Travel Treasure

Cindy's Nail Salon on Rockville Pike, in the suburbs of Washington DC, was not at all where I expected to score the world's most luscious box of mangoes. I hadn't been in the market for produce, but sitting in the salon waiting for my nails to dry, I noticed a steady stream of young nail technicians slipping out the front door in pairs, and re-entering a few minutes later laden with plastic bags overflowing with greens and bulging with ripe fruit. Craning my neck, I could just see, across the parking lot, a minivan with its back door open to the sky, colorful boxes stacked within. An older Vietnamese man and a tiny woman buzzed around it, clearly doing a brisk business.

Holding my hands out so as not to mar the wet polish, and shuffling my feet in their salon flip-flops, I made my way to the front of the salon, and, after making eye contact with the salon majordomo I tilted my head toward the scene outside. "Can I buy?" I asked.

In that moment, I was changed, in her eyes, from a client to a comrade, a sister in arms in the quest for food so tasty it could only be gotten off the back of a truck, or at least a minivan. Her stern face was transformed by her open grin, and her eyes twinkled at me. We shared a secret.

She summoned a young nail tech to escort me outside, to the minivan. My young guide quickly found the twenty dollars in my pocket I guided her to, and she proceeded to rapidly bargain for me a veritable bounty of mangoes, lychees, rambutans, and amaranth, pausing only for my approval of what she selected. Back at the salon, she deposited the lot on the chair next to me and disappeared back to work.

Around me, the other clients kept their heads down, tapping at their phones, completely oblivious to the miracle of the pop-up farmers market.

I love to travel. Living in a major city, I travel even without traveling. Within two miles from my house, I can parachute into a the cultures of China, Vietnam, Colombia, and Sri Lanka. Any venue -- grocery stores, nail salons, soccer clubs -- organized by a single dominant immigrant group can be a portal into that group's culture.

We just have to look up from our phones.