Savvy Traveler: How to Spot Fake Wasabi

by Iva Skoch on

Wasabi (aka the lump of green stuff that comes with sushi) is not horseradish. Wasabi is a plant that grows primarily in Japan but now also in the Pacific Northwest of the US. It is difficult to grow and can cost up to $100/lb. You see where I’m going with this…

In order to meet the rising demand for $6 supermarket sushi, the green stuff you are most likely getting with your sushi is American horseradish, mustard and coloring, hopefully at least mixed with the real stuff.

If you would like to be sure what you have, Sushifaq.com suggests, you can ask your wait staff if what you are served is ‘real wasabi’ or ‘fresh wasabi’ and if not, if it is available. If you are served putty, more than likely it is not real. Real wasabi is grated (traditionally on a sharkskin grater called an oroshi) and looks as such. Fake wasabi is not and does not. Just ask your wait staff for ‘fresh wasabi’ and if they have the real thing, they will usually return with a dish with a grated pile of the real thing, which is a very different experience from fake wasabi. If you are buying wasabi in store, read the label to determine if you have real wasabi or something else.

GADLING TAKE FIVE: Week of September 29–October 5

by Jamie Rhein on

How exactly does one pick just five posts to highlight out of a week’s worth of post bounty? Impossible, I say. Particularly since we have one more blogger on our team who has been a writing fiend ever since he started posting on Monday. Blogger Grant Martin has an eye and ear out for cheap travel and the bizarre story like Delta Requires Two Seats for Conjoined Twins.

Then there is Leif Pettersen’s last post on his hilarious series My Bloody Romania. He’s back in Minnesota thinking that everywhere he goes smells like french fries. I’ll miss Leif’s missives here, but more can be found at his blog Killing Batteries.

We’ve had a week of dabbling into science and technology with posts on a man-made island (Neil), space travel (me), and forays into the mysterious like the Loch Ness Monster (Catherine). Kelly’s travel read picks have also started again now that she’s back from Australia. There are five new One for the Road gems.

Here are my five posts if I must pick five–and I must. It’s “gadling TAKE FIVE,” that’s why.

This coming week, watch for another Where on Earth post. Brett’s wild about Gozo, Malta, the place he featured for this go round.

The Best Hostels to Get Wasted In

by Catherine Bodry on

Martha’s post on her drunken debauchery across the globe got me thinking about the hostels I used to seek out in my infant days of traveling. Eager for familiar accents and the kind bonding that 10 hours of drinking will bring, I was drawn like a mosquito to juicy flesh to any establishment my trusty Lonely Planet profiled as “full of drunken American college students.” While those descriptions were probably meant to deter travelers from that type of lodging, they served as guiding lights for me. I’m a little bit ashamed to admit all this now, but at the time I fully embraced being such a cliché. (Although now I’m probably just a different cliché.) But staying at places like these made me feel a little less lonely (and a lot less sober). And I had a great time.

A few that come to mind are Balmer’s Herbage in Interlaken, Switzerland; the Pink Palace on Corfu, Greece, and the Flying Pig in Amsterdam. The photos on the front pages of their websites ought to clue you in as to how you’ll sleep if you’re hunkered down in one of their bunks.

I know these aren’t the only three; where are the other party hostels?

OzBus: Too Drunk to Remember

by Justin Glow on

From the prospective of one of the OzBus bloggers, the first London-Sydney overland bus journey is nothing more than a mobile drunkfest, bouncing through country after country, sampling the local drinks until vomiting, and pissing off the local wait staff.

Surely not everyone aboard OzBus #1 is going out for early-morning bar times, visiting strip clubs, campsite streaking, and nightclub line-hopping. I wonder how that other half — you know, the people traveling on the bus to actually travel, not to test their alcohol tolerance in various parts of the world — feel about their heady-bro counterparts? I’d be mad.

The bus is currently in Romania, where the intrepid travelers drinkers discovered a local Scottish bar serving “54% alcohol shots.”

Twelve weeks on a bus with this crew? No thanks.

Previously:

Amsterdam to Extinguish One-Third of Red Light District

by Catherine Bodry on

A chunk of one of Amsterdam’s most famous tourist draws, the red light district, will soon be transformed into housing. The 700-year-old district is a maze of alleys lined with brothels, sex shops, and “coffee shops” selling marijuana and other mind-altering substances. This darker side of Amsterdam is as much a tourist destination as Anne Frank’s house or the Van Gogh Museum. However, the city’s Mayor, Job Cohen, opines that the concentration of sex in the city center is too high.

The brothel owner got a pretty sum for his 51 windows — 25 million euros, or $35 million. Real estate must pay more than sex these days.

[via Reuters]