Joe and Martha chatted about their favorite trips—China and the Galapagos for Martha, India (the birthplace of Afar) and Argentina for Joe—and of course, one of the best ways to truly get inside a culture: its food.

The other guests joining Joe and Martha were best-selling author and Afar contributor Susan Orlean, environmental advocate Alexandra Cousteau, and Flight 001 cofounder Brad John.

Featured speakers include Bob Maguire, director of the Haiti program at Trinity Washington University in D.C.; Nikolas Kozloff, author of Hugo Chavez, Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S.; and François Pierre-Louis, an associate professor at CUNY who specializes in Caribbean and Haitian politics. Lenelle Moise, a Haitian-American poet and performance artist, will recite a few of her poems to open the program.

Tickets are $40 in advance and $60 at the door.

Irish cheese at the Temple Bar farmer's market in Dublin's Meeting House Square.

An oversize new cookbook landed on my desk right before the holidays: The Country Cooking of Ireland, by Colman Andrews. For many years, Irish cooking has been the subject of ridicule, and this book aims to change that. Andrews—the co-founder of Saveur magazine, winner of numerous James Beard Awards, and an upcoming Afar contributor—is the author to do it.

Flipping through the book’s recipes of brown bread and smoked salmon, shepherd’s pie, and Irish stew, I was momentarily transported to the year I lived in Dublin. During the week, I was there to study Irish literature. During the weekends, I felt it was my duty to eat and drink my way through the city. First stop: Bewley’s, for an overflowing Irish breakfast and some strong tea. Then on to the Temple Bar farmer’s market, where I stocked up on freshly baked soda bread, flaky smoked salmon, and artisanal farmhouse cheeses like Gubbeen and Durrus. By the afternoon, I hit a cafe or pub for some reading, accompanied by a pint of Bulmer’s cider. Dinners often entailed “takeaway” from the local chip shop.

When I think back to that year, it’s not the names of books that I remember (apologies to all my outstanding professors). Rather, memories of food and drink come flooding back.

I know that some of you are as obsessed with food as I am. What are your best food-related travel stories?

Photo by William Murphy.

Malaysia: Home of world's tallest twin towers. And fifth-friendliest people?

I recently got a press release that trumpeted, “Malaysia Ranks 5th Amongst World’s Friendliest Countries.”

The first thing that struck me was how un-American it was to tout being fifth at anything. When was the last time you heard a crowd chanting, “We’re number five! We’re number five!” But ranking fifth among all the countries in the world is pretty good, I’d say. So, go Malaysia!

Then I wondered how “friendliness” was determined. As a traveler, that’s an issue that’s always puzzled me. I’m always suspicious when people come back from a trip raving, “and the people were so friendly.” It’s hard to say this without sounding grumpy, but it bugs me for a couple reasons. First, it’s a stereotype, even if it’s a positive one. You wouldn’t say, “and the people were so ugly.” I’m betting that anywhere you go, there are friendly people and unfriendly people. Second, in many cases, we travelers deal with people who are supposed to be friendly. They work at hotels or restaurants or drive cabs or lead hiking trips. It’s in their interest to be friendly. But I am willing to admit that people in certain countries do give off a warmer vibe than those in other countries. Hence my puzzlement.

Turns out the release was referring to the Expat Explorer Survey conducted by the bank HSBC, which asks expatriates to rate their adopted countries on a range of quality-of-life issues. It’s got some interesting stuff in there. For instance, most expats say their quality of life is better than it would be in their home country. And that while half of expats in Thailand say that they have they found love, only 4 percent of expats in India or Qatar have.

And it turns out things get complicated on the friendliness front. Malaysia actually ranks fourth (not fifth) in “Making Friends” but 14th in “Making Local Friends.” So it’s a good place for expats to make friends with each other–and it’s the best place in the world for finding a school for your expat kids, apparently–but not as good for making friends with Malaysians. Brazil and South Africa are tops on the local friend front.

If you had to rank the friendliest places you’ve been, who wins? Why?

Photo by Ramil Sagun.

Please add to this list by suggesting other ways we can all help in our comments section.

1) Text “HAITI” to “90999″ to donate $10 to the Red Cross — Our friends at the US State Department, including Katie Stanton (@kateatstate), very quickly put together this number to channel relief contributions directly to first responders who will be on the ground there.

2) Text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele Haiti – My good friend Wyclef Jean (@wyclef) created this foundation to permanently improve the lives of the most impoverished in his home country of Haiti. Over the years, the stories I have heard from Wyclef remind me of how hard the living is there. I am humbled by Wyclef’s commitment to the region and the impact Yele Haiti has there every day. Check out more on Yele Haiti.

3) Donate to Partners in Health (click here) — PIH (@pih_org) is already on the ground in Haiti and mobilizing their relief efforts. If you have heard of Paul Farmer, this is the organization he co-founded. Working to provide health care and education to the poorest of Haiti, PIH is the real deal.

4) Donate to Architecture for Humanity (click here) — Cameron Sinclair (@casinclair) and his non-profit Architecture for Humanity (@archforhumanity) can be found at virtually every developing world disaster site on the planet. These guys are a collection of design and housing geniuses who work tirelessly to provide shelter for the most deserving.

5) Donate to charity:water (click here) — If you know me, you know how passionate I am about charity:water (@charitywater) and its work to bring clean water to the 1 billion people on the planet who don’t have it. Recently, the organization’s founder, my friend and inspiration Scott Harrison (@scottharrison), traveled to Haiti to commence operations in that country and already thousands of Haitians have clean water to drink. As if the situation wasn’t already bad enough, the need for clean water only intensifies in the aftermath of earthquakes. Every dollar of your support to these guys goes fully and immediately to work in the field. (Update: charity:water wrote a post encouraging you to also help their partners in Haiti.)

6) Learn more about Haiti — So often we send token amounts of charity to far-flung developing world destinations. Yet, rarely do we have a sense of what life is like there. Thus, one of the ways I believe you can also respond to a tragedy like this is to commit to learning about Haiti, its culture and wonder, as well as its daunting hardships. To that end, I recommend reading Paul Farmer’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains to get a taste of the hard work underway. Also, be sure to watch Ghosts of Cité Soleil. Produced by Wyclef, and starring him as well, this documentary terrifyingly depicts the heavily armed gang leaders in Haiti’s poorest neighborhoods. Meantime, try following the Twitter accounts of the folks mentioned above. Each of us can learn something from them.

For Twitter lists of  information on the quake, try CBS News and NPR News.

On December 31, 2009, revelers in São Luis, the reggae capital of Brazil (highlighted in our current issue) were treated to the steamy beats of hometown heroes Tribo de Jah under a full moon. Flanked by towering radiola speakers on three sides, the band has been playing New Year’s Eve in São Luis on and off for nearly 25 years. Indeed, Tribo de Jah’s unlikely success captures the ‘power to the people’ spirit of roots reggae at its core. 

Formed in 1985 after the fall of the military dictatorship, five of the six members met while working at the School for the Blind, where they were also busy crafting their own instruments and playing in local clubs. (Four members are completely blind and one has only partial vision.) The quintet began their career covering the highly danceable lambada tunes that were popular at the time. Concurrently, Fauzi Beydoun was making waves as the first DJ to host a reggae program on the air. While the sound was initially frowned upon as “ghetto culture,” the social, political and spiritual messages of the music took root. Beydoun soon joined forces with the band and lent vocals to their sound. Together they began crafting a Brazilian take on Jamaican rhythms. In 1995, this small band from the country’s poorest state found themselves performing at the most important venue of their genre, the Reggae Sunsplash Festival in Jamaica.

Today the band is still bringing reggae’s message of peace, love, and jah (God) to the masses. In 2008, they released two new CDs: the English language Love to the World, Peace to the People  and The Babylon Inside, largely in Portuguese for their Brazilian fans. They have plans for a third companion CD featuring dub versions of the songs.

Watch Tribo de Jah perform the song Garota Dreadlock (dreadlocked girl) from their 2008 album Rafazendo.

For more on the São Luis scene, check out “The Reggae Capital of Brazil” on page 20 of Afar’s December 2009/January 2010 issue.

But did you know it makes you more creative? A better problem solver?

That’s what Jonah Lehrer asserts in his “Your Brain” column in The Panorama Magazine, part of the one-time-only McSweeney’s newspaper project, The San Francisco Panorama.

Lehrer, contributing editor at Wired magazine and the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, titled his essay “Definitive, Incontrovertible Proof: Why Travel Makes You Smarter.” Citing research conducted at Indiana University, the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, and the INSEAD business school in France, he comes up with several conclusions that should resonant with worldly travelers, especially those of an “Afar-ish” bent:

“When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, … we start thinking about obscure possibilities … that never would have occurred to us if we’d stayed back on the farm.”

“Experiencing another culture endows us with a valuable open-mindedness.”

And finally, when we travel, “We’re reminded of all that we don’t know, which is nearly everything; we’re surprised by the constant stream of surprises. … We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.”

The San Francisco Panorama hit newsstands and bookstores in early December and sold out immediately. It can be ordered from the McSweeney’s online store.

Lehrer posted his essay on his blog. You can read it here.

Tell us how his thoughts jibe with your experience.

Bonnier's Mag+ protoype shows some of the possibilities of a digital magazine.

The tech and publishing media are working themselves into a frenzy about the possible launch of Apple’s much-anticipated tablet computer later this month. If that is the new product they’re revealing, then the company has once again proved its ability to tap into the zeitgeist.

Just a few weeks ago, this demo video of an interactive Sports Illustrated started making the rounds, tantalizing faithful print readers as well as those of us who work in publishing with the possibilities of our digital future. Bonnier, publisher of Popular Science and many other magazines, is even working on its own platform.

In his column in last Sunday’s New York Times, David Carr took all this one step further, saying that the iSlate (or whatever it may be called) and an iTunes-like model for magazine or other content subscriptions could save publishing.

So, my question to Afar readers is what would you like to see in a digital version of our magazine? Personally, I’d love to see links to translation and location-specific GPS smartphone apps or maybe RSS feeds with the most recent content from blogs written by locals. Most important to me, I want to be able to easily access the content from my home and work computers and my iPhone. I hate it when I get on the train in the morning and realize I’ve forgotten to bring something to read.

What else? What content would you like to see? What features would you want it to have? What frustrates you about reading onscreen now? What frustrates you about print now? What aspects of print would you like to keep? Let us know!

[Post updated by author at 11:20 am with Mag+ image.]

Mag+ image courtesy of Bonnier.

If you spent New Year’s (or any other recent holidays) abroad, what traditions did you see or experience?