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December 26, 2007
The Worst Taxi Drivers in the World
Okay, I admit. I have not been around the world, so I might be wrong. Yet in my experience, Panamanian (or perhaps I should say Panama City's) taxi drivers are the worst.
They are not bad at driving by any means. They tend to go respectable speeds - not terrifyingly fast, nor annoyingly slow - and their cars are usually in adequate condition. They do not execute maneuvers that you would expect to see in a NASCAR race, nor in a Hollywood movie, nor in a Hollywood movie about NASCAR like our hometown drivers sometimes do. We have definitely had more white-knuckled moments in Guadalajara than we have had here.
No, the cab drivers in Panama City are bad because they seem reluctant to have customers. In other places we have been, when we are standing on a corner or walking along the street, taxi drivers will slow down as they pass and ask, "Taxi?" At other times, maybe if they do not see us, we will flag them down to get them to take us from one place to another. At worst, they suggest a price that is ridiculous and we reject their offer. It is a rare occurrence when one cannot negotiate a deal of some kind to get you where you need to go.
In Panama City, such is not the case. Cab drivers do not seem very interested in getting you where you want to go, regardless of the fact that you will pay them to do it.
One of the first few days that were were in town, we had gone over to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, and we were trying to get over to El Pavo Real, an English pub that was like a 5 minute drive away by cab. We had to wait a long time, as most of the passing taxis already had passengers. Yet eventually, we got a cab to stop. Shawn told the driver that we wanted to go to El Pavo Real. He shook his head and drove off. This left us flabbergasted. We did not have any idea why he did not want the fare, but he obviously did not.
We tried again, only to have the same reaction from the driver. The place to which we were going was not in a bad neighborhood, and it is not in a dangerous area. It is not that the cab drivers did not know the location. That was our first hypothesis to disprove, so Shawn got out a detailed map of Panama City and had it ready to show to the second driver. Yet that did not seem to make a difference. He also dismissed us and zoomed off.
The same thing happened a third time, then a fourth. The fourth driver explained that we wanted to go in the other direction, so he would have to turn around in order to take us. Then he drove off. True, it was in the other direction, but it was not on that same road. It was not like he would have to make a U-turn on a busy road to get us there. He could have turned right, gone a few blocks, then turned right again.
On the fifth try, we got a cab to take us, but instead of telling him that we wanted to go to El Pavo Real, we told him that we wanted to go to a large, well-known hotel and casino that was right across the street from where we were staying, the Wyndham Grand Veneto. This was only about four or five blocks from the English pub, but after the hassle of trying to get a cab, we were not interested in anything but going back to our hotel.
The next evening, we tried to take a cab to a Thai restaurant that we had read about in a guide book. We were worried that maybe it was no longer around, so we explained to the taxi driver that we are vegetarians and asked if he had heard of the place. We thought maybe, if he had heard of it, would know if they had vegetarian dishes and if it was any good. He had not heard of it, and when he could not find it, he stopped to ask a guy working as a valet for a nearby restaurant about it. The valet indicated that indeed it had been where we thought it should be, and then he told us it was no longer there. He suggested Madame Chang's, a Chinese restaurant nearby, and we thought that sounded okay. We asked the cab driver to take us there, and he said he would, but he had to go down the street, then turn around to come back on the street where Madame Chang's was located.
He started to do this, then he ended up stopping in front of some other restaurant and asking if we wanted to eat there. We told him that we were really in the mood for Asian food, because we felt we would have a better chance of being able to get vegetarian food, so we would preer Madame Chang's. He pulled back onto the street, turned a few corners, and then, at a place called "Crepes and Waffles," he pulled into their parking lot. He asked the valet there, "Do they have vegetarian food here?" The valet there confirmed that they did: crepes and waffles. He then turned around to us and asked if we wanted to eat there. We politely tried to tell him that we understood that we could eat there, but that we really were in the mood for something else, like, oh, Madame Chang's that we'd indicated that we wanted to go to multiple times. His response was, "This place has food!"
We paid him and got out of the car, deciding that it was not worth the hassle of arguing with him about it any longer. The valet began to guide us to the stairs for Crepes and Waffles, yet he seemed to understand completely what I meant when I thanked him and explained that we wanted something a bit more exotic. We finally encountered a great place called Habibi's which serves great Leganese food, but the experience left us really cold on Panamanian taxi drivers. Why he even asked what we wanted, since he was going to take us to some random place of his choosing anyway, did not make sense.
Whe had a similar problem trying to get to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, wherein the taxi driver pulled up and stopped in front of the Museo de Antropología, telling us we had arrived at our destination. Shawn pointed out that it was not the right museum, that the one we wanted to go to was on a different street and had a large park across from it. The only thing across the street from the museum where we were then parked was a row of tall office buildings. It was clearly the wrong museum. It took some coaxing and demonstrating that we were not going to pay until he took us to the proper museum before he drove the three or so blocks more to the proper location.
Of course, not all taxi drivers in Panama are this way, and we were happy to find an exception one night while we were out walking about and trying to find a specific bar. More like the cab drivers we were used to from other places, this guy came up to us and asked if we wanted a ride. We told him we were not going far - less than 10 blocks - and he offered to take both of us in his air-conditioned van for two dollars. (In Panama, even at night, the idea of being able to pay a couple of dollars to go even a short distance in air-conditioned comfort is very attractive.) He was pleasant, obviously knew the city, and took us exactly where we wanted to go, not just where he wanted to take us.
He gave us his card and a couple of days later, when we wanted someone to drive us around the city to do the few remaining things on our list, here and there about town, we called him. He not only drove us around, but he gave us some great information on the city. When Shawn wanted to take some photos of a government building exterior, he excused himself for a bit, and when he came back, explained that he had arranged with the rector an invitation to come inside to take photos. After I fell in a hole while shooting photos, scraping my knee and muddying my pants, he stopped and bought alcohol to clean my wound and a rag to help me clean up my pants.
It was nice to find such a gem, after dealing with what seemed to us to be the worst taxi drivers in the world.
If you need a driver in Panama, we highly recommend him. His name is Roger O. Caparroso, and his cell phone number is +507 6634-2482. He has an email address too, but I do not want to publish it here for fear that he will end up getting lots of spam and scam emails. If you are interested, drop me a line in the comments below and I'll send you his address. Oh, and he speaks both Spanish and English.
Posted by crispy at 12:15 AM | Comments (3)
December 22, 2007
¿Qué pasa, ese?
Ese laundry detergent, product of Panama
I wanted to rinse out some of my sweaty clothes in our hotel room sink, so I went to the mini super to buy some laundry detergent. When I got there and saw this box, I had to buy it.
Posted by crispy at 05:11 PM | Comments (2)
December 21, 2007
My Kind of Convenience Store
Mini-Super Fuki #2, Panama
This is the store under the Hotel del Alba building, where I bought the previously described Colombiana soda. This illustrates a situation where it might be better to use the pound sign.
Mini-Super Fuki #2, Panama
Posted by crispy at 01:49 PM | Comments (4)
December 20, 2007
Panama: Around the Hotel Torres de Alba
Posted by crispy at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)
Panama: On the Ground
View from the Torres de Alba, Panama City
We arrived in Panama last night, after a relatively pleasant flight on Copa Airlines.
Our one observation about Copa, having now flown on them three times, is that one should arrive at the airport about three hours before the departure of the flight, because checking in to a Copa flight seems to take a little over an hour. Their check-in desks are always understaffed, the employees tend to waste a lot of chatting amongst themselves, and when they are servicing clients, they're very slow.
The flight was pleasant enough though, and they did remember to serve us a vegetarian meal, consisting of a little dish of honeydew melon and an alfalfa sprout and tomato sandwich. Because, you know, vegetarian = rabbit.
We took a cab from the airport to our hotel, the Torres de Alba for USD $28.00. The cab driver told us that this would be the price without tip, and he knows that Americans always tip. The listing of the price in United States dollars in this and subsequent Panama entries is not for reader convenience; they not only have a currency pegged to the dollar, like many other countries. They actually use United States dollars as their national currency. As for values below a dollar, they seem to have their own coins, but they also use U.S. coins too.
View from the Torres de Alba, Panama City
The Torres de Alba thankfully has industrial-strength air conditioning, because it's hot, hot, hot here in Panama. It's not even 10 am yet, and it "feels like" 30.5°C (87°F) outside. It is located right next to the enormous Veneto Hotel and Casino, and about a block down the street from a 24-hour restaurant, and even the restaurants that close do so no earlier than 11 pm.
The Torres de Alba also has kitchens in all the rooms. The one in ours is easily four times the size of my kitchen in Guadalajara. Unfortunately, we will probably not be making many meals here in the hotel before we check-out tomorrow.
Kitchen, Torres de Alba
This city is exhillarating. It is hot, crowded, bustling and falling over itself with new growth. Whereas Buenos Aires seems much more like an older, European metropolis, Panama seems fresh and positively Pan-American. Shawn says it reminds him a lot of Miami. The joke here goes that Panama City is like Miami, except people here speak English.
Yeah, a lot of people here do speak some English, but don't be fooled. They prefer to speak Spanish, but it is surprisingly a very Caribbean form of Spanish, where the letter "S" before a consonant apparently costs extra. Our cab driver told us that there are a lot of English speakers here because they have a large number of immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean islands. Given the sound of their Spanish, I'd guess they hae a large number of Cubans and Dominicans here too.
I've been here about twelve hours and I already love Panama. It even has one of my favorite things about Colombia...
Colombiana soda
...Colombiana soda.
Posted by crispy at 07:30 AM | Comments (1)
December 18, 2007
"This is the school I work for..."
Shawn comes home today and tells me about the administration's plan for rewarding the students for good performance. He had suggested extra recess or maybe getting to watch a movie. Instead, the geniuses came up with this killer idea.
Each teacher will get a set of flags for various subjects to put on the wall. The top student in each category will have their photo put under it. WOO HOO! What fun!
They look like this:
Award flag for "Reading Comprehension"
Award flag for "Listening"
Award flag for "Writing Skills"
...but this says it all about he school where Shawn works:
Award flag for "Spelling B"
Another funny thing about it is, they have seven teachers that are supposed to use them, but they only made five sets of flags.
Posted by crispy at 03:21 PM | Comments (4)
December 09, 2007
Björk, Live at the Dust Bowl!
We went to the Sonofilia Festival this past Saturday night.
Charles drove us in his cab, and it took 90 minutes to get there. It was out in the middle of nowhere, and the last third of the travel time was spent on rough dirt roads.
We were lucky to have made arrangements with Charles. The buses that the organizers arranged to take people from our local shopping mall, Plaza del Sol, for MXN $110 each, which were supposed to depart every half hour or so, never showed up, leaving those who had already paid for their bus (and show) tickets stranded. Earlier in the day, several such people had hired cabs to take them out there for MXN $500 one way, but after those drivers made the trek and dealt with the road conditions, they hiked their prices to MXN $700, and then started refusing to go for any price.
On our way, we saw several cars from Mexico City, but there were representatives from many other Mexican states as well. We even saw plates from Nuevo León, which is up north, bordering Texas.
The roads were sprayed with water at some points, but it was not enough to dampen the dust on the roads. At times there was hardly any visibility, and it was bumper to bumper traffic. Once we reached the festival, Charles had to drop us off some 200 meters from the entrance gate. That was after he had passed a couple of other points beyond which vehicles were not being permitted, by telling the guards that he had Americans he had to escort or that he had a passenger who had trouble walking. I am usually not one to go for that kind of thing, but since the drop-off point for everyone else was a kilometer from the gate, and it allowed us to stay in the car and out of the dust for a little longer, I wasn't going to complain.
We soon discovered that one could not just walk straight up to the gate to get in. There was a 400 meter long line snaking around to get into the gate. It moved fairly quickly, but we were stuck the whole time in a windy dust storm, and no way to keep from breathing in heaping lungfuls of powdered dirt. That was just great for Shawn, who had just recovered from a sinus infection, and I was equally thrilled, having come down with chest congestion and a sore throat the night before.
We finally made it in the gates, and were able to get up to where we could see the stage. Björk started 30 minutes earlier than scheduled, but thanks to Charles, we arrived in time to see the start of her set. She was about as tall as a dime from where we were, but the performance was spectacular. Her set list is available online, but it isn't entirely accurate. I wish she had done "Oceanea" in her encore, as it is one of my favorites. She only did "Declare Independence," which was still pretty fantastic. The set lasted an hour and twenty minutes, and featured a brass ensemble.
After she finished, we decided to take off. Our sinuses were packed with dust and we had Charles waiting for us. We had arranged to give Charles a call on our cell phone to let him know we were leaving, but we were not able to get any service at all for our Telcel phone. I am really surprised that they didn't have the foresight to put a temporary mobile cell out at the festival site to have coverage there, but we didn't get any signal until we were headed out on the road again.
We talked about whether or not it was worth it, as it cost us about USD $230 for the tickets and unexpectedly nearly that much again for the transportation. We decided that it was worth it to have seen Björk perform live. I cannot stress enough how incredible she was. Yet if there is a Sonofilia Festival next year, we're not going back.
In fact, if there is ever a concert that we want to see, held at that location ("El Aguacate") again, we are not going. In the day following, it has become pretty clear that we have both developed sinus infections from breathing in all that dust, and my lungs hurt more than if I'd sat down and chain-smoked two packs of Lucky Strike straights. It's ironic since Björk supposedly wanted to perform in a place that was more 'natural' than a concert hall, but maybe it is just a reminder that nature can kick your ass.
The bottom line: Björk gets top marks for a wonderful show, and the way she can make such a big sound come out of such a little body. The organizers of the Sonofilia Festival did a really crappy job at picking their location and making sure that people had reliable transportation to get there. Furthermore, they really should have taken some proactive measures to control the dust issue.
We didn't take any photos, but you can check out this other person's photostream on Flickr if you want. They were closer than we were able to get anyway.
Other reaction en español @ cierra la puerta al salir, Defiéndete, L.C. Boxset, Robotania8a, Bitácora de una drama queen, pastelazo
Posted by crispy at 11:10 PM | Comments (2)
December 08, 2007
Megacable Blows
Digital Cable typo listing How to Blow a Billionaire
It's true. I have lost some of my love for Megacable, but I'm saving that for another post.
Instead, today we're going to talk about something they did that made me laugh. Today Shawn was looking at the digital cable guide and he saw the listing for the FX show, How to Blow a Billion...
Proper title on FX-created bumper
...but instead, it looked more like How to Blow a Billionaire. It's a little off, written as Billionarie...
not "Billionaire"
...but it's close enough that we both were shocked and amazed. Maybe that's some way for them to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit from Vivid Video.
In any case, it's a sure-fire way to get people to tune and check it out, even if it is cheating a little.
At least they do properly label it as an 'adult' show.
How to Blow a Billionarie
Posted by crispy at 01:04 PM | Comments (1)
December 07, 2007
Chokocrak
Chokocrak label
I saw this candy bar, manufactured by Dulcería Italiana under the Laposse label, at Wal-Mart. I bought it just for the box, but I wasn't going to let chocolate go to waste. I have to say, Chokocrak is really good. A lot of chocolate sold as candy here in Mexico is not very good, but I have to admit that I really liked this one. It is kind of like a Nestlé's Crunch, but with raisins, and huge: the bar is like 4" x 7".
As is typical of stores in Mexico (and especially Wal-Mart), the next time I went back and tried to buy more, they did not have it. Furthermore, none of the employees working the candy section knew what I was talking about it when I asked. Maybe they don't make it anymore, but I suspect it fell prey to Wal-Mart's no restocking policy. If you ever get the chance though, I recommend that you try Chokocrak. You'll be hooked!
Posted by crispy at 01:24 PM | Comments (3)
December 06, 2007
Shawn at Plaza Galerías
Shawn, Plaza Galerías
Posted by crispy at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
December 05, 2007
Mandú
Exterior of Mandú Restaurant, Plaza Galerías
Mandu
Plaza Galerías 360
33/3673-2319
As vegetarians in the United States, Shawn and I usually found Asian restaurants to be a pretty safe bet when dining out. At best, they were among our favorite places (Taki's and Tra Ling's) and at worst, they offered the same four or five ubiquitous, boring, yet meat-free, dishes. I can't tell you how many chefs seem to think that vegetarians not only avoid meat, but also variety.
When we moved to Guadalajara and tried out a couple of Asian restaurants, we were shocked to find that they usually did not offer any vegetarian dishes at all. I do not mean that they didn't have tofu dishes. I mean they didn't even have any dishes that consisted of just vegetables. When we finally did find our little slice of heaven, they understood our plight. They said that their tapatio customers would order something like beef with broccoli and pick out all the strips of beef, leaving anything green behind to be dumped into the trash. When that restaurant closed, we felt like we'd lost the only restaurateurs in town that understood us. It was a dark day indeed.
That left us with the sushi restaurants that serve kappa maki, avocado rolls, vegetable tempura, stir-fried vegetables and vegetable fried rice, but it seems like almost all the sushi restaurants offer these five dishes and only these five dishes, with very few exceptions. We like sushi, so we do go out for it often. Yet it seems that Japanese food, and particularly the sushi side of Japanese food, is one of the few socially-acceptable ethnic foods that the people of Guadalajara will dare to eat. It is by far the Asian cuisine most represented here, with Chinese being a distant second. Then all the other contenders - Korean, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian - simply do not exist here. At least, that's what we thought.
The discovery of Mandú, through a friend of Joseph and Larry, did not drastically change the situation for us, but it did offer us a couple of new dishes that we liked and can enjoy now and again when we want vegetarian Asian food that isn't sushi. (Actually, their sushi is pretty good too, and they have a chamoy roll that emulates the pickled plum roll, ume maki.)
Sushi at Mandú
Shawn likes their bibimbap, a Korean dish that they will make for him with tofu instead of meat. Unfortunately, the tofu they use is always the salad kind that comes in vacuum-packed aseptic boxes, so the best they can do with it is to put uncooked slices on top of the dish. Still, it's rare to find tofu of any kind in a restaurant here, so he is happy to get it. Personally, I don't like fried eggs, unless they're scrambled first. On my first trip to Mandú, I ordered the bibimbap and asked for my egg scrambled, and it arrived with a fried egg diced up and sprinkled around the bowl. Not exactly what I asked for, but even if it had been, I wasn't all that crazy about it. Not that it wasn't well-prepared. It should be noted that their execution is quite good with everything I've had there. I just didn't like bibimbap all that much.
The next time I went there, I got the Thai noodles, and asked them to hold the meat. They did, and the noodles were very good. When we went last week with Joseph and Larry, I got the udon with vegetables and tofu, and it was the best thing I've had at Mandú yet. I think next time I'll get that again, but I'll not get it with the bland tofu. It would be better if it were just noodles and vegetables. They also have a dish that is breaded fried cheese on skewers, served with a chipotle sauce.
Interior of Mandú
The first time we went there, we went with Charles, and he asked to see the chef. The chef came out and Charles explained that we didn't eat beef, pork or chicken, nor even seafood. He asked if the chef could make something vegetarian, perhaps something that wasn't even on the menu, for us. He said that he would be sure to prepare our food vegetarian, and he suggested the bibimbap to us. That's when we tried that. He then said that he had a cookbook at home with many vegetarian Asian dishes, and that he'd work with it to come up with some other dishes for our next visit.
The next time I went, I went with Charles again, and he asked to see the chef. He asked if the chef remembered us, and he did. Charles went through the routine again about all the things I don't eat, and asked what the chef might be able to make for me. The chef asked if I'd had the bibimbap. I had. As I mentioned, they didn't really make it like I'd asked. I didn't really want that again. He suggested the Thai noodles that were on the menu, but he could make them with vegetables instead of meat. I figured anything Thai with noodles has to be good, so I decided to try it. It was good. Yet I was getting the feeling that if I didn't get that, we were going to start running out of options. I did not get the impression that he had been looking into cookbooks to come up with anything new.
Of course, I don't hold that against him so much. He is a chef at a restaurant in a mall. I'm sure he has more interesting things to do with his free time than find recipes for two freaks that don't eat meat. I just wish he had not told me a story about cookbooks and being into discovering some new dishes, because I really got excited about it. If he wasn't really planning to do it, I would have preferred that he answer like the owner/chef at the Italian restaurant we went to with Charles, who upon getting the story about how we do not eat beef, chicken, pork, nor even seafood, and being asked if he would make something vegetarian for us, perhaps something that wasn't even on the menu, replied quite simply:
"No."
Larry, Shawn, Joseph and Chris at Mandú
Posted by crispy at 08:27 PM | Comments (2)