Retro-futurism in Brasilia

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Martin Koskins

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Brasilia seems to cop a lot of hate. Everyone I met along the way, who I told that I was going to Brasilia told me not to go. It began with “Junior”, the guy from Minas Gerais who works in the ASN sports nutrition store on Oxford Street just around the corner from yoga… While purchasing my vegan cookie there one day after yoga, I mentioned to Junior that I was going to Brasilia. He was completely gobsmacked and exclaimed, “Oh my God, you can’t go there… It’s like Canberra, only much worse.” “But I want to see the famous Oscar Niemeyer buildings, Junior.” “OK, so you go there for half a day, take your pictures, upload to Instagram and then you get the hell out”, was his response. To be fair, any student who tells me they’re going to Canberra, I usually give them the same advice: Go for half a day and then get out. In Rio de Janeiro, Rodrigo from my Airbnb told me that if I wanted to see Oscar Niemeyer buildings, I should go to absolutely any other city except Brasilia. And at the very minimum, everyone seemed to say, “Well, you know in Brasilia, you’ll have to take an Uber EVERYWHERE”, as if that was the worst thing ever. And hey… If you’re a gringo, you have to take a freakin’ Uber everywhere in Brazil. Perhaps it was because of this incredibly negative build-up, but my week in Brasilia was wonderful. It’s like I had saved the best for last. Brazil is really just a state of mind in my opinion, and as a gringo, you get the same Brazilian experience in Brasilia as you do anywhere in Brazil, but without the bitter third world after taste. It’s new (ish) … The buildings aren’t dilapidated, and the streets aren’t swimming in trash and piss. What’s not to like? I feel like if Brazil was Sydney, then Brasilia would be the Upper North Shore… But hey, I spent most of my life on Sydney’s upper north shore so I’m not knocking it. Maybe I was just lucky. Afterall, travelling solo is a bit of a roll of the dice at the best of times… But I had the most fun, met the nicest people and even reconnected with an old friend from Brasilia who I hadn’t spoken to in 5 years. Maybe the theory that people in ugly cities are nicer because they feel that they have to try harder applies. Who knows?

I’ll admit… When you first arrive, Brasilia is a bit of a weird looking place. It reminds me of the Australian Outback; not that I’ve actually ever been there, but you know… Big, flat, dry, wide open spaces. Then suddenly you have these huge surreal spaceship-like concrete structures plonked down, and plonked down seemingly at random.

While the buildings themselves are impressive, there doesn’t seem to have been much thought put into how the buildings relate to each other or how the surroundings relate to the buildings. The main streets are WIDE, and I mean REALLY, REALLY wide, but they’re empty (of people), and kind of eerie and windswept and lacking any kind of vibe.

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Another thing that’s weird when you first arrive in Brasilia is that everything has been placed into sectors. There’s the hotel sector, and that sector is adjacent to the ministries sector and also the banking sector.

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I stayed in the hotel sector… It was weird staying in a designated hotel sector because there is nothing there but hotels. In other cities you would stay in a hotel surrounded by mixed-purpose buildings, shops with people living above them and cosy neighbourhood restaurants and bars. I stayed in the Saint Moritz, which was in a complex of three hotels. Like every hotel, there were a few shops downstairs on street level like a convenience store, one restaurant and a laundry, but other than that, there was nothing. When you travel, you generally want to stay in the “downtown” part of the city (as opposed to the ‘burbs) because that’s where the action tends to be. I feel though that in Brasilia, the ‘burbs are where the action is. If I were to travel to Brasilia again, I would stay in one of the satellite towns on the edge of Brasilia or in Goias.

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As I said though, once you get past all of that, it’s a Brazilian city full of warm, welcoming Brazilian people, living the same Brazilian culture as anywhere else in the country, and you can find everything in Brasilia that exists in other cities, except beaches, of course. Just that you’ll probably get to know more Uber drivers in Brasilia than other cities.

The bars and clubs here are cute, at least the two bars and one club that I went to are. They feel so terribly upper-middle class though compared to the rest of Brazil. While clubs in other parts of Brazil and also Latin America can get a bit gritty, Brasilia’s ones are very nice and everyone is well groomed and polite. Imagine if Roseville or Killara had nightclubs…

And from what I could tell, Brasilia had more vegetarian restaurants compared to other cities!

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And that’s it!!

Just some more snaps before I go…

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And some random snaps from around town:

And now off to new adventures!

Booming and Busting in Belem

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Martin Koskins

After the week in Rio, I flew 3.5 hours north to Belem in the state of Para. Belem which means “Bethlehem” in Portuguese, sits on the Para river in the Amazon delta, about 100 kilometres upstream from the Atlantic. It was the first European colony on the Amazon, founded by the Kingdom of Portugal in 1616 but only incorporated into Brazil in 1775. It is the second largest city on the Amazon after Manaus. Back in the day, Belem’s economy rose from the sugar industry. The boom in Belem continued with cattle and then coffee, rice and cotton. Once Southern Brazil was settled however, these crops could be produced more efficiently there and so Belem’s economy declined. The city rose once again on the back of the rubber boom. In 1876 however, a conniving English bio-pirate by the name of Henry Wickham smuggled out a about 70,000 rubber tree seeds back to England, and the British determined they could grow rubber plantations more efficiently in the former colonies of Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Africa. And so, that was the end of that for Belem and the Amazon. Belem went bust again. It was during the boom period that much of the impressive colonial architecture was built but walking around the city it seems that the “bust” period has had the greater impact.

Arriving in Belem and looking out the window of the taxi, the first impression I got was that this is very obviously a poor city. I admit, I had a minor freak out. It was not what I expected. If you’ve ever been to Manila… Well, it reminded me of that: very run down and dirty, with lots of trash in streets. Admittedly, I arrived at midnight which didn’t do anything to lessen the creepiness of that first impression. I took an Uber to my Airbnb in the old town, Cidade Velha. Usually, in my experience, the old towns and “centros historicos” of cities are restored and well maintained. The government pumps a bit of money into them because that’s what brings in the tourist bucks. I was thinking along the lines of Old Havana, Vecriga, The Rocks, something like that. Well, Belem’s Old Town is a little different. It’s old in the sense that it’s the historical part of the city, but also old in the sense that it’s a f***ing run-down dump… And a dangerous dump at that, apparently. Later however, when I saw other parts of the city, I realised I wasn’t doing too badly by staying there. It gets a whole lot worse. My disclaimer to anyone that I’ve just offended: The enjoyment of a city is not dependent it’s economic success. For me, it’s all about the people and the experiences you have, and in that respect, Belem was up there with the best of them. Although I knew that the north was poorer, somehow, I wasn’t quite expecting it. It was a shock. After an adjustment period of a day or so, while I changed gears, it was smooth sailing.

Apparently, Belem is dangerous. I’ve travelled a bit in Latin America now, and maybe I’ve gotten used to it, but it didn’t strike me as that bad. At least, during the day it didn’t seem that bad. At night it looked a little bit sketchier. I was standing outside my maximum-security Airbnb waiting for my Uber one day when a car pulled up and told me that I need to be more careful and should get back behind the iron gate or put my phone away.

Another night I was trying to call an Uber in another part of town, sketchier than Cidade Velha and was told by some people that the Uber wouldn’t come to this part of town. That was a bit of a worry.

As I said, I took a day or two to change down gears and then everything was fine. I spent the first couple of days seeing what sights there were. Here are a few random snapettes from around Cidade Velha, just so you can get an idea. There are a lot of Portuguese style houses, just very run down.

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The Cathedral of Se is there, which is well maintained however.

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And some snapettes from the adjacent bairros, again just to give an idea:

By the docks:

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I went to the Ver-O-Peso market, which is by the docks and touted as one of the main attractions in the city. It’s an interesting insight into the local culture, and if you’re into open-air produce markets then it’s an amazing experience. Students often tell me that they went to the fish market in Sydney, and I think to myself, “what the hell for? Are you really into fish?” But here I was doing the same. There are lots of chickens, ducks and rabbits crowded into small cages in 35 + degree heat. I realise that veganism and vegetarianism is a luxury that we in more affluent societies can afford. Other people simply have to make do with what they can get. Nonetheless, I found it extremely depressing.

Being surrounded by so much water, fish and prawns are one of the mainstays of the city. At the market, there are tables upon tables upon tables of raw prawns and dried fish, and again out in the open in 35+ degree heat. It’s fine if you’re a dozen blind lesbians walking through, but it was a bit much for me. I took some snaps and quickly got the hell out.

Estacao das Docas is next to the market. It’s part of the old docks that have been renovated and now turned into upmarket restaurants and bars, mainly aimed mainly for tourists. Think Darling Harbour.

I took a power walk into the bairro, Nazare, which is one of the more well-to do neighbourhoods of Belem. By the way, if you do visit Belem, then that’s the place to stay. It’s more attractive and less run-down. The main cathedral of the city, the Basilica of Nazare is located there. I over-estimated my ability to power walk in intense sun, heat and humidity. I made it to the cathedral but didn’t quite make it back. I over-estimated my ability to power walk in tropical midday sun. I ended up sitting through the mass because it was the only place with air-con where I could cool down. I cooled down and then called an Uber and went back home.

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The next day I took a boat ride to Ilha da Combu, which is an island in the river, just a short 15 minute boat ride away from the docks of Belem proper. It was a nice day out… You just sit yourself in a resto-bar drinking cachaca and then you jump in the river.

Mangal das Garcas, a kind of mini botanical garden is another attraction in the city. The main point of interest is the tower where you can get a good view of the city.

That was about it for my sightseeing. The tropical heat and humidity didn’t really lend itself well to hardcore sightseeing or maybe I’m just getting soft. I retreated back to my maximum security Airbnb and decided the only sightseeing I would do from then on would be nocturnal. Then I stumbled across a club called Malice. Yes, the club is called Malice, so you can fill in the blanks.

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And then suddenly it was Tuesday. Time to leave.

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Dealing with jet-lag in Sao Paulo

Posted on June 24, 2019 by Martin Koskins

I’ve been in Sao Paulo for one week.

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Today is my last day before I fly to Rio. I’m still suffering jet-lag… But, I thought I’d better get in a quick blog post before I leave. I’ve been struck down with the most diabolical jet lag for the entire week. The timing of South American flights from Sydney couldn’t possibly be any worse. You leave at midday. Then you travel for about 18 hours and arrive at 4.30 pm on the same day, having slept and completely reversed the day and night.

The flight over from Sydney to Sao Paulo was fine. I flew Air New Zealand to Buenos Aires and then Qatar Airways to Sao Paulo. Sydney to Auckland was great. The flight attendants were super happy and friendly. I’m sure it’s because they’re all thinking “We’ve only got two and a half hours of this shit and then we’re out of here, at home, jet lag free!” … On the Buenos Aires leg however, you could see that the flight attendants were struggling to maintain a smile. Stepping onto Qatar Airways at Buenos Aires was a very noticeable step up in standards from Air New Zealand. The aeroplane is polished and in mint condition and the flight attendants look like they’ve all just come back from their modelling jobs. Quite a pleasant relief after the fuglies of Air NZ. There is also a noticeable attention to detail. Qatar Airways is the only airline that I’ve experienced that actually serve the special meals at the same time as the regular meals. Every other airline serves the special meal about three hours before everyone else. I mean, how difficult is it?

After arriving in Buenos Aires, the week got off to a bit of a bumpy start. I blame it all on my cost cutting measures. After all, you get what you pay for. I first thought I would save time and more importantly money, by not going into BA “Federal Capital” for my stopover, but instead staying close to Ezeiza airport, in a town called El Jaguel. El Jaguel is closer than Buenos Aires, but still, it isn’t THAT close. By the time you exit the airport and go through slip roads, loop roads, spaghetti junctions, motorways and side streets, it took about half an hour. Another 20 minutes in a taxi, and I would have been in the Federal Capital. I also could have found an equally cheap room and I would have been in civilisation. But hey, you live and learn all the time. At least I thought I could spend the day, strolling in the fresh air and quiet provincial streets. I didn’t factor in of course that I was directly under the flight path. El Jaguel is to Ezeiza what Marrickville is to Mascot. And at times like this, Murphy’s law invariably kicks in. From the moment I stepped off the plane until 27 hours later when I stepped back on, it rained literally non-stop and extremely heavily. In El Jaguel, there is literally nothing… Not a thing… You have to walk to the next ‘burb called Monte Grande to find anything. Did I have an umbrella? No. Could I call an Uber? No. All I could find in the house to eat for 27 hours was 2 dulce de leche biscuits and a carton of expired sugary processed milk. Yep, fun times.

The choice of flight to Sao Paulo was also driven price. It was the cheapest. The flight actually goes from Buenos Aires to Doha, via Sao Paulo. I guess that most people travel from Sao Paulo so they sell the BA to SP leg very cheaply. Sao Paulo being a stopover also meant that we arrived in the middle of the night. Arriving in any foreign airport, unless it’s a major transit hub, is pretty creepy. Guarulhos is no exception. I think my flight was the only one that came in at that time. Everything was closed including the casa de cambio. The airport was pretty empty. Two ATMs that I tried had no money. Luckily the third ATM I tried had cash. I inserted my card and pressed on the button that said I wanted to withdraw 2200 reals. You know, just before it’s about to dispense the money, the ATM tells you the transaction fee and then asks if you want to continue? It tells me that the transaction fee is going to be 240 reals!!!!! I quickly clicked onto my XE currency converter app and it tells me that 240 reals converts to AUD 90!!!!! WTF!!! Desperation of course forced me to click the “yes” button. I had no choice but I felt like they should change the “yes” button to “who cares” and the “no” button to “fuck you, I’m desperate”.

The next challenge was getting from Guarulhos to Vila Buarque, where I’ve been staying. There didn’t appear to be a whole lot of taxis floating around and I hadn’t been able to reactivate my Uber account. In order to reactivate it, they need to send a security code, and they send it to my Australian number which I was unable to access. As luck would have it though, some kind of renegade Uber driver approached me mumbling quietly “Uber, Uber” and offered to take me for the same price as a real Uber. I broke the number one rule of travelling in security challenged countries: Never get into an unregistered taxi. It was 3 am… What was I to do? Fortunately though, he was a decent guy and didn’t kidnap me. We get to Vila Buarque safely. The one bonus of arriving in the middle of the night is that there is no traffic. We got to my place in 20 minutes.

I had another minor Airbnb fail here in Sao Paulo. Again, I rented the cheapest room. The apartment itself is fine and the location is OK, but the room itself is a stuffy, windowless inside room with the most uncomfortable bed imaginable. That would be fine, because the owner is quite friendly, sociable and chatty and I felt comfortable coming about of my cell. That would have been fine, but the very next day he went on holiday and rented his room out someone else. I wasn’t introduced to this person and I’ve been getting very strange vibes all week. Not that I need to socialise with him or anything, but I’ve never been in a share living situation where people completely pretend like the other person is invisible. I did the usual, “Oi, tudo bem?” one night and he just grunted “boa noite” and got up, marched into his room and closed the door. Brazilian people in my experience are usually very open and friendly. Trust my luck that out of a population of 200 odd million, I’m living with the one freak in the country.

Brazilian people are extremely warm and friendly. I’m really surprised how friendly, kind and laid back people are here in Sao Paulo considering what a mother of a city it is. People have been extremely nice to me and have gone out of their way to help.

People aside though, Sao Paulo really is a mother of a city. Even though I’ve been here before, for the first few days I felt very overwhelmed. Slowly I’ve been getting my bearings though and relaxing into it. Sao Paulo is like Tokyo in so much as every inch of space is filled up. There are no empty lots or spaces between buildings. The streets run very organically, not in any kind of grid pattern and with the exception of the downtown area which has a few more identifiable buildings and landmarks, everywhere looks essentially the same. All the buildings are in varying shades of beige or creamy yellow. The shops, houses, walls and fences all line up to the same point on the side walk. So as you walk along the sidewalk, you are just walking through this endless wall of creamy yellowy beige. Thank God I got a local SIM card and have been able to use Google maps to guide me as I walk. Otherwise I’d be house bound in my cell.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I’ve been suffering the most diabolical jetlag with no signs that it’s going to improve. I eventually reached the point of “If you can’t beat it, just go with it”. So, I’ve been sleeping all through the day, waking up in the evening and going to bars and clubs at night. That’s something I haven’t done since my twenties.. I guess I had very high expectations of Sao Paulo nightlife. And while the bars and clubs are certainly very good, they’re pretty standard, like what you would find anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Sydney of course). The only thing that separates Sao Paulo nightclubs from others that I’ve been to, is the aggressiveness of the security check. The “pat down” is quite something else. Entering a club, I got the full “Banged Up Abroad” experience. The guy who did me, shouted at me and patted me down so hard that I was virtually bruised by the end of it. He patted down literally EVERY part of my body, punched my shoes several times, made me take them off and then inspected them closely. I was not required however to empty out my bulging pockets and neither was anyone else. Interesting.

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Bye for now. it’s time to pack.

New Year in Taipei

Posted on January 3, 2019 by Martin Koskins

It’s day 14 out of a 15 day trip to Taipei, and for 12 of those 14 days it has rained… Not just a one hour monsoon shower in the afternoon, but it has pretty much rained for the entire day every day. As such, I haven’t been on as many day excursions as I had anticipated… Well, the rain is part of the problem at least. The other part of the problem is that the drinks here are really cheap and really strong and I have been indulging a little bit more than I should. So, I haven’t been springing out of bed at 5 am like a Sealy Posturepedic model like I usually do. My day excursions have been mainly limited to various restaurants and bars, with the odd museum thrown in for good measure. But hey… It’s an urban vacation in an East Asian city in winter.

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I finally got to go to one of the restaurants that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time: The Modern Toilet Restaurant in Ximen. It’s a completely toilet themed restaurant. The interior is set up like a bathroom with exposed plumbing and everyone sits on a toilet to eat their meal. The food is served in toilet bowls and bed pans and the drinks are served in small urinals. The menu features such treats as “Poop stuffed pancakes”, “Diarrhoea Cocoa” and “Taiwanese Urine Beer”. It’s a restaurant that you go to purely for the gimmick of it, and as such, there were no locals there, only tourists. Having said that though, the food wasn’t too bad. I had a vegetarian hot pot served with rice and tea served in a small urinal. The service is a bit slow… The problem is that the restaurant is on two levels and the wait staff have to lug these huge toilet bowls up and down the stairs… It’s not like you can stack a few plates on your arms and do it quickly. They can only do one toilet at a time.

I was in Taipei for New Year’s Eve and went out to partake in the celebrations. I have always maintained that going out partying on new year’s eve is just for amateurs and bogans. It’s their one big night of the year. The cool people stay at home on New Year’s Eve… But somehow, this year I managed to get caught up in the hype of it all. New Year’s Eve parties always have such a build-up, but ultimately are a huge letdown. This year was no exception.

The big ticket attraction for new year’s eve in Taipei is to gather around Taipei 101 and watch the fireworks. Since it was raining quite heavily though, I opted to go to a night club and watch the fireworks on a screen there, rather than stand outside in the rain getting wet. The word on the street was that this club “Cercle” would be fun… I contacted them via Facebook messenger and got a good vibe. 600 TWD for all you can drink all night and a screen showing the fireworks… Woohoo!! This night would go off I thought. You could reserve a table but I figured that wasn’t necessary.

It was a small club, about the size of two large classrooms. As far as nightclubs go, it looked pretty cool and was set up very nicely with lockers, tables and lounges. They had digital lava light type projections on the wall and the DJ was playing house remixes of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s songs. Some of the songs and mixes were pretty cool, but you know, on New Year’s Eve in 2019, can we really not do any better than Sade’s “Smooth Operator” or The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me Baby”? Nice for nostalgia, but come on…

We rocked up at the club at about 10.30 pm. I realize it’s very early to go to a night club at that time, but since the point of it was to do the countdown and watch the fireworks, I figured it would be ok. When we arrived, there were only four other people there. Thank God for the staff, because at least they boosted numbers and the club didn’t look quite so empty. Up until the time we left at 12.30, maybe another 20 or 30 people arrived. There were about 20 or so tables there and about 15 of them had reserved signs, but most of them remained empty for the whole time we were there. No-one danced at all… All the Taiwanese people sat at their tables playing games and complaining that the music was too loud. At about 11.10 pm, they stopped the lava light show and started to project a stop-watch on the wall in order to do the countdown. It was a bit foolish to start the countdown already from 50 minutes I thought, because it just emphasized how boring the night was. We all just stood there watching the clock for 50 minutes: tick, tock, tick, tock.

So anyway, the clock is ticking away… It gets to 11.52 pm and suddenly the clock freaks out an starts showing the wrong time. It showed that it was 12.52 am rather than 11.52 pm. Next thing, a skinny Taiwanese guy, one of the staff, flurries onto the stage, has a panic attack and screams, what I assumed to be the Chinese for, “Faaaaaark!!! Has anybody got a watch?” He grabs a watch from a customer and starts doing the countdown. At midnight he screeches, “Happy new year”, throws a bit of confetti in the air and then the other staff promptly race in with brooms. Woohoo!!!

After that, we went to sit down at one of the unreserved tables… Not that it would have mattered if we had sat at a reserved table because there was barely anyone in the club and what’s more, the reserved tables were mostly empty … About 15 minutes later, the aforementioned skinny guy sashays up to our table and says, “This table is reserved”. I didn’t need to sit down anyway, so we got up but I proceeded to point out to him in a less than diplomatic tone, that most of the reserved tales were still empty anyway. 10 minutes later, skinny guy comes back and says, “Oh sorry, it’s not reserved after all. You can sit there”. I’m trying hard not to react to people or situations these days… Clearly I need to try harder, because suddenly, my mood plummeted faster than a fat kid on a see-saw… I put my face into his face and pointed out to him in a less-than-kind tone of voice, that this was the worst club in not only Taiwan, but the whole entire world. He apologized. We left.

By this stage, I had drunk quite a bit, so we headed to the Ximen pedestrian area to eat some street food. Ximen was buzzing … I ate lots of stinky tofu… It’s amazing what you’ll eat when you’re drunk. Clearly however, the food vendors didn’t have licences because the police kept driving through with sirens chasing the vendors away. The vendors merely parked in another spot and the customers followed. After three plates of stinky tofu, and being quite wet, we called it a night and I went home.

The days since new year’s eve have just been spent eating more food! I have branched out and tried some other vegetarian places. Thankfully, there are a lot of nice vegetarian restaurants in Taipei. New Year’s Day, I had fake beef and real broccoli, fried noodles and dumplings at Xin Hong in Ximen.

And… on the day after, on January the 2^nd, I tried a vegan burger at Ooh Cha Cha.

In between eating and drinking, I did manage to make it to the National Palace Museum. It has an extremely impressive collection of Chinese Imperial artifacts and artworks collected by China’s emperors. When the civil war broke out between the communists and the nationalists, Chiang Kai Shek decided to move the collection to Taiwan. They only managed to get about 22% of the collection before the communists stopped them, but they did manage at least to get the best pieces. And so, the National Palace Museum is one of the most impressive of its kind in the world. As with any large museum, my approach is just to get a quick overview of the whole place and then just focus on one area. I focused on the pottery, which was truly stunning. The funniest thing though in the museum was watching all the (who I presumed to be) Mainlanders, hell-bent on cataloging the entire collection, not looking at anything, just going click-move-click-move-click-move-click-move-click-move-click-move….

And some leek filled pancakes to finish off the day…

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Akko

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Martin Koskins

Meanwhile, I made the trip to Akko despite my Tel Aviv host’s discouragement “It’s a dirty Arab town and not really worth the time and effort to get there” he claimed. It indeed did take a while to get there and I can understand… When people tell me they are going to go by train to the Blue Mountains, I’m like, “Whatever the hell for?” But as a tourist, it’s not like you have to rush off to work or anything.. So, I threw caution to the wind, threw on a pair of shorts and off I went.

Akko is in the north of Israel on Haifa Bay, about another thirty minutes on the train past Haifa. Along with other cities, it claims to be one of the oldest continually inhibited cities in the world; about 4000 years apparently and is the holiest city for the Bahai faith. It was initially meant to be part of an Arab state during the UN partition plan for Palestine, but it was captured during the war and annexed along with other parts of Palestine. It then became a development town for thousands of Jewish immigrants mainly from Morocco and then later Russians and Ukrainians from the USSR. However, the old city of Akko still remains very Arab Muslim and is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

From a distance, the walled old city of Akko is quite attractive. It sits on a peninsula surrounded by water that comes up right to the city wall. In the centre of the old city is the very attractive Al Jazzar Mosque… and no problem entering in shorts either! The rest of the town is a labyrinth of covered walkways, part market and part residential. There are a lot of sweets and spices at the market and also an open fresh fish market. I’ll pause for a minute, so you can fully imagine the aroma of fish wafting around the labyrinth in 40 degree heat…

To be honest, Akko was a bit shabby and it was mainly a case of take some snaps, tick it off your list and leave. One good thing about going to places like Akko is that it makes Tel Aviv look a whole lot better when you return. It makes it easier to appreciate what it has to offer and overlook the ill-mannered and entitled Tel Avivians and the horrible service you get in shops and restaurants. At the better end of the spectrum, the service in Tel Aviv can be quite stern. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s just downright rude. I was tip shamed the other day at a club. The barman shouted at me, “It’s usual to tip in Israel!” as I went to pick up my change from the tray. I’ve worked in the hospitality industry so I totally get tipping and I generally DO tip … But at bar, when you’ve just paid an extortionate 65 shekels (that’s 24 Australian dollars!!) for an extremely ordinary drink and the barman doesn’t speak to you… He just scowls at you and flicks his face upwards as if to say, “What the f*** do you want?” … Can you explain to me WHY I should tip you?

And now from one extreme to the other: From a dirty Arab town to staying in an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood in Jerusalem… More to follow!

After party

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Martin Koskins

So I finally had the chance to realise one of my dreams: going to a Mexican after-party. And all I can say, is that it didn’t disappoint… It was everything I hoped it would be plus a WHOLE LOT MORE. Unlike in Guadalajara where clubs organise their own after-parties, the tradition here is that after the club closes for the night, everyone moves to someone’s house to have the party.

The night started off at a techno club a short taxi ride away from the Sacristy. I’m not really a huge fan of clubbing by myself these days, but in Mexico it’s absolutely not an issue. Mexican people are so genuinely warm, welcoming, friendly and hospitable (at least towards foreigners anyway) and everywhere I’ve gone people have seen that I’m by myself and asked me to join their group. So even though I knew no-one in this club, within about 20 minutes of arriving, it was like I was out with a bunch of old friends.

The club was really cool with three different DJs playing… The main annoyance were the drinks waiters who were on a mission to rip-off everyone as much as they could. I’m sure they make a killing every night this way. They automatically took their own tip, as much as they felt they should or could. At the beginning of the night the tips were small but by the end of the night the tips got bigger and bigger. Nor would they return change unless you chased after them and made a special point of asking for your change back. The price of a beer was 40 pesos and a bottle of water was 20. At the beginning of the night the waiter wanted 50 and 30 respectively but by the end of the night the price for a beer and bottle of water was 150! The general feeling I got was just pay the money, keep them happy and avoid risking any trouble. So despite being in Mexico, it worked out to be quite an expensive night.

The only other issue in the club was a plumbing issue. Nothing flushed in the men’s bathroom so you can imagine what state it was in by 6 a.m.

After the club closed at 6 a.m. about 40 people shuffled off to someone’s house for the after-party. Anyone who wanted could go and there was quite a collection of characters. I’m the first to admit I’m a bit of a pig when it comes to household tidiness and cleanliness but even I was a bit shocked at how quickly and how badly trashed this guy’s house became. Just about every drink was spilt on the floor and nothing was mopped up and pretty much everything else ended up on the floor aswell. On top of that, in Mexico it seems that the floor is used as the ashtray… and Mexican people like to ash and put out their cigarettes with such passion and gusto. So after a few hours, everyone was slipping and sliding around in a sea black debris strewn murkiness. The owner didn’t seem to mind and for me it was truly the cultural experience to end all cultural experiences.

I arrived back at the Sacristy at about 1 p.m. on Sunday afternoon looking a little rough round the edges. The only bummer about the Sacristy on days like this is that it’s maximum security. First there’s a big wooden bolted door and then another padlocked iron gate, so there’s no way of just discreetly sneaking in with no-one seeing you. You have to buzz for someone to let you in.

I went up to my room and and at that time the housekeeper had had arrived to clean my room. I must have looked like a fright because she took one look at me, jumped, dropped her keys and cried, “OK, I’m leaving” and rushed off. I was glad she left but I was a bit embarrassed by the whole situation.

Last night was a very lazy night just hanging at the Zocalo and eating tacos and today it was hanging on the rooftop of the Museum Amparo taking in the sun.