Former CP staffer Lora Reehling and her boyfriend, Nick, recently left behind their lives in Philly to volunteer for FairMail, a photography program encouraging self-esteem, business acumen and creative talent to underprivileged teens in a small Peruvian village. She’ll drop in weekly to share stories about the organization, life in South America and the occasional giant meat plate.

pinata prize.

Rooftop Dance Party, Complete with Poultry

Success. That’s how you feel after you’ve pulled off a kick-ass party in another country with friends you’ve just met within the last month. I’m a bit over-welcoming, to a point — I give the benefit of the doubt that people at my parties are going to be cool. I didn’t realize at the time that I’d have to worry about chickens, too …

The night began down on the street with my neighbors since they were having their yearly summer block party. We lent them some chairs, and a grill to make "anticucho" (cow hearts on skewers). One of the kids explained that we would start off the night with a game and mentioned something about a chicken on a rope. I thought I might have misinterpreted this Spanish translation and just went along, wondering what it would actually be…

Integrating the Peruvians and gringos was a bit of a challenge. I kept running back and forth between my neighbors and friends trying to show how we could all get along. And then … the games began. We saw a piñata hanging from the rope and the game was made quite clear to us. But where did the chicken come in? Nick and I were called over to line up behind the other couples on the far end of the street. Each couple would skip hand-in-hand toward the piñata, which hung on a string, swinging in the air from the rooftops. The rope would swing up and down while people took a running leap to swing for the piñata. We were the only gringos playing the game, but I think our competition underestimated Nick’s monstrous height, and because of this we were able to bat at the prize. As everyone cheered and the piñata smashed down in a cloud of dust, a REAL CHICKEN fell out of the bucket. Disguised as a piñata, and running around in the street, this was just unreal! I was in hysterics and jumped for joy at the thought of winning a chicken at our first Peruvian block party. (Animal rights activists would have a fit in this country.) We got high-fives and cheers as we felt the adrenaline rush of being the chicken-winners, but unfortunately it was explained that it’s a best-out-of-three kind of thing … so the games went on.

After some additional "dancing around the case of beer bottles" game, we decided to take the party up to the roof to have our own version. We had every intention of dancing the night away, and although I love salsa and enjoy the Latin music here, it’s seriously the same 40 songs played over and over with no variation. We rented a little Peruvian trobbit (as well as his sound system) sitting in the corner making sure his speakers were protected as the dancing began. I haven’t danced like that in a long time, and I’m quite sure that everyone had fun. We had a good mix of about 15 different countries represented and plenty of dance styles. It went on till 4 in the morning. Then Nick and I foolishly bolted down to the beach to go swimming only to be stupidly cut up by the rocks we forgot about. It was a fantastic night.

Ciao for now –

Lora

Harry’s New York Bar. In Paris.

Photo | Briana Regan

We asked CP intern Briana Regan to chronicle as much dumb America-related stuff as possible during her recent spring break trip to London and Paris.

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Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months.

Today, March 18, Amy and I leave for Bhutan, the real honeymoon part of our trip. Because of the amount of time it takes to write these posts, as well as our limited access to computers (we’re not travelling with one), we’ve gotten a bit behind where we’d like to be in keeping you updated. In an attempt to remedy that, here’s a quick overview of how we spent our time in Vietnam (hopefully with another post on Laos and Northern Thailand to come).

Feb. 17 - 20; The Mekong Delta

We started out in Vietnam by taking a boat from just outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to the Vietnam border at Chau Doc. There we saw a fish farm (quite sad actually) and had a good time walking through the town at night and drank shots of rice wine with green mango, offered to us by a group of very sweet, and very drunk, locals.

The next day we embarked on a three-day Mekong Delta trip, mostly by boat. We stayed in Cantho, where we ate snake, had amazing Vietnamese coffee, saw an incredible floating market, and met a nice teenager who helped us buy water and practiced his English with us before ditching us to play online games (which are huge here!).

Then we were off to Mytho which was quite nice.

We ate durian which we had been wanting to try but were afraid. It’s a fruit that’s both sweet an incredibly pungent. The smell reminds one a bit of raw sewage, but the taste is, well, sorta good.

I have to admit it’s a bit hard to get past the smell. On bus trips, they don’t allow you to bring durian into the passenger area with you. Because of the incredibly strong smell, you must stow it with the luggage.

In Mytho we met this guy who took us on a fantastic nighttime boat trip through these small canals in the delta to a restaurant where we ate a super tasty and beautiful mudfish.

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Got a missive from Thailand from one half of our globetrotting "You’re Going WHERE on Your Honeymoon???" team, Ramon Sender, last week:

hey brian,

check out what happens when i try to access the citypaper.net from Thailand (attached).

hilarious!

The fine print reads: "Sorry, the web site you are accessing has been closed by Royal Thai Police to do inappropriateness such as pornography, gambling or contain any information whihc is deemed to violate national security."

We don’t know for sure, but we believe the block stems from a dust-up over an ad we ran back in 2002.

Anyway, stay tuned for a final Southeast Asia post from Ramon and Amy this week before they head to Bhutan!

Ramon: Feb. 5-17

So we spent nearly 2 weeks in Cambodia. Amy wrote already a bit about how difficult of a place it is. The poverty really is overwhelming, and any westerner with a pulse is constantly reminded of their privilege; your heart is always breaking a little bit. It sounds selfish to say that the hardship of others is directly responsible for your own inability to enjoy yourself: “Why don’t those starving street children just leave me alone so I can have a good time?…” But the truth is it does have a weighty impact.

That being said, we had some amazing times in Cambodia. Our first stop was Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a small town about 5 miles from Angkor Wat and the rest of the ancient Khmer ruins, and it’s where everybody stays who goes to the temples. Our first day there we rented bicycles and set out to see them. Just before arriving at the moat surrounding Angkor Wat, we bumped into some more monkeys.

This is the 3rd or 4th time on the trip that this has happened and I swear I don’t get tired of it. As we learned in the ensuing days, these particular monkeys do a good business preying on the curiosity of tourists and as a result remain well fed and unbothered by our proximity to them. We stayed with them for a few minutes and then pedalled the final 1/2 mile to the grandaddy of all temples, the largest religious monument in the world, the Khmer temple of Angkor Wat. (more…)

Former CP staffer Lora Reehling and her boyfriend, Nick, recently left behind their lives in Philly to volunteer for FairMail, a photography program encouraging self-esteem, business acumen and creative talent to underprivileged teens in a small Peruvian village. She’ll drop in weekly to share stories about the organization, life in South America and the occasional giant meat plate.

Trujillo, Peru

Transport, chop shops and trobbits

To get to Trujillo and from Huanchaco, you have a few options: taxi, combi or micro. Taxis are the fastest and most direct, but will cost you roughly 10 soles (about $3) for a 20-minute ride. A combi is a small van that will get you there for 1.5 soles. A micro (this name makes no sense, since the combi is much more mini that the micro) is the cheapest option, at 1 sole.

Combis and micros have a driver and a "runner" — young guys who hang out the window yelling and luring people onto their vehicles. Or in some cases, they’ll hold on to the metal interior and hang out the side with the door wide open. (I find this seriously dangerous, but I have yet to see a driver fall out of his seat.) Their job is to hurry people on and off, and at several checkpoints along the way, to bolt off the bus and run up to a little mailbox in some random house or shop to get a piece of paper stamped.

This is their version of a bus schedule, presumably to let the next driver know how fast or slow they’re going. So on a fast day, the runner guy isn’t given much slack. The driver yells "Corre, corre! (Run, run!)" and doesn’t even stop the bus. The kid basically jumps on and off the bus while it’s still moving along crazy bumpy roads, simultaneously dodging other traffic to jump back on. Meanwhile you sit there, crammed into a tiny van with people on top of each other, keeping a lookout and yelling "baja!" when you want to get off. You just wave them down and yell for your life when the time is right.

Pushy taxis, bzzz sounds and PCSFs after the jump!

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Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months.

Amy:

Nice bug ladies in Battambong

I had seen them in the market in Thailand, glistening salty piles, separated by species. On the left, cricket; in the middle, beetle. On the end, the one that provoked the most horror in my imagination — the worm. The larvae. Ivory white, they were bumpy, fleshy, big as the pinky of the Michelin Man.

Okay, maybe not that big.

But they were easily an inch long. I imagined putting one of these giant maggots in my mouth, its soft flesh wiggling gently between my teeth. Eegads.

The first time we saw them, visiting the Watermelon Festival (much like a county fair) with our homestay family and a group of NGO volunteers, we whities all pointed and giggled in amazement and revulsion. But I was piqued by the idea of trying them. I didn’t know if I could stomach it. Were they for real? Did people really eat them? If they could do it — if they liked doing it — there must be something to it. Part of what’s interesting about traveling is seeing past the limits of how you’re socialized. I wanted to get to that point where you see that what you know is really only what you think you know, and try to step outside of that. And I think I know that eating bugs is gross.

But at the Festival, our homestay host, Tik, turned up her nose at the fresh-fried insects, and I was freed from the challenge of trying to prove myself a non-narrow-minded Westerner. For the moment.

Weeks later we were at the bus station in Battambong, Cambodia. Our bus was very late and I decided to while the time away by trying out my phrasebook-Cambodian on the friendly looking lady sitting next to me.

We found we both spoke a tee-ninsy bit of Thai, which served us better than my non-existent Cambodian or her limited English. But she appreciated my efforts and rewarded me with a treat she had just bought from the vendor — a tiny raw minced pork ball topped with a very hot chili and wrapped in a banana leaf. She and her friend watched with amusement and approval as I ate the spicy ball. I smiled and fanned my open mouth at the intense heat.

She then disappeared for a moment and came back with a funny, slightly mischievious smile on her face and a bag full of fried bugs. And not just any bugs. These critters looked suspiciously like cockroaches. Zow.

Man. What to do? She very sweetly offered me one, and both women laughed when I balked. Really? I asked. Delicious? Oh yes, they said, peeling off the outer wings and popping them into their mouths. Delicious.

Ummmmmm… .okay? I said, taking one tentatively. God. Was it going to be juicy? Were bug guts — COCKROACH guts — going to squirt out into my mouth?!?!?!?!?

I waited a few moments for the appropriate photos to be taken — I had to have this on record — put the roach to my lips, opened my mouth, and bit it in half…. (more…)

Former CP staffer Lora Reehling and her boyfriend, Nick, recently left behind their lives in Philly to volunteer for FairMail, a photography program encouraging self-esteem, business acumen and creative talent to underprivileged teens in a small Peruvian village. She’ll drop in weekly to share stories about the organization, life in South America and the occasional giant meat plate.

view from the top.

Home is where the Squeak is

Today is our first day of relaxation since we’ve returned on the night bus from a jammed-packed trip to Cajamarca, Peru’s northern capital city. This was our first excursion with the FairMail program to a new city besides Huanchaco with all of the students, as well as some Dutch travelers who came along and helped fund the trip. It was five days filled with great photos, lots of rain, some dancing in the street, and some first-hand experience in really feeling like I’m making a difference.

But first to try and recap our first month in Huanchaco. I’m struggling to cram so many little experiences of my new life here into this blog so I can start moving forward in present time, but here goes:

Life in Huanchaco is often described as "tranquilo" here. It’s a tiny little beach town where you can still see the fishermen set out each day on their Caballitos de Totora, or traditional reed boats — like strange kayaks that they sit on top of instead of inside. This is basically the only place in the world that they still use these boats to fish. Our first night here, we made our way down to a restaurant called Otra Cosa, where we met Janneke and Peter, the directors of FairMail. After some introductions and an exciting conversation over some food and cold beer, we reminded Janneke that we were eager to find a suitable living space. The hostel we stayed in the first two nights was nice … but no place to call home. It was roughly 9 p.m. by the time we finished, yet apparently a perfect time to begin a search for a place to live.

Janneke and Peter had a couple of places in mind, so we proceeded to take a walk and knock on some doors. This experience to me was so down to earth and simplified. No newspaper listing, no Craigslist, no phone calls, no background check, none of that. We ruled out an old lady’s extra room with no windows, a primitive bungalow with palm trees but no refrigerator, and the option to camp for two months, or live in a hostel. The next day we somehow stumbled upon a place Janneke had mentioned but the people weren’t home that first night, and it was just right.

(More photos and a lovable addition to the fam after the jump.)

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Amy Pickard & Ramon Monras-Sender are both Philly-based musicians. They recently got married and decided that, in lieu of a traditional honeymoon, they would quit their jobs and go traveling for six months.

Amy, Feb. 24

Cambodia … what to say about it? As we drove out of Phnom Penh to catch the boat to Vietnam, we once again found ourselves on an incredibly bad stretch of road. This highway — a major road in the country — is completely in ruins. Long stretches with no pavement, just red dirt road. The dust coats everything. The giant plants by the roadside are mere emerald suggestions under their thick cake of red dust.

Click for larger images

But this road is nowhere near as bad as the road on which we arrived. We crossed the border from Thailand at Poipet. The highway there takes you to Siem Reap, the premier destination in Cambodia and one of the largest tourist attractions in Southeast Asia. Forgive the hellfire and brimstone talk, but that road there is an abomination. It can scarcely be called a road. It’s mostly gravel - large gravel - and EXTREMELY bumpy, with a detour about every five minutes. The detours dip riotously down to the right, over huge dirt humps, before you come back on the “road.” I was wearing only a regular bra, not a sports bra, and my boobs bounced so uncontrollably I had to hold them still the whole way. There were no lights - no street lights, no traffic lights. No signs. No gas stations, only roadside stands selling 1 liter bottles of petrol and diesel in old Johnnie Walker Red or Pepsi bottles (right).

There is a persistent rumor afoot in Cambodia that an airline in Thailand pays the Cambodian government to keep this road in such horrible condition. That way, many travelers will choose to pay the outrageous flight prices from Bangkok to Siem Reap. Hooray for corruption.

We undertook the four-and-a-half-hour, 90-mile journey at dusk, sharing a taxi with a very nice traveler we’d met along the way. We’d had to give a dirty old Austrian man the boot from