Hugely looking forward to the Travellers’ Tales Festival, taking place at the historic headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society in London later this month. I think it’s the only festival in the world dedicated to travel writing and photography, so it’s probably a must for anyone interested in either or both – and probably for anyone passionate about travelling.
Intrepid explorer Benedict Allen is due to open the festival with what promises to be a riveting account of his extraordinary journeys around the world, which should provide a suitably inspiring start to a weekend’s worth of talks by equally well travelled photographers and writers.
And closing the festival is Don McCullin, arguably the greatest war photojournalist who I understand is making a very rare appearance.
The weekend stars numerous travel photographers including greats such as Frans Lanting who is one of National Geographic’s in-house-contributors and Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher, well known for their striking African portraits.
Writing-wise, there are two rare appearances: the grand dame of travel writing Jan Morris and Irish writer Dervla Murphy who wrote From Ireland to India with a Bicycle will both be there. Other speakers are the inspiring and wildly witty Chris Stewart and the acclaimed BBC special correspondent Fergal Keane, who is as poetic as he is hard-hitting.
In addition, the festival will run workshops and solo spots by emerging new talents dotted about the building’s many rooms and halls so punters can pick up a few hints and tips from the experts.
I’m sure it’ll be an interesting and pretty inspiring weekend. It runs from the
19-21 February in London and should provide a refreshing pause from the rather rotten winter.
Visit the website for tickets… www.travellerstalesfestival.com
Pictures by Paul Harris from Travellers’ Tales Festival 2009
There's a spectacular view of mountains, rock formations and the beautiful Rio Limay on Ruta 237 not far from Bariloche. My video skills do not do it justice, but you get a glimpse of the incredible beauty of the Valle Encantado.
Cortexica's Steve Semenzato demos Winefinder at VatorSplash in San Francisco this past week.
The magic behind Winefinder is an image recognition technology that informs a buyer of the kind of wine they are buying simply from a photograph of the label. They can also learn where they can purchase it for less. While currently only available in the U.K, they plan to expand to other countries soon.
Durian, sometimes called the King of Fruit, is a mainly found in SE Asia, This soccer ball sized fruit is normally loved or hated; loved by the locals and hated by westerners. Durian has a reputation, a stinky one. The fruit is so stinky that it’s banned from public places in Singapore. However since Vietnam rarely has rules, there’s no banning here – eat it, sell it, and transport it whereever you want!
Vietnam Market
Walk around the markets and they’ll have the familiar smell of durian wafting through them. It’s not a pleasant smell; I think it smells of rotten eggs, however after prolonged exposure to the once foreign small, I’ve become tolerant of it now.
Durian is like the superhero of fruit. Not only does durian have a protective smell force-field, but it also has a protective armor force-field. A pointy, hard outer layer makes it hard to even carry.
Luckily I had help on my durian adventure, I went with my good friends Lee and Tuyet, a lovely Vietnamese/American couple who has befriended me and agreed to show me the wonderful foods of Vietnam. We went to the local market to pick up food for a Vietnamese feast; including durian. The market trip was great; smelly, chaotic, motorbike flooded, and sweaty…a true local Vietnamese market. Lee and Tuyet stopped at their regular stalls; the vegetable lady, the shrimp lady, the fish lady, and the fruit lady. Plus, we stopped and picked up a few lotus flowers too so they could have me try the seeds…yum! I love to explore markets and new foods; and it’s even more fantastic when you have people with you that can speak the language!
We brought our bags of fresh produce home and before we started preparing and cooking the feast, we decided to have a snack to tide us over. Tuyet could hardly wait to have some durian – no better time than the present I guess.
Opening a Durian
She showed me how to open the durian without getting impaled by its armor. Once I got the crack started, it pulled apart easily. Strangely I didn’t notice the repulsive smell that much; I was focused on not impaling myself I guess. Sure, it’s not lilacs, but it’s not a terrible smell to me any longer; proving that you can get used to anything with enough time.
Since I felt as if I had gotten past the smell issue, I thought the eating part would be a breeze – that is until we broke open the durian and exposed the fruit inside. It looked like an internal organ of some kind, a yellow liver. Silence of the Lambs came to mind; fava beans anyone?. All of a sudden it didn’t look too terribly appetizing! I was once again reminded that the brain is such a powerful thing. Just seeing shape of the fruit gave me a negative reaction. Tuyet showed me how to gently get the fruit out of it’s protective armor; careful use of a spoon to scoop it out delicately. To my surprise it was then that I realized that the fruit did not have a solid consistency; instead it was delicate and mushy….like really soft butter.
Eating Durian
I tried a bite and was surprised; it wasn’t what I was expecting. The smell didn’t get me, but the consistency did. It was sort of like eating creamy frosting that had a vegetable and fruit taste at times. I saw one description of it on the Internet as “French custard passed through a sewer”. That seems a little extreme, but I think you get the point. The taste seemed to change in my mouth as I ate it which I wasn’t too nuts about. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t necessarily like it either. Lee and Tuyet laughed at me as I analyzed each bite.
I eventually got through the liver-sized creamy frosting concoction and it did seem to get better as I ate more. Maybe my brain eventually switched off and I just ate instead of thinking about what I was eating.
The rest of the afternoon was spent cooking up a massive meal of fresh fish with mushrooms and chili, shrimp cooked in coconut milk, and clams in lemon grass and coconut followed by more fresh fruit for dessert. It was a Vietnamese feast! It never ceases to amaze me what can be produced out of a small, simple Vietnamese kitchen with 2 gas burners. One of my favorite things about the Vietnamese culture is cooking and food is a social process; similar to cooking food in Italy. Everyone joins in, it takes hours of preparation, and it’s more of a social gathering.
Vietnamese Lunch
As I sat on the floor and cleaned vegetables and talked to Lee and Tuyet about their lives in Vietnam, it was no different than sitting in a bar with friends drinking a cosmopolitan in NYC. The process of spending a whole morning from 7AM to 1PM shopping for, preparing, and eating food is normal here. I have to admit, it’s much better than going to Starbucks and then sitting around watching TV for the morning!
As for my durian experience, well, all I can say is that I’m glad that I tried it. I didn’t think that I could travel throughout Asia plus live here for a year and not try it! As I ate the creamy fruit I did have to remind myself that people actually LOVE this fruit in Asia. I think I’ll reserve my love for the mango instead.
Sherry Ott it the co-founder of Briefcase to Backpack, a website offering career break travel inspiration and advice. She also runs an around the world travel blog writing about her travel and expat adventures at Ottsworld – Travel and Life Experiences of a Corporate America Runaway.
“Geotourism” – defined as tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place – has been a buzzword in the travel industry for several years now. It’s hard to know exactly what the term means, however, unless you see the companies that are putting such practices into action.
And that’s what National Geographic’s annual Geotourism Change Summit tries to accomplish. [Read more →]
PICNIC Program Director Kitty Leering talks to me about their upcoming PICNIC event, held in Amsterdam, Holland every September. Think of PICNIC as more of a festival or a cross-discipline platform for creative discussion and collaboration than a conference. Bringing together art, technology, innovation and culture, its unique festival format covers strategy as well as hands-on workshops and matchmaking sessions. Learn more from Kitty below.
While food was clearly not my on my high list of kudos in Germany this past week, I managed to sample a cross selection of traditional German food in beer halls, restaurants, cosmopolitan bistros, pubs, markets as well as the renown Dallmayr exquisite food shop along Munich’s Dienerstr.
Click below to energize your senses with the aromas of homemade German chocolate. Tucked away on a side street not far from Munich’s food market where you are mainly faced with sausage, sausage and more sausage, a little gem called Sama Sama sits.
The building itself on Westenriederstr is crooked and crammed inside, every corner filled with homemade delicacies oozing with combinations you are unlikely to have tasted.
Not only do they use the best quality ingredients to create dark and milk chocolate masterpieces but they incorporate pistachios, cherries, lemons, ginger, amaretto, pepper, lavender, violets, roses, blueberries, vanilla, strawberries and more.
Allow yourself to surrender to chocolate everywhere you travel on this magical globe of ours. In one video, you will also see the chocolate in process as well as the finished product.
