans to be very honest. Nobody will ever argue about this being bad, but some Germans tend to be very frank about the truth and this will probably hurt your feelings if you’re too sensitive. I actually found it quite refreshing, but it took some getting used to!

For example, I was dancing for several hours one night and a girl I had just met told me that I smelled and could do with a shower! It was true of course (it was a hot night and I was dancing enthusiastically), but this is not something you would hear from people you’ve just met in many cultures. I suppose this level of non-sugar-coated honesty could be read as rudeness if you jump to conclusions too quickly, but that girl continued to dance with me after sharing the “interesting” information.

So, if you’re sensitive about your weight, etc., you should probably not ask Germans if those jeans make you look fat. But this isn’t rudeness. You could argue that many other countries are way too sensitive — to the point of dancing around issues and never being direct enough.

Germans have no sense of humour!

When Germans laugh and smile, it’s because something is genuinely funny. I don’t like the inauthentic “thank you for shopping at Walmart” smile that’s sometimes overused in places like the States. Many European countries don’t go around laughing and smiling at every single thing, and this means that when they do smile / laugh, you know it’s genuine.

What this means is that if someone doesn’t laugh at your joke (either because they do think it’s funny but not enough to guffaw at loudly, or because it’s actually a terrible joke), you might think they don’t have a sense of humour. I don’t know if it’s my personality or being Irish, but I didn’t find this at all in Germany and found many Germans quite hilarious and content people.

Anywhere you go requires a change in mindset.

The fact of the matter is, if you truly believe any of the above headings, you will filter out any information that doesn’t support it and only look for confirmation, and you’ll probably find it. I know this because I did it myself when I refused to be open-minded about a culture I didn’t like in the past. I’ve met people who insist that I’m not “really” Irish because I don’t drink, and not surprisingly if they spent time in Ireland, most of it was in pubs.

If I had a weird stereotype of all Belgians being hairstylists, for example, I could confirm this by spending all my time in Belgium in hairdressers. No matter where you go, you’ll find your stereotypes answered if you look for them. I prefer to start with a clean slate if possible and get to know the people as directly as possible. Perhaps more Germans are rude, strict, humourless, and angry than I think, but because I wasn’t looking for these signs, I didn’t find them.

After discovering all the interesting cultural differences, what I usually find is that we aren’t that different after all. It’s one reason I can feel at home so quickly in many places. Berlin was one of these places and I will miss it!

This post was originally published at Fluent in 3 Months and is reprinted here with permission.

The post Are Germans rude? Killing the stereotypes after living in Berlin appeared first on Matador Network.

Short video explains fracking

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the controversy surrounding “fracking.” But unless you’re a petroleum engineer or an environmentalist, you’ve probably got no idea what fracking is. The good green, pro-nature person in you wants to think, “Pumping uh…water and stuff into the ground…or, I mean, oil holes…yeah, that sounds bad.”

But you actually have no idea why, or why it’s being done in the first place.

Fortunately, the excellent YouTube channel Kurzgesagt has put together a short animation explaining why energy companies are pushing fracking, how it technically works, and what some of the negative consequences may be. While Kurzgesagt is objective enough to leave it up to you to decide whether it’s a good idea or not, I think the answer is pretty clear: This is an incredibly destructive way of prolonging the time before we feel the crunch of a fossil-fuel shortage.

The post A short video to help you understand exactly what fracking is…and why it’s a horrible idea appeared first on Matador Network.

When you become culturally Mexican

Photo: Darlene Acero

HERE ARE 9 WAYS you know the cultural shift has happened, even if you have no idea how or when it occurred.

1. Your knife has been replaced by a tortilla.

2. You answer the phone saying, “Well?”

3. You say “provecho” (bon appétit) to anyone eating, at any moment.

4. You believe that mezcal is the best cure for colds, stomach bugs, heartache…

5. You no longer want to be touched by the rays of the sun but instead walk as close to buildings as possible to enjoy the thin line of shade they offer.

6. You instinctively look for salsa and tortillas when any meal is placed in front of you.

7. Random strangers talking to you no longer makes you want to run for fear of your life.

8. Being punctual includes being 30 minutes late. At least you turned up!

9. Rather than sneaking out of a party quietly, you pucker up when leaving and kiss every single person goodbye, whether you know them or not.

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23 signs you were born in Maine

Photo: Jeffrey Stylos

1. By third grade you were babysitting yourself and others.
2. You can rollerblade on a dirt road. Like a boss.
3. The first alcohol you drank was Orloff. And you liked it.
4. You’ve used a riding lawn mower to run an errand.
5. You went to school in a trailer.

Maine public schools are usually very low on funding. Students are more often than not attending classes in buildings that contain asbestos, have been flooded, or have been damaged by heavy winter weather. A popular solution is to gut a bunch of mobile homes, throw some desks and a couple whiteboards in ‘em, and park ‘em in the back parking lot.

6. Your extended family made up most of your high-school graduating class.

Cousins are everywhere. Seriously. You might think you met a super guy at the away game in Brewer last Friday night. You may have made out with him down on the long-jump mats. And you may have found out later from your mother that not only is he ‘that John John,’ your third cousin twice removed, but you also peed your pants in front of him at daycare.

7. You always play ‘the Name Game.’

When a Mainer meets another Mainer for the first time, the Name Game will not be stopped until both parties have found at least one person who they both know or with whom they’ve had some kind of interaction. And when found, that person will be the primary subject of conversation. Ex:

“Do you know Nancy from Newburgh? Nancy, Bill’s girl Nancy?”
(Silent and acknowledging nod.)
“Don’t know her myself but in Shaw’s last week, looked like she was goin’ through anotha’ divorce.”
“Ahh yup yup yup.”
8. You never lock doors.

No one’s more trusting than a Mainer running into the gas station to get himself a steamed red hot dog and a 6-pack of Buds. Keys are left in ignitions. Nokia first-generation car phones are left in plain view. And if something does get stolen, which is rare, it gives you something to discuss at Dysart’s for years (and years and years) to come.

9. You pack for impending snowstorms on your vacation.
10. Your grandmother shoots groundhogs from her kitchen window.
11. You put human hair in your garden to ward off deer.
12. You can have an entire conversation consisting of grunts in agreement.
13. You smile at strangers.

It’s almost creepy sometimes. Walking down a street in a small Maine community means you’ll get smiles, you’ll get ‘good mornings’, you’ll get waves from random people on the opposite side of the street. And you should expect to get stopped and asked what exactly it is you’re doing in Maine, how you like it, and where it is you come from.

Many small communities don’t get a lot of people from out of town. When they do, they want to know everything. To prove it, some Maine communities still have social sections in their newspapers. These are sections in the back that let the community know that, yes, those were indeed Dottie’s great grandchildren visiting her last Sunday. They enjoyed cucumber and cream-cheese sandwiches and a round of cribbage on the back porch.

14. You know people who’ve never left.

When a Mainer settles, they sink into the cloth of a community. Everything they need is on the land they own, in the diner they visit, or at the hardware store downtown. It’s not uncommon to meet a Mainer, of any generation, who’s never crossed state lines, or even county lines. On the account that it’s never been necessary.

15. You’re thrown into a downward spiral of rage when driving behind a Massachusetts driver.

Even if they did nothing, you consider looking at their license plate a huge inconvenience.

16. Your definition of ‘camp’ is a rundown cabin in the middle of the woods.
17. Coffee brandy is what you drink when you’re feeling fancy.
18. Your mom and all of her friends operate hair salons in their basements.
19. You wear Carhartts because it’s cold, not because you bought them at a thrift store in NYC.
20. You’ll swim in any body of water, no matter how cold, no matter how dark and questionable.
21. You measure distance in hours.
22. You know what a red hot dog is. And you’ll eat one.
23. And, of course, you survived the ice storm of ’98.

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60 ft waterfall in a canoe [video]

Twenty years ago, there were a few open boaters such as Dave Simpson who pioneered the hardest steep creeks alongside the best whitewater kayakers at the time. But since then, kayaking’s progression has rapidly outpaced canoeing in design and technique — particularly when it comes to running huge drops.

Part of this is just the nature of the craft: Open boats are simply bigger; their center of gravity is higher. They’re more difficult to hike in and out of remote regions.

But over the past couple of years there have been some sweet milestones. In 2012 an open boater paddled the Toxaway Gorge in North Carolina — among the hardest runs in the country — and just recently longtime river safety guru Jim Coffey styled this 60 footer in Costa Rica, breaking the open boat waterfall record that had stood since the early 90s.

So cool seeing open boaters run these drops; it’s kind of the equivalent of seeing people get monster barrels on longboards. The style and technique are just badass.

The post New world record: Dude styles a 60 foot waterfall in an open canoe appeared first on Matador Network.

I watched a Bangkok ping-pong show

Photo: Sobri

After a total of sixteen months in Bangkok, and at the request of an American girlfriend who was visiting, I agreed to go to a “ping-pong” show.

We had no idea which one to go to, so we were forced to depend on the kindness of a stranger — a man wearing a wig that looked like a turtle shell posing as hair who approached us as we were about to cross Surawong Road into red-light central. If the place he guided us to was the top of the line among ping-pong shows, things must have been pretty grim at the bottom. As soon as I took one glimpse at the drab decor, I wished we’d stayed at Hot Male, where several cute showboys had been making eyes at me. But you only live once.

And I really couldn’t say I’d lived until I’d had the pleasure of paying 400 baht (about $13) to sit in a dark, nearly empty bar while an amazingly well preserved 53-year-old woman (the proprietor — or madam — whose grown son was pouring drinks behind the bar) hit on me (didn’t the words “I’m gay” mean anything anymore?) and a procession of bored-looking women disrobed onstage.

The one with the most, um, skills, the apparent veteran of the bunch, looked like she should have been reading bedtime stories to her grandchildren somewhere. She did a stunt where she pulled a string with razor blades attached to it from her vagina, using one razor blade to engage in an arts and crafts project that she then presented to my friend and me, hoping for a drink in return.

Another attached a Coke bottle filled with water and then one filled with Coke to her vagina, occasionally positioning her body so that the liquid trickled inside of her. I was terrified that she was going to pour the remaining contents of those bottles onto us.

The least enthusiastic showgirl spent her entire time onstage just swaying to the beat like she didn’t have a care or a spectator in the world, apparently too shy to remove the bikini top and bottom she was wearing. Did Maroon 5 know what these women were doing to its hit song? “One More Night” sounded a lot better with Adam Levine’s abs providing visual accompaniment.

“What the hell is this?” I asked my friend as we watched the badly choreographed proceedings. In a city where hot females outnumbered hot males by a significant margin (not because there aren’t plenty of attractive men, but because Thai women, in general, are so ridiculously genetically blessed), I couldn’t believe that the owners of this particular ping-pong joint couldn’t find one woman who could hold a candle (which, thankfully, wasn’t one of the props) to any of the guys we’d seen earlier at Hot Male.

It had been my second Hot Male experience, and I still hadn’t gotten used to a show that involved several groups of two having nonsimulated sex onstage. This time a few of them even took the act into the crowd for a little bit of audience participation. God must not have been listening to my prayer, because one twosome stopped right in front of us so that the “bottom” could rest his head on my lap while the “top” stroked my chest. “How do they keep it in when they’re walking around like that?” my friend asked as they returned to the stage. I didn’t have a clue, and as much as I wanted to be a Bangkok host with all the answers, finding out that one wasn’t on my to-do list.

Not only were those women treating their private parts like toys, but they were using them as torture chambers, especially during the bit with the razor blades.

I was equally at a loss to explain the vagina Olympics, too. Just as my friend and I declared that we’d had enough and were preparing to exit, the moment we didn’t realize we’d been waiting for arrived. One of the women started to emit ping-pong serves from her vagina, while a customer seated in a chair in front of the stage tried to hit the balls with a ping-pong paddle. Ping-pong. Ping-pong. Ping-pong.

Once we were back outside, I wondered why I’d had such a strong negative reaction to the female revue. It wasn’t as if Hot Male was a bastion of respectability, but although I didn’t necessarily approve of what they were doing onstage there, I can’t say I didn’t kind of enjoy watching them do it. Was I reacting out of a sexual distaste for female nudity — or women in general? Maybe I was holding women to a different standard of conduct than men. Or perhaps it was that shows featuring female private parts simply weren’t created for gay men.

In Bangkok’s red-light district, nudity wasn’t sexy, and neither was sex. Hot Male and the ping-pong show were representative of one of my biggest problems with the Thai sex trade, an unfortunate dynamic that flowed over into the general population. When the emphasis was always on sex, especially in such a brutally forthright way, it began to lose its appeal to me. A surplus of sex created a deficit of desire.

A colleague once told me a story about how a country superstar she once interviewed told her he quit smoking by spending an entire weekend sucking on one cancer stick after the other. By Sunday evening, he never wanted to puff another one again. I guess the experiment could have gone one of two ways: the way it went, or it could have intensified his addiction. It might have been the same way with sex in Bangkok. The more some people got, the more they wanted, but because it was so often being shoved in front of my face, my sex drive had never been lower.

Perhaps it was also the influence of growing up in the relatively prudish US. Even in my wildest moments, I’d always been a closet Goody Two-shoes, and living in a city where I could walk down a crowded street in broad daylight and have spa workers proposition me and guys try to sell me gay and straight porn, where I could go into a spa for what I assumed would be an innocent hour-long massage and end up being molested by a middle-aged woman, brought out my inner angel.

If she and I had been on a date, that would have been one thing. I wasn’t above using a massage to get my way with someone. But there wouldn’t have been any money exchange, no undercurrent of violence and pain, all key components of the entertainment at Hot Male and ping-pong shows, as well as the professional Thai massage. For me, the latter, already such a rough experience, was much less rejuvenating with the threat — yes, threat — of sex hanging over it.

I once went out with someone who’d spent a year and a half living in Bangkok, and he was celibate the entire time. “How is that even possible?” I asked him. By the time I left Bangkok, I got it completely.

I can’t say the same thing about the ping-pong show. As extreme as the onstage action in Hot Male might have been, I understood its entertainment value. It was a joyous celebration of sex and sexuality that, in a sense, made fun of them both. Meanwhile, the ping-pong show was a bizarre onanistic display that no one — neither the performers nor the audience — seemed to enjoy. Not only were those women treating their private parts like toys, but they were using them as torture chambers, especially during the bit with the razor blades. It bordered on sadomasochism, which might have been one of my least favorite things to watch.

And on a purely aesthetic level, the ping-pong show was just such an eyesore. It was dark, drab, and joyless, like a windowless one-star hotel room. The women weren’t smiling, and neither were any of the six customers (including us).

Naked women and their vaginas deserved so much better.

The post I agreed to go to a “ping-pong” show appeared first on Matador Network.

Notes from the world's top freediver

William Trubridge is the world’s best freediver. Freediving is the act of diving without the use of a snorkel, scuba gear, or any other breathing apparatus. Basically, you’re just going down there and holding your breath for as long as you can.

Trubridge has dived to a depth of 100 meters — approximately 330 feet — without assistance. And he didn’t die. This short journalistic piece on Trubridge documents his life before freediving (of course he was basically raised in the ocean), his efforts in the sport, and his philosophy on it.

Probably most interesting is his statement that freediving is as much mental as it is physical. I for one can’t imagine diving that deep, or for that long a period of time, without feeling the sense of deep, instinctive panic you get when you go underwater for too long. Trubridge’s approach seems more zen and meditative than athletic — though obviously he’s in incredible shape. To overcome the body’s most basic need — the need for oxygen — sheerly through the force of your mind is what’s most incredible about Trubridge’s accomplishments.

The post Living without air: Notes from the world’s best freediver appeared first on Matador Network.