We travel to Mogadishu, go on trains through the Romanian mountains, make easy money, ponder about the world upside down and learn about heretic Hasidim.
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Fancy a Weekend in Mogadishu?
You know I would rather read a trip report of a place that is not so prevalent in the travel blogosphere. Extra credits where your personal safety is not guaranteed and you admit you have no balls to go there yourself! Mogadishu sure qualifies! The Norwegian Gunnar Garfors dude went there for a weekend. Such an interesting place! Things are looking up there these days!
To travel around Mogadishu, the capital, was in more ways than one a rather schizofrenic experience. There are a lot of residential houses and commercial buildings damages by ammunition of very different caliber and very varying degrees of power. That makes for a rather surreal backdrop for kids playing games or kicking footballs in the streets. Mogadishu is a coastal city with a big port, impressive beaches and rugged cliffs which the waves keep battering. Ruins of banks, restaurants, apartments and hotels are lining many streets, whereas new buildings are popping up in seemingly random places.
To travel to Mogadishu as a tourist takes a bit of preparation, as you will not be allowed to leave the airport unless you have adequate protection. As in hired guns. Four companies organize trips for tourists and will sort you out with all logistics, included the needed protection…You will be picked up from the airport and taken around in a pickup truck with one or two guides and a driver. In the back you’ll have 2-4 armed guards. Then again, you can have more hired guns in a second or even a third pickup if you pay extra. Although you already draw more than enough attention with four gun-toting guys in the back. But it can of course be quite an ego booster to have 8 or 12 guards instead of 2, 3 or 4. To be entirely safe, you should probably get 255 guards. After all, John Rambo killed 254 guys in Rambo IV. And to be fair, being driven around Mogadishu feels a little bit like a violent action flick. With ruins everywhere, you may easily start imagining where a possible ambush could take place. Behind that shed, around the next corner or from within that green shabby garage. [Starting to appreciate the humor…it’s there!]
And more, check it out!
Three Nights On A Train – Into the Wild Romanian Mountains
This trip report in Flyertalk was suggested by a reader (I forgot who, let me know for a proper HT if you want one). This guy has talent and takes great pictures. Again, the theme of the travel here is…out of the ordinary is good. Different and exotic, oh yes! I learned so much about Romanian trains reading this. And I did not realize Romania is that large, territory wise I mean. Enjoy the ride you guys!
Myths, Markets and Easy Money
What a great article on my other area of expertise: personal finance. If I had a dollar every time I heard that the easy money has been made. The author obliterates this issue, deservedly so! Every year since we bottomed in early 2009…we heard these excuses. Yawn.
Look, there is a bear market ahead. Several in fact. But if you tune out the noise you will capture more of the returns than the active traders who speculate in and out based on another scary headline. Most people need to be saved from…themselves! Making the decision to buy back then and continue to buy and hold and compound is NEVER easy!
Now we have Trump to worry about…There is ALWAYS something to worry about.
The World Turned Upside Down (and what to do about it)
This guy captures a lot of what we are all thinking lately….At least I am!
I don’t know what depresses me more — the stupidities and dishonesty and tolerance of darkness that come out of the President’s mouth or the response from those that oppose him. Given that I don’t like the President, you’d think I find the response of his enemies inspiring or important. But the responses scare me too, the naked hatred of Trump or anyone who supports or likes him. And of course, it goes way beyond Trump and politics. The same level of vitriol and anger and unreason is happening on college campuses and at the dinner table when families gather to talk about the hot-button issues of the day. Everything seems magnified. [We must find a common ground…Sometimes I look at the vitriol thrown around from both sides and it makes me sick to my stomach!]
So we manage to convince ourselves that the evidence speaks so loudly, so emphatically, that we have no choice but to declare our allegiance to a particular tribe as a result of that evidence. The red tribe. Or the blue one. Or the white one. Or the black one. It rarely crosses our minds to notice that causation is probably going the opposite direction — the tribe we are in determines the evidence we notice and accept. [Think about that!]
Politicians lie and dissemble all the time. But they tend not to lie and dissemble about things that can be fact-checked. So this is new and it understandably outrages people and reporters. There is indeed something outrageous about this kind of hyperbole. So when a member of the media tweets or prints a chart showing Trump’s claim is totally incorrect, the chart reminds Haters of Trump that Trump is a buffoon and a liar. But it doesn’t convince the Lovers of Trump. Instead it confirms their view that the media is hostile to Trump. And as the media becomes more self-righteous in its denunciations of Trump, the Lovers of Trump see this as confirmation not of Trump’s idiocy but of Trump as victim and the media as the enemy of their friend.
Imagine the possibility not just that you are wrong, but that the person you disagree with could be right. Try to imagine the best version of their views and not the straw man your side is constantly portraying. Imagine that it is possible that there is some virtue on the other side. We are all human beings, flawed, a mix of good and bad.
Heretic Hasidim
This is an older article but still so timeless. And so educational!
Torn between devotion to their faith and families and a desire to explore the outside world, rebellious young ultra-Orthodox Jewish men are resigned to live secret double lives.
You have seen these guys with the weird hair dressed in black and white, mostly in New York City. You will learn so much about them in this piece. Talk about a unique group. I am glad I was not born in this group, I could not bear the conformity and restrictions. But, here we go again, with the internet even these people are changing. And some are leaving the faith all together.
What a story…And with all of them married so young and expected to have up to a dozen kids…
You are in for a treat!
Satmar is a sect of Hasidism (alternately spelled Hassidism or Chasidism) composed mainly of Romanian and Hungarian Hasidim founded in the Hungarian town of Szatmar in the twentieth century. Like other ultra-Orthodox sects, it is characterized by an emphasis on strict, unwavering adherence to its interpretation of Jewish law. Most importantly, Satmar and other strict Hasidic groups strongly reject the outside world’s impurities. By and large, these Hasidim study in religious schools, speak Yiddish as their first language, dress according to a strict code, and enter arranged marriages when they are between the ages of seventeen and twenty. They are forbidden to listen to the radio, watch television, listen to non-Jewish music, or expose themselves to the ideas and people of secular society. Yet some unknowable fraction—often young and aided by the Internet they are told to avoid—are breaking the rules.
And I leave you with this…When all there is left to get is a debit card (wonder if they will metal-ize it!)
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore
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If I had that debit card and Walmart asked to see an ID, I’d be ready.
Lol.
Good morning Sam!
Can’t wait for all them ass kisser bloggers to link to this shit:
Someone Replaced the Soap in Detroit Airport Bathrooms With a Bodily Fluid – View From The Wing
Ruined my free blonde roast Starbucks coffee…fifth cup!
Thought Leader right there – blech!
Love the blonde roast. With gold, free refills! I’ll always walk out with a full cup to ice at home in the fridge.
My favorite is Komodo. But they almost never make it. When they do…they bring it to me 🙂
Love the Mogadishu article, incredible! Sure beats another trip report to the Maldives. Will be checking out the Romania report later – I like trains so it sounds cool.
I should go and get a pic with 255 mean dudes guarding my ass!
Learning about the name on the card made my day.
No wonder some haters will see that and continue, inexplicably, to complain that TBB is misogynist…WTF!
When I saw that….I knew it belonged here 🙂
Mogadishu worth more than the price of admission!
World Turned Upside Down=false equivalency. Very dangerous.
I agree on Mogadishu.
I still like that World article 🙂
I appreciated the flyertalk report from Romania. The country is different than depicted in Borat!
Ric Garrido at Loyalty Traveler will probably go there and tell us how cheap the beer is.
Lol. You are probably right, that guy is a beer pub expert indeed!
Borat wasn’t Romanian….
The movie was filmed in Romania.
Twitter Update:
Thought Leader pivots from post on piss at DTW to pissing on Buzz.
Guess one could say he’s in a pissy mood.
I’ll have the links here in tomorrow’s post.
He could have used the time to piss on me to find more shocking videos and tell us why CSP is THE card everyone MUST have for the 3,459th time 🙂
What a disgusting human.
I disagree. I admire Gary Leff’s talents and his achievements. He was a true pioneer in the travel blogging field and often offers insight few others can touch (unless they rip him off).
Gary does have his faults, in my view. The anti-government/TSA stuff, and now these tabloid-like posts. Also, while he criticizes aspects he doesn’t like (TSA again), I don’t see him using his skill and influence to make real change. Nor is he obliged to do so, but I think he could make an important difference if he chose to do so, Easy for me to say.
So no, he’s done nothing to have his humanity challenged. And those that do so should better wish they had but a fraction of his qualities.
I don’t judge people, I judge blogs.
VFTW is in the Blogs To Ignore list. And not going anywhere!
Blog quality has deteriorated down to Kardashian level quality lately. And the credit card shilling has exploded. The good posts continue to fall in numbers.
Don’t get me started on the political libertarian agenda he is pushing. At least he is consistent on that. And so am I here 🙂
Pioneer? Yes. Great content CONSISTENTLY? Yes. In the past five years or so…that is no longer the case. And it is getting worse.
Down to bodily fluid shit…
Challenged him and he is posting better stuff today. Expect the normal barrage the rest of this week.
To justify that “I have a 13 year old boy at heart” was horribly miscalculated. Never knew 13 year old boys care so much about bodily fluids and the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (and many other cards lol).
Now if I only had a CSP click for every damn link “Alan H.” fed him from my blog I would not be complaining so much. Or I would be kissing his ass instead.
On a final note, I never pretended to be a travel thought leader. How arrogant is THAT?
I will delete the douche bag insult. I am sorry. Just a Trump moment when I was hit with bodily fluid very early at Starbucks waiting for my free refill cup #11.
Actually, not sure what # free refill was…After the fifth one I lose count, it’s all a blur!
LOL he was a pioneer in the “field” of trying to find ways to put credit card links into uninteresting writing and then expecting people to praise him as he got rich from his dishonest intentions
All hail Gary Leff
Did anyone get the additional Fairmont Free Night for the 6 month spend on the former Fairmont credit card (that Greg wrote about)?
I haven’t checked yet…but I have no doubt it will pop up
The quality of the links on this post today is why I continue to return to read TBB. I am educated, entertained, inspired: thank you!
VFTW, on the other hand, has been irrelevant for so long…it’s like a Kardashian time suck. Why bother with that? Life is too short to waste time on garbage. Maybe Leff should send his resume to TMZ.
Thanks FullMoon.
Will post the links tomorrow of the pissing match 🙂
News from Delta … the qualification for Diamond via credit card spend goes from $25k to $250k. It was nice while it lasted!
The classical solution to a problem: add/remove a zero. Will Greg (FM) move abroad or give up on Delta Diamond status?
Will have a detailed analysis tomorrow…
No doubt that the credit card pumping bloggers will sell Amex Delta cards with the same enthusiasm!
Can’t get to see Rene say enough with Delta lol. Mileage runs baby woohoo!
Oh no Rene is celebrating this as a huge win. I shit you not.
See.My.Blog.Post.Tomorrow 🙂
The optimization problem will change a lot! I think I know how to respond but there are lots
of complications to work through.
What? You are working on an algorithm to increase my $ clicks? Thanks!
Your Hasidic article was beyond long-winded, and things have changed drastically in the past 5 years in Williamsburg. But still, holds many truths. What is it that old school homicide detectives say; everyone has three lives: the public life, the private life, and the secret life.
The juxtaposition of having $18 mai tais, at a Williamsburg hot spot directly across the street from a 6 story Hasidic building is very interesting. When they leave the bar doors open, you can spot two very different cultures watching each other, probably both feeling sorry for the other. Also, two of the best local wine and liquor shops are Hasidic owned the evolution and adoption of both cultures trying to co-exist in the same neighborhood are fascinating to me.
However, if someone is interested in ever watching the NYC marathon in a great neighborhood with significantly fewer spectators the Hasidic parts of Williamsburg are the place to be.
Your twitter fight (chat) with Gary was great this morning! The inner 13-year-old boy thing was straight weird and a really bad justification for posting clickbait shocking videos. Keep up the content curation, which is really what Gary has shifted to while throwing in antigovernment rants. In his defense, original content is hard and time-consuming, way easier to bash the TSA, service dogs, and pump CC.
Great feedback on the Hasidic story, thank you!
I say Gary reads my blog but does not want to admit it. I should have a contest about that 🙂
Don’t flatter yourself. Nobody with a brain reads this blog. Or that one.
Or calls themself Anonymous.
Thank you for not reading my blog but still commenting on it!
As a financial guy, I’d be careful advising clients they need to worry about Trump and that there is a bear market coming. That kind of outlook advice a few months before the largest tax cuts in a generation is borderline malpractice.
The “worry about Trump” was sarcastic. I specialize in sarcasm here 🙂 Point is…in the financial media there is ALWAYS something to worry about!
Is it malpractice if you are not a paying client? Besides, the advice you get here is worth as much as you paid for it 🙂
I take the LONG term view. Always. There will be more bear markets ahead. I have no idea when!
After the health care debacle and general non sense coming from this administration…I would not hold my breath that they can deliver on them large tax cuts. Which have already been downgraded in their size anyways…Better forget that 15% corporate tax rate. Lol.
All fair points. As a funny aside, I had a guy call me on Monday to give me the ‘ol I shouldn’t be telling you this, but AXON is going to explode on its Alzheimers drug, I should “look into it.” I told him my official advice for retail wanting to play an Alzheimer’s drug approval is that you will definitely lose money unless you have inside information that it will be approved and don’t mind the potential for 18 months of anal rape when you go to prison for insider trading. Checked on it yesterday, stock down 75% from 24 to 6. Guess he didn’t have inside information. Lol, people never learn. You can’t win..don’t try.
When I get “marketing” calls of all kinds, my standard response is:
“Someone is at the door, please hold on”. Then I go to the bathroom and I start flushing the toilet…several times. I do not get a call back from the same number 🙂
I don’t think much of VFTW these days, nor GL’s tweet attacks. But I see no reason to question his humanity.
If writing a mediocre blog post made someone a bad person, hell woukd fill up in a day.
I agree.
Loved today’s posts. Been a little busy lately but always find a way to read your posts. Keep them coming !
I am trying…
Enjoy my baby while it lasts…