The corruption is mostly a thing of the past. It has a lower inflation and unemployment rate than the US. Its government is running surpluses and paying down debt. Its economy is growing by leaps and bounds with one of the largest oil fields in the world recently discovered there.

As the economy has grown, crime has plummeted. The murder and violent crime rate are less than half what they were 10 years ago. While crime is still high, much of it is avoidable if you take basic precautions like staying away from the Favelas.

The government respects basic civil rights much more than the US government does. It’s not a police state like the US is becoming.

It was a star-filled night in Chechnya’s besieged capital of Grozny. The snow crunched under my feet as I walked with the Chechen rebel commander away from the warmth of our safe house. When we entered a bombed-out neighborhood 15 minutes away, I put the battery in my Iridium satellite phone and waited for the glowing screen to signal that I had locked on to the satellites.

Read more on www.foreignpolicy.com

Source: Foreign Policy

Here are some things that I have witnessed or been apart of in Mexico:
*Robbed at gunpoint by “police” in front of international bridge in Ciudad Juarez, 2006.

*Robbed by group of men in downtown Nogales near border, 2006.

*Sinaloa state police approached me with guns drawn and attempted to extort and kidnap me in 2010. They offered to drive me to a restaurant. When I declined there offer they told me I had to get in the car. I declined again. They followed me all the way back to my hotel. I think they were afraid to grab me out in the open, but they would have kept me if I got into the car.

*Witnessed many police and military busts and raids on gangs and cartel owned businesses, homes, and vehicles.

*Witnessed extortion of restaurant owner in Juarez, 2010.

Here are some things that have helped me stay safe in Mexico:
*Ride on buses owned by large companies. They will use the toll roads, which are safer.

* Speak Spanish and don’t dress like a rich American.

*Don’t carry around your map. Try not to look like a lost tourist.

*Mind your own business. Don’t ask personal questions to people that you are just meeting. Avoid talking about immigration, politics, the drug war, etc. in bars. Don’t become disoriented or intoxicated. Keep your wits about you.

*Stay in areas that appear secure and well light.

*If you take pictures, try not to draw attention. Journalists are often targeted in Mexico. If you blog or write about your experiences, do so privately and anonymously, if possible.

*Pay attention to everyone around you, even children.

*Avoid anyone that offers to sell you drugs, prescriptions, hookers, or illicit merchandise.

*Stay at hotels that have gates and ones that do not have outside access to your room. The entrance to your room should be accessed by passing through a hotel lobby.

*ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS fill out the US State Department Smart Traveler Enrollment Program information for your trip.

*Have a person from the hotel write down license information of any taxi you take. Another thing you can do is take a picture of the plate and send it to your email address.

*Don’t take rides from strangers

*Avoid making public political statements or participating in political protests.

But the hike was sweet – the Guadalupe Mountains rise from the center of the desert in the middle of nowhere, on the north-south border of Texas and New Mexico, near Carlsbad Caverns. The outer slopes of the mountain are dry, patchy desert while the interior is forested with scraggy pines. It’s a big valley, and a small river begins at Guadalupe Peak, the highest mountain in Texas, flowing downhill across the center of the range to spectacular, steep-walled McKittrick Canyon. Long ago when Texas and much of North America was underneath an ocean it was a massive coral reef. Now, when you tear off a piece of soil, you can see the crumbling rock is made up of tiny fossils.

First we hiked Guadalupe Peak on what happened to be on New Year’s Eve and 8 days through the valley and out the canyon. Through sharing our wine and liquor with the other campers on Guadalupe Peak on New Year’s, we got a lot of military meals from a father and son who were leaving. You know, the big dark green plastic bag full of dehydrated delicious.

Now we skip to Mexico. El Paso was only a few hours away, and neither of us had been to Mexico before so we decided to go, at least for lunch. I remember parking near the border and going to the newest supermarket to buy batteries for a dead flashlight. I opened it up in the parking lot and dumped two oozing lumps of battery-acid into my hand. It took a while to find a bathroom to wash it all off. It was something of a sign of bad things to come.

We showed our drivers licenses, paid the small toll, and walked across the footbridge into Mexico. We were immediately impressed by the activity – people everywhere, in and out of traffic, markets and a slowly paced hustle and bustle. We hadn’t showered in a week and were starving. We went to the first taco place we could find and ate a lot.

I remember feeling slightly overwhelmed by it all – I had traveled outside of America before and seen some strange places, but Ciudad Juarez had an odd vibe – somewhat imposing and liberating at the same time. Crumbling buildings contained massive nightclubs and restaurants, strange twisting market streets peeked out of every corner, and no one seemed to notice us, even though we were noticeably grubby foreigners. Although it is right on the border, there didn’t seem to be any Americans anywhere, unlike Tijuana, which I would find out later on my second and third trips to Mexico.

After lunch we went to a huge cantina. Inside it was all black and very dark, though it was midday and there were plenty of windows. There was a circular stage in the middle of the floor.

We ordered a bucket of beer and then two, and halfway through the second bucket the music stopped and the lights got even dimmer. Then colored floodlights started spinning and booty-bass pumped over the house speakers. Two muscular, Jheri-curled men wearing small black leather vests took the stage, dancing.

Corey and I looked around – it was the same as before – mixed crowd, men and women drinking at tables, less than half-full, most not paying attention to the dancers. As they took turns peeling off the leather vests, it was obvious that these were a special kind of dancers.

We attacked the beers and turned our chairs around. While finally leaving I glanced at the stage, and they were down to tiny white g-strings. We paid up and got right out of there.

Unprepared to get hit by the sun, we were back on the street, loose and free in Juarez after our first decent meal and refreshment in a week. We drank in various bars until just after sundown. Outside it got chilly fast – this was January, remember. That’s when Corey realized that he didn’t have his fleece.

“I must have left it in the Chippendale bar.”

So we went back. There was a doorman now who just waved us in. We entered, fearing the worst, but now the place was packed and there was a 12 piece Mexican band on stage. The jacket was still on the chair where he had left it. We shrugged at each other, ordered another bucket of coronas and sat down.

Many hours, bars, and beers later we were once again walking down the principal street. Three policeman approaching from the opposite direction. Thinking nothing of it, being legally drunk in Mexico, we had no reason to make eye contact. However, as we passed they grabbed us, threw us against the wall, handcuffed us, and yelled at us in Spanish.

Facing each other with our heads pushed into the concrete wall, Corey and I exchanged a shrug of “Now what?” I spoke high school Spanish and tried to communicate our innocence, but the third cop ignored me and went through our pockets.

He opened my wallet, took out all the money, and the put the empty wallet back in my pocket. He did the same to Corey and also took his Swiss army knife off his key chain and threw it up onto the nearest rooftop. Then they took the handcuffs off and told us to get out of there.

Now, I don’t know why but for some reason the bridge came to mind, and that we would need money to cross it. So, in broken Spanish I said something like “dinero para salir mexico.” He came back and gave us exact change!

Without any money, another bar and a cheap hotel were out of the question, so we walked back across the border with our exact change for the toll. If you had told me then that ten years later I would be living in Mexico, well I wouldn’t have believed it.

As a footnote to the story, I should include that we drove straight back to Wisconsin, which took something like 24 hours. I was driving when we crossed the Mississippi river at St. Louis and the weather had already started getting freezing cold. At that moment, tired as I was, I remembered a certain friend who always lit a cigarette when he crossed the Mississippi for luck. I stole one of Corey’s and put the window down to smoke it. The electric window went all the way down but I only wanted it cracked. How dejected was I to find that the window wouldn’t go back up at all! We pulled over. Corey woke up and got in his sleeping bag, and I put on all my winter clothes, driving with big gloves and a ski mask. However it wasn’t enough and after 3 or 4 freezing hours we taped a garbage bag to the window. It barely kept the cold out and was so loud that we couldn’t listen to music or talk to each other for the entire ride and my ears rang for days.

First of all malaria and dengue are endemic in almost all the country, and in some Cambodian provinces the agent is the mefloquine resistant strain of Plasmodium, so check if immunization is required before leaving.

Second, mines are a very serious issue out of the cities, so avoid to walk in the country or the forest without advice from the locals if you like to keep both legs.

Third, if you have never been to Southeast Asia, avoid driving, tuktuks for short trips and taxis are cheap.

Fourth, don’t drink water from the tap, or at last bring some water sterilization tabs and you’ll avoid problems.

As you can read everywhere, the healthcare services are quite poor, if you have serious problems just take a a plane to Bangkok as soon as you can.

The country is really cheap, (Phnom Penh is slightly more expensive than other cities) you can eat well for less than $5 in a restaurant and find a nice and clean hotel for about $10 – 15, beer is also very cheap, I liked the Angkor brand, but you’ll found also Beer Lao or Singha in Phnom Penh.
The food is similar to a Thai – Chinese mix, only not very spicy, if you get in the right places you’ll find unusual ingredients, like red ants sauce just to say one that I’ve tried.

Bring a good amount of small USD bills, $1 and $5 are the most useful, you can have problems with $20 bills and greater if they are worn, the bigger the note the newer it shoud be.

Good advice can be found here:

http://khmer440.com (expats forum)
http://talesofasia.com/ (good info)

Kevin Pollard, Babel Travel

On May 1^st 2011, we were 14 days into our 16-day trip in Afghanistan. At about 10pm on the night of May 1^st, we settled into our beds, which just happened to be located right underneath the flight path of the Bagram Air Base–America’s largest military base outside of the U.S!

To our amazement, at least 50 jet fighters took off and landed at the base over the next 5 hours or so. What I remember most about this was the almighty noise that the jets made–the likes of which I had never heard before. Our Afghani guide (who is from a village close to the air base) remarked that on any given night between 10 and 15 planes would depart and land. He couldn’t quite work out why so many planes were departing from the air base. Was America planning to attack more Taliban strongholds on another overnight raid? Or was something bigger planned?

We hardly slept that night due to the most deafening sounds of planes taking off and landing. We drifted off to sleep sometime after 3am, but woke when the sun rose at 5:30am. Not really the greatest of sleeps! As we didn’t have access to the internet or TV that morning, we were unaware of what had transpired just a few hours earlier.

Upon hearing what had happened, my girlfriend phoned me from Australia (at about 7:30am Afghani time), moments before Barack Obama announced to the world that American forces had killed Osama bin Laden over the border in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Shocked by what I’d been told, I immediately told my group, our guide, and some locals who were eating breakfast with us. All were unaware of what had just happened, and were understandably stunned by the news. But they were also concerned about possible retaliatory attacks on US troops and Afghan civilians.

We travelled back to Kabul that morning, a little bit more nervous than usual. Our guide noticed an increase in both Afghan and U.S. military vehicle traffic en route to Kabul. The normally heavy security checks were now longer and more thorough. Arriving back in Kabul late that morning, we headed straight for our hotel to gauge the impact of bin Laden’s death on the city. After speaking with the head of the security network that had kept us safe for 15 days, we were told that it was safe enough for us to walk the streets of the city -with armed security, of course!.

Our plan was to speak with locals about the death of bin Laden, a name that is synonymous with terror in Afghanistan. I’m guessing that almost all foreigners who were in Afghanistan that day wouldn’t have dared leave the safety of their hotel fearing attacks against ‘anyone that looked American.’ Not us.

Speaking with about 10 locals, we weren’t surprised to hear that all were pleased that bin Laden was dead. In their opinion, he and his followers had brought nothing but despair to the people of Afghanistan. They rightly pointed out that bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia, and that many of his affiliates were not Afghani. We saw at least 5 Afghani TV crews interviewing locals about the same subject. It was certainly big news that day!

We spent a few more days in Kabul, reflecting on the trip and what had just occurred, before returning to Switzerland. Upon our return, we learned that the jets and helicopters that raided bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan had departed from the Bagram Air Base the night we were there! Around 300 foreign tourists visit Afghanistan each year, and very few can say they stayed overnight at the Bagram Air Base the night Osama bin Laden was killed. Something to tell the grandkids!

* More information on Cultural Engagement Trips can be found here.

Liquid asset: On Mar. 26, the MT Polar sat moored off Hobyo, Somalia (Jason Florio)

Imagine if you could invest $100,000 to control a $200 million asset for three months and sell it back to the owners for $10 million tax-free. That’s the Somali pirate way…

Read more of Robert’s article online at www.businessweek.com

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek