Like my Indo-European ancestors, I travel a lot, forty-eight countries and counting,

slightly less than one a year, but I figure to rectify that soon. But who’s counting? No, I haven’t been to the Arctic Circle yet, but I’ve come close. I’ve watched the sun surf the Atlantic Ocean at Reykjavik in June, refusing to go down until the clock hits 2300 hours, like Michael Jordan finally laying the ball in after a twenty foot long jump and immeasurable hang time. Short of a season in Uranus (pronounced YOUR-anus), that’s the closest I’ll ever get to seeing the Sun wobble gently in the middle of the sky, going nowhere ultimately, at least not relative to my own position. These days I triangulate myself mostly between the US, Latin America, and Thailand. If I didn’t triangulate myself, then how would I know where I truly am? Right now Thailand wins on points, decimal points. The same house in the US would cost me at least ten times as much as what I pay in Thailand. Also, that’s where my wife is, so follow the pull of gravity. This is old-fashioned gravity, not the Einsteinian geometrical function. No, Tang’s there literally pulling. Tang’s my wife. She’s more than a breakfast drink. Thai women are beautiful, but they’re out of their minds; out of their minds and into their bodies. People ask me what Thailand’s like and I say it’s like Mexico, except that the food is good and the women are beautiful. Those are gross over-simplifications, of course, but that doesn’t stop me from saying it. If it did, I wouldn’t be writing this tractatus right now. Mexico beats Thailand hands down in arts, culture, and literature, though. Thailand is not an intellectual culture. Asia is a woman; Europe is a man. Thailand is the breeding ground, a Buddhist magnetic field of passive attraction, flowers waving gently in the wind. The middle path lies right between the legs.

Wander Love

I judge a country by the beauty of its women. Even after thirty years of travel, there’s still a lump in my throat, still a lump in my pants at the thrill and fear of landing in a country for the first time.  Unfortunately, Venezuela and the Caribbean don’t seem to have the lithe blithe femmes carrying a tray of fruit on their heads like you’d want them to, all smiles and sex and shortness of breath.  In actuality, the only women I’ve ever seen with fruit on their heads are the Hindu Balinese ladies on their way to temple with offerings, legs strapped together with tube skirts for virgins, sex the last thing on their minds.  Venezuela is part of the Caribbean segment of Latino culture, hot, kinky-haired, and thick of speech, akin to Panama and the Spanish Antilles, and Central America to a lesser extent, not surprising since it shares the same tub with them.  In Panama, salesmen line the streets in front of their stores, clapping their hands in short staccato bursts, as if that sense or urgency will inspire increased sales.  In Venezuela stores have long surrendered their fronts to the throngs of ambulatory vendors appropriating the public right-of-way for their private benefit to the point where the sidewalks are almost impossibly impassable.  This seems to be a growing trend, even in countries like Venezuela and Thailand that have technically left the Third World, as least in terms of GNP.  Unfortunately the flight of the filthy rich obscures the plight of the filthy poor.  The rich get richer and the poor get babies.    

Night Life

The girls of Ensenada will never make a Playboy shoot.  I know that there are a lot of lonely people in the world, but this is ridiculous!  Nightlife in Mexico is surreal.  With their bouffant hairdos and gaudily painted faces, it’s like something from a dream, or a circus, or maybe just the past.  Mexican women are to normal women as Mexican food and music are to their ‘normal’ counterparts, an acquired taste.  Ensenada comes awake all of a sudden when the love-boat lands.  It’s like night and day.  The only thing I’ve seen like it is in Songkhla, Thailand, where bar girls watch and wait behind counters deadly silent, counting I guess, as if something will surely happen if only they wait long enough.  It does.  The foreign off-shore oil-field support workers come in, somebody rings the bell hanging over the bar, and all of a sudden the place is an uproar, with dancing and drinking erupting as if from a long dormant volcano.  Of course, nothing beats the ‘wookie bar’ along Sukhumvit in Bangkok for surrealism.  If you turned Thailand up on edge to sort out the loose nuts, this is where you’d go to pick them up.  Is this where you end up after cruising the parking lot of Shoney’s Big Boy in Jackson, Mississippi, as a teenager?  It’s bumper-to-bumper on a Saturday night in Ensenada.

LAOS

 

Laos is a ramshackle village, a forgotten place on a forgotten map. Lights go off in the outback at nine, so do it with flashlights. Till then the crowd outside divides according to TV programs, Thai or Chinese, or maybe a French bistro roasting in Asian backwater. By day pigs wander the streets looking for something they might have forgotten, and turkeys keep watch from behind their wire fence. Buffalo jerky lies drying in the sunlight, while flies fall asleep on their pile of shit, and yard-dogs forget to bark. Akha men look like refugees from a Fassbinder film: tribal bikers on dope, kings in their naked village of naked women and naked babies. Still, the babies suck tit like there is no tomorrow, so maybe they’re right. If you want to see Thailand like it used to be, then you go to Laos.

Tourism gets ugly when the natives get restless

Border towns of the world unite! Expose yourselves! Celebrate your absurdities! Strange flowers grow in strange places, back to back to the same fence with a neighbor you hardly know, selling tickets to an arena where reality is the only show. Tijuana, Tangier, and Istanbul define the turf long taken over by Bali, Bangkok, and Bora-Bora, pushing back the borders of consciousness to a neighboring dimension of time and space. Tourists line up to see the natives sing and dance and otherwise entertain the bored wealthy Europeans seeking novelty and succor. The world’s sunny beaches are increasingly filled with sons and their bitches occupying space once given to fishermen, and complaining about the high price of fish. We are all in the same boat, rich and poor, a ghost ship to the future. Don’t rock it, rock out. Time to shake hands rather than fists.

special relativity of travel

Time travel is the best kind.  You don’t have to move a muscle or start an engine.  You just flip the pages of memory and sit back and enjoy as images pass by on the projection screen of your mind’s eye.  There’s only one drawback; it involves getting old.  So, as with most of life itself, it all works out in the long run; the less you’re able to travel in space, the more you’re able to travel in time.  Don’t laugh at that old guy with spit dribbling down his chin; he’s trucking in his mind.  This world is science fiction, the fractal edge of the universe in the process of expansion, chaos meeting the void, waves crashing on the beach, the fragile border area between existence and non-existence.  This is Interzone, the international zone, the chaotic border where languages fall flat and desires become erect.   Modern standard Pidgin English is the lingua franca according to the fashions of the day, Chinese language torture, the tongue of half-baked smiles and crocodile tears.  This is science fiction; this is World War III; this is reality.  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have no idea where I am.  I search an empty mind for the most recent memory, any memory, anything.  What’s a computer without an operating system?  Insert boot disk.  Finally a reference point emerges and the rest can be extrapolated.  Sometimes I wonder if a different memory had popped up, then maybe the entire extrapolated world would be different.  Is history constantly shifting its point of reference?  IS there such a thing as objective reality?

You Can’t Fight US Customs

The Customs guys in Houston had a little table set up on the ramp to the airplane for the international flight. I’ve never seen anything like that, so ignore it. They flag me over. I’m Mr. Profile, by the way. They have a picture of what the typical bad guy looks like; it’s a picture of me. Hey, can I help it if I’ve got an eccentric flair for fashion? I’ve got carry-on luggage, so immediately I’m suspect. Under US law, if you’re carrying more than $10,000 in ‘monetary instruments’, then you gotta’ report it. No big deal; I know all that. I travel all the time; it’s a way of life. I deal with Customs officials all the time; it’s a way of business. I even do my own Customs brokering, so know the rap. They think I’m trying to be a smart-ass. They want to see all my money and such so we do that, counting every penny. Back then, ATM’s weren’t so popular, so I had traveler’s checks, plenty of them, since I buy handicrafts. It all added up to about $9,300 or so, well under the limit, or so I thought. Let’s wrap this up and get on with our lives. But no, the guy with the badge is getting excited. He leaves and comes back a few minutes later, telling me to follow him on to the plane. Like a good citizen, I obey. We go into the cockpit, where he informs me he wants to ‘know what that bulge in my pants is’. I shit you not. I had to pull down my pants for some pervert with a badge while two pilots and a flight attendant looked on. I guess know I know why it’s called a ‘cockpit’.

Turning 50: Years, Countries, Jobs

To be alone in a sea of strange faces is not only natural, not only not dreadful, it’s heavenly, relying on the basic goodness of mankind, unlearning the violence inherent from our fathers’ mistakes.  Still the best part of travel is coming home to the nest, complete with mother and son, and shitting in it.  Sometimes I don’t need to travel; I just need to BE without direction or schedule, an extra in the movie with no lines to read.  I need no extra lines on my face to show my age, like a giant redwood lying shattered on the forest floor cut full girth across the grain of resistance, with no quarter-sawed comfy little beds and all their fibers lying smoothly between their teeth.  Fibers one and all had their lives cut short, perpendicularly open-ended ready for anything, large or small, objets d’art or mansions in the sky.  I need contrast, the constant zigzag between poles, both north and south.  The World’s Oldest Backpacker (WOB) hits 50 (countries, years old, states of mind) with no regrets and unrepentant.  Someone asked, “How long you been travelling?”  Thirty years and counting…. Turning fifty was just like old times, alone and lonely, abandoned by my friends, walking the streets of London without an umbrella or a prayer.  The rain hovers around me like weak soup, reminding me of why my ancestors left so long ago.  I find solace in a pasty pie and a pint, and I’m glad for it.  All that’s behind me now, older but wiser.

Brave New World of Tourism

Tourism is the great modern gold rush, linking past and present, rich and poor, traditional and modern, in a gradual melting pot of cult and culture.  The modern rich get their entertainment by viewing the past as expressed by poor traditional peoples.  The only problem is that it puts itself out of business.  If successful it changes the very thing that drew tourists in the first place.  This is the new colonialism, tourist colonies and sunny beaches, Interzone girls and forty inch screens.  The brave new world is a chicken shit travesty, a burlesque of the real world, dancing girls included.  Entertainment is everything now, the real thing itself, not just what ‘holds us’ between the real things.  

 

 

Confessions of an Aging Backpacker

Okay, okay, I admit it. I like to travel; no more long-winded explanations about business, ‘raw material’, or “I like interesting places, but not the actual traveling to get there”. I like it all, okay? It’s a way of life- the spontaneity, the breeze in your hair, the new experience just around the next bend, the friend-for-life that you just might meet tomorrow. Like the hero in one of my favorite songs, it may not keep you free and clean, but it’ll keep you honest. Who says you have to sit in a little house on a little street in a little town in a little country every day for the rest of your life anyway? My Indo-European-speaking ancestors certainly didn’t. They spread far and wide with nothing much more than a herd of cattle for inspiration. Those humble herders went on to become Greeks, Hindus, Romans, Persians, Russians, Germans, French, British, and Americans. What’s the first thing those modern men and women want to do when they’re old enough to leave home and have enough money to consider their options? For many, the answer is obvious: travel. Like salmon swimming upriver, maybe it’s there in the genes somewhere. For others, maybe it’s in the jeans somewhere.

Of course if you’re a true backpacker, it doesn’t take much money. It takes smarts, and a modicum of daring. After all, luxury is not the goal. Adventure is. Or if not true adventure, then at least novelty. A true backpacker will go hundreds of miles out of his way to cross a border that’s only recently opened and the people are not yet jaded. That’s virgin territory, but we can change all that. We’re only limited by the Backpacker Uncertainty Principle (BUP)- that undiscovered paradise at the end of that new road will be altered by our very presence, and our own perceptions are only that, not reality itself. Technically, of course, you can’t measure our speed and plot our location simultaneously, either, but that seems irrelevant here. Still we persist in our search for novelty. This is, after all, the greatest show on earth, in full Technicolor, Sensurround, and Odorama. You’re only limited by your imagination and your pocketbook. There’s only one guiding Backpacker Rule and it’s simple: Travel light. Okay, you don’t have to drill holes in your toothbrush as one early travel guide jokingly suggested, but you get the idea.

For better or worse, back when I first started, there was no Lonely Planet travel guide, much less hundreds, much less Rough Guide, Moon Publications, or any of the others. Standards were the corny old Frommer books and the series based on ‘Europe on $10 a Day’. South American Handbook was the Bible for Latin America and there were just starting to be some ‘cool’ travel books coming out like ‘Southeast Asia on a Shoestring’, ‘Indonesia Handbook’, ‘Along the Gringo Trail’, and ‘People’s Guide to Mexico’. The last of these is probably my all-time favorite, simply because it told you nothing about where to stay or what to pay, but it told you what it’s like to be part of the landscape. For me, ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. I know what it’s like being a tourist, backpacker or otherwise. That’s nearly the same everywhere. Guesthouses, restaurants, and travel agencies, even mountains, rivers, and deserts are very similar all over the world. Cultures are what distinguish a place. I want to know what it’s like to live there. That’s what backpackers do. You live in a series of situations linked like a chain, neither constant travelling nor constant residence. Sure, I want to know where the temples, museums, and waterfalls are, but I also want to know what’s in the CD and video stores, movie theatres and supermarkets, also. A book doesn’t help much with that, and I used to eschew them religiously. Now I eschew them because I hardly know where I’ll end up when I start out, and extra paper violates Backpacker Rule #1 (and the basics you can get from the Lonely Planet www.ebsite on any computer from any Internet Café anywhere in the world. Ha!)

I like to think of myself as one of the ‘originals’, but actually I’m not. I started in the mid-70’s, what I would call the ‘belated Hippie’ era. That was probably the Golden Age, when many places in the world were still inexpensive, still culturally distinguishable, but developed enough, and globally aware enough, that accommodations catering to this youthful group quickly sprung up, almost overnight in some cases. A Westerner could simply hop on the bus and cross on over to the other side. For an American, that meant Mexico and South America. For a European, that meant Turkey and Africa. For an Australian, Indonesia and Southeast Asia were obvious choices. For all, India was like the jewel in the crown, prized equally for its guru-laden culture and long-time facility with the English language. India, indeed, was one of the favorites of the previous generation that started out as beatniks in Goa, Tangier, and Ajijic. The next wave surfaced later smelling the roses in Kathmandu, Marrakesh, and Panajachel, and ending up on the beaches and bitches of Samui, Kuta, and Mallorca. The scene changed from the Beatnik characters portrayed in On the Road and progressed to the post-hippies of Video Night in Kathmandu to the modern-day slackers of The Beach.

Of course the backpacker scene changes all the time, by definition. The overland route from Europe through Asia now goes north through Russia and China, rather than south through Iran and Afghanistan. Who could’ve guessed that thirty years ago? Of course, back then the highest goals of any traveler were India and Nepal, now both a bit smudged in the public eye. Old places lose their charm and new places open for business, many times due to political considerations. Laos was in, out, now back in, ditto for Peru, but give Kabul a little more time. Vietnam still lures, Yangshuo and Dali in China still maintain their charm even after the novelty’s gone, and Prague’s the rockingest spot in Europe, long after Western Europe priced itself out of the backpacker market. Sometimes an area or city remains popular, but the center for backpackers drifts to new neighborhoods. Kathmandu’s Freak street has moved across town to Thamel, as has Bangkok’s Soi Ngam Duphli to Khaosan Road, while Bali’s Kuta merely extends itself endlessly down the same street, first to Legian, then to Seminyak, like growth lines on a tree.

Rising prices have decreased the attraction of Latin America, along with increased crime, but there are still adventures to be had, especially in the South American Andes. The threat of violence also affects perceptions of Africa and Muslim countries, but persevere. If you don’t mind being the only backpacker around, then every place is a potential trip. You don’t really require banana pancakes, do you? Asia is clearly ‘Easy Street’ for today’s backpackers, what with former Communist countries not only cheap, not only time capsules, but now allowing multiple entry and exit points so that one can loop back to a starting point without re-tracing one’s steps. This is Backpacker Rule #2 (Okay, I lied earlier): Backpack, don’t backtrack. Novelty is worth the long hard bumpy ride through uncertainty and digestive distress, but reruns only excite when they’re nostalgia runs, like time travel, same space but different times. But that takes a few years to be effective.

Yes, things have certainly changed since that day some thirty years ago when I first put thumb to the air and the rest was history. Gone is the Culture Shock. Gone is the thumb, as a rule of thumb. Gone are the days of ‘going native’, when you’d trade your jeans, Vibram-soled boots and down-filled jacket for the local handspun and go live in a hovel with the Indians. I suppose that is a testament to the increasing globalization of world culture, but probably also to the increasing luxury of the backpacker scene. Backpackers now have got it easy, what with all the centers of cheap accommodation competing for your dollar, all the cafes, all the guidebooks, all the Modern Standard Pidgin English gone worldwide. But I’m not complaining. I got a glimpse of a past they’ll never get. I became a self-taught linguist out of the necessities of world travel. I became a self-taught anthropologist to try to make sense of everything I saw. I even made a career out of travel, dealing in handicrafts when they, too, had a novelty value and a Golden Age which is now in decline. I’ve even had the opportunity to live in several foreign countries (and still be my own boss).

Internet makes travel much easier and knowledgeable nowadays. E-tickets mean you don’t have to worry about losing that handful of tickets that link you back to the ‘real world’. Improved transportation means that formerly inaccessible areas are now open for business, notwithstanding the fact that what attracted you in the first place may change in the process. Life is good. I’ve visited forty-eight countries (and counting), worked in ten or twelve of them, and lived in two or three of them. AND THEY’RE CREATING NEW ONES ALL THE TIME. I figure if I visit five or six new countries a year, then I’ll see them all before, well, you know. I still hardly know Africa or the Middle East, and now Central Asia’s game. Forget those obscure land borders, though. At fifty years old (and counting), I start looking for airlines from exotic countries that allow free stopovers at no extra cost. I start looking to see which airlines make fuel stops in Cape Verde. I start weighing the options of flying from Bangkok to New York via the Pacific or Atlantic. I start seeing the world not as a random collection of countries, but as Hispanic or Germanic, Francophone or Lusophone, Slavic or Semitic, Uralic or Altaic, Bantu or Manchu, Sino-Tibetan or Uto-Aztecan, etc. according to the historical ebb and flow of peoples, religions, languages, and power. I stop counting the years and start counting my blessings. Unfortunately, I still need to count the money once in a while. See you in Mozambique.