The Joy of Procuring Exotic Stuff from Really Far Away

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 02.19.02 | 2:32 PM ET

After she returned home from her Bora-Bora vacation, Debbie Seaman contacted Tahiti to special-order the same soap stocked in her hotel room. Why? Not because it gets her any cleaner than the stuff she can buy at the local store, she writes in Sunday’s New York Times, but because its scent takes her right back to an azure lagoon. Seamen doesn’t confine such pleasures to soap, either: “When I eat bona fide Dijon mustard, for example, I like to pretend I’m back at the Paris bistro where, following the lead of the French, I first tried it on my frites instead of ketchup. I want my eyes to tear up, my nostrils to quiver, and my taste buds to revel in recognition.”