T A B L E_T A L K Wherever you go, the barbecue seems to taste different. Find out where Table Talkers have found BBQ heaven in the Wanderlust discussion area   ___________________ Want to learn more about beads and beignets? Search barnesandnoble.com's huge selection of books about Mardi Gras ___________________ R E C E N T L Y Mardi Gras unmasked By Zachary Karabell New Orleans' biggest bash features days of flesh, booze and flashy costumes. But what happened to the festival? (02/28/99) Railway ties By Morrie Erickson A traveler discovers the real Burma on a train to Mandalay (02/26/99) Escape from Tashkent By Jeffrey Tayler A Peace Corps worker unwittingly falls into a romantic adventure with a Russian waitress stranded in Uzbekistan (02/25/99) Ground zero By Ellen Meloy Excerpt: The Last Cheater's Waltz (01/24/99) Death in Ghana By Tanya Shaffer A simple succession of events in an African village leads to a tragedy -- and a traveler's haunting sense of hopelessness (02/23/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		STRANGERS IN PARADISE | PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - I play piano, Yosi plays guitar. We had been brought from California to Singapore by the prosperous Ben-Eliazar family to play for their daughter's wedding, and had picked up another gig in Thailand a few days before the wedding. We're musicians, but ever since we'd arrived in the Far East, we'd been searching in vain for music, indigenous music, native music played by natives. We could never find any. It seemed to me that everywhere we went the local music consisted of "New York, New York" and "I Shot the Sheriff," with a vague world-beat rhythm, but not sounding a lot different in Asia than it would in Miami or Rome. The big Singapore wedding took place in what must have been the poshest grand ballroom in the deluxest Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the entire hemisphere. I have to admit that Yosi and I, who call ourselves the Tel Aviv Band, also played "New York, New York" and "I Shot the Sheriff," when we weren't playing the Sephardic Middle Eastern music that has made our reputation. We played "Never on Sunday" and "Matilda," too, bar mitzvah-band standards the world around. We played these songs because the people asked for them. They love them. Until an American musician travels outside of his own country, he doesn't learn the amazing truth: Western pop music is the standard the world around. If you can sing in English and know no more than 25 songs and half a dozen rhythms, you can find work anyplace on five continents. It doesn't matter if you are playing for Russians or Argentines, Saddam Hussein's sister or a shopkeeper in the bazaar in Marseilles, everyone wants to hear the same songs. You can never overestimate the power and reach of popular music. A musician can think about this in one of two ways: A) The World Loves the Songs I Hate. I will adopt an attitude about it and when somebody requests "Feelings," I will sneer at them and gag. Or: B) The World Loves These Songs for a Reason. Also, I love traveling and getting paid for it. So the next time someone requests "I Write the Songs" or "My Way," I will not choke. I will do my best to play every request with some heart, and make it sound as fresh as I can. I love our little band. We make a ton of music, for two people, and we have as much fun playing as audiences do listening and dancing. We played for close to a thousand people in Singapore and the party lasted into the wee hours. I can't even remember how many times we played "New York, New York." They kept requesting and we kept playing. Both Yosi and I know that as long as our answer is an honest B), we will keep working. Here is our proof: Two California musicians blowing down a windy tropical highway on our day off, heading for Nagoya, Batam Island, Indonesia. Still, I always hold out hope we will run into some great local music. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I leaned over the front seat and pointed to the car radio. The driver turned it on. We heard static, interspersed with snatches of "Na Na Na Na Goodbye" by Steam. You couldn't escape it. We were so far away from where this song comes from we could travel East or West to get there and it wouldn't matter. "Listen, Yos," I said, as the radio played: "Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey ..." The driver said, "Nagoya." I looked at Yosi. The radio continued: "Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey..." Yosi sang "Nagoya." The driver laughed. He certainly knew this song. Then he started to sing: "Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na ..." I went: "HEY HEY HEY," and we all started singing: "NAGOYA." This was now a singing taxicab. "Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, HEY HEY HEY, NAGOYA!" The little Toyota leapt over hills and thin mountain passes, eighth notes and treble clefs mixed in with the trailing smoke. Na-Na-Na-Native music indeed. But the farther into the interior we got, the more static came over the radio, and soon we couldn't hear anything at all. The driver reached over and turned the radio off. The car was silent. It was like "the day the music died." Suddenly the driver's mouth formed a large O, and he braked hard, took a towel off the top of a pile draped over his front passenger's seat and stuffed it through the floorboards down into his smoking transmission, as we slowed down and entered a little village. We were now in a one-float parade. The whole village was lined up on the side of the road, waving at us, trying to get our attention so we might stop and buy the tiny yellow fruits, or fresh meat, or candles, or Muslim religious articles that they had to sell. The one thing that grabbed my attention was that the people were so very thin. This was the time of the Asian economic flu, and I knew all of Indonesia had been hit hard. In this village we saw skinny dogs, skinny chickens, skinny birds and skinny people. I couldn't help thinking about all the folks on Stairmasters in America spending fortunes to burn off Demon Fat. We drove another few minutes, and then saw a road sign: "NAGOYA!" above and "Na-go-ya-ma-chi!" below. "Machi" means town in Japanese. The poor little taxi gathered its strength and wheezed up a driveway to a stop in front of the Nagoya Hotel. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "This looks a little like Hebron, except for the trees," Yosi said. "And the smoke. And this guy." A thin Indonesian doorman in a too-large maroon suit with little gold slippers came running out to open our car door, but had to jerk backward due to the smoke and smell that assaulted his nostrils. The doorman finally helped us out of the car and then leaned forward and bowed. Ushering us toward the hotel, he said in English: "All Praise Where All Praise Is Due," which is part of the traditional Muslim greeting. "All praise," I answered, and Yos answered in Arabic: "Aleikum salaam." We glanced briefly into the hotel lobby, which was empty except for Japanese and Indonesian hotel employees, who were mostly sitting or standing in disconsolate bunches staring at their watches. "Not a lot of Super Deluxe Packages, Yos," I said. "Only us," Yosi said. "Ginny and Mei sure were beautiful, though." We walked back outside. The cabbie was leaving. "Nagoya!" he was singing, as he waved and the little blue Toyota disappeared into a cloud of fumes. The song was gone but the melody lingered on. The town of Nagoya seemed to be blanketed by the same smoke we smelled coming from the transmission. It was easy to see why. Every few hundred yards women, children and shirtless men crouched in circles at the sides of the road, staring blankly at smoke rising from burning bald truck tires, an acrid rubbery detritus filling the air. No one moved, as if they were required to watch over these fires to make sure they kept burning 24 hours a day. It reminded me of Chanukah -- the candles burning for eight days. The entire island was the menorah. But this didn't seem religious; it was more like hypnosis. Any traveler to tourist spots could recognize what had happened to Nagoya -- or not happened. The boom everyone had counted on never really arrived, and then hard economic times came along and finished the job. Perhaps Nagoya at one time had its own life, but now there was little here but smoke. Everywhere were signs of construction started, then stopped. Many old structures had been half-torn down, or half-renovated, depending on your cosmological viewpoint, but either way Nagoya appeared to be a town of halves -- and have-nots. There were few stores open along the main street. Most of the visible people who were not crouched by the side of the road were young wild-haired boys cruising the streets with angry looks on their faces. Then I spotted a shop with a light on inside. In the shop window was an advertisement for Carnation Ice Cream. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was August in the Far East, and everywhere Yos and I had been was a lot hotter than we were accustomed to. Walking in Singapore was like breathing lava. I'd been thinking about a root beer float for a week, even though I knew ice cream is a European thing, not an Asian thing. The poster in the window was unmistakable. "Yossele!" I shouted. "You won't believe this! Ice cream!" "You kidding? Where?" "Look!" Yos saw the sign. "Vay is mir," he said. We went inside and 40 years slipped away. N E X T+P A G E | Currency and cultural exchange in the sweets shop   _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________