#1063 – The Expat Files: Montezuma’s Revenge, Hygiene, and Life in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now that I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started You're probably wondering why you heard a repeat show last time the show that was supposed to go out last Sunday Well, you see it was unavoidable because something happened to me that hasn't happened in 15, maybe 20 years now I got hit with Montezuma's revenge. Yep on top of that

[00:47] I had a technical problem with my equipment, but it really was old Montezuma that did me in I Ended up in bed a whole day and feeling like well, you know crap for about two more days And I'm still not exactly a hundred percent, you know 15 or even 20 years I can't even remember is a long time not to get stricken by that certain minor plague that seems to hit everyone especially tourists coming down In fact, it's kind of a rite of passage Especially with backpackers who pretty much eat the cheapest street food they can get their hands on in fact I don't know if any gringo or expat who's been down to Latin America who hasn't reported an incidence or two or ten And it seems every little tourist or backpacker group has at least one person sick with it at any given time now as for me I have managed to avoid it for 15 or 20 years because I maintain certain strict rules and regs against eating street food

[01:34] Because 80 to 90 percent of the time Montezuma's revenge is caused by contaminated street food. Not that it doesn't taste good It's just that the after effects are well pretty horrendous and if you're hanging with people It's beyond embarrassing to Montezuma's revenge is bad enough But it's even worse when you have it at someone else's house and thus glued to someone else's toilet It's much worse when you're not sick at your own house You probably know the feeling every time there's a knock at the door It gives you all that much more reason to just want to die So then was I lax did I drop my guard? Do I even know how I got it? Why did it happen to me to a guy who takes all the necessary precautions? Like for example never ordering any kind of beverage or drink with ice in it how did it happen to me the guy who at restaurants stealthily wipes the silverware down with napkins a

[02:21] Guy who never eats salads or mix fruit dishes unless I clean and prepare them myself Well as luck would have it it hadn't anything to do with eating restaurant food or street food Which I won't eat or breaking those salad and fruit rules either It happened because I went to a birthday party and you know sometimes if you're lucky when you're out and about You'll go to someone's house party and they'll have some coconuts on hand whole coconuts unopened I know now that was my downfall Oftentimes you'll see whole coconuts at parties stuffed in the refrigerator And when you slice off the top of the most refreshing natural drink you can imagine I've had coconut water like that Hundreds of times, but this time that coconut water agua de coco did me in so how'd that happen? Was it naturally contaminated? Well, no that can't really happen It's hermetically sealed by nature though

[03:08] It can go bad if it just sits around too long because you know coconuts want to become coconut trees So eventually after you've got a big old coconut off the tree And it sits around for weeks even months even in its natural state unopened It'll start to naturally deteriorate and the water inside will start to ferment and go sour That's all a part of the process of germinating and soon enough It'll shoot roots out if it's sitting in the soil now when the coconut water starts to go sour You can't really tell by looking at it not at first when you taste it. It's not slightly sweet It's slightly bitter when it first starts going sour in the first day or two you can still drink it It won't get you sick, but it won't taste quite right, but that wasn't my problem my coconut water tasted absolutely fine But I knew there was a good chance

[03:55] I was gonna be in trouble when I took a walk outside That was about a half hour after I drank mine the usual way through a straw you cut a little hole stick a straw in And start slurping anyway I walked out on that patio and saw the gardener slash maintenance guy chopping coconuts for people if you've ever seen it done They slice just about an inch off the top it makes a hole through the hard shell and right through just a touch of the white Meat layer giving access to the water so you could pop a straw in and that little opening was about as big as your thumb So I stood there for a minute or two and the maintenance guy said to me. Would you like one? I said I already had one inside was great He said have another then he winked and said and I'll toss a little rum in it for you, too I said okay, why not so he took his machete and

[04:41] expertly cleaved off a little silver dollar sized button off the top of a coconut and he put it down on the ground and As I was about to go into the house to get a straw I watched him cut three more and load them into a little wooden box to bring into the kitchen Only thing was and it kind of shocked me for a second He stuck his dirty fingers in those holes as if they were bowling balls and dropped them in the box He was gonna bring into the kitchen and I stood there for a second thinking. Oh, no Every one of those pristine coconuts was contaminated with his slimy grimy fingers And then worse yet after he dropped those three coconuts into the box. He licked. Yep I said licked with his tongue the cocoa juice that was running down his fingers and man, let me tell you That's the perfect example of how and why you absolutely have to train up your maintenance guys

[05:31] You're cleaning ladies your maids anyone in your household. That's handling food Even if you feel funny about it and you think they know what they're doing You have to assume they're very short on basic hygiene and they are remember your maintenance guy cleaning lady, etc. Etc Most often live in a place that it's only got water six or eight hours a day with dogs driveway chickens and kookerotches Running in and out of the house at all times. Nothing wrong with that if you're used to it But we're not our immune systems aren't used to that level of hygiene either Look you longtime listeners might remember the story I told about the disgusting habits of a certain cleaning lady who worked a couple of days a week at the house of one Of my expat buddies if you recall me and my expat friend were sitting around shooting the breeze and I saw out of the corner Of my eye his cleaning lady go into the bathroom and clean the toilet with a certain green wash rag

[06:22] They're called trappos down here wash rags are called trappos T-r-a-p-o and then a little later I saw her in the kitchen wiping down the kitchen sink the countertops the faucets Etc with that same towel she used to clean the toilet and I said to my buddy, you know You really have to train up your cleaning lady She's using the same rag to clean the toilet as she is to clean the kitchen countertop and sink and his eyes widened He said is that right? Shit. I said correct shit And that's one of the big errors. I see gringles and expats make all the time They assume they're cleaning ladies maintenance guys, etc. Know exactly what they're doing Well, they don't not as far as good hygiene goes as for sure you have to train them up Of course that begs the question why Latinos don't get sick all the time if that's the kind of hygiene practices they use

[07:09] Well, it's Darwinism, you know natural selection when the conquistadores came over in the 15th and 16th centuries They brought smallpox syphilis and a number of other diseases with them wiped out half the population in the Americas north and south And in return the locals gave the newcomers certain strains of Montezuma's revenge They'd never seen before parasites amoebas dysentery, etc And if your immune system couldn't take it you didn't make it So now here in Latin America and in all third world countries They've got populations whose immune systems are really tough and resilient against that kind of stuff They had centuries to work it out, which is why we can get Montezuma's revenge at the drop of a hat and they don't So to make a short story long, that's why there wasn't an expat file show on Sunday

[07:54] Or at least I'm 99% certain of it thing is though No one else who went to that party got sick, but then again, I was the only gringo there So let that be a lesson to you and another thing about hygiene and food here in Latin America One thing I've noticed since almost the very first time I've been down here and visited Local Latin Americans in their own houses. They've got this bad habit Maybe it's not bad to them But to us it is of leaving food out on the counter or the stove all night They'll cook a dinner bake a cake make a pasta or fruit salad That's the worst, you know because it's loaded with mayonnaise and note Latinos are addicted to mayonnaise with North Americans It's ketchup with Latinos. It's mayonnaise Anyway, it seems whatever they're making for dinner at night often remains overnight on the countertop or stove

[08:41] Now that's something my mother told me you should never do unless of course, it's a cake or bakery items Then you cover and seal it nicely. So insects can't get in it and you're okay But as for meat fish lasagnas casseroles, whatever you name it as my mother would say it's got to go in the refrigerator I know I know there's times when you're cooking late at night and whatever you're cooking is really hot So you'll leave it out overnight But then it should always be well sealed and covered and now that might be the rare exception up by you But down here, there's always something left out overnight in the kitchen So then why do you think practically every single Latin American household they've ever been in rich or poor? They've got a fly or kook a ratchet problem or both though You could say part of that is due to the fact that almost everyone here in Latin America has an undersized refrigerator

[09:28] That's why most refrigerators down here are jam-packed Too small a refrigerator for the size of the family unless it's an upper-middle-class person or someone a lot of money who can afford a big Double-dorf with a water and ice dispenser considered high-class here Sure, you see those in appliance stores and in gringo and upper-middle class and wealthy Latino homes But most other families probably 90% of them have undersized refrigerators And even if they look like they're full-sized refrigerators when you open them up you find out They're only half as deep as your mom's old reliable Sears slash Kenmore up in the States You'll notice that once you hit an appliance store down here, you'll see when you open the door They're just not that deep and thus only hold about half as much Of course, that means they're much cheaper too, but that's the point. But hey, you get what you pay for right including this show

[10:17] And if you're on the alert for things like that I know it sounds strange, but I have an eye for the unusual I think you've figured that out because you know when houses are built at least as they've been built in the last 40 or 50 Years anyway, there's a standard cutout in the kitchen for the refrigerator freezer, right? Well, I'll tell you here in Latin America It'll often be the case that you walk into someone's kitchen unless again You're talking about upper-middle-class or wealthy people that makes up only about 5% of the population Anyway, you'll see in that standard refrigerator cutout and undersized or even pint-sized unit like a whirlpool or Kenmore That hasn't grown up yet kind of throws the whole kitchen off-balance to see a tiny Refrigerator in a nice big opening. It'll be most often one of those oddball brands, too You have never seen up in the States because they're made in Mexico or Brazil or Colombia funky names to like Tecca Te ka

[11:08] Altus and core but my favorite Latin American appliance brand name of all is MABE pronounced maybe that's perfect, right? Cuz maybe it's good. Maybe it's not maybe it'll work. Maybe not MABE maybe check it out. If you're renting a furnished apartment in Latin America, maybe you'll have one Maybe not. Hey, you know, but anything you buy brand new looks nice Which reminds me of the eternal irony with stainless steel products as you probably know cuz you have some there's nothing stainless about them However, some appliance companies some high-end appliance companies even some of the more solid and dependable Korean Chinese and Japanese companies like LG Samsung, etc They have their sort of professional or high-end designer lines that have stainless steel finishes on them

[11:56] That really truly live up to the hype. They don't stain they're easy to clean and they don't mark up at all because they've taken the pains to Include a more expensive alloy or somehow coated them with a thin clear polyurethane, whatever But when it comes to sinks stainless steel is all the rage here in Latin America Why cuz they're cheap but cheap stainless steel means flimsy and I'd say about 98% of all kitchen sinks are stainless steel So eventually they all just stain up and look like crap except there is one brand I have noticed in high-end kitchens down here It comes from Italy. It's called Visani V-I-S-S-A-N-I. It's higher priced stuff. You see in high-end kitchen shops Yep They've got high-end kitchen shops and appliance shops throughout Latin America because they've got some very wealthy people living in very nice neighborhoods

[12:43] So they want the best even so, you know, a very high-end brand is Kohler, right? You've heard of them K-O-H-L-E-R. It's an American company and most of the stuff anyway I think is still made in the United States in a little town called Kohler, Wisconsin You know when I was very young and I played golf pretty well I actually played a tournament in a private golf club in Kohler, Wisconsin owned by the Kohler family that makes the sinks Now Kohler is very high-end and high priced They have been high-end kitchen shops here in Latin America too in expensive areas And they even have an expensive line of stainless steel sinks But they haven't conquered that stain problem like that company Visani has and I'm only mentioning this because I've had something like 13 houses Already here in Latin America and in the ones that came with a stainless steel kitchen sink

[13:29] I ripped them out and put in Porcelain a few of them were Kohler sinks very expensive down here Even if you're ordering from Amazon, of course, you can order anything from Amazon But then you got to pay the shipping by weight and being that porcelain sinks are baked on to cast iron Those things weigh a ton and so with the shipping you could pay up to 500 bucks for a plain kitchen sink So anyway in my own houses and apartments I always ended up ripping out the stainless steel kitchen sink And if I built the places from scratch myself I never included stainless steel sinks from the get-go all except the one house which had A Visani stainless steel sink in it. I'd never even heard of Visani when I looked at the stainless steel sink I thought oh no, here's another one. I gotta rip out The place was six years old when I bought it So it had some fairly new appliances and sinks etc and that sink and I don't know why it just was

[14:16] Unstainable absolutely fantastically resistant to any kind of stains or scratches So when I moved in realizing it had been built six years earlier and it wasn't stained at all I thought man i'm not going to change this what for on top of that? It was solid as a rock because you know The second biggest problem to have in a stainless steel sink Is that they're stamped out of thin pieces of stainless steel So they flex a bit and you probably know this where the faucet is attached. They move they give a bit They don't feel near as secure as a porcelain sink You could easily flex the faucet handle stainless steel sinks may look good when you first buy them But eventually they start looking grungy and you know, they're not really made for a lifetime of use Anyway, there you have a few appliance and kitchen tips. So enough said about that

[15:02] Oh, and I mentioned ordering sinks, etc from amazon. You can order anything from amazon and they'll ship it to latin america That is anywhere but cuba and venezuela. In fact, one of my gringo expat friends just ordered a bathtub He showed me the order it was 700 bucks It weighed 70 pounds for shipping was around 200 bucks had amazon ship it to his forwarding service in miami By the way, it's good to know as things weigh more and more Your freight forwarding service will charge you less by the pound. They've got a sliding scale for a pound They might charge you five or six bucks But when it's over 50 pounds or 75 or 100 pounds They might only charge you two or three bucks a pound because some of the big stuff and big boxes might come by boat Which is cheaper instead of air. Oh, and by the way, I have a couple expat buddies who live in peru I'll talk about peru. I think on the next show since an amazingly tragic thing has just happened there. They voted

[15:53] I died in the wool Communist as their new president and anybody there who's got a business or has some money at all is shaking in their boots Because in his political platform, he comes right out and says he's going to nationalize private businesses for the good of the masses Just like guess where the old soviet union venezuela and cuba, you know, i've been to peru quite a few times I've never recommended the place except to visit machu picchu that's a must see and last time I was there I think it was about right before covet about a year and a half ago I was at my expat buddy's house and he was ordering something from amazon So just know all you listeners out there amazon will ship anywhere It turns out my buddy had a miami mailbox courier that forwarded his stuff directly to leema Well, it turns out it was such a hassle dealing with the adwana and customs the courier service quit doing it

[16:41] I'm sure a few others have popped up. I'll have to ask him about it But get this when I was there last time he ordered a 32 replacement battery for his hb computer the computer was a few years old it was doing fine But the battery was only charging for like an hour and a half slowly dying So he ordered a new one on amazon 32 bucks And when he went to his cart to check out on amazon There was free shipping to his miami freight forwarding company But there was an additional charge on the last line of his checkout statement 102 dollars and there was a question mark on a box to check out if you wanted to know what that was for It was required by the peruvian Adwana that'd be import tax authorities on every single amazon item coming through to peru So even before peru voted in a kami president the peruvian tax and adwana authorities absolutely gouged everyone using amazon

[17:29] It's not just amazon either. It's for any product you order online like alibaba or ebay, too So my buddy had an extra 102 Tacked on to his purchase of 30 bucks and that's for an item that weighs less than one pound I hate to see what they charge it for big stuff Now just last night when I was thinking about what I was going to say about peru today I went to my own amazon account went to the vitamin page clicked on quercetin 29 bucks for a bottle of 120 and I changed the shipping destination to peru Just to see how much it was going to cost and just like a year and a half ago 102 charge popped up in the checkout window. That's Another reason I prefer central america over south america

[18:15] The shipping freight and taxes to import anything to south america is two to three to five even ten times more In some odd cases than it is to ship to central america And that's reflected in all the stores and tiendas that sell things that have been imported And why for example in brazil an iphone costs twice to three times as much as it does in the states or in the central America, but just wait inflation is rearing its ugly head in a big way Now you found that out last time you went to the grocery store, right? Prices will go much higher worldwide Of course the official word out of the us government from tweety bird. Janet. Yellen Is that inflation will be minimal and temporary kind of like her brain power minimal and temporary well She's another snaggle-toothed lying Pusball that I definitely punch in the face if I ever saw her in a checkout line

[19:03] I mean come on. Here's a woman who gets duked millions of dollars for speaking engagements yet She can barely cluck out a sentence speaking of bio and terrible hygiene It appears from the obvious shade of green when she smiles that she hasn't yet learned how to brush her twisted teeth Though I understand from dc insiders her minimal hygiene is slightly better than hillary's who washington insiders say if the air turns suddenly Rancid hillary's in the building or the winds just shifted off of the dump And I do mean that in the most loving christian sort of way Now before I get on to the next topic and you're really gonna like this one I want to comment on the nearby construction You may have heard the sounds coming from the show in the last couple of weeks You see every morning at around eight o'clock a crew about six or so people arrive at the construction site next door They're up to their ears building walls laying tile doing carpentry plumbing and electric wiring every day. I hear those guys

[19:53] I overhear some private conversations too And I see them walking in and out of the building taking their breaks Checking their phones telling jokes picking on each other having a lot of laughs And really as dirty as scummy and dusty as they get in construction work. They're having a great old time They love their jobs even when they're stuck out in the hot sun on the roof or covered in muck That's one thing I got to say about latin american workers Unlike workers up in the first world who I believe 90 percent of them don't like their jobs and would much rather be doing something else The latin american working class down here reminds me of my dad's generation They were just glad to have steady jobs because their parents our grandparents went through the uncertainty of the great depression And that's something you'll notice the longer you live down here in latin america the genuine happiness of most workers though One of the unfortunate things i've seen in the last maybe two or three years is that it seems every young worker under 25

[20:44] And that under 25 crowds usually always the gophers and the grunt workers Well these days nearly all of them are wearing their pants at half-mast. Yeah, they're all heavily influenced by the brain dead ass crack American rappers though. Don't get me wrong. None of them have that rotten rapper attitude going But they absolutely have glommed on to that most horrible fashion trend Ass crack pants. I know i've mentioned this before but hey Just be aware of the fact if you're remodeling doing a building project or have some repair work to be done when the repair guys Come and there's a guy under 25. You'll either want to laugh or cry Now I have no idea if you're building a house up in the states or doing some remodeling If ass crack pants boys show up on your job, if I was a boss, I wouldn't allow it But maybe up by you if the boss or the owner who's paying for the project thought about laying down some proper rules of job etiquette

[21:35] He'd be afraid to fearing cancellation and the twitter mob being labeled a bigot or a white supremacist racist Now imagine if you've got young daughters in the house and there were guys walking around with their asses hanging out of their pants So I asked a couple of job foremen down here older guys who say to me they believe it's pretty disgusting too But as long as they do the job and nobody complains, they just let it slide In fact just a few days ago. I was talking to a guy whose title is maestro That would be master builder a guy in charge of an entire work crew when I asked him about his three young boy workers And their ass crack pants. He didn't even answer the look on his face said at all He shook his head and gave a wince like my dad used to do in the 70s when he saw a hippie With long hair and john lennon glasses driving a volkswagen bus He'd have a look on his face that explicitly said the hell is this world coming to johnny?

[22:23] Well, we know what happened to that generation of hippies who later became toxicly indulgent parents and ended up in congress, right? america's become well Gutted and one of the main reasons so many planned bees exist now I don't have kids and I might never have them But if I ever had one or one lived under my roof, there'd be no ass crack pants allowed Oh by the way that maestro that master builder was talking about when discussing his ass crack pants boy workers He did comment. He said I don't know how or why their wives and girlfriends would ever allow it He said if my kid tried to wear his pants like that that'd just make his ass all the more tempting to kick Or something like that. He'd said it in very fast spanish Now i'm sure you've all heard the news that el salvador is the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender

[23:10] And currency that means the banks will have to accept it all the stores and tiendas will too It'll run parallel to the country currency, which is the us dollar You know that right for the last 20 years. It's been the us dollar and ever depreciating funny money currency itself You knew that too now understandably banks and financial institutions are totally pissed off about this Why because it takes the control the power the usual gouge the slice of the pie they're cut away from them Question is how and why did it happen first in the world to little el salvador? Well, here's the scoop. You won't hear in the lame stream news Who will only tell you how bad it is for society in the world? You know kind of like how the lame stream tells us if we don't get vaxxed We're gonna endanger the entire planet You know for the last couple of years part of my seminar has been in el salvador

[23:57] Both in the capital and on the pacific beach side where even a couple of years ago You'd see little bitcoin signs everywhere What you might not realize is that the pacific coast of el salvador is a world-class olympic? Surfing area with surfers coming in from all over the world as mentioned It's one of the stops on my seminar That was the seed that started the beach front bitcoin revolution in el salvador just a couple years ago already Though no one ever heard of it outside the international surfing community And of course if you visited one of those little towns on the beach yourself Now one of the first things you might hear is that bitcoin transactions cost a few bucks So how can you buy a cup of coffee or a soda pop with bitcoin? And poor salvadorians 60 to 70 percent of them who don't even have a bank account They'll never use bitcoin the transactions fees alone will kill them

[24:43] Well, that just means you haven't studied the subject or you haven't been down here to see how they're doing it Turns out salvadorians can switch back and forth from bitcoin to dollars using what's called a strike Wallet that's been around for a while and what's called a bitcoin beach wallet, which was developed by a bunch of wealthy Crypto surfers who've been coming down to el salvador beaches for 15 or so years now So people keep sending money back and forth between the bitcoin beach wallet and strike wallet Depending if they want to use bitcoin or dollars or vice versa and the fees in the low sense almost close to nothing There aren't transaction fees of dollars as most people who aren't in the know seem to think So they've developed an excellent work around it allows a person making two or even 300 bucks a month to use bitcoin for practically everything

[25:29] It's what you might call a bootstrap trading engine. That's been developed specifically by these bitcoin surfers Now one of these bitcoin beach surfer crypto guys. His name is mike peterson who is now Personal friends with the president of el salvador. You gotta wonder how'd that happen? Well, here's how it started bitcoin beach is a project in el salvador They set out to show that bitcoin could be used day to day by everyone as a long-term investing strategy For people who have never invested in anything except maybe their own little tienes houses and farms because 60 percent of them don't even have bank Accounts and this group of surfing crypto guys set out to prove even the poorest of poor Could have empowerment in their lives and get a financial education out of it, too The thing is you see if you visited those little beach towns before three years ago before bitcoin hit

[26:15] You'd see lots and lots of tiny local businesses that wouldn't accept credit cards because small business owners had no credit Or no financial history and could not qualify for merchant accounts and therefore could never qualify to accept a visa or mastercard So it started out as a project principally to benefit people who were cut out of the banking system Including hundreds of small business owners because let's face it when you're an international surfing destination with people coming from all over The world they come not with cash but with surfboards and credit cards And if you're a small mom and pop grocery store or restaurant and don't accept credit cards You're so well, by the way salvador's president bukele who got this whole thing rowing Went out of his way many times to say that the inspiration behind him

[27:01] Ramming the bitcoin as a currency legislation was all because of what was happening at bitcoin beach But too bad we're getting towards the end of the show now next show i'm going to pick up where we left off I promise you're going to hear things they'll never talk about in the lame stream media because The banks who are an absolute fear of cryptocurrencies are in control of the lame street media narrative But you knew that already, right? And if you didn't you can just keep dancing to the music on the deck of that titanic Just keep humming that lame brain refrain. Don't worry be happy You've been listening to the expat files living in latin america If you need some help with your own plan b we can schedule a one-on-one phone or skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week long expat insider seminar in central america

[27:50] Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan b. Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com nos vamos