Katy's Asia Adventures (plus Mexico!)

A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

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Sunday, May 21, 2006
 
Time For a Wrap-up!

I'll concede that it's actually two months past time for a wrap-up. Primarily this delay is due to my having no idea how to wrap up; secondarily this delay is due to an appalling level of procrastination despite constant (and yet justifiable) harassment from my father. But hey, here I am, better late than never.

First of all, if you're checking in for the first time, you may want to click here, scroll to the bottom of the page and work your way up, seeing as the trip is documented in reverse chronological order. Then you can come back to this page and do the same thing. That's assuming you're a committed reader, savoring every word of my engaging prose stylings. It's not required. There won't be a quiz later.

I left off on Day 8, and for the most part I don't have much to add since Day 9 was a travel day, which we all know are largely tedious and annoying, involving:

  1. Multiple modes of transportation (taxi, bus, plane, moving walkway, plane, car);
  2. Standing in excruciatingly slow lines (special note to American Airlines - you are On My List. Not the good list, either. The list where I put airlines who take 45 minutes to get through 20 passengers at check-in, delay the plane take-off 20 minutes for one person, and don't provide blankets or peanuts on their freezing cramped aircraft);
  3. Bag searching (should it really take 15 minutes to search my bag when I am STARVING TO DEATH???? I think not);
  4. Delays (ice storms in Dallas! What's the world coming to?); and
  5. Endless TSA checkpoints (full employment plan for officious assholes).
This may look like a mean, dumb ogre with bad teeth and a glandular problem, but he has a well-paying job with the Transportation Security Administration working the metal detector wand at Dallas-Ft. Worth Int'l Airport.


Now I'm all het up and cranky. I never should have mentioned the trip home. Deep breaths.

OK, all better.

All in all, it was a fabulous trip, and I highly recommend getting off the beaten path when traveling to Mexico, or indeed any other country for that matter. It's always more challenging and more rewarding to be the only tourists in town.

For me visiting Mexico was especially interesting because I haven't been there in about 20 years, though I spent a couple of months living in Veracruz when I was 15 (my parents must have been completely insane). I had never been to the central highlands, but Mexico in general was much changed from my memories, and you can see the influence of an expanding economy and returning Mexican-Americans.

On the plus side, the roads are much better, as are the cars. In 1983 when I was last in Mexico City easily two thirds of the cars were VW Beetles. They have graduated to compact Japanese cars now, with a smattering of vans and larger cars. SUV's, however, have not gained much of a foothold, no doubt due to the narrowness of the roads and the necessity of bold snake-like driving techniquest inthe city. Old buildings in the cities are being maintained and restored, but new ones are mainly of the speedy and cheap cinderblock/cement construction that blights the landscape across the developing world.

On the minus side, certain North American urban marketing techniques are in evidence, including roving pampleteers passing out flyers about chemical peel opportunities and the unbelievable over-hype of Valentines Day. Signage, always omnipresent on Mexican walls, poles, billboards, etc, is still largely political -- an election was underway during our stay, though our driver insisted all the candidates were crooks (likely true), but I was intrigued by a few additions. Anti-smoking signs had been posted in various places, as were exhortations encouraging recycling. Hypertention clinics and Alcoholics Anonymous chapters in small rural towns seemed to imply both modernization and the stressful price of modernization.

I guess that wraps it up! If you want more information about the cooking school, Puebla, or Tlaxcala, here are a few links:

Tlaxcala tourism (great site, but unfortunately in Spanish, and we know that translation isn't the Tlaxcala government's strong suit)

Mexican Home Cooking School
(recommended!)

Tlaxcala tourism info in English (pretty weak, actually, but there's not much out there in English)

Puebla tourism in Spanish (Also not translated, unfortunately, since it's by far the best site for Puebla tourism)

Puebla tourism in English
(same lame site as for Tlaxcala)



Hasta luego! Or more accurately, Hasta el proximo viaje!


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