Secrets of a Million-Mile Traveler
The rhythms of life in Spain. A magical meal in Tokyo. Seeing the world is easier than ever -- but truly experiencing a place requires an unconventional approach. Our travel correspondent on how to escape the tourist bubble.
By STAN SESSER
June 9, 2007; Page P1
I was in Zurich for only one night, an obligatory stop to make a plane connection. At dinner I talked to a young man sitting at the next table. He turned out to be a widely traveled half French-Canadian and half American-Indian who had lived in Switzerland for the past two years. He raved about a little town in the Swiss Alps called Arosa, so much so that the next morning I canceled my flight to Istanbul and took a train to Arosa instead.
That was 10 years ago, and I've since returned seven times. Arosa is at the end of the line of a narrow-gauge railway that offers breathtaking views of snowcapped mountains, deep ravines, roaring rivers and waterfalls. Because the town is known for skiing, in the summer the tourists are scarce, the wildflowers plentiful and the hiking spectacular.
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Alamy
The Five Storied Pagoda at the Senso Ji temple in Tokyo
After many years as a travel writer, taking countless flights and clocking more than a million miles in the air, I've become convinced that the key to a more rewarding experience is violating the rules -- at least some of the time. When others check into big-chain hotels, I look for an apartment in the back streets. I'll choose a quirky guided walk through a place over a crowded tour bus.
It's a paradox of travel these days that many people are traveling more widely than ever before but are spending their time in exotic destinations surrounded by the trappings of home -- familiar hotel chains and brand-name restaurants. (Starbucks now has nearly 4,000 outlets outside the U.S., including stores in China and on the Greek island of Mykonos. And if you're traveling to Nepal, the Hyatt Regency Kathmandu has burgers and fries on its room-service menu.)
In one form or another, this dilemma has plagued travelers before. In 1601, Francis Bacon advised the young British aristocrats who traveled to the Continent that they should make local friends and eat local food. "Let him sequester himself from the company of his countrymen and diet in such places, where there is good company of the nation where he travelleth," he wrote. But with the huge upsurge in travel in recent years, staying in that bubble has become a much easier proposition than in Francis Bacon's day.
My own solution requires two words: Be counterintuitive. When conventional wisdom tells you to do A, consider doing B. In practice, this might be something as simple as eating food from a street vendor or as heart-stopping as going to a country when everyone else is fleeing it. Counterintuitive thinking inevitably gets me out of the bubble, and even though it might provoke some anxiety, it usually works out fine.
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Stan Sesser offers tips3 for escaping the tourist bubble and having a truly unique experience on the roadOver the years, for example, I've often arrived in a city without a hotel booking. Only once, in Paris, did I have to spend the night sleeping on a park bench. Moreover, the beautiful warm evening made that night in the park almost fun.
Admittedly, I'm one of the more adventurous travelers, after some 40 years circling the globe, the past seven based in Bangkok as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. And I'll be the first to acknowledge that travel to unfamiliar places can be a daunting proposition. But even the less adventurous can have a better travel experience by applying some of these key tactics in small measures. You can escape the horde of tourists and meet more locals by getting out of major cities and exploring small towns -- but take it as a side trip, rather than make it the focus of your vacation.
For me, the unpleasantries don't come close to matching the joys of acting counterintuitively. Here's how I do it:
Avoid Hotels
In Spain, Seville's Old City sits behind medieval walls, and the narrow, cobblestone streets are lined with whitewashed stucco buildings. It's romantic and picturesque -- but some distance from areas where many of the upscale hotels are located. Instead of booking a room out there, I booked an apartment in the Old City and ended up with the accommodation of my dreams. For $130, less than the price of almost any hotel, I had two large, bright rooms, plus a modern bathroom and kitchen.
SEVILLE
TIP: Get closer to locals by renting an apartment -- you'll escape the traditional tourist zones near hotels and get a feel for the rhythm of the city.
With hotel rates soaring, apartment owners are increasingly finding it more profitable to hire management firms that will rent their apartments to tourists, rather than leasing to a long-term tenant. For travelers, it means a chance to break away from bland breakfast buffets and hotel décor that often looks the same whether you're in Moscow, Manila or Miami. In Seville, I knew exactly where I was staying: With red-tile floors, colorful tiles decorating the walls, and a wood-beamed ceiling, it was so redolent of Spain that I half-expected a group of flamenco dancers to entertain me at night.
The beauty of living in an apartment is that I felt a part of the city, not a tourist. I switched to Spanish dining hours so I could eat with the locals, with lunch at 3 p.m. and dinner at 11 p.m. The food of Seville centers on tapas, many consisting of seafood or varieties of Spanish hams. Crowds mill around, helping themselves to some food displayed on the tapas bar counters and ordering other dishes. It's not clear how much anything costs. The chaos makes it doubly rewarding to mingle with the regular patrons, because they'll often take pity on bewildered Americans and explain the system, even suggesting what to eat.
Management firms are springing up to handle these apartment bookings and provide maid service. You can easily find listings on the Internet. Pick an agency that has photos of the apartment on its Web site and that doesn't commit you to paying for the whole thing in advance, in case you end up not liking the place. Beware of any unconventional requests, such as cash rather than a credit card, on which you can always do a chargeback if you get cheated. Last year, I was burned by an agency in Moscow that demanded a $100 deposit via Western Union, then took the money and ran.
Get Out of Big Cities
To many travelers, Prague has become the poor man's Paris, just as beautiful but much more down to earth. So if anything is counterintuitive, it's the idea of leaving this glorious Czech capital and heading out to the unknown countryside. I did this last year for the first time and was amazed at what I found. The Czech Republic reminds me so much of Tuscany, with little medieval towns climbing the slopes of hills that are topped with castles.
Stramberk is a tiny town dating back to the 14th century. The nicest hotel in town, a splendid renovation of a medieval building, has four rooms, so you won't exactly be caught in any crowds boarding tour buses. You have a view of the main square, looking up at the old houses lining the narrow streets.
At night, everyone descends on the local restaurant/pub on the main square to eat delicious food (delicious, that is, if you like pork and veal) costing only a couple of dollars and to drink glass after glass of the famous Stramberk Trubac beer. It's simply the best beer I've ever tasted, dark gold in color, with a head the consistency of shaving cream. Unfiltered and unpasteurized, it's so fragile that it can't be bottled; it's drawn directly from the casks in the medieval cellars under the restaurant.
One of the things that made Stramberk such a delight is the fact that there is nothing much to do. Who wants to spend a vacation doing nothing? Me for one, if it's a one- or two-day break from the usual hectic tourist routine of running around frantically seeing things and doing things. I sat in the little café in front of my hotel drinking coffee, walked around the town and took a hike in the surrounding woods.
From Stramberk to a little island in the Mekong called Don Kone, small towns make up some of my fondest travel memories. Before you go, look at other people's recommendations on travel bulletin-board Web sites, like Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forums, to avoid small towns that are more dull than magical.
Eat Where the Locals Eat
It almost goes without saying that the best food is often outside the five-star hotels. But it can also mean going beyond the cliché of "authentic" local cuisine.
TOKYO
TIP: Take a chance on nontraditional restaurants -- in Tokyo, for instance, local culinary precision brings a special edge to French cuisine.
A couple of years ago, I devoted one of my precious few nights during a trip to Tokyo to a French dinner. It all started one evening not in Tokyo but in Saigon, where I was having a dinner so wonderful that I congratulated the owner. He in turn introduced me to a Japanese woman eating alone, an agent in Tokyo for avant-garde artists. There are tens of thousands of restaurants in Tokyo, but she seemed to know all the best ones. And she recommended Tout Seul (in English, "all alone").
Why not? I thought. I've seen young Japanese interns assiduously chopping away in kitchens of the greatest restaurants in France, learning the tricks of the trade. Presumably the concept of freshness and simple preparation that defines Japanese cooking could work equally well on French food.
"All alone" indeed. The young Japanese chef, who spent six years working in France, did everything himself for a maximum of eight diners sitting at a counter. He not only cooked but also served the food, bused dishes, washed pots and poured the wine. The Japanese aesthetic took as much precedence as in any restaurant serving Japanese food. My meal included grilled sea scallops served over a tomato purée, and roasted guinea hen with a sauté of oyster mushrooms, asparagus and broad beans.
It sounds boring, but what if the scallops were the freshest, juiciest available, and what if the tomato purée came not from a can, but from the ripest, reddest summer tomatoes? And consider the vegetables alongside the guinea hen. No seasoning other than salt, but everything was flavored by the rich juice of the mushrooms.
Aside from asking people you meet for recommendations, I find that hotel concierges respond favorably if asked specifically for a restaurant that serves local food where you won't see a single tourist; it's a challenge for them, so different from the usual queries they face.
Intuition tells us that in countries with low standards of sanitation, we should confine our eating to fancy places, right? Well, consider my years living in Bangkok. I've had serious food poisoning twice, and both came from meals in five-star hotels. On the other end of the scale, I eat at sidewalk stalls at least a couple of times a week, and there has never been a problem. Unlike many tourist spots, local restaurants depend on repeat business.
Take a Quirky Tour
I can't deny the benefits of getting to know a city by taking a tour when you first arrive, particularly if you don't have much time. But being on a tourist bus is like being in a zoo looking through the bars. In various cities, I've seen better options, including walking tours, bicycle tours, even a running tour of Paris. When I took a Segway tour of Bangkok, there were just four of us, and startled and amused residents stopped us frequently to talk.
BERLIN
TIP: Take a quirky walking tour to see sights without a tour bus and impersonal tourist spiel; you're more likely to wander the streets and encounter the unexpected.
The more unconventional the tour, the better. In Berlin last month, I joined a free 3½-hour walking tour sponsored by Sandeman's New Europe, a company that has similar free tours in several European cities. It was the first time that advice in an airline magazine, in this case Ryanair's, turned out to be valuable. The guide gets paid by tips only, and the company gets its income hoping you'll like the free tour sufficiently to take a paying tour.
What made the tour such a success was the fact that Naida Alic, our 27-year-old guide, was so far removed from a typical tour guide. A Harvard graduate majoring in history, she had come to Berlin on vacation and fallen in love with the city. She laid great emphasis on both the Nazi era and the rule of the Communists in East Germany, using monuments like the Brandenburg Gate, the bunker where Hitler committed suicide and the standing section of the Berlin Wall as a backdrop to probe the German psyche. She showed us the luxury high-rise apartment complex built by the Communists near the Berlin Wall to be visible from the West, to demonstrate the prosperous life that they wanted the world to think the East Germans were leading.
For lunch, she took us to Schlotzsky's Deli. It was only after I left Germany that I discovered Schlotzsky's is a franchise operation based in Austin, Texas. You see how easy it is in these days of globalization to get sucked into the tourist bubble?
Go Where Others Aren't
Of all the counterintuitive things I've ever done when I travel, this heads the list. In 1993, a month before the United Nations-sponsored elections in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge attacked Siem Reap, the town that's the gateway to Angkor Wat and dozens of other magnificent monuments. Because they didn't have enough strength to hold the city, they torched a few buildings and withdrew. The attack caused a mass exodus of frightened tourists.
AROSA
TIP: Head to places where other travelers aren't going -- try visiting off-season when many towns still have compelling attractions but fewer tourists.
A week later, I flew to Siem Reap and checked into the Grand Hotel d'Angor, which had only one other guest, an eccentric British poet. For two days, I had the privilege of being the only tourist at Angkor Wat, one of the great wonders of the world.
Even if you're skittish about destinations in flux, it's still worth thinking about going where others wouldn't usually flock -- even if it's simply going somewhere off-season. Take my trip to Arosa, for instance, a town in the Swiss Alps that's usually full of ski buff-tourists in winter but where I like to go in summer.
When I got off at the Arosa station on my first visit, I could hardly believe I was in Switzerland. Waiting to board the train for the return trip was a large group of Orthodox Jews speaking Yiddish to each other, the men dressed in long black coats and black hats. It turns out that while few Americans have heard of Arosa, it's a popular getaway for Israelis. There's a strictly kosher hotel, and in the hills above Arosa a dairy that sells cheese, yogurt and milk, owned by an Orthodox Jewish family.
I've never done more beautiful hiking than in Arosa, which is why I keep going back. A real bonus lies with the people you meet on the hiking trails. Many are elderly Swiss who have retired to Arosa not to watch television, but to hike in the summer and ski in the winter. They're in no special hurry, and enjoy saying hello. Some are in their 80s and -- although I'm loath to admit it -- some have zoomed past me as I've made my way up the steep mountain trails.
[分享]WSJ: Travel article
[分享]WSJ: Travel article
CAVA如果你要去香港找吃的和看”中式香港“的街景，建议你去九龙城。不过去九龙城没有地铁，最近在乐富站下车。如果搭个的士，大约不用跳表就到了。走路的话略有点儿麻烦。九龙城过去是个大”城“，后来拆掉了，变成现在的公园。”功夫“里的”猪笼城寨“，其实就是九龙城。九龙城的潮州菜和泰国菜都十分好吃。潮州菜有一间叫‘澄海老四”的，泰国菜其实随便一间都好吃，金兰花、黄珍珍、金宝。当然比真正泰国的泰国菜，还是有距离。
香港岛那边推荐去上环、西环。西环就是上环再向西，搭电车。西环好多好多米铺，我一辈子没见过那么多米。那里也有很多好潮州菜吃，而且便宜，是真正“打冷”。我记得皇后大道中有一间叫陈什么记的“，卤水有五十年了。蚝仔粥真是鲜美，伙计全是老头子。
当然，中环的气魄也是独具一格的，跟别的大都市不一样，香港有香港的城市夜景。我每次夜晚在中环，都由衷地不忍心离开。
香港岛那边推荐去上环、西环。西环就是上环再向西，搭电车。西环好多好多米铺，我一辈子没见过那么多米。那里也有很多好潮州菜吃，而且便宜，是真正“打冷”。我记得皇后大道中有一间叫陈什么记的“，卤水有五十年了。蚝仔粥真是鲜美，伙计全是老头子。
当然，中环的气魄也是独具一格的，跟别的大都市不一样，香港有香港的城市夜景。我每次夜晚在中环，都由衷地不忍心离开。
http://harps.yculblog.com
搬家了搬家了
搬家了搬家了
可是，我居心险恶的想（Jun wrote:No kidding. This is what real medicine is like. Not the fantasy world of House or ER, where most patients are saved heroically.
），会不会，是Atul此人不算特别天才的缘故涅？开头有一段说他给人开center line的，好多次都是扎来扎去扎不着，又忘这又忘那的，看得我一身一身的为他病人出汗。然后他就说medicine跟其他所有学科一样，都得靠练，熟能生巧，不过这个是在人身上练。我就不免想，不见得吧，总有人上来就艺震八方的（我结结巴巴的补充说，比、比如House这样的？）。我自横刀向天笑，笑完我就去睡觉。
我就不免想，不见得吧，总有人上来就艺震八方的（我结结巴巴的补充说，比、比如House这样的？）。
小E你真可爱。天才医生，哇塞。当医生是最不需要天赋奇才的行业之一啦，central line也好，开心手术也好，甚至在显微镜下面给神经搭桥，都不需要莫扎特或者米开朗急罗类型的非人天才，倒比较接近那个拆牛骨而不损刃的屠夫：无它，手熟耳。不过加一条：不能怕见血。Central line开几遍就会了，会了以后大家做的都差不多，在高级的天才也开不出朵花来。
绝世良医，鹤立鸡群的，有！你找他的新书Better来看看，里面描述了好些个非常好的医生，讲他们怎样达到极高的行医水平。好医生的characteristics也有，但不象你想象的那样绝顶聪明，与众不同，关键的是１.无比耐心；２.天生关心他人，乐于助人；３.不武断，好奇心重，观察力强；而且很重要很重要一条：４.Good at listening。望闻问切，问这一条跟其他一样重要！就算是现在科技发达，诊断手段多而先进，但是再先进的tests也替代不了耐心亲切地同病人交流。（请看洛洛描写的眼科医生的例子。）所以我很反感House医生声称不问病人，不听病人自述，因为病人"They always lie.＂
Thank Jun for the recommendation. Just listened to the audiobook "Better". It's so realistic. I like this idea of "positive deviance" a lot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Deviance
Positive Deviance (PD) is an approach to personal, organizational and cultural change based on the idea that every community or group of people performing a similar function has certain individuals (the "Positive Deviants") whose special attitudes, practices/ strategies/ behaviors enable them to function more effectively than others with the exact same resources and conditions.[1] Because Positive Deviants derive their extraordinary capabilities from the identical environmental conditions as those around them, but are not constrained by conventional wisdoms, Positive Deviants standards for attitudes, thinking and behavior are readily accepted as the foundation for profound organizational and cultural change.
For example, even though poverty is often the root-cause of ill health, in any community there will usually be some families, the Positive Deviants, that manage to stay healthy, or raise healthy kids, despite their poverty. Their practices, such as washing their hands more often, cooking the food differently, consuming crops that were considered taboo by the rest of the village etc. became the foundation for large scale community change.
Similarly, in any other population, even in such seemingly mundane groups as service personnel in a fast food environment, the Positive Deviants have attitudes, cognitive processes and behavioral patterns that lead to significantly improved performance in key metrics such as speed-of-service and profitability. Wide spread adoption of the Positive Deviant approaches consistently leads to significant performance improvement.
The method was introduced by Jerry Sternin during his work with child nutrition in Vietnam, who has continued to promote the concept together with his wife Monique. His work was based on that of Marian Zeltlin at Tufts University. This work was significantly extended, primarily to the private sector, by William Seidman and Michael McCauley. Their extensions include methodologies and technologies for:
Quickly identifying the Positive Deviants[2]
Efficiently gathering and organizing the Positive Deviant knowledge
Motivating a willingness in others to adopt the Positive Deviant approaches[3]
Sustaining the change by others by integrating it into their pre-existing emotional and cognitive functions[4]
Scaling the positive deviant knowledge to large numbers of people simultaneously[5]
Positive deviance was further extended to groups or organizations by Gary Hamel.[6] Hamel looks to Positive Deviant companies to set the example for “management innovation.”
This is not true in U.S. because usually the surgeons (especially for the specialist) here get their first job around 33?而且30-40的医生最好, 短的经验少, 老的眼力体力都不行了, 站边上指导可以
Graduate from medical school at 26,
finish 5 yrs general surgery training at 31,
then finish 2-3 yrs specialty training at 33-34.
I'd think someone who has been practiced for 5-10 years as the expert in the field.
