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What's in Your Backyard?
Tell dem cats they don't know where I'm at, cuz I be pushin' twenty-fours on the Huffy with some cheeba in my backpack.
On Friday afternoon, I set out on my bike and headed east, climbing a mile or so to a water tank that sits atop a hill. It’s the highest point accessible by bike for a large radius, or at least the highest point with a view—and the view is spectacular. A few miles to the south and west the Philippine Sea laps gently at the coastal mangroves. Several small limestone islands flank the coast. To the south, separated by several miles of ocean, you can see the island of Koror, Palau’s capital, and the bridge that connects it to the big island of Babeldaob (where I live). To the north and east, a dense forest of dark green blankets innumerable hills and valleys. Here and there the forest has been cleared and the hills are covered only with high green grass.
Crossing the bridge
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It seems to me that the fundamental difference between tourists and travelers who aren’t tourists is that tourists stay, or at least try to stay, within their respective comfort zones. Non-tourists, on the other hand, seek out adventure in the form of spontanaeity and uncertainty. Of course, nothing is absolute and there’s a little bit (or a lot) of tourist in all of us, but I’ve noticed that the more you travel outside of your comfort zone, the wider that comfort zone becomes, so that I’ll often see or do things now and take no notice at all—things that just a couple years ago would have been unthinkable.
I moved to California when I was seventeen, and it took me a good three years to work up the courage to try menudo, which is just a Mexican soup made with beef tripe. Menudo, I guess, was my “gateway food,” and from there it was inevitable that I’d move on to harder stuff, like cow tongue, or pickled pig’s feet. When I started leaving the country, however, things started to get really interesting.
Balut, Eating Balut, and Intestines on a Stick. Yum.
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