Pretirement

Here’s something I have never craved for dinner:  spiders.  Too bad, then, that tonight we went to dinner at a place in Phnom Penh called Romdeng — a delicious place specializing in Khmer food and staffed by former street children. (The parent organization, Friends International, seems pretty great.) We’d heard that it served a traditional Khmer treat – deep fried tarantulas – and whereas I laughed this off as the sort of food one might gawk at in a night market but never think of actually eating (such as the scorpion kebabs on offer in Beijing), Peter insisted that he was going to try them. “You know how you feel a weird need to visit traumatic sites just to absorb their history?” he asked me (I was the driving force behind our visit to Tuol Sleng). “I feel a need to eat weird food.” I was going to challenge him on this until I remembered his unfortunate choice or ordering smoked pigs’ ears in Lithuania. Oh god. I can still see the hairs.

Sure enough, when we got to the restaurant, deep fried tarantulas were on the menu – a starter, should you be wondering – and Peter ordered them. As we waited, we discussed what we thought they might look like. Both of us were imagining that they had been dipped in some kind of batter, and would be presented as a sort of tarantula fritter, so coated in tempura that their true arachnid nature would be completely camouflaged, nothing more than a stomach-turning afterthought.

We were wrong.

Our smiling waitress approached our table with a white plate, garnished with artfully carved cucumber and a small dish of dipping sauce. Arranged around the greenery were three large tarantulas, each the size of my palm. There was nothing batter-y about them. They were still clearly black; even their hairs were visible. These were just straight-up tarantulas, dipped in oil and fried.

“It looked like they were alive,” says Peter, remembering the scene. “They really looked like they could crawl away.”

He later claimed that once he took the first bite, it became easier to swallow. In the moment, Peter didn’t seem particularly reassured after he first sampled a leg. In fact, his exact words were, “This is going to be much harder than I thought.” Then he spit out a small clump of something black.

But what are you supposed to do? You’re in a restaurant staffed by former street children who probably grew up struggling to find food, and here you are with three palm-sized spiders, artfully presented – they came with a garnish, for god’s sake. What kind of asshole doesn’t finish their tarantulas?

So Peter plowed on. After working his way through a leg, he gamely bit into an abdomen, a bulbous pouch of spider innards. “That didn’t taste so good,” he said. I pointed out the dipping sauce.

As I giggled and took photographs, he started in on what we later learned was the body and the head. According to wikipedia, they have “a delicate meat inside.”

“This part really isn’t so bad,” he said, chomping on another leg and trying to get me to take a bite of what we later learned was the thorax. “It’s really not so bad.”

He was clearly becoming delusional.

“No, seriously,” he said, gesturing toward me with a half-eaten tarantula body.

I looked more closely. I’d never considered the idea that spiders might have meat inside, but this one did. It was white and flaky and looked a bit like fish. Now, I would never have ordered the tarantulas on my own. But this was probably my once-in-a-lifetime chance to try one. I decided to take a tiny bite. By tiny, I mean less than a nibble. A nibblet. Basically as little as I could possibly eat and still claim to have tried it.

And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. It tasted meaty and fried, but that’s about it. Emboldened, I broke off a tiny piece of leg and popped it in my mouth. It left behind an unchewable crunchy material, sort of like a shrimp shell, that I spat out into my napkin. I decided not to eat any more tarantula.

My favorite part of this photograph is the leg pressing into my cheek.

Peter, on the other hand, kept going. By the time they cleared his plate, only an abdomen and several orphaned legs remained. What’s more, he had begun to insist that the cooks had cleaned out the spiders’ innards and replaced them with  stuffing. “See, they all have splits on their backs,” he said. “It tastes like tamarind.”

I was doubtful, and so we checked out the recipe for the tarantulas in the restaurant’s cookbook, the aptly titled “From Spiders to Water Lilies.” It begins as follows: Step 1 – Kill the spiders by pressing firmly on their backs. Step 2 – remove the fangs.”

It says nothing about tamarind fillings. Also, as we later noted, pressing firmly on their backs to kill them would likely cause the splits in their shells that Peter insisted was evidence of their being stuffed. According to Wikipedia, here is what Peter mistook for a tamarind filling: “a brown paste, consisting of organs, possibly eggs, and excrement.”   A good chef , the entry continues, will fry the spiders until the legs are almost completely stiff, by which time the contents of the abdomen are not so runny.

We later asked our waitress where the restaurant got the spiders – we both were envisioning a cage full of live tarantulas in the kitchen, similar to a tank of live shrimp. But she told us the spiders arrived dead, having been gathered from a nearby province.

“How do they raise the tarantulas?” I asked. “Are they farmed? You know, like fish?”

“No,” she said. “They use a flashlight to find them. They are in trees or in holes.”

That’s right, all you Alice Waters foodies out there: our tarantulas were free range.

When we left Vietnam yesterday for Cambodia, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I kept thinking of the part in Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Committed, in which she gets chased down the street by a horde of begging Cambodian children and holes herself up in her hotel room.  Or, for that matter, the stories I’ve heard from other travelers of what an emotionally difficult place it is to travel, due to its recent history with the brutal Khmer Rouge.

We haven’t yet met hordes of street children, but I could see how that second part could be true. This afternoon included a visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum, a former high school that the Khmer Rouge used to detain and torture more than 17,000 people between 1975 and 1978, nearly all of whom were subsequently executed in the infamous Killing Fields. It is a terrifying place, more so because its setting – a high school, still with pull-up bars in its grassy courtyard – is so mundane. As Peter pointed out, one of the most disturbing aspects of the experience was noticing that the checkerboard-patterned tiled floor shown in the gruesome photographs of the murdered victims was the very same one that we were standing on. It’s one of those places that are important to visit, but deeply upsetting.

Tuol Sleng

As a result, we decided not to visit the Killing Fields themselves, much to the disappointment of the many tuk-tuk drivers we encountered around town. (Tuk tuks are two-person chariots pulled by motorbikes.) That was one of the most bizarre parts of walking around Phnom Penh. About every five minutes, you’re approached by a guy driving a motorized pedicab asking you – in a very cheerful voice — if you want a ride to the Killing Fields. It’s the same tone one might use to offer a trip to the Royal Palace, or maybe a romantic tour around town. “Hello, you want tuk-tuk? Maybe visit Killing Fields?” The only thing odder than their advances was the fact that the admission to the Killing Fields — $3 according to the latest Lonely Planet – is controlled by the Japanese company responsible for repairing the road that leads to it. I’m not sure whom, exactly, I think should be getting the money, but I don’t think that’s it.

Another legacy of the craziness of the Khmer Rouge – which, in addition to restarting the calendar at year zero, decided to abolish money – is that no one seems to want to use Cambodia’s official currency, the riel. Instead, they use US dollars. I don’t just mean that prices are quoted in dollars, as they often are in Vietnam with a poor exchange rate. I mean that the dollar is the de facto currency. You buy things in dollars; you get change in dollars; they’re even dispensed by ATMs. (People use riel in place of quarters, but that seems to be about it.) Locals deal with riel more often than tourists do, but they use dollars as well. Does anyone else find this weird, that an entire country can decide to use a different country’s currency? I feel like that’s somehow against the rules.  But the problem-solver in me thinks this might be an excellent way to combat our immense national debt: just get other countries to give up their currencies. Who needs the Euro? They can just buy a ton of dollars – thus sucking up some of our potential for inflation and making them more dependent on our success. I recognize there are large holes in this theory of global economics, but I’ve been walking around all day in 90-degree heat. At the moment, it seems to make a lot of sense.

There are two reasons to visit Hoi An, Vietnam. One is the beach. The other is tailored clothes.

We happened to arrive at the beginning of Hoi An’s monsoon season, which left us with the second activity: having clothes made. Peter had been excited about the prospect of a new suit since we’d arrived in Vietnam, and had prepared by researching different styles and cuts online so that he knew exactly what he wanted.

I did not take that approach. I am bad at picking out clothes when they have already been sewn – I feel like my sense of personal style would be best defined as “clothes I can wear to the gym.” Ask me what kind of clothes I dream of having made, and I will give you the sort of blank, panicked stare exhibited by animals about to be flattened by a passing truck. I do not know what kind of clothes look good on me. I do not know what kind of clothes I want. If I could spend the rest of my life dressed for a yoga class, I would be happy.

It didn’t help matters to be in a town where every other shop is a tailor. I’m not exaggerating. Skirts, suits, trousers, shirts, a selection of identically cut winter coats – you can even have shoes made.There are so many tailors that it’s difficult to find your way around  the town, since you can’t  use shops as landmarks. “I’ll meet you on the corner by the dress shop” could be any corner in Hoi An. Leaving Hoi An without some sort of custom-made clothing would be like eating at Peter Luger’s and not having a steak: you’d be  missing the point.

Peter’s plan, which I agreed with, was to go to A Dong silk, one of the more reputable shops in town. It was immediately obvious that this was a higher class establishment than the small shops nearby. A Dong had greeters and a receptionist. They offered us thick catalogues of clothes to look through and glasses of bottled water garnished by slices of lemon. We each were greeted by a woman who became our personal sales assistant.

Peter immediately began describing to his sales clerk the exact type of suit that he wanted made. Two buttons, notch lapel, single vent in the back – even as he’s relating these words to me, I have no idea what they mean. I, on the other hand, asked if I might see a catalogue, and soon was leafing through several books, each over 100 pages, of every conceivable type of women’s clothing. It was totally overwhelming. And making things worse, I had a much less helpful sales assistant than did Peter. Instead of helping me select clothing from the tomes in front of me, her main goal was to try to get me – a freelance writer who works primarily from home – to buy a three-piece suit set.

By the time Peter was selecting fabrics, I was descending into a spiral of self-loathing that occurs any time I set foot in a department store. Worse, I was sharing it.

“I’m sorry,” I said to my sales assistant. “I just hate shopping. It makes me feel horrible about myself. I’m really bad at this. It’s an issue I’ve been struggling with for quite some time. I really hate this.”

I’m not sure how much of my apologia she actually understood; she was too busy pushing the suit (which I eventually bought). I did, however, learn a valuable lesson: if I’m going to go shopping, it’s important that I do my laundry beforehand. We’d dropped ours off the night before, and adding to my usual sartorial self-loathing, I had been reduced to wearing too tight yoga pants and an oversized t-shirt from Peter that says “Ask me about my Sheep!”

But I struggled on. Eventually, I decided upon several things: the aforementioned suit set, a knee-length winter coat, and a pajama set.

Yes, that’s right. Faced with a Bible-length book of potential clothing choices, I chose to custom tailor pants that I wear to bed. I will add the experience to my list of evidence suggesting that, if I ever have a large source of disposable income (and willingness to part with it), I really should invest in a personal shopper.

The fittings themselves were hell, especially since my assistant, a young woman named Phuong, had an irritating habit of insisting things looked good when they didn’t. I also had suggested she call me “Kate,” a name I never use, since “Catherine” is a bit difficult to pronounce (though, as she said it, Kate turned into Kay – so maybe I just should have stuck with my actual name). The result? Dialogues such as the following:

“Kay, you try on the pants now?”

“Okay.” (Shimmy into pants, observe the way they cling to my groin.) “These are too tight here.”

“Really? Are you sure? I think they look nice. Are you sure, Kay? Are you sure?”

I guess the good thing about these exchanges were that while I am relatively clueless when it comes to picking out clothes, I do in fact have the ability to tell when things are too tight in the crotch. And after a few minutes of her insistence, I wasn’t afraid to be assertive.

The result? Peter got a couple of great suits made. And after several rounds of fittings, I went from hating the clothes and my body to actually being happy that I’d gotten a pair of custom tailored dress pants.

Now I just need to find a reason to wear them.

All right, here’s the update you’ve all been waiting for: what happened to Peter’s hair. Devoted blog readers will recall that in Beijing, he made the disastrous decision to allow the hairdresser to give him a perm. That was September 3^rd. It’s now November, and . . . let’s just say it’s getting there.

Peter made his first correction in Lhasa, Tibet, on September 25^th. His  hair had grown a bit by that point, making the perm stand up even straighter from his scalp, giving him permanent bed-head and/or the appearance of someone who’d stuck a finger in a socket. We both were a bit nervous, given the vertical rise of the stylist’s own hair, but after I explained that he wanted it “short little little,” he gave Peter an unoffensive trim.

A rare moment of open eyes.

I watched Peter this time, and confirmed his habit, which I’ve only discovered on this trip, of taking off his eyeglasses and closing his eyes when he gets his hair cut. He says he likes to relinquish control in the barber’s chair and relax, which is a nice idea in theory, I guess, but given the previous consequences, I couldn’t believe he was doing it again. Perm me once, shame on you. Perm me twice . . .

Then November 6^th, while we were in Hoi An, Vietnam, Peter decided he needed another trim, since the perm was in no way “gone.” So, naturally, he went to a guy with an open-air shack on the street.  As Peter took off his glasses and sat down, eyes closed (really?!), the guy whipped out what I have personally experienced in an Asian salon before — and which has made me swear never to go back: thinning shears.

I’ll never fully understand why people like thinning shears, but if they’re going to be used anywhere, Asia makes sense – people’s hair tends to be thicker than, say, someone with English and Irish blood. But this stylist wasn’t concerned with whether the texture of Peter’s hair was in need of thinning. He just jumped right in.

As I watched him, I began wondering if the man actually had some sort of tic that made it impossible for him to stop snipping. He snipped his way through Peter’s hair, and then kept snipping the air as he moved on to the next piece, then snipped the hair again. The sound alone would have glued my eyes open. But Peter relaxed, eyes closed, as the man thinned his hair like someone clearing undergrowth from a forest.

“Are you sure this is what want?” I kept asking. “Maybe you should open your eyes.”

“It’s fine,” Peter replied. “I don’t have my glasses on. I can’t see anything anyway.”

I was baffled – had he learned nothing? – but didn’t intervene. Instead I watched as the guy pulled out an electric shaver and started buzzing the sides. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but feared that Peter was getting a marine-like cut that would leave hair on the top of his head and none on the sides, sort of like a cupcake. My fear intensified when I noticed that the man had shaved a line into the hair at the back of Peter’s neck, far higher than any self-respecting man wants to be hairless, and then buzzed everything below.

Long story short: Peter now has a weird hairline at the back of his hair where the guy’s shave ends and his normal hair is coming back in (it’s probably an inch and a half higher than it should be). As for the top and sides, the hair is so thinned out that I fear he’s getting sunburned on his scalp.

Next time, I’m going to insist on two things: wear contacts, and keep your eyes on the prize.

Still snipping.

While our initial impressions of Vietnam were fantastic, we soon fell victim to a syndrome warned of by the Lonely Planet: feeling paranoid that we were constantly becoming victims. Vietnam, more than any country we’ve visited, put us on guard of being ripped off.

We’d spend five minutes negotiating a relatively fair price for something, and then the seller would pocket our money and try not to give any change. Every taxi meter started at a different price and went up not just by different amounts of money, but in different increments of distance and time. Taxis outside tourist attractions were even worse – after leaving the Ho Chi Minh museum, Peter and I took separate cabs (I wanted to go to a hip hop class) and both were overcharged so outrageously that we each got out early. When I pointed out to my driver that his meter was bumping up approximately every five seconds and insisted that he pull over, he then accused me of being a “Very bad lady.” (“And you are a bad man,” I replied.) Peter’s told him that it was his fault, since he’d chosen to be picked up in an expensive part of town.

We heard stories of people selling counterfeit bus and boat tickets several steps away from the legitimate ticket offices; there is even a scam where people open hotels with the same name as other hotels, and hire cab drivers to go to the airport and ferry passengers to the fake version. (Sometimes the fake version is run-down/closed, and so the would-be guest goes to the guesthouse recommended by the cab driver — and owned by the scheme’s mastermind.) Check out the number of pages our guidebook devoted to ways you can get ripped off, as compared to other hazards:

Landmines: 209, 482-3

Malaria: 514-15

Scams: 90-1, 104, 351-53, 476, 481-2

The result is that you begin to feel that everyone is out to get you, which doesn’t make traveling a very pleasant experience. We found the best solution was to arrange pickups at the bus or train station so that we didn’t have to deal with taxis at all – which led to this welcome in Bac Ha (I didn’t get a photo till the sign had almost been destroyed).

My favorite scam, though, was this ambush that Peter coincidentally caught on camera as we were trying to take a movie that would show what it’s like to cross the street in Hanoi. After lots of smiles and an insistence that we take a photo, this woman demanded I buy a bag of sliced pineapple from her. In this particular case, though, the video was worth the price.

Here are a few more photos from Nepal:

Kids LOVE Catherine

Rice Harvest

Kids were able to get their kites hundreds of feet in the air

They could get themselves almost as high

Early morning in the jungle

Please?

Here’s a sign that Peter’s and my maturity levels do not correspond to our ages: our reaction to the customer satisfaction survey for the Red Dragon cruise we took through Halong Bay on a beautiful wooden boat. Some sample questions:

-What did you like about our junk?

-How did you learn about our junk?

-Please list any suggestions for how we might improve our junk.

-Would you recommend our junk to your friends?

7^th grade humor aside, though, the experience was great – two and a half days of floating and kayaking amidst hundreds of surreal karst formations jutting out from the water.  Even better, this particular company had the exclusive rights to an area of the bay, so that for much of the trip the only other boats we saw were those of local fishermen.

We then took a local ferry to Cat Ba island, where we spent a day rock climbing on a deserted beach with a local guide who climbed in his flip flops. And then it was a night train to Sapa and Bac Ha, two towns in northern Vietnam known for their terraced rice fields, fantastic markets and colorfully dressed minority tribes, with evocative names like the Flower H’Mong and the Red Dzao. (If you think our reaction to the junk questionnaire was bad, you should have heard us in Sapa. “Oh my god! That buffalo is H’mongous!” “Why can’t they just get H’mong?” “H’mong Catherine, let’s go.” Ad nauseum.)

Climbing on Cat Ba

Said minority tribes are also known for being some of the most persistent and annoying saleswomen ever, tempting you to spend your weekend holed up in your hotel room just so they cannot find you and try to sell you aprons. For a while it’s fine, since some of the stuff is pretty — and besides, it’s hard business supporting your family on your handicrafts. But after having several women press their faces up to the glass in the cafe window where we were sitting (seriously – they’ll just stand there, trying to get you to make eye contact), I composed the following open letter.

Dear Ladies of the Flower (and Black) H’Mong:

Contrary to what you believe, I do not want to buy any of your embroidered bags, pounded silver earrings, or postcard sets that you produce from a mysterious pocket in your apron every time I walk past you. When you approach me with your distinctive cry – “Hello lady! You buy something for me!” – and I say “No, thank you,” I am not asking if you might like to walk with me for the next half hour, pushing hand-stitched tote bags into my hands. If you then stand next to the table at the restaurant where I am eating lunch, waiting for me to finish, and/or send your small child onto the restaurant’s balcony to proposition me with small, stuffed felt squares, I will be even less inclined to make a purchase. And if you then appear out of nowhere later in the day while I am shopping for replacement sneakers and again show me your wares – this time offering to sell yourself as a souvenir as well – as another woman joins you and attempts to sell me the exact same products that you are, as if I might just not like your particular striped bags and would prefer her identical selection, please forgive me if I cover my head with my hands and attempt to run away.

In the end, as you know all too well, I may break down and buy something, not because I want a purple headband, but because I want to be left alone. But that’s your game, ladies of the Flower H’mong. You’ll keep trying and trying, thrusting your bags onto people’s arms and demanding that they name a price for something they don’t want, until eventually you wear them down.

Oh, how you fatigue me.

Flower H'Mong selling to other Flower H'Mong

It is our second official night in Hanoi, and Peter and I are thrilled. It’s a surprising feeling of exuberance, considering that today officially marks five months on the road, and our most recent stop – Kathmandu – left me wanting to curl up in a ball and never leave the hotel.

Part of our happiness has to do with the vivacity of the city itself. Rivers of motorbikes flow through the streets, making getting across town a stressful, potentially suicidal activity. There’s a bit of the sense of anarchy that can be overwhelming and exhausting. But it’s outweighed by a sense of vivacity and excitement that’s infectious. There are stalls on every street corner where people sit on tiny plastic stools, chewing on sunflower seeds and sipping beer as they watch the traffic go by. Ancient trees push out of sidewalks, covered in roots that seem to be dripping down their trunks. Guys on mopeds linger everywhere, trying to convince you to let them give you a ride, and women in conical hats sell fruit from scales that dangle from poles stretched across their shoulders.

But the thing that so far has made it great – and which I feel is going to continue to be one of our favorite parts of this country – is the food. Vietnamese people care about their food. They care about it a lot. They also have fantastic raw materials – fresh fruits and vegetables, great seafood, and a cuisine that emphasizes seasonality. And, though perhaps it’s un PC to say this, they also happen to have been occupied by the French. (I don’t support colonialism, but if you were able to choose your occupier based on their food, they sure as hell beat the British.) There are baguettes here, and strong, good coffee.

Peter at our cooking class. If this is not the definition of "perfect husband," I don't know what is.

The reason for our current euphoria, however, has to do with a restaurant called Quan An Ngon. (It’s at 16 Phan Boi Chau, should you want to find it.) It was recommended to us by a Swedish woman I met on the plane and oh, please, if you come to Hanoi, you must go. The premise is street food – a sort of one-stop shop for many of the deliciacies you can find sold in hole-in-the-wall shops around town. The seating area is a large courtyard with white sheets draped over it to keep out the rain, and around the edges are numerous open-air kitchens, each specializing in a section of the menu (which is the thickness of a J. Crew catalogue) and labeled by a sign painted on a steamer basket.

We were overwhelmed by the choices, but managed to narrow it down to four things: mango salad with seafood, steamed shrimp in coconut juice, grilled squid with chili sauce, and whatever dish was our waitress’s favorite – which turned out to be Vietnamese pancakes.

It took about four minutes for the first dish to arrive, the mango salad. It was a mound of sliced green mango, crunchy and only slightly sweet, topped with cilantro, tiny red flakes of chili, shrimp and squid. Peter took one bite and actually exclaimed in happiness. (I believe his exact words were, “It’s a taste explosion!” – and he wasn’t kidding.) The combination of spiciness and sweetness, the crunch of the mango and the softness of the squid, and the overnotes of the herbs, were perfectly combined. We took a cooking class earlier today (at a school called Hidden Hanoi, which I also recommend) and our teacher had told us about how important balance – referred to as the yin and the yang and defined as a blend of salty, sour, sweet and heat – were to Vietnamese cuisine. This dish nailed it.

Spring rolls from the cooking class. Why do I think we'll gain weight here?

Next up was my favorite, the Vietnamese pancake. It was a plate of rice paper crepes, a pile of fresh lettuce, mint and basil, and some sort of crispy fried thing combined with bean sprouts and sauteed egg and shrimp. It looked great but neither of us had any idea of how to assemble it. Not to fear. Our waiter, seeing our confused looks, whipped out a pair of disposable plastic gloves from his apron and expertly rolled the ingredients together into a tight, cigar-like tube and handed it to me. Oh. My. Goodness. Crunchy, salty, sweet, and yet somehow refreshing, thanks to the herbs. I’ve had Vietnamese pancakes several times before, but never like this. What’s more, the entire plate cost $1.50.

The squid were perfectly grilled; the shrimp came draped around the edge of a whole coconut, filled with juice. For dessert, we had another recommendation of our waitress, something called che suong sa hot luu – described as “jelly, water chestnut, tapioca pearls and coconut milk.”  It came in a juice glass and was an icy, milky concoction with an odd combination of green gelatinous crunchy things, strips of black sweet bean, a thick sweet yellow paste, and red balls that looked like pomegranate seeds. It looked like someone had thrown up a Christmas tree into a glass – but it turned out to also be delicious.

The ingredients for our dessert, which were mixed up in coconut milk.

We walked back to our hotel giddy and full, with fingers that smelled of sweet fish sauce and garlic and charcoal squid. Even better? Our four dishes, dessert, beer and water came to about fifteen bucks.

I love it here.

If I had to choose one farm animal to epitomize this trip, it would have to be the goat. (I know you’ve been wondering.) This started, obviously, with our experience on the French dairy farm, in which our daily existence revolved around the milking needs of 28 goats.

But our interactions with goats didn’t end there. Every country we’ve been in has had goats, and they’ve all looked slightly different. We’ve seen black goats, white long-haired goats, stumpy looking pygmy goats, and goats with long, floppy ears that make them look like bassett hounds. We’ve seen goats on farms, goats on the side of the road, goats galloping across pastures, goats perched on top of buckets, goats riding on luggage racks and, my personal favorite, a goat traveling on the back seat of a bus (it had the whole row to itself). I’ve started developing a real soft spot for the goats, the sort of affection I usually reserve for golden retriever puppies. I’ve also started wanting a goat of my own.

We admitted our goat love to Mark and Teresa, a couple we met at the yoga center and whom we later stayed with in Hong Kong. It turned out that they, too, shared our goat obsession. And as we discussed the many attributes of the goat, we came to a startling conclusion: goats might just be the ultimate green pet.

Think about it:

1. Goats eat everything. Forget the time-consuming process of composting your kitchen scraps. Just feed it to your goat!

2. Goats make fertilizer. Yesterday’s leftovers = today’s soil booster. My mother recently told me that she saw alpaca droppings being marketed for use in home gardens. A great idea, but when it comes to farm animal pets, alpacas seem a little bourgeois. Goats are much more down to earth.

3. Goats keep you warm. Get an angora goat and you can make a sweater. And if you don’t have a garden in need of fertilizer, you can use goat droppings the Tibetan way: burn them as kindling. A little smelly, yes, but the tiny pellets are surprisingly effective fire-starters.

4. Goats make good cheese. Impress family and friends with your homemade chevre. You can’t do that with a dog.

5. If all else fails, you can eat them.

In conclusion, I believe that goats are the ultimate green pet. Now I just need to figure out if they’re allowed in Philly.