I wanted adventures. I wanted to go up the Nung Ruver to the heart of darkness in Cambodia. I wanted to ride out into a desert on camelback, sand and dunes in every direction, eat whole roasted lamb with my fingers. I wanted to kick snow off my boots in a Mafiya nightclub in Russia. I wanted to play with automatic weapons in Phnom Phen, recapture the past in a small oyster village in France, step into a seedy neon-lit pulquerÃa in rural Mexico. I wanted to run roadblocks in the middle of the night, blowing past angry militia with a handful of hurled Marlboro packs, experience fear, excitement, wonder. I wanted kicks - the kind of melodramatic thrills and chills I'd yearned for since childhood, the kind of adventure I'd found as a little boy in the pages of my Tintin comic books. I wanted to see the world - and I wanted the world to be just like the movies.
Unreasonable? Overromatic? Uninformed? Foolhardy?
Yes!
But I didn't care.
Anthony Bourdain - A Cook's Tour
