There are five things you need to know about Potato Spicky.
1. Spicky is a potato tube. It springs forth from a potato head.
2. Spicky is fun to eat while sitting at a computer, buying a dress and driving a car/piloting a biplane.
3. Spicky is non fried.
4. Spicky appears to be vegan.
5. Spicky is my favorite Thai snack food.
First: Make a list of things to do before you die. Realize that you are always inching toward death and still haven’t done a single thing on that list. Decide to do something about it.
Quit your job. Leave home. Travel around the world.
Tell yourself, “If I make it to Ha Long Bay, this trip will be a success.”
Go to Peru. Go to Bolivia. Go to Argentina. Check off some things from the list.
Meet a couple of Americans and drive around South Africa with them. Live in a village. Learn to carry buckets of water on your head. Hike into Lesotho, the country that nobody else has ever heard of.
Go to Uganda. Ride across the country in a minibus with 24 people and a pregnant goat. Get work as a country-western DJ for the local radio station. Learn to harvest rice.
Go to Rwanda. Spend your days teaching English to genocide survivors. Cry. Teach them to play bingo. Laugh.
Fly to Egypt. See your husband for the first time in six months. Find out your grandmother died. Find out your mom is dying. Fall down an endless tunnel of darkness. Hole up in a yoga camp on the Red Sea.
Go to your mother’s funeral. Wrap yourself in a blanket of grief. Return to Egypt on the day a revolution begins. Feel like you’re comatose.
Take a boat to Jordan. Leave when protests begin. Go to Bahrain. Leave when protests begin. Get the nagging feeling that you are creating a trail of destruction around the world.
Go to Ethiopia. Still feel comatose.
Go to India. Love it. Embrace it. Drink in every hot day, every fragrant spice, every bit of eye-popping color. Move into an ashram. Pray.
Go to Thailand. Work with elephants and cuddle tigers. Meet a friend from home in Bangkok. Travel with her to Cambodia. Have a lot of fun. Say goodbye.
Take a bus to Vietnam. Battle Saigon’s scooter-clogged streets and get a feel for the city. Slurp down bowls of noodles. Take a bus north. When the bus breaks down for 12 hours, sleep at a bus station. When the bus works again, it’s the hottest part of the day and the air-conditioning is now broken. Sweat. Make an unplanned stop in a beach town just because you desperately need a shower.
Take more buses. Take a train. Sleep in a dirty train car on soiled sheets. Arrive in Hanoi.
Schedule a boat tour. Pack up. Get picked up at 7 a.m.
Go to Ha Long Bay.
Spend a night on a boat.
Jump off the boat and into the ocean.
Swim in emerald green water.
Lap up the sunset.
Live your dream.
Some countries have one particular color that shines for me.
Other countries are a kaleidoscope.
Surprisingly, Vietnam falls into that latter category. I say “surprisingly” because I imagined red communist flags would be the only burst of color on otherwise grease-blackened city streets. I imagined tangles of jungle green straight out of “Platoon.” I imagined row after row of matchbox-sized buildings that all look the same.
In some cases I was right.
In many cases, I was deliciously wrong. Vietnam was practically a Skittles package, spilling handfuls of color all around me.
Here’s proof.
There’s got to be more to life than just being really, really, really ridiculously good-looking.
— Derek Zoolander, international male model
I was in Ethiopia when someone told me I had an enormous nose.
“Are you Italian?” he said.
No, I replied.
He continued, “I ask that because you have such a huge, huge nose.”
Nope, not Italian, I confirmed.
“It’s just that your nose is so big,” he said. “I knew an Italian woman once, and she had a nose big like yours.”
I understand what you are saying, I told him. But I’m still not Italian.
His words stung. I’ve been self-conscious about my nose for as long as I can remember. It’s a defiantly bulbous thing that descends off my face like a lumpy potato. From the side, I think it cuts the profile of a turtle head. I do my best to ignore it and pretend like it’s not even there.
Unfortunately, this nose has become a major topic of conversation along my travels.
“So, tell me about being Jewish,” said a man at a cafe in Uganda.
I’m not Jewish, I told him.
“But your nose …” he said.
I explained that there are many different Jewish people around the world, and they all look different. I, however, am not one of them, because I am not Jewish.
“So you are a Christian woman with a Jewish nose,” he said, shaking his head. “Very sad.”
Though these discussions are uncomfortably direct, they are not always negative. On a train in India, an entire family examined my nose from all sides. Then the father pointed to his 9-month-old son.
“We massage his nose every day so it will be strong and proud like yours!” he said.
Thank you. I think?
People have been equally blunt about my shape.
“Oh my god, you are so huge,” said a motorcycle taxi driver in Uganda. “I don’t even know if this moto will go, you are so enormous.”
I’m having a difficult time now in Southeast Asia, where almost everyone is lean, petite, tiny. At a shop in Thailand, one clerk shook her head as soon as I walked in the door. “No size for you!” she yelled. I had to pay extra when I had clothes tailored to fit in Vietnam, because, as the tailor pointed out, “We need much, much fabric for big, big body.” I tower over people on the street.
I have seen so many beautiful women around the world. Plump Indian grandmothers wrapped in gold and green saris, with buttery baguettes of flesh tumbling out of the layers of fabric. Ethiopian tribes where the women rub red ochre in their braids, their skin pulled shiny and tight over firm muscles. Vietnamese women who have the complexion of eggshells and eyelashes like moth wings. Argentine women who effortlessly look like supermodels while eagerly shoveling down steaks as big as bistro tables. Egyptian women who have the entire universe in their charcoal-lined eyes, their hair pulled back and covered like a wonderful secret.
Every woman is exquisite in a multitude of ways — so you’d think after witnessing this scope of beauty, I could ease up a little on myself. Still, I crinkle my nose in the mirror and wish that I had the money to slice and dice what I see. Too big.
I have also seen so much hardship around the world. I met people who struggled to survive through genocide, famine, political unrest, abuse, inadequate health care. How could I possibly complain about my reflection when I have limbs that work, a constant supply of food and water to sustain me, a support group of family and friends and a future of wide, open opportunity? Still, I curl my hands into fists and beat on my thighs. Too big.
I thought I could out-travel my own issues and insecurities.
Instead, they’re still staring me in the face.
Felines around the world.
In Nuweiba, Egypt.
Hampi, India.
Mumbai, India.
Nuweiba, Egypt.
Phonsavan, Laos.
Petra, Jordan.
Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Omo Valley, Ethiopia.
In Dahab, Egypt. I named him David Bowie. (Also note the cat under the chair photobombing this shot.)
Chiang Mai, Thailand.
