Have food allergies, will travel

by Iva Skoch on

Traveling with food allergies must be hard.

Even in many countries in Europe, menus simply don’t list all the ingredients used in meals. My Canadian friend went into an allergic shock in Prague because of his nuts allergy. He figured eating a sandwich would be safe. Of course, they didn’t mention the sandwich had pesto in it. And pesto contains pine nuts…

And that’s Prague, which is now fairly Westernized. Imagine what it must be like to travel in Asia, where not only do they use peanuts a lot more but it is much harder to read the menus and find people who speak English well enough.

This ABC article talks about traveling with allergies. It is about the challenges of a traveler with serious food allergies, who presents a card to the waiter noting his allergies to peanuts and peas, written in the native tongue. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. Some waiters even say that they have “never heard of such allergies.”

I found it really interesting to read, although I don’t have any allergies. How do you deal with food allergies when traveling?

Hot tamales: the best place to get them

by Jamie Rhein on

My first tamales, sad to say, where the canned version that Hormel puts out. When I was a child my grandfather owned the grocery store in a small town in Kentucky. We were allowed to pick food from the shelves for our meals when we visited. A can of tamales was my first choice. Pork rinds were my second. Also, sad, but true.

Once I moved to New Mexico, I learned that tamales actually have texture and come in wonderfully flavorful varieties like green chiles and chicken. Today, I heard about the best tamale place in the world, according to the folks on the NPR show “Splendid Table.”

Rhonda’s Famous Tamales, a cafe that also serves soul food, isn’t in New Mexico, but in Arkansas. Located in the Arkansas Delta region of the state in Lake Village, Rhonda’s is one of those places that is worth driving out of you way for. If Arkansas wasn’t so far from Columbus, and I didn’t have so much to do, I’d be there for dinner.

Rhonda cooks her tamales in a coffee can–12 per can. The suggested way of eating them is scooping them out with saltine crackers. If you get the Hormel version, you can smash them up on white bread. Don’t forget to sop up the juice.

Oklahoma is O-K

by Jamie Rhein on

L-A-H-O-M-A , Oklahoma! Yow!

The fact that the song Oklahoma is playing in my head at this moment is John Ur’s fault. Of course, I do still know a song medley of the musical by heart thanks to high school choir days, but over at Intelligent Travel, John Ur’s mention of the lyrics to “Oklahoma” in his post about movies filmed in this state, put me in a red gingham dress and cowboy boots looking for a surrey with fringe on the top.

When I read Ur’s post, I flashed back to my own Oklahoma experience sitting in the audience of an outdoor production of “Oklahoma!” This outdoor theater in Tulsa uses real horses and wagon and a building was set on fire. At least that’s what I remember. Discoveryland’s season runs June 6–August 16, so you still have time to plan your trip here.

This is a professional production with crowd pleasing appeal. It’s also kid-friendly. I only went to the main production, but you can add a western-style dinner and before show entertainment.

Villages all over the world open their doors to tourists

by Iva Skoch on

The search for authenticity is central to postmodern traveling. Nobody, or almost nobody, wants to be the token tourist and be treated as a token tourist.

Many destinations around the globe are starting to figure that out. Instead of assuming that “rich Westerners” want to sleep at the Marriott and sample foreign culture only by sipping a “theme martini”, places like Thailand know that more and more travelers want to experience the authentic life average people of Thailand are living: feeding pigs, planting vegetables, harvesting fruits. Swapping places, if you will.

The Guardian has an interesting article about the “community tourism” phenomenon. The author spend time with the “mountain people” in Ja Bor in north west Thailand, a three-hour drive from Chang Mai “on a road of endless hairpin bends”.

Visitors apparently “stay in a local home mattresses on the floor with outside washing facilities or in a large dormitory-style building, and are fed lavish amounts of food from the villages ubiquitous rice fields, its fish farm, organic vegetable garden and from the nearby forest, nurtured by sparkling streams. Close to a waterfall is a delicate bamboo shrine to thank the spirits for carrying water to the rice fields. And then there is coffee production. Dried by the sun, roasted over an open fire and sifted on bamboo platters, this arabica coffee bears a Fairtrade label and gets sold to Starbucks.”

Aside from the Starbucks piece, it sounds blissful.

Combine caffeine and naps for jet lag help

by Jamie Rhein on

Here’s what I do to deal with jet lag. I don’t go to sleep much before I travel. I think I was a hamster in my past life. I’m the type who wants to get every last project done, every last dish washed, every last chore behind me before I head out the door. I ruminate. I become more compulsive than usual.

Sometimes, I stay up so late that going to bed may not make sense. That’s what happened before the good-deed travel Mexico trip. It got to be 4:00 a.m. and I thought, I’m getting up in two hours anyway, so why bother? I slept on the plane on and off, and went to bed early the following night. When I travel across time zones, this staying up late makes me tired enough that the jet lag is not as noticeable. I’m thrown off already, what’s a bit more?

When I was living in Singapore, one of my closest friend’s parents visited from the U.S. They are the hearty, cross-country skiing type who stay on a scheduled routine. Their answer to jet lag was to go on a long hike through the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve almost as soon as they arrived at our apartment. Our complex edged the preserve which made hiking there pretty darned convenient. They went to bed when they normally do, and seemed not to suffer much. Getting out in the air and sunshine is one way diminish that groggy, disheveled feeling.

There was an article recently in the New York Times that explains how a combination of coffee and naps can help thwart jet lag. I suppose this is what I do, but less scientifically. I always order coffee and a club soda when I fly. Coffee for the boost, and soda water for the hydration. It feels fancier than regular water. Anything one can do to spruce up travel in my opinion.

The photo is of my 2nd cup of coffee on the Southwest flight. It’s slightly out of focus, but then, so was I.