The Bizarre Truth

Bizarre Truth? I can give you several, but one that comes to me in my dreams at night is the idea of writing or talking, which I do for a living, about a subject that I strongly believe is one that has to be experienced up close and personally in order to be completely felt or understood. Not the most ringing endorsement for a great read or a good night spent in front of the telly. And let’s face it, empirical, experiential, immersive travel always trumps reading about it. But we all can’t be everywhere at once, can we? And what about music? Or sports? I guess I don’t need to play in a World Series to appreciate baseball. Do you need to handle a guitar with the virtuosity of Frank Zappa or Prince to enjoy listening to music? No, you don’t. And it is a fairly selfish conceit to try to keep all this goodness for myself. So I am committed to tell the tales and hopefully accomplish several goals in the act of doing so.

Educate, entertain, inspire.

There are lots of lessons to be learned by getting out and experiencing our planet. I think we live in a world where we are all motivated by self. We live in a world that has lost touch with its ancestry because we have grown more in every sense of the word in the last generation than in practically all the other ones combined. Gratification is instant or worthless, culture is disposable, literature and the arts are seemingly at the bottom of an all-time low when it comes to popularity. But this doesn’t depress me. Frankly, I think we are simply at a pivotal swing point in our global evolution, and when tradition, culture, and ways of thinking are in flux they seem scary when analyzed under a microscope. But step back and take a view from up high, peek at the big picture,
and you can see that what is happening is simply the “ebb and flow” of civilization. Things seemed awfully bad at the fall of the Roman Empire, didn’t they? Well, I am not in the business of predicting a new Dark Ages, but I do know this for sure. I want everyone to take a deep breath, head out the door and see the world, spend time with people, not stand in line at a museum. Because in sharing ourselves with others we can learn a different way of looking at who we are and how we think and act, and maybe we can change in ways that would not be possible otherwise.

I was sitting at lunch one day in Sicily, and the thirteen-year-old son of the fisherman in whose home I was sitting and eating got up from the table. Potty break, I figured. Nope, he was headed off to work. On his own boat. That’s the way it still works in the teeny town of Marzamemi on the southern coast of Sicily, near Pachino, far from the madding crowd. The town grew around its fishing industry, with the
tonneria
being the guiding force in the culture of the town. Tuna canneries in Sicily are a thing of the past; the industry is dead and the two remaining (out of nearly fifty a generation ago) operations are doing what they can to survive. Tuna are scarce. Men wanting to spend their lives on the water are even scarcer. But if you spent a day with this family you could learn more about Sicilian history and the human capacities for passion, dedication, pride, and good old-fashioned earnestness than you could in any other way I can think of. You can see how differently people live (in my country you can get arrested for child-labor-law violation), and yet how similar we all are under the surface circumstances of our lives. You can learn to appreciate life and be grateful. I want my son to know these stories, meet these people, see the world as it really is in African villages, European capitals, and Asian markets, because the way you learn how to live your life is by sharing it with others. You don’t get anything out of life by living it based on self.

So education is important, but who wants to be beat over the head by the “pay attention” stick? Not me. So I want to entertain.
This is not intended to be revelatory in the classic sense. This is not a textbook, nor did I intend to write a serious tome. I am not half the writer or thinker you would need to be to accomplish that, but I do have experiences. And that’s all it takes, quite frankly, which is why I believe so strongly in seeing the world for one’s self. One of the most respected anthropologists in America, the chair of the department at a major university, once referred to me in casual conversation as a colleague and I corrected him, saying I was anything but. He rebuked me immediately, insisting that I had shared more real time, on the ground, with indigenous tribes than most tenured professors he knew. That was a wake-up call. I quickly realized that I viewed myself one way, and that others might see me as something else, and I could take advantage of that, becoming an agent of change to a certain degree, perhaps an awareness raiser for the global cultures I come in contact with. Education comes in many forms; I am always looking for an easier way than doing homework, but I am good at showing up for class. That means going places and seeing what’s out there. I consider this book a way to engage a part of ourselves that remains fascinated by the human condition around the world. And I wanted it to make you think, and laugh and be hungry when you were done reading it. I am all about the food.

Which brings me to my thematic material. I am indeed primarily focused on experiencing food and sharing culture. Why? Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone loves a good meal. And that food is the easiest way to bridge gaps, build friendships, and become family … all in one day. I consistently prove it again and again as I make my way through country after country, eating my way around the world. I also believe you can taste a culture and its people in their food. I swear to you I have tasted struggle and love, war and death, in a good bowl of stew. I wanted people to taste it also, and you can’t do that eating at an Italian restaurant in Beijing. That’s not to say that you can’t find good veal Milanese in China, it’s just I think you should be eating
that dish in Milan if you want to really understand a cuisine and the folks who eat it. So I wanted to give readers a sense of how I do that, not just what I find when I do. So I give tips, like eating at the last stop on the subway, or investigating dying breeds, or perusing unique and arcane ingredients, or doing some hero worship at the altar of some great chef. Trust me; you’ll learn a lot following some of these rules of the road. Most important, I also like to check out spiritual systems, and as a matter of course I regularly check out rituals wherever I can.

So why food and ritualistic traditions? Because the food always leads to conversations, and I am always asking people what they believe in, and why. The Greatest Questions, and ones we have been asking ourselves for thousands of years, are what do you believe in, why do you believe it, and what is your relationship to that belief? The next greatest question is, of course, “rare or medium rare?”

In all seriousness, you learn things in the oddest ways. When I was in the Kalahari, I spent some time with a local tribe outside of Xai Xai in Botswana, and we were hunting with snap snares, one of the trickiest ways to trap game, especially birds. We ended up checking our snares one afternoon, and lo and behold we had a bird in the small loop of string that the hunters had made the day before explicitly for that purpose. They made their own string! And they made it from stripping small plants of their fibers and winding them by hand. Anyway, when I found the teeny bird in the trap I grabbed my knife to cut the bird down, and was stopped immediately by one of the senior men in the group. “Why,” he wondered, “would you waste the rope by cutting it?” I was floored. I hadn’t even thought about it and yet it was obviously the most wantonly wasteful act I could imagine. I was stunned and had learned a valuable lesson on several fronts, but the real surprise was when we got back to camp I was told we wouldn’t eat the bird ’til the next day because the tribe believed that the bird’s soul would alert other birds to the traps unless we waited. And we needed those traps to keep snaring birds. My point is that belief systems and
food are intertwined, sometimes directly, sometimes not, but you need to pay attention. So I always try to learn everything I can about a culture, you never know.

The majority of my travel takes place with my family and workmates. And most of the working experiences are the lion’s share of my traveling, and have taken place during the taping of
Bizarre Foods
and
Bizarre World
. Many years ago I took a meeting with the head of a production company here in Minnesota at the urging of a mutual friend (thanks, Robin!), and the resulting relationship between Colleen Steward and myself birthed both of our TV shows and several specials. The idea for our show was created at Tremendous Entertainment and was the collective result of a lot of smart and talented people over the years as we incubated, tested, and tried to sell the idea of sending me around the world mouth first. It took several years, but finally the amazing Pat Younge and his team at Travel Channel took a chance on an unknown talent and green-lit our show.

Shannon, Mike, Chris, Patrick, Tasha, Johanna, Scott, Steve, Gary, Luke, Joel, Tacy, Jane, Pam, Dave, Nina, Carrie, Laurel, Ellen, Ladonna, Erik, Troy, Steve, Darrin, Kel, Libby, Nicole, Tye, Debbie, and dozens of others worked very hard and put up with a lot of crap from me to make this show what it is. Here is essentially how it works.

We find locations and set the shooting schedule for the year, we rotate teams, researching and preproducing several shows at a time, enlisting the help of many local producers, writers, researchers, and videographers on the ground in each country to help us find the most compelling stories. We do not seek out strange enclaves or outrageous foods for the sake of shocking people. If we wanted to do that, we would shoot the whole thing at the town landfill here in Minneapolis and save a lot of travel costs. We find stories about real people and their cultural tradition. That’s first and foremost on our minds. Then we try to tell the stories from the fringes, and that is ultimately where there are not only bizarre
habits and customs, but also the greatest number of untold stories. It works for us. I always travel with a field producer and two videographers. We pick up sound techs, fixers, drivers, security folks, and PAs along the way. We typically travel seven to nine people as a crew, and we usually take seven to nine days to shoot a show in its entirety. Primary shooting usually takes six or seven days.

I spend more time on the road with my team than I spend time at home with my family. We are very close and have endured a lot together, shared life and death, and faced down some pretty hairy situations. I was in a small town in Morocco, outside a
madrasa
as luck would have it, on the day that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. My producer, cameraman, and I had to run for it, scrambling into the van and racing out of town. There was a lot of fear and misunderstanding on the street that day and we got caught up in it. That is not atypical.

My crew deserves more love and applause than I can ever throw their way, and I am eternally grateful for their ability to work seventeen hour days, day after day, and of course, they have to watch me eat. Never pretty. And we try to tell stories that help inform our audience about aspects of a place or a culture that they won’t find elsewhere. Iceland had become a playpen for the Europeans up until the time of their economic collapse last year. It still is a place filled with incredible restaurants and a great lifestyle. The first stop on the subway, Reykjavík, bustles twenty-four hours a day. But for the handful of people brave enough to take on the assignment, curious enough to see what other people don’t, Iceland offers adventurous experiences well off the beaten path—for example, snacking on freshly cured rotting shark meat at the Hildebrandur Farm in Bjarnhofn, a four-hour drive across a lunar landscape from Reykjavík. The farm is so far off the beaten path that on the day I went there we didn’t see another car on the country’s main ring road for the last half of the journey in and the first half back.

It’s the same with the Philippines, where almost no one outside of the country, and very few native Filipinos, can comprehend the
natural beauty of the southern province Palawan. A three-hour, hell-raising bus ride across the island brings you from Puerto Princesa, the island’s only real town, to beaches reminiscent of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe tales, complete with wild komodo dragons and mischievous monkeys roaming the beaches. That’s the type of experience that makes real travelers salivate. And even the crew and I knew it was special when we were there.

Now, the crew and I know we have it pretty good. We get to do some pretty cool stuff, but we also believe that you have choices when you travel and hope you try it our way at least once. For example, you can board some insanely overcrowded cruise ship and sail up into Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, and just about every other seaside deep-water harbor, where you’ll avail yourself of whatever day trip the ship’s staff recommends. You’ll see Alaska, but it will be the same Alaska that 5,000 people saw the week before, and 5,000 more saw the week before that. Or you can call my pal Andy, drive three or four hours out past Girdwood, hop into a whirly-bird and get dropped on an ice field, or get onto a couple of snow machines and head to the top of a glacier in the Chugach Range. In fact, you can even get picked up on the side of the highway, if helicopter rides scare you, and ride all the way up the side of Carpathian Mountain. That’s where you get the real backwoods adventure that is yours alone. Push your limits and you will learn things about yourself that you never imagined. When you’re snow-mobiling across an endless expanse of ice, knowing that you’ll never lay eyes on another human being no matter how many times you do it—that’s life at the last stop on the subway, traveling, not touring. No jet contrails, no streetlights, no safety net.

If glacial exploration is not your thing, try Samoa. Not American Samoa, but Samoa: a Pacific island nation composed of two large islands and a few small ones, all absolutely stunning. In the spring of 2008, I arrived in Upolu, a somewhat larger island in the Samoan chain, and spent a few days in the main town of Apia. Our crew caught wind of an interesting hunting expedition on the
uninhabited island of Nu’utele. Intent on seeking out every “last stop” and “dying breed” experience we could, we packed up our gear, said a prayer, and boarded a dilapidated tin can of a boat and headed out to sea. Some would say,
Why bother?
Others might find this type of thing a little dangerous. They have a point, but I would say that an immersive, authentic experience is always worth the hassle, and in a world where statistics tell us that driving to work is the most dangerous voyage we ever take, some of the crazy stuff I have found myself doing doesn’t seem very macho at all. So if this all sounds like your idea of a good time, you’ll love this book. If you do it enough times, you might have the experience I had last year in Nicaragua. I am at the municipal airport in Managua, boarding an ancient World War II vintage plane to fly into the bush country on the Mosquito Coast. I had a witch doctor appointment at noon. On the plane, we met a couple of local fans who informed me that they called me El Pelon in Nicaragua, “the bald one.” We all laughed, but our fixer Josh Berman was continuing the chat and I was curious, since I don’t speak Spanish, what our new friends were saying. Josh was reticent to share, but I kept the pressure on and he confessed that the locals had told him they also call me El Chamboavaca. That means “he who eats like a pig, lurks like a snake, and shits like a cow.” Someday that privilege may be yours.

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