No, not the city in New Mexico, but the Portuguese conqueror of Goa and Malacca: Affonse da Alboquerque, to be precise.

Needless to say, I've been a bit pre-occupied the last several days, head buried in a bunch of 19th century accounts of travelers running amok--now there is a word with one hell of an etymology, but you'll have to wait for the book for that story--up and down the Malay Peninsula. And then, there is this guy Alboquerque, or Albuquerque for you spelling Nazis out there.

He was a real piece of work.

In a nutshell, Alboquerque was ordered by the King of Portugal to capture Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea. The strategic rationale was pretty solid: cut off Moorish/Egyptian shipping of spices in the Red Sea and thus cut Venice--who shipped all the pepper and cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg from Alexandria, into the Mediterranean--out of the spice trade altogether. Trade was equally as cutthroat then as it is now.

Affonso was on his way to do his duty by the king when a report came in that the Sultan of Malacca had razed the Portuguese warehouse in Malacca and taken 20 Portuguese hostage, including Ruy de Araujo, it's commander, or perhaps in modern parlance: the consul general.

More after the jump.

I have a new policy suggestion for the TSA that will prevent future bombers of the sort that attempted to bring down the plane on Christmas Day: everyone flies nude.

It's simple and quite elegant.

As a side note: I'm glad I've discovered alternative methods of travel. I haven't decided yet where I am going in July: Indonesia, Istanbul or south to the Tierra Del Fuego, but the good news is if I head south, I do so on a bus. If I head to Indonesia or Istanbul I can take a container ship.

I do realize both these methods require a great deal more time than most travelers have. So, fly naked.

If you are looking for a more serious critique, well, read Bruce.

So, I have from late Wednesday to roughly Monday the Fourth of January to visit some place in Texas I have not. I'm thinking Palo Duro Canyon, near Amarillo. I'm up for a long drive, a road trip of sorts. Any suggestions? Or alternatives?

“I am Iraqi,” said the boy with the striped woollen hat and makeshift wood contraption under one arm; his provisional badge of authority as a shoe cleaner. Yes, I knew there were allegedly three million Iraqi refugees living in Syria, mostly in Damascus, most in miserable conditions; a few came with money, a lot of money which they invested in property, while others had got through everything; it had been a long war.

“From Fallujah.” The name stung as intended somewhere in a complex area between mind and feeling. Yes, I had seen the reports into the operations at Fallujah, scorched earth, overkill, too many maimed children. How many is too many? He was about ten or eleven and we were walking quickly as he tried to grab my sleeve and began a new tack. “Tomorrow I go to school, school very expensive in Syria, I have no money. Please.”

We were beside the long wall of the Ummayad Mosque, leaving behind the pilgrims crowding before the main doors; large numbers of women in black chadors, Muslims from Malaysia, Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. That evening, on the way to a restaurant he appeared again, out of the shadows of the newly renovated shop doorways along Bab Sharqa, gateway to the Christian end of Straight Street. “I am Iraqi, I have no mother or father; I am very hungry. Please one Euro.” The following afternoon, again in front of the mosque where we were to meet our friend Ossama, another boy begins the same litany, from Fallujah, the name meant to cause the discomfort which it does. Later Ossama tells us the boys are Kurds. I had already imagined a Fagin like figure teaching his apprentice beggars on a bench in front of him an English mantra and the use of the shock word. We let the thought of the artifice help ease conscience; there were after all too many images in Damascus of lives led against the odds, images which give the phrase ‘making ends meet’ the raw life it never finds on paper. Ossama when he came sharply gestured the boy away, as other men had done when they noticed us being accosted; that helped too, but in some unquiet corner of our Western European well-being, nothing really helped at all.

More after the jump.

I always wondered why there were flies painted in the bowls of so many urinals across the globe.

Especially the Dutch and the Danish urinals. (And yes, I realize urinals is not the greatest topic in the world.)

But I really had no idea there was so much subliminal message going on.

Gives new meaning to how dense men can be and are.

Me included.

For those of you you who don’t know Texas or have never visited or traveled in Texas, my latest story is up at Texas Monthly Online. It's a reworking of a post here at The Agonist from last week. Some parts have been added and other parts removed. Hopefully for the better.

I hope, in the coming months, to spend some more time visiting portions of the state I have not seen in recent years, notably Big Bend, the more isolated parts of the Hill Country, the North Texas Plains and Canyon Lands and so much more.

Texas is a curious place. Some of it isn't very pretty, as I was reminded on my recent trip south to the Coastal Plains. Parts of the state have been devastated by drought, or even worse, the modern plague of locusts known as Wal-Mart. Even in some of the most remote portions of the state, industrial blight remains in the form of oil derricks, some of them seventy, eighty years old languishing in the fields, surrounded by grasses and stickers and thistles. All empty. Smote down by an inexorable economic god.

To say I have a complicated relationship with home is an understatement. The people, the sounds, the smells and the memories. All of it.

And yet, there is a bond, one that will never disappear no matter if I make my home in Istanbul or Iowa.

It's not exactly a consumerism backlash, but it's an interesting development in Singapore, nonetheless:

“Haji Lane is closer to our aesthetic,” she continued. “Here we feel free to go a step further and explore new things. We showcase our own artwork, and the crowd is very encouraging.”

Indeed it is. Haji Lane has become a meeting place for the city’s anti-mall crowd.

That's a big climbdown from the malls-are-all aesthetic of Singapore. Believe me, I walked through three of them on my way to work every morning. Singapore is, if it is anything at all, a city of malls. A city of shoppers.

What I found interesting about this story is how close Haji Lane is to where I lived in Singapore: just a few blocks away. I lived at the corner of Beach Road and Leang Seah. Leang Seah is well know as a foodie street in Singapore, with lots of boutique food stores, many of them run by Thais, Malays, Vietnamese, Singaporeans and Chinese. Toss in a Tamil for good measure.

It was a fantastic neighborhood to live in, as well. It felt like a cosmopolitan neighborhood of small shops in the heart of a big city, which is exactly what it was.

I miss the food. And that fifty cent coffee of fresh, right off the mountain Sumatra I had every morning on the way to work.

I hop into the car to spend the night in San Antonio, my former home and still hometown. It’s late Thanksgiving Evening and even now I am full. A day of corn-based, over sucrosed food and now apathy.

After an hour on the road I am greeted on the outskirts of San Antonio by one of those newfangled high-def billboards It hangs bright in the foggy night like an embrasure into an alternate future, another universe. But, like a character out of Blade Runner, I have already stepped across the threshold of the past into some bastardized underworld eternity. Unlike the one Odysseus or Aeneas strode into mine has much more in common with Dante’s, the one he awoke to in dark wood wandering.

More here.

In light of this story in the Washington Post today about the trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief, I thought I would post a story I wrote for publication while I was in Cambodia. It was never published, as the travel editor I was working with was laid off the day after I filed the story. Some of my posts on Cambodia can be found here and here.

Phnom Penh, November 26, 2008.

Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen: each name is immediately recognizable as the scene of heinous crimes. But if you mention the words ‘Tuol Sleng’ or ‘Choeung Ek’ you’re almost guaranteed to draw a blank. What? Where? Huh?

Tuol Sleng served as the detention and processing center for enemies of the Pol Pot regime; the sentences were carried out at Choeung Ek, better known as the ‘killing fields.’

I was very hesitant to stay in Phnom Penh. And I certainly didn’t want to witness ground zero of Cambodia’s self-immolation. But the morning after I arrived from Saigon, however, I grabbed a tuk-tuk, the Cambodian equivalent of a tri-shaw and made my way to Tuol Sleng.

More after the jump.

I was involved in two pretty interesting conversations with Ruy and Plutarco while in Nicaragua. They spanned about three days, but below you will find the gist of them both. I traveled with a friend who wrote up the conversations in dialogue form, as my Spanish leaves lots to be desired.

Ruy:

On Evangelicos

Ruy: “There are a lot of evangelicos here. You know, the people here have a lot of illiteracy and no education. When the evangelicos come, the people don’t know any better. They take, and take and take and the people just flock to the church and give what little they have to these thieves; puto evangelicos estupidos.

More after the jump.

I fly home tomorrow, so this is the last batch of photos from Nicaragua. Enjoy!

SP -- your comments on Nica's crime situation are spot on. In an earlier incarnation, I covered all of Central America (well, never made it to Belize....) for one of the analytical arms (OK, chose your own body part) of the USG. At the time, Nica in the run-up to the return of Comrade Danny and was a particular favorite of mine. The Nicas are probably the most interesting of the Ladino groups in the region.
The lower crime rate CAN in part be traced to the socialized medical & educational programs the Sandis brought in. Another factor is that Nica expats during Danny's previous time at the trough departed the country as family units (middle class & all that). More important, most settled in Florida -- not the west coast, where local gangbangers were a dominant influence.

For a long time Nicaragua has had the lowest crime rates of any Latin American country. I don't know if that was a function of a semi-socialist/communist history or the simple fact that there just isn't much left to steal in a country when a former president pilfered the state coffers of $100 million. (Yes, that is chump change back home, but here?)

Sadly, crime is on the rise and Conservatives back home, while they love to berate Daniel Ortega, they'd love the privatization of the police function here. From a Nica Times article, October 2-9 issue:

The communications officer for the National Police of Granada, Luis Carrillo, says citizen security is not just the police's responsibility. He says that everyone has to work together to ensure 'citizen security.'

Might I suggest to Officer Carrillo that he import some gun-toting white southerners for his vigilante justice project?

Have I mentioned how uninspired I am when it comes to writing? I think it's the heat. It's downright devastating. Singapore was hot and so was much of the area around the Straits, but this heat? Good grief. I had a hard time finishing my pancakes this morning it was so hot.

I've never been a big fan of the rum. At least until I tried Flor de Cana, the local Nicaraguan brand of rum. It's nice and goes down smooth. I should know, some surfers and I polished off a full bottle a few nights back on the beach at El Popoyo.

I might be a convert. The only problem is I seem to fall in love with local blends, like Yeni Raki, that are well nigh impossible to get at home.

Life is rough.

On a side note, yesterday, for the first time in my life I was corrected by a local for calling myself 'an American.'

"I know you are an American," Walter told me. "So am I!"

Soy Tejano, then," I said.

He looked at me with his head cocked to one side. "Huh?"

"Texas," I said.

"Oh, you are a Norteno," he said.

"Sure thing."

He does have a point. Of course, I've heard 'yanquis' and 'gringo' here in Nicaragua more than anywhere else in my life as well.

Had someone told me twenty years ago when I was majoring in Russian, ready to fight the Cold War and all that, that twenty years to the day I would be spending my 39th birthday in a Nicaragua where Daniel Ortega was president and enjoying myself immensely, I would have laughed in their face.

Alas, here I am. 'Tis a strange life and a stranger world. Lots of new photos from the Lago De Nicaragua here.

More photos from Granada, here.

The vile shit we do in the name of national security is beyond me, sometimes. I’ve visited a lot of countries in which our national security obsessions have led to all sorts of misery, but here in Nicaragua it seems the most futile. What harm did this desperately poor country ever pose to us? A little Cuban influence? Or Russian mercs running around in the hills? As Ruy told me yesterday, “Soy no Sandinista, pero if I have no job, I vote for Ortega.”

That says a lot for a guy who was pressed into the Nicaraguan army to fight the Contras. “Three years I spent in the mountains, fighting that puto Ronald Reagan. Pablito,” he tells me,” I love you Americanos, but Reagan was el grande puto.”

Ruy likes that word, he uses it with a large smile, his little Ortega inspired mustache hanging from his upper lip. He’s got an infectious hand-shake and at close to 50 years old has the energy of a 20 year old.

We drive for an hour and a half from the beach here at Popoyo to Rivas, the only place within a hundred kilometers with an ATM. “Yeah,” I think, “capitalism has come to even Nicaragua.”

More after the jump.

I figured I better post a photo of me working, as opposed to doing nothing, which I seem to be pretty good at!

More photos of sunsets, geology, surfing and landscapes can be found here.

A couple dozen new photos are up.

There is nothing so hideous as waking to the thumping bass and screeches of of foreign music at six in the morning. But after 36 hours of no electricity I can't blame the Nicas (short for Nicaraguan) for wanting to revel in it. That, however, didn't help my headache. Or my first morning in Nicaragua.

My room is terrifying. Ants scurry across the floor. The shower is little more than a PVC pipe pumping out sulfurous swamp water. The sheets are clean, but only in a tentative, hand-washed way. The rafters leak mosquitos. The wash basin is filled with the accumulated grit of years. I don't think it has been cleaned since before the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza. The toilet has no seat. Surf boards and bottles of empty rum are scattered helter-skelter.

I stumbled out of bed, bleary-eyed and coated in sweat out to the veranda and ordered coffee. I lit a cigarette, dragged deeply as the nicotine and tar at the very least woke up my lungs. I surveyed the sights around me.
The wind blows up dust devils in the dirt road. Thatched huts line the beach. Blue skies and bluer water ripple out all the way to Hawaii as tropical clouds jog penitently in the sky. Alfonso argues in the kitchen with his mother. Coconuts cling to branches while the water in the mangrove lagoon behind me splashes softly onto sandy banks. A pair of Magpie Jays roost in the branches while a small heron and sandpiper feed on the banks. A fish kicks out of the water, snagging a wayward dragonfly. A hammock swings in the breeze beckoning me to waste my day in its embrace.

I'm tempted.

More after the jump.

New photos up here.

I left La Fortuna at 615am. Yes, that early. I took the bus from La Fortuna to Penas Blancas, a small frontier town along the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border. It was a slow bus ride, taking about six hours. I arrived in Penas Blancas about noon.

From La Fortuna down the mountains to Guanacaste the flora was a uniform, high canopy, interspersed with small farms of guayavas, papayas, carrots, onions, peppers and the like. But as I entered the flatlands, high semi-dry grasses proliferated. It was dryer too. Still lush by Texas standards, but the grasses had a golden edge to them and the trees looked windblown. The bus stopped frequently, crawling north between parallel mountain ranges. Cool highland breezes gave way to lowland humidity and stifling heat.

The people changed in the lowlands too. Where they had been more Spanish looking in the highlands and along the Pacific Coast, here their looks took a decisive turn to the indigenous. Lean body frames, thin noses, light eyes and wavy hair were replaced by by thick straight tresses of black hair, coal eyes, short globular frames and flat noses with flaring nostrils.

More after the jump.

My latest Texas Monthly story is up, here. Enjoy!

I'm off to Nicaragua tomorrow and will be out of pocket until Tuesday. My next Texas Monthly story should run this week. My latest Guardian story was supposed to run late last week, but I think the Iran news pushed it back. I fly home from Managua on the 8th of October. So my regular blogging schedule will resume then. I'll keep you all posted.

Lots of photos today. Hopefully I'll get a story done as well.

My favorites?

I'd be lying if I said the one above of the lizard wasn't one of 'em. By the way, all the animals in the subsequent photos are from the wild. None, except the kitty, are in captivity.

This one of the Arenal Volcano is nice.

And this one is for Don Henry Ford, Jr. Horses!

I love Vermillion Flycatchers. And this one of the Broad-billed Mot Mot? Probably the finest bird I've ever seen in the wild. I wish the colors weren't so washed out in the photo.

No photo collection is complete without food, this of a fine anti-pasto overlooking the Lago De Arenal, taken from The Country Store, owned by ex-pats from Arizona.

Cumulonimbus!

Finally, the hot springs at the foot of the volcano, known as Tabacon de los pobres.

Enjoy!