Nasi Kandar from Line Clear in George Town, Penang.

Joe Sidek, the Resident in our September/October 2010 issue, is a huge booster of his hometown, George Town, Penang, Malaysia. A true Renaissance man, Joe not only works as a managing director of a company and runs the Community Works non-profit (as well as its shop, Sentuhan). He has also owned a club, run a modeling agency, and designed costumes for an opera. He recently directed One Harmony, One Heritage, One Hope, an event celebrating the first anniversary of George Town’s designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As with many of our Residents, there were far more places he wanted to send our readers to than we had space to run in the magazine. So, here are more of Joe’s excellent picks to help you plan where to go–and especially where to eat–during your next trip to George Town.

In George Town

Hai Nan Town
“This restaurant is right on the seafront and has really nice Peranakan food. The Peranakans are the Chinese people who came here and adopted Malay culture. It’s food the way the Malays cook, so there is a lot of tamarind, herbs, and chiles, but it’s the Chinese version. It’s very fragrant.”
Tanjung City Marina, Pengkalan Weld
604/263-8633

Liyaqat Ali
“This is a really famous stall that serves nasi kandar, an Indian dish, which literally means ‘rice on a balance’ because there used to be a guy who would carry on his shoulder a long pole with a basket on each end with rice and a mixture of curries. This stall is open until the wee hours of the morning.”
98 Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling

Mamak mee stall
“Mamak mee is an Indian fried noodle dish served with egg and lamb or chicken. This guy’s father used to have a stall nicknamed Mee Agong, which means ‘King’s Mee,’ because the mee was so good it was said to be the favorite of visiting kings.”
Corner of Jalan Hutton and Jalan Penang

Beach Blanket Babylon
“This is a small café/restaurant on the seafront, named after the Beach Blanket Babylon in San Francisco. It’s also owned by the people who own 32. They have a really nice crab laksa, which is a version of the national dish but with crab and a fish broth.”
32 Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah
604/261-0289

Beyond George Town

Bagan
“Bagan is a jazz bar in a beautiful old house that feels like the house in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; it was owned by an old man who looks and behaves like Quentin Crisp. Now it’s been converted into a transvestite bar by the same owners of 32, but I like the music and it has fabulous Peranakan food.”
18 Jalan Bergan Jamal
604/226-4977

Bellevue
“Go here in the evening and have a drink. You can see all of George Town. I love being up the hill when it’s dark, looking out at the lights in the city.”
Bukit Bendera, Penang Hill
604/829-9500

The Spice Garden
“You hear about cinnamon and you hear about clove, but you never imagine what the plants and the flowers look like. You can see them here. The Spice Garden is a really beautiful, landscaped little space where you can go and chill out, and it’s very peaceful.”
Lone Crag Villa, Lot 595 Mukim 2,
Jalan Teluk Bahang
604/881-1797

Reporting by Dave Zuckerman. Nasi kandor photo by scaredy_kat. (CC 2.0)

My ramen dinner. I would've taken a wider shot if I could've moved my seat any farther back.

The process starts deceptively simply. Outside the door of the restaurant, there’s a little machine with pictures of various dishes and their corresponding prices. You put your money in and get a little ticket. I’m figuring that for someone like me who doesn’t speak Japanese, this is pretty much as simple as ordering food gets.

No. If your experience is like mine,  the nice hostess shows you up a cramped, dark stairway and hands you a laminated card. You take a seat at the L-shaped bar, using what little space there is between the stools and the wall to squeeze past the other patrons without touching them inappropriately. The six other seats are filled by people who obviously know how this works. When you sit down and consult the card, you realize the whole ticket thing downstairs was just a ruse to lull you into the false sense that there was nothing mysterious about ramen.

The card is an English translation of the sheet that someone hands you from behind the bar. You can’t see who it is, because the area behind the bar is pitch dark and whoever’s back there seems to be on some sort of platform because his or her head is way above where your head is, and anyway, you can’t see that high because there’s a banner hanging over the bar that blocks your view. All you see is an arm emerging from the darkness to take your ticket and hand you some kind of checklist. Turns out that ticket you bought was actually your admission to the World of Customized Ramen.

The checklist allows you to specify, on a range from 1 to 5, how you would like your ramen prepared in seven distinct categories: noodle thickness, noodle firmness, pork or no pork, leeks or no leeks, spiciness, oiliness, and, if I recall correctly, something about sauce. (By the time I got to the seventh category, I was a little overwhelmed.) Fortunately, they had suggested levels for first-timers. I went with those, except on the oiliness scale, where I took it down a notch.

In the few moments I had before my noodles arrived, I helped myself to a glass of water from my own personal tap, and declined to put a coin in the tiny coin-operated red lantern that demarcated each spot at the bar.

The disembodied hand returned to serve me my bowl of noodles. And I must say, it was delicious.

A must-see for any 3-year-old boy traveling to Japan.

Pre-trip Planning

Eleven-hour flight.

A 3-year-old boy abroad.

We might be insane.

Sightseeing Priorities

For you, Japan is

temples and cherry blossoms.

For us? Garbage trucks.

Dining Logistics, I

Similar in shape,

chopsticks are not for sucking,

nor straws for grabbing.

Dining Logistics II

You can lead a boy

to conveyor-belt sushi,

but you can’t make him eat.

Souvenir Purchasing I

In any language,

“Some assembly required”

means trouble for Dad.

Souvenir Purchasing II

Sadly, we lack both

the bowl and the paperwork

to bring home goldfish.

Stroller in the City I

Shibuya Crossing

is not fit for baby strollers

nor agoraphobes. 

Stroller in the City II

Stairs are the only

way to the elevator.

It’s a zen koan.

Taiyaki stand near Shibuya Crossing, Tokyo

I just got back from a trip to Japan with my wife and three-year-old son. I wasn’t sure if the whole experiential travel thing would work with a kid. But I’m now convinced it can. Traveling with our son opened doors to the Japanese culture I never would have opened otherwise. In fact, it was so cool that I think destinations should offer rental toddlers to visitors, just so everyone can see what it’s like. I’ll write a few posts about our experiences, but I’ll start with the most tangible impact of traveling with a cute kid: People give the kid stuff. I kept track. Here’s what our son scored.

A ballon in the shape of the strange froglike creature we saw all over Tokyo’s Asukasa neighborhood. Given by the clerk at a laquerware shop.

A sticker from a stand selling fish-shaped sandwiches (taiyaki) near Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing.

An origami ball from a souvenir saleswoman near Kyoto’s silver temple.

An origami thing that looked like a kissing mouth, made by the concierge at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo.

Glittery bug stickers , given to us by a flight attendant as we disembarked from our flight. By the time we reached immigration, our son had bedazzled himself with them.

An extra slice of mango from the dried-fruit vendor at the market at Tenmangu temple in Kyoto.

A toothpick American flag from a sushi chef at Sushi-Go-Round in Tokyo.

A tiny toy Jeep from the Sushi-Go-Round’s waitress. (This bit of generosity made us feel better about having inadvertently violated protocol by taking a juice box from what we thought was a self-serve refrigerator. Oops! Sorry! Don’t be mad at us! Look how cute our kid is!)

Needless to say, we would’ve received none of these things had we been traveling on our own. It made us view Japan as a generous place, the kind of place where people keep little gifts around just to give to kids. And souvenirs that are given always have more of a story than ones that are bought.

I also loved the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple, a place where many Chinese and Japanese folks come to worship and pray for a particular wish or blessing. They light incense and place it by the temple as an offering. If their wish comes true, they return to the temple to donate a token of thanks (generally money which keeps the temple running). It’s hazy with incense smoke, it’s colorful and loud and crowded, and filled with a sense of hope and thanks and belief.

Photo by Megan Gordon.

The volunteer teaching program in Bali includes three surfing lessons.

Last Friday on WPIX-TV, Afar co-founder Joe Diaz recommended five trips that might inspire you to change your career. If you’ve ever considered becoming a teacher–or a professional surfer–check out this program in Bali:

Trip: “Surf and Teach English in Bali” volunteer program with i-to-i
Overview: On the tropical Indonesian island of Bali, you’ll teach English to kids at a public school where funding is not available to hire native English speakers. You’ll especially focus on practicing conversational skills using games, songs, and story-telling—not just a grammar book. You’ll also learn to surf on this island known for its waves.
Skills you’ll learn: How to teach English as a Second language through an online TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course and classroom practice; how to surf through three lessons included with the program.
Other highlights: Meeting mellow Balinese surfers while waiting for the next set of waves. Exploring the island’s beautiful beaches and green highlands
Price: from $1,299 for three weeks

Four other career-changing trips:

• Work alongside marine biologists in Greece
• Learn to cook in Morocco
• Live the life of an organic vintner in New Zealand
• Help healthcare workers in Guatemala

Photo by yummiec00kies

Learn how locals make silk on the Meet the People Tour in northern Thailand.

In the Good Trips department of Afar’s December 2009/January 2010 issue, you’ll find seven trips that use arts and crafts to help you get inside cultures around the world. Here’s another:

Traidcraft “Meet the People” Tours, 44/(0) 191-265-1110

U.K.-based Traidcraft is a fair-trade organization dedicated to reducing poverty in developing countries. Its “Meet the People” tour to northern Thailand takes you into the homes of fair-trade craft producers in villages inhabited by the Thai Leu, Hmong, and Mien hill tribes.

What you’ll do: Spend time with silver jewelers, bamboo-basket makers, and silk weavers, who will show you how they make their crafts; meet with fair-trade craft companies to discuss business models; talk with farmers near the border of Laos about their way of life.

Highlights: Ride atop an elephant through the jungle. Snack on som tam (spicy papaya salad) at the night market in Surin. Take an early-morning stroll through a tea plantation.

Price: 13-day trip from $2,495, includes lodging and most meals.

Photo courtesy of Traidcraft.

In Afar’s premier issue, Zachary Mexico broke down the history and latest developments in Beijing’s avant-rock scene; in the December-January issue, on newsstands Nov. 10, Dan Strachota does the same for the digital cumbia movement in Buenos Aires.

Music + Travel touches down in 12 locations. Among them are Paris (”New Rap City”), Australia (”Art Rock Confidential”), Addis Ababa (”Swing Shifts”), Mumbai (”Passage to Indipop”), Berlin (”Techno Color”), and, yes, Beijing (”Experimental Methods”) and Buenos Aires (”The Digital Domain”).

Music scenes in Chicago, Southern California, Dublin, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Istanbul get similar close-up treatment.

Not only do Museyon Guides, which include three volumes of Film + Travel and the new Art + Travel, take the Afarish approach of tapping local experts to take readers on “a far-reaching, accessible, and inventive journey into the things they love,” but, like Sounds, they get inside the local culture through a mix of text, photos, time lines, maps, and annotated discographies.

Bringing the synchronicity full circle, at Museyon’s New York City launch celebration for Music + Travel, the special guests will include Beijing avant-rock stars Zhang Shouwang (Carsick Cars and White) and Xiao He. The party takes place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Wed., Nov. 4, at Von, 3 Bleecker St. Admission is by RSVP only, but you can find the open invitation on Museyon’s blog. Of course you can become a Museyon Facebook fan and follow Museyon on Twitter.

Related posts:

• Listen to the sounds of Beijing rock
• Imogen Heap spins the globe and scores a hit
• Singing in the Sahara with Tinariwen

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

With the anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the founding of the People’s Republic of China approaching in October and November, Jeffrey Wasserstrom examines how communism’s biggest defeat helped strengthen China’s Communist Party in an article for Foreign Policy.

Toward the end of the piece, Wasserstrom looks at two key lessons China learned from the end of communism in Eastern Europe:

1. Patriotism is a winning strategy, but it only works for one side.

By capitalizing on national pride, Eastern Europeans were able to unify citizens within each country against Communism, positioning it as a regime imposed on the country from outside forces. Taking control of this powerful tool, the Chinese Communist Party “placed renewed emphasis on patriotic education, stressing the party’s pre-1949 role in chasing out foreign invaders,” Wasserstrom writes.

2. Class divides give rise to dissent, so give people opportunities to bridge those divides.

East Berliners had to merely look over the wall to see how capitalism afforded their West Berlin counterparts a higher standard of living. Within Eastern European countries, Wasserstrom writes, “The only meaningful social divide was between a small privileged coterie of corrupt officials and the rest. And the rest was pretty much everyone.”

China avoided similar problems by encouraging a consumer revolution over the past two decades. As more working Chinese entered the middle class, there was less of a divide between the average Chinese worker and not only the party faithful but also middle-class workers in capitalist Taiwan.

Read the full article here.

Photo by unknown author, released by permission of the Senate of Berlin. CC 3.0.

She hoped to record with female musicians there, but was told that was out of the question. “I did find it very emotionally difficult, especially seeing how it was for women,” she says in a mini-documentary from National Geographic. Despite widespread sexism and the male musicians initial skepticism, eventually she gained her collaborators respect.

“Every third hour the electricity went off. So we had to hang around with them and improvise and play music and then in 2 or 3 hours the electricity came back… After some time…in the same environment…, they understood I was a professional, and so were they. So we were kind of the same and wanted to express something beautiful, something artistic.”

Reflecting on the experience, Bergsman says, “I don’t know if I’m brave. I think I’m just very curious and very restless.” Sounds like an Afar traveler to me.