MORE SNOOPING FROM THE BUSH REGIME-- ALL NEW PASSPORTS WILL HAVE RADIO FREQUENCY ID CHIPS STARTING TOMORROW

Tne newest Wired has a story claiming that as of January 1, 2007 (tomorrow) all new American passports will have a radio frequency chip embedded in them. If it weren't bad enough that government officials can easily monitor your movements, how about hackers and other "bad actors?" Wired claims it will make it all the easier for hackers to get their hands on your personal stats.

Getting paranoid about strangers slurping up your identity? Here�s what you
can do about it. But be careful-- tampering with a passport is
punishable by 25 years in prison. Not to mention the "special"
customs search, with rubber gloves. Bon voyage!

1) RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the front cover;
the chip is embedded in the back.

2) Sorry, "accidentally" leaving your passport in the jeans you just
put in the washer won't work. You're more likely to ruin the passport
itself than the chip.

3) Forget about nuking it in the microwave-- the chip could burst
into flames, leaving telltale scorch marks. Besides, have you ever
smelled burnt passport?

4) The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt,
hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn�t invalidate
the passport, so you can still use it.

Or does that idea of an electronic chip in your passport make you feel more secure and safer? Many people actually like Big Brother and some people think they are better fit for robotic slavery than for the vicissitudes of freedom.


UPDATE: AND IT ISN'T JUST AMERICAN TRAVELERS THAT UNCLE SAM IS GATHERING INFO ABOUT. BRITS TRAVELING TO THE U.S.-- GET READY!

Happy New Year! Today's Telegraph has an unwelcome announcement for British air passengers U.S.-bound. "Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington. By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account."

There are 4 millions Brits per year who fly to the U.S. and this newest Bush Regime initiative covers not just them but all Europeans. Not only has Bush demanded that all this info be available in regard to his phony war against terrorism but his regime is also asserting the right to the same information when dealing with other ill-defined "serious crimes."

MY FAVORITE RESTAURANTS IN BUENOS AIRES

There's something perverse about a non meat-eater writing a guide to Argentine restaurants. Meat is the biggest deal down there. Everyone I ran into was so proud that Argentine beef is the best in the world-- and with the least cholesterol, no less! But non-meat eaters travel to Buenos Aires too. And, believe me, you can eat as well there as anywhere else. I'm not a vegetarian. I eat fish as well as vegetables. On the other hand, I don't eat sugar or anything made with flour (pasta, bread, cakes). And I love to eat. I'll do a specific paragraph below about the Buenos Aires veggie restaurant scene. But first let me say a few words about top restaurants in town.

As a prelude, I'll just mention that Argentina is a large and rich agricultural country with great quality food and a wide array of products. In the north there was tropical jungles and in the south, freezing near desolation. In between it's temperate and everything grows. Eating is good in Argentina. It might not be as cheap as it is to eat in Bolivia or Peru but for a tourist who could afford to get there, it's damn cheap. And the portions are generally really big. High quality, big portions, good prices. How you going to go wrong?

Generally recognized as THE best restaurant, Tomo 1 is in a hotel of faded glory, the PanAmericano (Crowne Plaza). Fortunately Tomo 1 isn't faded at all and it isn't of the hotel, just shares an address, Carlos Peligrini 521, right near the Obelisque, in what you might call the center of town (an absurd concept in Buenos Aires). Anyway, they serve lunch (weekdays) and dinner Monday through Saturday. It's been something of an Argentine institution since 1971 when the Concaro sisters, Ada and Ebe, opened it in a house in Belgrano. It moved to the Panamerico about 12 years ago. For an Argentine, 90 pesos for a meal is steep, like 90 dollars would be for an American in L.A. or NYC. But 90 pesos for us is around $30. And that's $30 for the best restaurant in town where every dish is mouthwatering and designed to be absolutely perfect. One sister does lunch and the other does dinner and their philosophy places flavors above all other concerns. Everything I ate there was delicious and nothing came to the table that you could get anywhere else.

If another restaurant gives it a run for its money it would be the newer (2004)-- and way hipper and more glitzy-- Casa Cruz in Palermo. The place blew me away to the point of doing something I had never done before in my life. I photographed the menu; take a look. This place is all about unique combinations of ingredients. Frommer or Fodor or something like that claims this is the best restaurant in town. I'm not going to argue with them either. It's not easy to get into though. I was unable to get reservations twice. They serve 'til 3AM or until you're finished eating.

Most concierges who you ask for the best restaurants in town will say there are 3 and add in Sucre. Sucre is excellent, but in my opinion not on the same level as Tomo 1 and Casa Cruz. It's bigger and not quite as smooth as the other two. The food's very good but not as unique or memorable. It's kind of out of the way too.

In fact, I think I'd put Oviedo, a posh Old World seafood restaurant in Barrio Norte, in as my third favorite restaurant, over Sucre. It's clubby and feels fancy but it was actually pretty relaxed and the food was superb, almost like you're eating in a grand restaurant in Spain rather than in Argentina. (And even though it's "officially" a seafood restaurant, people say they have incredible beef and lamb dishes as well.) Everything is done with a lot of flare.

Most of the tourists I talked to missed these incredible world class restaurants and were delighted to have their meals at Buenos Aires' traditional grilled meat restaurants, parrillas. People I met raved about El Obrero in La Boca and La Brigada in San Telmo as the best parrillas in town. After that everyone's second favorite choice are the omnipresent pizzerias and Italian restaurants. They literally are everywhere. Buenos Aires is almost as Italian in culture and character as it is Spanish. Buenos Aires also has Chinese restaurants, Thai restaurants, German restaurants, French restaurants, etc. And plenty of MacDonald's and crap like that too.

It wasn't hard finding good vegetarian food either. Although my favorite veggie (and organic) restaurant was Bio in Palermo, the "veggie scene" is centered around a store/restaurant called La Esquina de las Flores. Since I rented an apartment for my first week in Buenos Aires this was a place I could buy some basic groceries, although not fresh produce. And they have great take-away. The women who run it were mostly humorless, forbidding, harried and unfriendly. Right next door is another veggie place, Lotos, which is kind of Chinese veggie. Florida is the huge pedestrian street in the center where everyone walks and shops. There's a huge veggie cafeteria called Granix (open for lunch only) where you get as much as you can eat for $7. It isn't high consciousness food but it's good and tasty and a great place to go if you're hungry. I heard of 2 or 3 other veggie places that I never got to check out (including a Hare Krishna place I didn't want to check out, sugar being the main staple of the Krishna diet... which explains a lot).

EATING ON THE ROAD-- A ROCK STAR'S PERSPECTIVE: FRANZ FERDINAND LEAD SINGER RELEASES A BOOK, SOUND BITES

I'm agnostic on Franz Ferdinand's music. Their manager is an old friend of mine; otherwise I probably wouldn't have ever heard of them. I wound up liking "Take Me Out" well enough but it didn't wind up on my iPod's most-played list. I can't say I paid the Glasgow-based rockers much attention. After hearing an engaging and witty interview with lead singer Alex Kapranos today on NPR, I realize I need to go back and pay closer attention. Before he was a rock star, Kapranos was a chef-- as was Bob Hardy, the band's bass player; they learned all about restaurants from master chef Martin Teplitzsky who forged a kitchen team and played the Stooges and the Velvet Underground all day. And then Kapranos started writing a rocker's-eyed-view restaurant column for the Guardian which was released by Penguin this month as a book. (Here's an example of one of his columns/chapters, eating in Prague.) Sound Bites is all about the band's two and a half trips around the world, what they ate, who they ate it with and... well lots of color.

Just as I was about to switch the radio station to Air America, Kapranos, started talking about how to avoid the horrors of bad food on the road. I figured that had to be better than anything Ed Schultz was likely to talk about so I stayed and listened. A lot of what he talked about-- prodded, although not for no reason, by the host-- were "the weirdest things I ever ate." like deep fried insects in Bangkok (tasted fine, he said, but then you have to deal with the mandibles that get stuck between your teeth), bulls' balls in Buenos Aires (criadillas, worst thing he ever ate, kind of metalic-tasting), fishbrain bread in Finland and that Japanese blowfish that can kill you if it isn't prepared properly. And haggis.

THE TRAVELERS' CENTURY CLUB-- FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN TO 100 OR MORE COUNTRIES

Although the sturdy and intrepid New York traveler I met in the Ushuaia airport last week turned out to be a Republican nutcase, this isn't another story about how Argentina is the one place in the world-- other than Israel-- where you meet right wing Americans on the road. Actually, I really liked this lady and even asked her to do a guest blog (when she started talking about how older women are safe because they are "socially invisible"). She declined my offer because she doesn't have a computer. Anyway, aside from her theories on how "the woman's lib walk" keeps her out of trouble and how Rudy Giuliani was the best thing that ever happened to New Yorkers, she talked a lot about her travels. She's really been everywhere. And she's a member of the Travelers Century Club.

Now I'm a member in good standing of the Mile High Club but I had never heard of the Travelers' Century Club. Unlike the Mile High Club, this is an actual club with meeting and dues and a newsletter, etc. To be a member you have to have been to 100 "countries," although they have a unique and utterly specific way to decide what a country is. (Their definition is very different from the UN's and there are 317 of them.) Hawaii, Alaska, Sicily, Corfu and Hainan count. Koh Samui, Long Island and Tierra del Fuego don't (although both the Chilean and Argentine South Pole stations do count as countries). Anyway, TTC was started in 1954 and if you've visited 75 countries you can be a kind of associate member. It costs $100 to join and yearly dues for Americans are $40 ($70 per couple). If you don't live in the U.S. yearly dues are $50 but there's no discount for couples. The headquarters are in Santa Monica (their phone number is 310-458-3454 and you can e-mail them at tccclub3@gte.net).

There are over 1,500 members and 35 of these have visited 300 or more countries. They sponsor club tours to out-of-the-way places like Northwest Passage, Central Asia (the �Stan� countries), West Africa, the World Heritage sites of North Africa, islands of the Indian Ocean, the Marquesas and Tuamotus, a Cape Horn to Cape Town cruise, the South Atlantic islands, including Bouvet Island, Greenland/Iceland/the North Pole, North Korea, the outer islands of Britain, Barrancas del Cobre, the Sahara, and they have circumnavigated Antarctica.


The most recent countries added to the list of qualifiers are Prince Edward Island, Nakhichevan, Srpska (northern Bosnia), Kosovo, and Trans-Dniester (between Chisinau/Odessa). I'm over the 70 countries mark counting Srpska and Kosovo. If you want to be able to count Tuvalu, you better go soon since it is sinking below the Pacific waves and it's highest point is only 16 feet above sea level. Wait!! I just saw a proviso that fuel stops count as a "visit," which adds South Korea, Alaska and Taiwan to my list. I'm qualified to be an associate member!

TWO OF MY FAVORITE SPOTS IN ARGENTINA: THE IGUAZU FALLS AND ESTEROS DEL IBERA

When I originally decided to go to Argentina, it was the remoteness of Tierra del Fuego that drew me. As I explained earlier, I just wanted to go to the end of the world and be quiet and empty. But as I started planning out the trip I came upon two other places in Argentina that looked interesting and turned out to be just as soothing to the soul as Tierra del Fuego. One is very well-known, Iguazu, and one not well-known at all, Esteros del Ibera. Both are way up north jutting up into the Brazilian tropics. The former is in Misiones Province and the latter in Corrientes Province.


Iguazu is one of the wonders of the world and attracts millions of tourists. Located in an area where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, it is actually between 250 and 300 individual waterfalls strung out for a couple of miles. Brazil and Argentina have impressive national parks built around the falls. They positively dwarf Niagara Falls.

There are only two hotels within the national parks, a Sheraton on the Argentine side and the more luxurious-- in an old fashioned/old world kind of way-- Tropical Hotel Das Cataratas on the Brazilian side. Both are pretty expensive, primarily because of their locations inside the parks. I stayed on the Brazilian side and walked to the middle of the falls several times a day, every day-- as well as at night. The towns are miles away and not convenient. If you don't stay in the park, you have to make a trip to the falls, not just open your bedroom curtains or go for a stroll.


The problem with being at Das Cataratas is that there's nothing around and you're completely at their mercy. And they take advantage of that to charge outrageous prices for everything-- something, in fact, everyone in the area does. All services have a price for locals and a price for tourists. You want to guess which is higher? And it's a lot higher. Every hotel I stayed at, from the Park Hyatt at over $500 a night to the $35/night Julio C�sar in Posadas, let guests use their computers and Internet connections for free except one-- Das Cataratas. And in Buenos Aires the locutorios charge a peso an hour to use a computer (around thirty cents). At Das Cataratas it was something like $9 an hour. Meals were decent but not great-- and quite over-priced, there being no place else to go.


On the other hand, the falls are so spectacular and so awesome that it's worth the rip. In fact, in light of the sheer spectacularness, the rest of it is inconsequential. It's an hour and change plane ride from Buenos Aires and it is a must see. I might add the room rates were somewhat negotiable and that the service staff was friendly and eager to please.


The other place, Esteros del Ibera, I kept wanting to cancel everywhere along the planning process. I mean who voluntarily goes to a swamp? I wound up going anyway-- inertia-- and it was completely amazing. The most important thing was to get the idea of "swamp" out of my head. This was easy because the place is not only gorgeous, it is fresh and even cooler than everyplace around it. The water is so beautiful that if it weren't for the alligators, pirhanas, capybaras and anacondas, you'd want to jump right in-- as many of the folks who live around there do anyway (and have the missing fingers and toes to prove it).

It's not that easy to get there-- rutted dirt road that looks like no fun in downpour. And there is virtually no public transportation. You have to rent a 4 wheel drive vehicle in Posadas. The tour book says $85 but prices have gone up and they charge a lot more, although, they're not opposed to negotiations and discounts. My driver from Guayra Turismo was great and made the process of getting there far more pleasant than it might have been.


I stayed at an incredible, magical place called Posada de la Laguna, a top-of-the-line lodge right on the lagoon. It's the kind of place that is perfect for laying in a hammock reading and sleeping all day-- which is exactly what I did, except when I was out in the boat looking at the wildlife. The food was superb; they have a real chef who made me completely delicious vegetarian meals 3 times a day. At first I was the only guest but eventually a couple of really nice Brits backpacking around South America turned up and then a delightful couple from Montana showed up in their own van out of the blue. It was nice to be alone and it was nice to be with other guests. The whole experience was fantastic and I recommend it highly.


UPDATE: A LETTER OF RESPONSE FROM THE HOTEL DAS CATARATAS' GENERAL MANAGER



As I was checking out they asked me to fill in a comment form. I did and I touched upon some of the topics I brought up above. I just got an e-mail from Jose Acir Borges, Cataratas' general manager.

Dear Mr. Howard Klein,

In attention to the suggestions form you filled in regarding your stay at the Tropical Das Cataratas Hotel between the 04th and the 06th of December, 2006, we would like to thank you for your time and inform that it was taken in high consideration by our managerial staff.

Concerning your mention about Internet, we are mindfully analyzing it, in order to take the necessary steps.

We would also like to highlight that all the concepts and opinions expressed in the suggestions form were included in our guest evaluations statistical system, helping us improve the quality of our services.

We thank you again for your attention and preference, and take advantage of this opportunity to reinforce our strong commitment to your satisfaction.

Yours sincerely,

Jose Acir Borges
General Manager

UPDATE: ANOTHER WAY TO SEE BRAZIL-- AND LOSE SOME WEIGHT IN THE PROCESS

I wouldn't recommend trying this one, but "Slovenian Martin Strel completed his swim of the entire 3,272-mile Amazon River on Saturday, a 65-day odyssey in which he battled exhaustion and delirium while trying to avoid flesh-eating piranhas and the dreaded bloodsucking toothpick fish." He started in Peru and finished yesterday at Belem, Brazil on the Atlantic Ocean. Struggling with dizziness, vertigo, cramps, high blood pressure, diarrhea, chronic insomnia, larvae infections, dehydration, abrasions caused by the constant rubbing of his wet suit against his skin, nausea, severe sunburn and delirium, as well as the loss of 26 pounds, Mr. Strel was lucky to have escaped the interest of the piranhas, toothpick fish and bull sharks. "I think the animals have just accepted me," he explained, obviously no quite over the delirium yet. "I've been swimming with them for such a long time that they must think I'm one of them now."

Strel has already swum the lengths of the Danube (1,866-miles), the Mississippi (2,360 miles) and the Yangtze (2,487 miles). He spurns the Nile. "I am not going to do the Nile. It's long but not challenging enough, it is just a small creek. The Amazon is much more mighty." Or maybe he's sensible enough to realize the crocodiles might not be as accepting as the piranhas, bull sharks and toothpick fish.

JET LAG KILLS... OLD MICE

Today's Washington post, on one of the busiest flying days in history, has a story about the deadly impact of jet lag. The story is based on an academic study of mice which seems to point out that elderly mice have a great accelerated death rate from too much jet lag.

Back in 1969 and 1970 I drove from London to India and back over the course of two years. No jet lag that way, of course. But I always noted that tourists who had flown in-- especially to India-- were a mess. I chalked it up to being unable to cope with the sudden upending of their cultural universe. But, of course, the effects of jet lag can be very disconcerting.

I got home yesterday after two flights from Buenos Aires (around 10 hours) and Dallas (around 3 hours). I'm not jet lagged at all. That's because most of the trip was north-south, not east-west, which means I didn't crossed many time zones, the cause of jet lag. The Post article is worth reading and it talks about ways to ameliorate the problem (including wearing sunglasses when you arrive at your destination!).


When I had to travel to Europe on business frequently I got used to flying on an overnight British Air flight from Los Angeles to London, first class in a fully reclining flat bed. It didn't eliminate jet lag entirely but, at $10,000 a pop, it seemed to make it a lot less burdensome. I could usually be ready for a business meeting within hours of arriving. Before I found a corporation to pay for that I used to fly economy class-- my first trip to Europe (on Icelandic Air) was $99 to Luxembourg-- I was a walking disaster for at least a day or two before I could adjust.

IS BUENOS AIRES A SAFE CITY TO VISIT? SHORT ANSWER... NO, NOT REALLY

Howie at Iguazo after the "safe incident" in Buenos Aires

The most regular Google hits this site gets come from people finding a piece I wrote last Christmas called Is Morocco A Safe Place To Visit?. My conclusion, having visited the country a dozen times since 1969, is that it is. Now you don't have to go traveling around the world to find trouble; trouble'll find you anywhere, and certainly in Paris, London, New York, L.A., San Francisco, Sydney... yeah, anywhere. My luckless friend Roland has been to Marrakech three times and was robbed the first two times he was there. But I rate Marrakech safe, as well as the other big cities listed above, and Buenos Aires unsafe. Let me tell you why I came to that conclusion.

A few weeks ago, just before leaving for Buenos Aires, I was laughing about how Bush's drunken daughter was robbed in San Telmo, a Buenos Aires hotspot (while surrounded by her Secret Service bodyguards). I was laughing because there's no amount of grief that could come to that infamous family that I wouldn't find amusing-- and because the daughter is just like the father: an irresponsible jackass who can't figure out how to behave among people. However, once I spent some time in Buenos Aires I started feeling badly that I had laughed. Everyone gets robbed in Buenos Aires. Everyone? Well, no, that was an exaggeration. I wrote something the other day about how Americans that are afraid of anything foreign can stay at the Park Hyatt and be in a virtual plastic bubble of American-ness (including a safe and prophylactic environment).

On the other hand, I haven't met a single Argentine without a story about crime in Buenos Aires. Everyone who hasn't been robbed has a brother or sister or best friend who has. My friend in bucolic Posadas has two sisters who moved from Misiones to cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. Both have been robbed numerous times; one was robbed 6 times! Buenos Aires crime isn't all directed at tourists. It's directed at everyone, including tourists.

Conventional wisdom for travelers is always to be alert and use common sense and then you won't be a victim. Mostly that works. But it works less well in Buenos Aires. The stories are legion! You get everything from the mundane stuff: pickpockets, purse and camera snatchers, crooked taxi drivers... to some really exotic shit: roofies in the drink at night/naked and penniless in a strange place in the morning. I ran into a guy from Milwaukee who had driven his motorcycle all the way down from Wisconsin to Argentina. You have to be pretty tough to do that. And then he got to Buenos Aires. Tom has a great web site about his trip, and the whole thing is worth reading just because he's such an engaing writer with a refreshing perspective. But here's a segment about his misadventures in Buenos Aires:

Sadly, the two most entertaining things to write about are also the most unfortunate for me. First, I was robbed. And, second, I flirted with the possibility of serious personal injury.

The robbery took place in the morning at a small park in one of the three medians that separate the lanes in the 14-lane avenue I referenced earlier. I was reading the paper, enjoying some breakfast, when I suddenly realized that a bird had just pooped in my yogurt and on my leg. I figured this to be revenge for not sharing my donut with the crowd of birds gathered around my feet. At right around this time, a man in his 50's walked by and motioned to the birds in the tree directly above me. I stood up to survey the breadth of the poop, at which point the man directed me to a cement post a short distance away where he claimed there was water. Near the post a woman in her thirties noticed my leg and offered some of her Kleenex while addressing me in an apologetic tone. I was not in the mood to have people wiping poop off my leg, so I brushed them away. It was on the way back to the hotel that I realized that my camera was not in my pocket.

I also had had a video camera and some cash on me, so they didn�t fleece me completely But I was pretty irritated, and I had evil thoughts of breaking all of that woman�s fingers one by one. Strangely, the more I thought about it, the less upset I got. It's one thing to be robbed, but to be bamboozled by a three-person (including the deuce squirter in the grassy knoll) squad in an elaborate artificial poop ploy is quite another. I admired their audacity and originality, and, as an aside, I believe that the fake poop recipe involved a spicy mustard.

Actually, it isn't all that original. They were doing the exact same thing in Delhi in the 70's, around Connaught Place. It's just one of countless schemes Porte�os have come up with to separate people from their money and possessions. Why Buenos Aires?

There are a lot of theories, although I should point out that most of the huge Latin American cities are crime infested and relatively unsafe. Argentina is a very materialistic place and somewhat superficial to boot. Everybody who's anybody-- or wants to be-- wants to at least appear to be on top of things. That costs money. And of the 11 million residents of the city, a great many millions of them are poor. It looks like a very prosperous city, a very, very prosperous city. But you don't have to go far from the core, away from the Microcentro, from Palermo, from Recoleta, Belgrano, Retiro, Barrio Norte before you run into some serious poverty. Shanties surround the city. And there are sections right in the heart of it you don't want to walk through. A ten minute stroll from the 4 Seasons and Park Hyatt you could stumble onto Villa 31, a ghetto that many Porte�os claim is at the root of a good deal of the street crime in town. Along with urban myths about how teenage murderers cannot be legally punished and that kind of thing, you get a picture of Villa 31 being filled with young people sitting around and listening to cumbia all day-- think rap and hip-hop-- and very addicted to Paco (think crack). You'll be hard-pressed to find too much sympathy among Argentines for the residents of Villa 31 and the other villas miserias and their unfortunate inhabitants but here's the other side of the story.

So what about me? You know how I walk everywhere-- and at all times of the day and night. I walk for miles and miles in any direction and sneer at anyone who tells me it's unsafe. Did I run into any of the famous Buenos Aires street crime? Not first hand. But that doesn't mean I wasn't robbed. I wasn't robbed in one of the villas miserias though; I was robbed in Recoleta, Buenos Aires' "Beverly Hills." I was the victim of a trick at least as old as the one that Tom fell for with the pigeon poop.

I rented an apartment through a "reputable" Argentine agency that connects landlords with tourists who are spending at least a week in the capital, ByTArgentina. I picked an apartment in an upscale building on Posadas, a pretty posh street. I figured I would play it safe for my first week. What a joke! The landlady, Graciela Ujaque de Narnesi (Grace Ujaque of Buenos Aires and Miami) met me at the apartment and gave me a key to the safe so I could leave my money in it. When I left a week later, $500 was missing from the safe. ByTArgentina promised they'd get back to me; they haven't. Does that mean I won't go back to Buenos Aires? of course not. I'll just be... more alert next time.



WHAT ABOUT MEXICO CITY? IS THAT ONE SAFE?

Like I said, there are problems with all the big Latin American cities, not just Buenos Aires. New Years Eve's Washington Post did a story on the safety of traveling to Mexico's gigantic capital. The article talks about politically motivated problems and common street crime. "Street crime also has long plagued this 580-square-mile, traffic-clogged metropolis of more than 20 million residents. The list of crimes encountered by travelers is daunting: pickpocketing, purse snatching, mugging, armed robbery and rape, according to the U.S. State Department's consular information sheet on Mexico. 'Instant kidnappings,' in which the victims are abducted at gunpoint and forced to empty their bank accounts to pay a ransom, also are common. Even hailing taxis is considered risky. Is a trip to a place with so many sore spots worth it? And if you go, how best to stay safe?"

The writer insists that Mexico City has a lot of draws recommending it. He recommends avoiding certain neighborhoods and suggests avoiding oft-used scams and ye olde bullshyte line about taking "every precaution you would in any large city." As well as carrying minimal cash, leaving the bling back home and trying to "blend in." (The jewelry business in Argentina is ruined because no Portenos in their right minds wear anything real anymore.) He thinks you'll be safer if you avoid areas around the airport and central train station-- a good idea in any big city anywhere-- as well as Garibaldi Square, Pensil, Tepito, Buenos Aires and Santa Julia, the area behind the National Palace and the Zocolo at night.

Everyone says the green and white VW bug taxis are to be avoided. Even a U.S. Embassy employee in Asuncion warned me against them! The hotel concierges say the same thing about the non-radio hotels in Buenos Aires, although I found them problem-free (and less expensive).


UPDATE: GUANGZHOU IS WAY WORSE

Hong Kong is as close as I ever got to Guangzhou (Canton when I was a geography student), although I always wanted to go. After reading about the Hand Choppers, a motorcycle gang that doesn't bother removing a purse or ring but opts for severing the whole hand, I've decided to stick to Shanghai and Beijing.