#424 – Hygiene, Parasites, and Cultural Insights 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 I wonder Hello there all you expat 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 Now you all certainly remember a while back when I was talking about Chinese restaurants in Latin America They're everywhere and they all pretty much suck terribly and I guarantee you if you hit a few of them You'll be sick or feel generally crappy more times than not in the next few hours

[00:49] Why I don't think I have to tell you but here goes anyway Well for one the food preparation is totally unsanitary and if you go into the bathrooms You'll see there's almost never any paper towels And if there's a towel at all it's cloth and it's usually been hanging there all day or even all week And it's always damp the so I'll leave it to your imagination what that means Which is why expat Eddie always says never look in the kitchen or going to the bathroom before you sit down to eat not in a Chinese restaurant in Latin America as a matter of fact that big problem and The fact that eight or nine years ago There was basically no fresh good sushi in Central America was the impetus Behind the reason why expat Eddie opened up a very successful sushi restaurant

[01:39] In fact, it's a chain now Oh and by the way If you want instant proof of the horribly unsanitary techniques they use in Chinese restaurants and in a lot of other low-end Latin American restaurants Just watch the waiter or the waitress as they bring in your food more often than not especially in Chinese restaurants The plates are of heaping helpings and overloaded with food which at first glance you'd think is a great thing Man, are you getting a lot for your money? Which is reason one why most people go to Chinese restaurants, but note the waiters fingers are often dipped in the edges of the food As he's bringing it to you because you can hardly avoid it when the food is practically falling off the edges And they've yet to figure out they could use big trays to carry a number of plates instead The waiter carries each plate by the edge thus nearly always getting his fingertips in your food

[02:29] So what you might say especially you backpacker folks out there who I know are used to occasionally eating with your fingers I know I've seen it myself many times and you're not dead yet, right? So then you might say the average person from India or the average person from the Middle East eats with his fingers Which is true, but remember the average life expectancy for one of those characters is like 10 or 15 years less than a first-world person Oh, and by the way, if you've ever been to the Middle East or India You'll know that they eat with their right hands and they wipe their butts with their left hand So do remember that if you're ever over there and you shake somebody's hand, especially you lefties out there All right Just to review if you're in a Chinese restaurant in Latin America or any middle to low-end restaurant in Latin America

[03:15] Keep an eye on your waiter's fingers while he or she is bringing you your plate Not to mention keep an eye out when your waiter or waitress is setting down your forks and knives The so-called silverware. What a misnomer, huh? Oh, and by the way way back when you know forks and knives used to be silver Or silverware and you know why they use silver at first glance. It sounds very impractical, right? You know, it really was a hardship to have real silverware because it was so damn expensive But way back when even poor families had a couple of basic place settings of silverware in the house Because it's been an age-old fact for centuries that silver is antibacterial Why do you think so many people use colloidal silver today? Which is why the Romans and the Egyptians used to throw a silver coin in every jug of water that they stored and

[04:07] Why they'd throw a silver nugget in the bottom of every well that way they knew they most likely would not get sick now They had no idea about bacteria or anything, but they just knew it worked So from there, it was an easy progression to silverware, but I digress as usual Anyway, keep your eyes open and note that not just in Chinese restaurants in Latin America But almost all medium and low-end restaurants your waiter will often lay down your place setting forks and knives By grabbing the business end of those utensils Which I don't have to tell you is the part you're eventually gonna stick in your mouth Over and over again, not to mention notice when cups and glasses are delivered to your table Often your waiter or waitress will be carrying them around by the edges too Which is why I don't recommend anyone drink out of a glass or a cup

[04:54] Meaning stick to the can or the bottle whenever you can and of course you already know my feeling about ice cubes So if what I've said is just a bit too finicky for you and you think I'm going overboard Well, if you have a cast-iron stomach, you might not get sick I mean, let's face it. The locals don't seem to get sick any more than we do in our home countries But I'll never forget what a couple pharmacists and medical doctors told me here. They said that virtually 100% of the lower middle class and indigenous population in Latin America Which makes up 50 to 80 percent in most countries are harboring gut and intestinal parasites And they're not talking about the symbiotic types that we all have in our guts to help in our digestion They're talking about the unwanted freeloader type like tapeworms, etc

[05:41] In fact, the word Lombreese, that's L-O-M-B-R-I-Z Lombreese is a very common word you'll hear down here quite a bit in reference to intestinal worms like tapeworms Nice, huh? So then you might ask why isn't half the population feeling sick all the time and chronically lethargic Which is in fact just the opposite You'll find Latins rarely complain about anything except maybe from a chronic lack of dough and the truth is Tropical medicine specialists down here will tell you that it's all kept in check and in balance by a diet That's heavy on lemons and limes and of course dozens of varieties of hot peppers So the next time you're in a crowd try not to think of all the nearby happy worms But of course now that I mentioned it, that's not quite possible

[06:28] Now note, if you're just getting this information now and you've been down in Latin America a while You might be all freaked out by the fact that you might have worms yourself, right? And if you're a backpacker, you can bet money on it So what can you do about it besides dousing yourself with a few fiery hot peppers or heading to the nearest pharmacy and Downing a few nasty pills Well, the fact is you can completely clean out your own system by downing a few cloves of garlic a day for about a week raw garlic Now if you do that, you won't be kissing any person anytime soon But you'll be kissing those long braces. Goodbye Well, by the way, if you have a dog down here The easy way to get rid of parasites is to shove a garlic clove down his mouth, too Nope, he won't like it, but it works

[07:14] Oh, by the way, if you want more proof that the average Chinese restaurant down here is completely unsanitary Try ordering some Chinese or oriental dish with shrimp and notice They never removed that nasty black mud vane your mother told you always to get rid of So if you don't mind eating multiple crustacean poop shoots, I guess that's okay But note that's why when you eat ceviche down here in Latin America, you know, that's uncooked seafood That's been basted for a while in lemon juice to cure it Note that you can get sick after eating that stuff Even if the shrimp or the seafood has been fully cured by the citric acid Getting sick is all about the type and the concentration of bacteria, you know and your resistance to it That said even if the flesh of the seafood or shrimp is fully cured with the citric acid

[08:02] Getting sick often depends on how many of those mud vane poop shoots you've slept down and as far as I'm concerned One is too many That's why so many of us expats have learned the hard way that you don't want to eat anything That's not cooked unless you've prepared it yourself So anyway if you don't mind the thought of that or the Montezuma's revenge that often accompanies a night in a Chinese restaurant if You can handle it like the locals do or for that matter the very low-rent backpacker crowd who seem to favor Chinese Restaurants because of the cheap food too. Well, then you could just disregard everything I just said You know what? They say you pays your money and you takes your chances But some advice if you insist on eating cheap Chinese or if you like cheap restaurants or street food

[08:48] Keep a handful of those amoeba pills handy. They'll set you straight for only about a buck or two When by the way, those amoeba pills are monsters. Some of them are as big as Alka seltzers So for all you delicate folks out there with touchy gag reflexes Good luck trying to wolf them down and how do I know that well because the first couple years I was down here in Latin America, I used to hit those Chinese restaurants, too So way back when both expat Eddie and I were hitting those amoeba pills at least once a month But you know what in the last 10 years I haven't had to use them once and neither has Eddie Just a few words of wisdom. So why am I talking about Chinese restaurants again? Well because if you recall I mentioned that practically no Chinese restaurants in Latin America have fortune cookies

[09:35] And you know to us gringos, that's one of the merits of going to a Chinese restaurant up north It's all part of the experience, right? I mean, come on Chinese restaurants without fortune cookies That's like getting weighted on at McDonald's by someone who doesn't have acne Now, I don't know if I mentioned this story before But there used to be a game a lot of us gringos that play up in Chicago each time We'd go into a Chinese restaurant at the end when the bill came in you opened up your fortune cookies You were supposed to read it out loud and then add the phrase in bed You got that you add the phrase in bed B-E-D Which always added a lot of laughs to the lame words of Confucian wisdom printed on the things You should try it yourself and see what I mean, but everyone at the table has to do it

[10:24] That makes it all the more fun. Yeah, stupid fun, but fun. Well, you'll see here's a few examples Here goes a friend asks only for your time not your money in bed How about this one a golden egg of opportunity falls into your lap in bed How about this one now is a good time to finish unwelcome tasks in bed Or this one with twice the effort anything can be accomplished in bed All right. All right. I know you had to be there even if it doesn't work so well on the radio Go ahead and try it yourself However down here in Latin America You'll never be able to make a fool yourself like I just did because there are no fortune cookies

[11:11] And I still can't figure out why however, and I'm sure this will make you crack up There's a company a paper products company called Saba Saba and their biggest best-selling product is a feminine hygiene napkin as it turns out It's a low-cost Latin alternative brands to the ones, you know, like Kotex and Tampax, etc Get this now just recently as a marketing ploy they just started putting fortunes and sayings and even beauty tips on the Inside wrappers of their feminine hygiene products Which as it turns out is a really good idea because people are catching on they're buying them and reading those sayings and getting a kick out You know what? I think someone in the marketing department of that company must have been to a Chinese restaurant up north

[11:59] So if ladies can get their fortunes and tips like that, what about guys someone I think should put fortunes in condoms But then again, they'd have to be very very uplifting phrases because guys are quite sensitive about that part of the anatomy So then you might wonder who told me about the fortunes and beauty tips on those feminine hygiene products expat Eddie Of course, he saw some female workers in the break room passing those things around and chuckling now as far as I know I don't think there's any feminine napkin product up in the States that has fortunes or beauty and health tips on it I wonder how that would go down and you know when I heard that that Saba company was doing that here The first thing I thought was what the hell's wrong with the Chinese restaurants? What's the disconnect here? I can just picture in a 40-story building somewhere in Mexico City a Latin American marketing brain trust

[12:50] nixing the idea of fortune cookies Nah, that won't work. The public won't buy that in favor of fortune feminine hygiene pads. Yeah, that's a Unique. I mean come on ever since I was a little kid There were three sure things about going to a Chinese restaurant You get that nice little basic white origami folding box with the metal handles along with fortune cookies and an MSG hangover Yet the only sure thing you get in a Chinese restaurant down here is that MSG hangover and coal in trouble Oh and since we're talking about business and unpredictable marketing schemes down here in Latin America Did you know that one of the most common ways that a business advertises for walk-in traffic is to hire a portable disco a couple of beautiful girls in bathing suits or skimping outfits and

[13:38] Have them dance all day under a tent in your parking lot or near your front door now being Latinas These ladies really shake their booties and they do get tired So in between dance numbers they hand out little freebie gifts and pamphlets promoting products or the business whatever now Expat Eddie who is quite a big success down here especially in Salvador Says the second best way to promote your business besides the disco and the red-hot dancing girls outside is to hire some teenage kid for 200 bucks a month to give a free car wash to any client that comes in and buys something now that might not make sense To you up in the states, but down here in Latin America It does two things one it obviously draws attention because you will have a big sign out front that says all clients get a free Car wash and two what you're doing is you're creating a self-selecting

[14:26] Client base because now you're gonna be drawing an upscale crowd to whatever business you have a bar a restaurant a surf shop Whatever you're selling whether it's gourmet prune juice bush Obama toilet plungers It doesn't matter a free car wash will bring in a higher-end crowd because as you know If you listen to this program about 60 to 80 percent of Latin families do not have cars because they can't afford them So that means you're gonna be drawing from that upper 20 percent or so who have cars and Hopefully some disposable income to drop on those collector item toilet plungers So remember free car washes automatically cut down on the chicken bus crowd However, like expat Eddie says if your market is the chicken bus crowd bring on the dancing girls and believe me. That's no joke

[15:13] Businesses down here regularly put up a tent a mobile disco and bring in the dancing girls Always in slinky sexy tight outfits, too Now I know up in the first world this would be considered gauche and low-class and besides that you probably couldn't get any girls to do It the embarrassment of shimmying away in a target parking lot as uncle Oscar walks by would be way too much for a first world Girl to take but not down here in Latin America So for practically any special event and sometimes for no special reason at all There'll be discos and beautiful dancing girls in parking lots giving away free samples of the product of the moment Believe it or not you go to an Ace Hardware Walmart at Costco You'll see what North Americans might call sexist displays right in their parking lots, too

[15:59] Don't think you just see that kind of stuff in low-end commercial centers and crummy shopping malls You'll see that kind of thing in front of banks Even in the parking lots of major first world franchises that would never dare to try such a thing in their stores up north down here in Latin America that kind of marketing's been Going on since the dawn of disco and believe me some of these girls could be beauty queens And whether they pay them on the very high end maybe 50 bucks a day now don't get me wrong They're not working full-time. They might be only putting in a Friday or a Saturday So good-looking girls can make a hundred bucks a week for two days work And that's why they consent to do it because the average person would have to work a full month to make 250 or 300 a month and these ladies because they're very good-looking can make 400 bucks a month working

[16:47] Just two days a week about eight days a month However, they're always being moved around from business to business from shopping center to shopping center They never have a permanent job in one place So for example if you're used to going to a particular Walmart You'll always see fresh new beautiful faces dancing to the disco out in the parking lot now There's a certain Spanish name for models who do that kind of work. They're called Eddie cons EDC and s now don't confuse these beautiful girls usually outside of the store in the parking lot, etc For the girls you see inside a Walmart or Costco giving away free products Who might also be in skintight skippy outfits with logos on them, but are generally not half as beautiful as the girls outside They're called impulse adores like the English word impulse

[17:35] Basically translating to girls that try to get you to make an impulse buy because they're also hawking products These impulse adores that work in the store are not the beauty queen type and therefore work every day and get the minimum wage Which is 200 to 300 a month So the reality is the more beautiful a young girl is down here the more money She makes when she works as a product pusher now Note that these impulse adores the girls that work inside the stores giving little products away like yogurt and free coffee, etc They would like nothing better than to be one of those girls outside in the tent In fact, the impulse adores the girls inside are jealous of the Eddicane's and you know What it shows and although they dislike them and call them pre potente

[18:25] Which means stuck up every impulse adora would really rather be an Eddicane for one thing that dancing Eddicane is outside get a lot more attention from the public and it is a very good and safe way to come in contact With the occasional upscale eligible young guy who just might be their ticket out of middle class or lower middle class poverty Because you know almost all of these girls Eddicane's and impulse adores come from the middle classes or lower middle classes Now, please don't send me emails condemning me for talking about this stuff Like I condone it because I'm not I'm just saying that's the way it is down here And in fact, none of these ladies gives a single thought to the macho Sexism angle because it's just so common here and it always has been that way So again, if you're opening a brick-and-mortar business

[19:10] You might consider the disco and the dancing girls out front or a free car wash though like expat Eddie said hiring a teenage kid for a couple hundred bucks a month to wash cars in your lot is infinitely simpler than organizing a disco a tent and a bunch of dancing beauties and If you're the owner of the business, you'll have a lot less trouble with your wife or girlfriend Now just one more thing about these Eddicans and impulse adores one of the favorite stories that Vacationing gringos bring back to Chicago and Cleveland once they've been down here are those unforgettable memories of the ladies They see in those stores. It makes quite the impression on traveling first world guys However, when it comes to educated first world gringas coming down here and seeing that stuff They generally have a completely different spin on it

[19:57] So what I've heard from so many vacationing gringo guys down here is that they Mustn't gush about it too much when they get back up north not in front of first world ladies anyway Doesn't that sound like another great first world masters thesis project again? I'm just reporting the facts ma'am. And now let's get to a couple of quick emails. This one's from just another John Now let me point out that even though he says he's just another John He was a guy that came down to one of my earlier expat wisdom seminars and now he's down here for good I think he's been over a year in Central America So we're talking about a guy who's got a lot of boots on the ground down here. So pay attention He says Johnny listening to a recent previous show about cars in Latin America When I was back in the states, I used to work as an appraiser for storm-damaged and wrecked cars

[20:48] I know that many of these that were totaled up there ended up down in Latin America In fact, I'm pretty sure that a lawyer down here I know has an audio that was just such one of those wrecked cars from up in the states Then he says you can see some high dollar car makes down here that are certainly Crabbing down the road. Those are totals from our US auctions. I'm sure I know that you could check the VIN numbers on those cars Online, but I don't quite remember the site name Anyway, as usual keeping it real down here just another John. Well, what do I have to say about that? Well quite a long time ago probably in the first hundred shows I went into quite some detailed on wrecked cars that do end up down here in Latin America So to review a tiny bit

[21:34] I recommend that you never buy a car down here in Latin America from a lot or in the paper That has come from up in the states because certainly there's a lot wrong with it and it's down here for a reason It was dirt cheap up in the states because it was in a flood or a hurricane or a terrible crash In other words, it was probably totaled up in the states or just too expensive to repair So it was brought down here because labor is just so damn cheap I mean you can get a really good mechanic or body man for like 15 to 20 bucks a day up in the states I'm sure it's more like 30 bucks an hour or more. So in the end it turns out to be quite worth it to bring a car Down here. That's a wreck up in the states and put it all back together So then you might ask how do you know if you're getting a car from up in the states because if they're total that

[22:21] Means they're running a brand new title on them Well, there's three easy ways one of course is to run that VIN number on the internet if you can find this site I'm sure it's pretty easy and for you uninitiated people out there mostly ladies who don't know what a VIN number is that stands for vehicle Identification number VIN and you'll find that in a number of places on your car Usually right up on the dashboard near the window on the engine block under the hood on the firewall, too And a couple other places anyway number two the car Definitely is from the states if when you look on the back of the car by the plates or on the trunk There's a chrome logo or decal on it that has the name of an American dealership where the car was bought Sometimes they'll even have the city in the state too like Arlington, Texas

[23:10] You can look that up on the internet, too And finally number three and the most definitive way to tell if your cars come from up in the states is If the speedometer and odometer are in miles per hours at mph instead of kilometers per hour That's abbreviated kph or kmph so if it's in miles per hour It's definitely a car that's come from the states So beware of those three telltale signs if you find any one of those it's coming from the states And it probably was a wreck or was in pretty rotten condition when it was bought at auction up in the states Oh by the way when just another John said in his email that often high-end cars down here will be Crabbing along the road now. That's something you almost never see up in the states

[23:56] But it's very common down here in Latin America that means at some time or another someone have vastly exceeded the carrying capacity and Overloaded that car or truck or whatever so much that they bent the transaxles permanently and or Deformed the wheel mounts bearings and suspension mechanism so that it kind of floats and sways like a crab bouncing down the road So you will see a lot of cars even late model cars that look like they're riding way too low Often with the back two wheels splayed out permanently as if the car is suddenly developed fall in arches So take my advice if you're buying a used car in Latin America Do stand back stoop down low and look at the rear end of the car the wheels must be Perpendicular to the ground if they're the least bit splayed hold on to your wallet and start running in the opposite direction

[24:47] Now related to that I'm sure you've seen in your cars owners manual if you've ever cracked that open or in the inside edge of your car door or in Your trunk a sticker that says your car's maximum load capacity is 800 to 1200 pounds Something like that meaning your average car carries anywhere from four to six 200 pound adults now I can tell you no one I know down here in Latin America has ever done the math in fact I bet not one in 10,000 Latin Americans ever even read the sticker that said my suggestion is they should have the sticker Right on the steering wheel and there should be no math involved. It should be much more simply stated It should just say something like no more than 17 people allowed in this Honda Civic And they should have a similar sticker on the speedometer of all motorcycles saying something like no more than four adults and three children

[25:35] Are allowed on this 85 CC Suzuki just a general useful little tip there I think now if you think I'm exaggerating for effect well, I've got photos how about small cars with 15 16 even 20 people in them and Motorcycles with four five even six people on them in fact I've got a shot of a rice burner like that where the driver is holding two kids There's three other passengers on the back and he's talking on his cell phone at the same time now down here You'll find out that the carrying capacity of a car or truck is never limited to what the manufacturer says the vehicle can hold That data is of absolutely no concern to anyone in fact It seems there's really no limit to the amount of people or cargo you can fit in on or outside the vehicle

[26:22] It seems like every day someone breaks a Guinness record, so then how much is too much well That's easy when the tires are flat and the vehicle bottoms out on the road That's a sure sign you can fit two more people in another sack of cement Okay, now just another John who sent us that email also mentioned that he's an Apple product user He says as an Apple user. You know a rich gringo and all that not Yes, the prices are a little higher down here that said I recently had a problem with my MacBook Air It seems not only it couldn't swim, but it wasn't very waterproof either So in an effort to replace it, I went to one of the Apple shops and sure enough for about 200 bucks I could buy another however what they were selling here in Latin America were not the currently available

[27:11] Models in the US the one they offered me was the same make as I had bought two years ago in the States For $200 more than the prices of current upgraded models signed just another John Well John thanks for that and since I had way too much coffee I'm looking for just another John myself South of the border You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America coming to you twice a week from somewhere south of the border Email me the expat files at gmail.com And don't forget to check out expat wisdom calm to sign up for your free reports on Latin America See you next time. No sway most Spanish