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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 10:38:19 JST Adrianna Tan

   I’ll never forget being excited about the lonely planet raving about a market in Bangkok you just had to go to. It was a good market, but when I got there I was just like.. it’s just a normal wet market like every market I know. That’s when I learned that most travel and food and lifestyle journalism was made for other people.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 10:41:33 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Language that ‘others’ people in the realm of travel / lifestyle journalism really bothers me.

     Check out this writing about breakfast in Singapore, in Nat Geo a few years ago:

     “Here’s what my breakfast in Singapore looked like: sticky, slime-colored coconut custard jam slathered over a thin crisp of toasted brown bread, served with a side of two eggs so undercooked that their whites retained the clarity of newly dead fish eyes.

     Alongside, a small cup of coffee with an oleaginous blackness that rejected the advances of condensed milk. It was not love at first sight.”

     https://mothership.sg/2019/04/national-geographic-kaya-singapore/

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 10:44:12 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Soon-Tzu Speechley wrote this in 2020, ‘what if we write about American food the way they write about us’

     “In a nation torn by racial conflict, one unlikely food unites. To those accustomed to chopsticks, the greasy parcel known as a ‘burger,’ a sort of split bao, is crude and messy. Yet it encapsulates a nation’s violent past.”

     Sometimes I feel if I’m being very extreme about the way I push back on certain tropes on food and culture here, but I also think I need to do even more of it.

     https://hazlitt.net/feature/bad-taste

   • Embed this notice
     Jeri Dansky (jeridansky@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:03:39 JST Jeri Dansky

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Lonely Planet evolved over the years, and not always for the better. I had either the first or second edition of the LP guide to Korea, and it had a much more personal note than later editions, which were more formulaic.

     https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/43400060-korea-travel-survival-kit

     The author actually lived in Korea for at least a while: "He met his first wife, Hyung Poon, whilst working on a guidebook in South Korea. They married in Seoul in 1982." She's listed as co-author on the second edition.
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Crowther

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:06:00 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Jeri Dansky

     @jeridansky they had some good writers on some editions and absolutely fuckers on others

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:06:03 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Arno

     @arno_in_sing heh, most other eggs are too overcooked for me

   • Embed this notice
     Arno (arno_in_sing@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:06:04 JST Arno

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte it’s cultural dominance, when you have the power and reach to set the frame through which things are described and thus set the baseline for what is normal and what is not. This only gets worse with AI than being trained on that dominant culture.

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     Arno (arno_in_sing@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:06:04 JST Arno

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I love Kaya, until some nutcase puts XO in it but whatever if that’s your thing, but the eggs are too runny to my taste

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Stein (he/him) (runrichrun@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:10:54 JST Rich Stein (he/him)

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     Did they pull that paragraph? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/things-to-eat-kaya-kopi

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:10:54 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Rich Stein (he/him)

     @RunRichRun possibly, the entire country was in revolt about it

   • Embed this notice
     Jeri Dansky (jeridansky@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Jan-2026 11:12:12 JST Jeri Dansky

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte They were one of my go-to guides, but I never took them as a sole authority.

     I remember LP being dismissive about Kanyakumari, but the Indian folks on soc.culture.indian told me to go — and of course they were right. Magnificent place.