Double Tall Skim Catpooccino To Go

by Iva Skoch on

If you’re a coffee lover, maybe you’ll want to make a special flight on Japan Airlines to buy “the rarest coffee in the world“: civet coffee. But this specialty brew is sold only in business class, to the tune of $600 for 100 grams.

You’re not going to find this in any Starbucks. Your other options for getting the coffee are limited: if you’re not heading to Japan, a single coffee shop in Vienna sells the beans. If you’re really adventurous, maybe you can sniff out the source directly: the Philippines. An environmentalist husband and wife team, named Reyes, has made a multi-million-dollar business out of its harvest. Non-coffee drinkers themselves, they accidentally stumbled into the civet’s special gift while doing conservation work on sugar palm trees outside of Manila in 2003.

What makes the coffee so rare? It’s made from the droppings of the civet cat. Apparently, this nocturnal, ferret-like cat eats sugar palm fruit and coffee cherries. (Oh, and you can catch SARS from it too.) The coffee bean is not digested, but ferments in its digestive system and is excreted, much to the delight of locals, who collect the ready-to-roast beans, but try to keep the origin secret. The roasted beans give off a “sweet chocolatey aroma” and produce a “strong and earthy” brew.

Ah, I can just imagine the aroma!

Word for the Travel Wise (10/05/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

Looks like we’re a day late and a dollar short of visiting the Sinanggiyaw Festival held in Dumanju, Cebu (Philippines), but with careful planning you should be able to catch this annual event and celebration of planting, harvesting and thanksgiving next year. Sounds like a real colorful and exciting time for the both the natives and a wandering tourist.

Today’s word is a Cebuano word used in the Philippines:

sayaw – dance

Seeing how I normally point to Tagalog words when heading to the Philippines for the language feature I’m going to keep the information on Tagalog below. As for Cebuano, it is spoken by approximately 20,000,000 people, most of which are inhabitants of Cebu, Bohol, and Negros Oriental as noted in Wikipedia.

Tagalog is one of the major languages in Central Philippines and part of the Austronesian language family. For some reason I was surprised by the number of free GOOD resources available to prospective Tagalog student. Wikipedia has great background info on the lingo as well as related languages, Bikol, Hiligaynon, Waray-Waray, and Cebuano. Mongabay pretty much covers all the really good, up and running links to sites that help teach Tagalog, after checking out a few I’ll do the favor of pointing the best out. The first is an interactive language and Filipino culture resource site tools are provided for both teachers and students. A pretty intense breakdown on local slang and how it is derived can be found here. Travel Lang has word and phrase generator that spits out all the basic words you’d use while visiting.

Past Filipino/Tagalog words: taon, kalye, alak, masarap

Next Stellar Stop – Bohol, Philippines

by Adrienne Wilson on

Bohol is a place of unusual familiarity for me. Almost all my Pinoy and Pinay friends speak highly of the island if not above some of the other thousand islands. And I know one day I’ll be able to walk the lands and sail the seas with my brethren and sistren from my birth country, but until that day comes I’ll just have to make due with their reports and various others on the net like this Stellar feature.

Whitney Weis gives the facts on the island paradise becoming popular with nature tourists because of its eight distinctive regions. To the right you’ll find one of them pictured. Known as the Chocolate Hills visitors come year round even when the mounds aren’t so chocolate looking. For diving fanatics there are really a couple of great finds in Bohol, or should I say off of Bohol. Balicasag has some of the best diving in the entire Philippines according to her notes and Cabilao is perfect for adventurers wanting to go head-to-head with the hammerheads that frequent the waters. There’s much more to this 60-mile long Asian jewel, but you’ll need to see the Stellar piece for the rest. It wouldn’t be fair of me to tell you all here and besides I’ll have my stories to share one of these days.

Word for the Travel Wise (07/16/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

One of the things I’m looking forward to most after this walk across America ends is going home to a real meal. Not that I haven’t been blessed to dine all over the U.S. at some of the smallest, largest, fanciest, or tastiest places known to man, but I just miss a good home cooked meal. Nothing beats them. You know; the kind of dishes seasoned by a mother’s love or that from a friend of the family. Well, such is the case in only a week’s time where I will feast on some of the most appetizing Filipino food in the world prepared by my mother’s friend. I can’t wait!

Today’s word is a Tagalog word used in the Philippines:

masarap – delicious

Tagalog is one of the major languages in Central Philippines and part of the Austronesian language family. For some reason I was surprised by the number of free GOOD resources available to prospective Tagalog student. Wikipedia has great background info on the lingo as well as related languages, Bikol, Hiligaynon, Waray-Waray, and Cebuano. Mongabay pretty much covers all the really good, up and running links to sites that help teach Tagalog, after checking out a few I’ll do the favor of pointing the best out. The first is an interactive language and Filipino culture resource site tools are provided for both teachers and students. A pretty intense breakdown on local slang and how it is derived can be found here. Travel Lang has word and phrase generator that spits out all the basic words you’d use while visiting.

Past Tagalog words: taon, kalye, alak

Word for the Travel Wise (06/01/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

America is one of the biggest melting pots around – hands down. With each turn in most major cities the traveler is bound to find different tastes, smells, and even sounds. While some words in various languages slowly sneak their way into to the average American’s vernacular many won’t. There are several words that wiggled their way in long ago and the average person has little knowledge of the word’s origin with the exception of child geniuses in spelling bees. Tonight I want to toss to you a word from a smaller melting pot in the world where certain words have close ties to those such as: Malay, Tamil, English, Spanish, Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian.

Today’s word is a Tagalog word used in the Philippines:

alak – liquor

Alak is a loanword from the Persian language used in the Philippines according to this table found here.

Tagalog is one of the major languages in Central Philippines and part of the Austronesian language family. For some reason I was surprised by the number of free GOOD resources available to prospective Tagalog student. Wikipedia has great background info on the lingo as well as related languages, Bikol, Hiligaynon, Waray-Waray, and Cebuano. Mongabay pretty much covers all the really good, up and running links to sites that help teach Tagalog, after checking out a few I’ll do the favor of pointing the best out. The first is an interactive language and Filipino culture resource site tools are provided for both teachers and students. A pretty intense breakdown on local slang and how it is derived can be found here. Travel Lang has word and phrase generator that spits out all the basic words you’d use while visiting.

Past Tagalog words: taon, kalye