Travel

Why We Don’t Like Some Places We Travel

Posted on by Laughingnomad

On couchsurfing.com there is a thread on a forum with people talking about places they didn’t like and why.  After reading a few posts, a very funny couchsurfing friend who I shall call the “Green Lady of England” finally let loose with this rant.

O gawd lets all moan. I’ll join in. Trouble with the world is that it’s so damn cluttered with all these bloody poor people. Some of them steal. Some of them stare. Some of them just don’t know how to behave around tourists. And they seem to hang around and clutter up the most beautiful places, ie precisely the places we want to visit and where we like to spend our money how we want (mine, typically, on copious amounts of ice cream, chips and rugs). Damn the lot of them. I’m staying home from now on where I only have to do daily battle with the bloody neighbours and the surly staff on the trains and in the shops. You know where you stand in England – we all keep our expectations low in anticipation of disappointment. Works for us.

Karrrrggghhhh

The Green Lady really made me laugh! One person can love a place and the next person can’t stand it…usually for an isolated experience that is specific to that person. I think many of what we term bad experiences are largely due to attitude. If we are traveling to truly experience the reality of another country then we have to accept that these experiences are just part of the learning how other people live… inconveniences and all. In 10 years of constant travel, having my computer stolen on the Prague subway was the only experience I would call bad…mainly because of the trouble in replacing it because it was a MAC.

And a WHOLE lot of other things happened too..a teacher strike in Oaxaca that paralyzed the city for months…and I just returned from Thailand where the entire shopping area and business districts were paralyzed for 6 weeks with up to 100,000 demonstrators that ended in 3 days of rioting that burned down the second largest shopping mall in Asia and at least 25 other buildings and the burning of thousands of tires that turned the city black…and the deaths of 80+ people including 2 journalists…one Italian and one Japanese. And others critically wounded. And a curfew that is still in place. Imagine having to be in your hotel from 9pm until 6am. When one up-country demonstrator asked why they burned down Central World he answered that he has no sympathy for the store owners. We have no money, he said. “Do you understand?”

This is the reality of the poor up-country farmers in Thailand in the face of institutional corruption. Not that I support all the violence. And some backpackers are grousing in the CS Bangkok Group! I remember a couple with 2 small children in Oaxaca City who stopped me to ask what was going on. They were quite angry as they were stepping around burned tires in the intersections. Knowing what the lives of the poor mountain people were like, I had no sympathy for them.

But I just choose to not consider these bad experiences. I am a guest in these countries. They are not there to accommodate me. Although the one thing that does irritate me are the topless women on the beach in Thailand because it is so disrespectful of the locals who really don’t like it but would never say anything.

Happy Travels Everyone!

I Used To Make Fun Of Rick Steves

Posted on by Laughingnomad

 I used to make fun of Rick Steves.  No more!

Here are a few gems from a Salon.com interview just in case you don’t want to read to the end:

Salon: “Steves wants Americans to get over themselves. He wants us to please shed our geographic ego. Everybody should travel before they vote,” he has written.”

So if McCain and Palin had won, what would we have seen abroad?”

Steves: “More and more Americans wearing Canadian flags”

LOL.  During 7 years of near constant travel, I used to say I was from Canada.  My husband used to say he was from Iceland.  I always said I wanted a T-shirt that said in 6 languages: “I didn’t vote for Bush.”  Election night there were parties all over Mexico. Now they are watching us.

Steves: “As a travel writer, I get to be the provocateur, the medieval jester. I go out there and learn what it’s like and come home and tell people truth to their face. Sometimes they don’t like it. But it’s healthy and good for our country to have a better appreciation of what motivates other people. The flip side of fear is understanding. And you gain that through travel.”

What’s the most important thing people can learn from traveling?

Steves: “A broader perspective. They can see themselves as part of a family of humankind. It’s just quite an adjustment to find out that the people who sit on toilets on this planet are the odd ones. Most people squat. You’re raised thinking this is the civilized way to go to the bathroom. But it’s not. It’s the Western way to go to the bathroom. But it’s not more civilized than somebody who squats. A man in Afghanistan once told me that a third of this planet eats with spoons and forks, and a third of the planet eats with chopsticks, and a third eats with their fingers. And they’re all just as civilized as one another.”

The “ugly American” thing is associated with how big your country is. There are not just ugly Americans, there are ugly Germans, ugly Japanese, ugly Russians. Big countries tend to be ethnocentric. Americans say the British drive on the “wrong” side of the road. No, they just drive on the other side of the road. That’s indicative of somebody who’s ethnocentric. But it doesn’t stop with Americans. Certain people, if they don’t have the opportunity to travel, always think they’re the norm. I mean, you can’t be Bulgarian and think you’re the norm.

It’s interesting: A lot of Americans comfort themselves thinking, “Well, everybody wants to be in America because we’re the best.” But you find that’s not true in countries like Norway, Belgium or Bulgaria. I remember a long time ago, I was impressed that my friends in Bulgaria, who lived a bleak existence, wanted to stay there. They wanted their life to be better but they didn’t want to abandon their country. That’s a very powerful Eureka! moment when you’re traveling: to realize that people don’t have the American dream. They’ve got their own dream. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing.

That is certainly true of many people I have talked to around the world and most people I talk to in Mexico who have migrated to the north. The fruit seller speaks a little English. I ask if he has ever worked in the north. Yes, he and others say. Three years. Six years. Ten years, the guy in the tiny mountain village 7 hours from the nearest town in Guatemala says. The guy on the corner of my block whose wife sells tamales worked in the U.S. 30 years. But eventually they usually come back. If given an economic choice they would choose to stay in their own country where they can enjoy their own language, their own culture…and their families. One of my eureka moments. Read More

Alastair Says It For Us

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A 25 year old Brit, Alastair Humphreys, spent more than four years bicycling through Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, North America, and Asia. This is what he says he learned:

“That the world is a good place filled with nice, normal people. It’s not all filled with the terrible events we see on the news. I learned to trust more. I saw my strengths and weaknesses highlighted in the good and bad times: loneliness, self-pity, determination, an openness to get on and communicate with whatever kind of person I’m with, a stubbornness not to quit, a fear of failure. I came to really appreciate my friends, family, country, and good fortune.”

An Argument For Travel

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Neuroscience researchers have concluded that “we can pretend we are free of bias, and avoid thinking about how to deal with our own deeply ingrained tendency to discriminate. Or we can take a lesson from neuroscience, and even from dumb computer agents, which can switch from noncooperation to cooperation if they learn that it is in their best interests.”

“Unconscious biased responses (amygdala activation),” they say, “can be significantly reduced by experience and familiarity.”

Oct. 31, 2007
Robert Burton
Salon.com

We’re Prejudiced, Now What?

Scientists now tell us bias toward others may be innate. But that doesn’t mean we have to behave like Bill O’Reilly.
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All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They
— Rudyard Kipling

I am stuck in rush-hour traffic. Maybe I can find a decent radio program to distract myself from the blasting horns, angry looks and cussing behind rolled-up windows. But the radio is worse than the traffic. On NPR, a Washington think tank guru is arguing that “my 30-plus years of studying the Middle East has convinced me that democracy is more appropriate for some cultures than others.” A second NPR station is airing a debate on the medical rights of “illegal aliens.” On Fox, Bill O’Reilly is talking about a recent dinner in Harlem, N.Y., with Al Sharpton: “I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks.”

Everywhere I turn, someone is honking at the other guy. Once upon a time, when psychology was king of the behavioral hill, I thought that prejudice could be explained by upbringing, cultural influences, socioeconomic disparities and plain old wrong thinking. Despite any hard evidence from soft sciences, I nursed the vaguely optimistic belief that education and the teaching of tolerance might make a dent in the bigotry and racism of “others.” And yet sitting in stalled traffic, I cannot shake the irrational feeling that “those in the other cars” are different from “us in our car.” If my mind seems intent upon making such ludicrous and meaningless distinctions, is there more here than meets the purely psychological I?
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Contemplating Going “Home”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I was quickly stopped by a policeman. “Have you been drinking? Have you been smoking pot? Your eyes are all red! Then he made me stand, in high heels, on one foot and count to forty. Then follow his finger moving back and forth with my eyes. Then he let me, shaken, go.

Last time I got off the plane in Portland from almost a year in Asia, I found myself jet-lagged and completely disoriented…driving on the “wrong” side of the road.

Found this blog by a Chinese-American on Bootsnall. He is probably much younger but his experience is none-the-less very similar to mine.

Coming Home: Sharks Also Need Constant Motion
By: Jeffrey Lee

“Coming home meant coming down. It was easier to stay up. I’d return home to piles of bills and an empty refrigerator. Buying groceries, I’d get lost – too many aisles, too many choices; cool mist blowing over fresh fruit; paper or plastic; cash back in return? I’d wanted emotion but couldn’t find it here, so I settled for motion.

Out at night, weaving through traffic, looking for trouble, I’d lose myself in crowds. Gaggles of girls with fruit-colored drinks talked about face products and film production. I’d see their lips move, look at their snapshot smiles and highlighted hair. I didn’t know what to say.
Read More