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“The trouble with resisting temptation is that it may never come again.”
Note: Michael Shapiro passed along the above quote, which he found in a Chinese fortune cookie some years ago. “Though not specificially a travel quote,” he says, “I’ve seen it in that light.” A little Googling reveals that this aphorism is known as “Korman’s Law”.
The following list of names, which recently appeared in Harper’s, caught my eye because I’ve come across similar names in my own travels in Mongolia. “Khunbish”, for example, which means “not human”, was once a popular given name, since it was thought the evil spirits would ignore a baby if they didn’t know it was human. Mongolians are so superstitious about making babies seem unattractive the spirit world that it’s actually polite to say “yamar muuhai huuhedrel” when you see an infant. Translated, this literally means: “What an ugly baby!”
From a list of historical clans compiled by the head of the Mongolian State Library to assist Mongo
“There’s a sort of corrupted idealism about the insanely innocent Wolfowitz plan for the Middle East, the domino theory in reverse, the spreading of democracy like a germ across the Middle East. Just invade Iraq, lop off the monster’s head, and the people of Iraq will want to create a democracy. It’ll be like Connecticut on the Euphrates, and this germ of infection will spread to neighboring countries, irresistibly, because everybody wants to be Americans. Everybody wants to dream of democracy.
“And there’s a germ of truth in that, too. But the way in which it was conceived by Wolfowitz and those guys: They knew nothing about its culture; they knew nothing about its political divisions, its religious divisions. They went blind into this place, simply seeing it as a bunch of people under a dictator — take the dictator away and then there would be some sort of natural reversion that would take place to democracy, as if that were what people reverted to. Actually, as it’s becoming plainer and plainer, if you had a democracy in Iraq, what the democracy would almost certainly be, with the majority of Iraqis being Shiites, would be a theocratic state, with close ties to Iran. This completely seemed to evade Wolfowitz’s thinking — it’s extraordinary. But it was presented as a kind of idealism: America doing good in this world.”
–Jonathan Raban, in Michael Shapiro’s A Sense of Place (2004)
“That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have the courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called ‘visions.’ the whole so-called ’spirit world,’ death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.”
–Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929)
I’ve been encouraged in recent days by the amount of grassroots effort on the part of travelers to help the victims of the south Asian tsunami. I’m sure I’ve been told of only a fraction of the personal fundraising efforts going on, but examples include vagabonder Andrea Johnson’s Phi Phi Rock Climbers’ Blog (created with help from BootsnAll), which has collected over $1000 from her family and friends; David Wallis’s upcoming fundraising benefit on January 23 in New York, featuring travel writers like Adam Goodheart and Ayun Halliday (see Jen Leo’s blog about it here); and Jeff Greenwald’s current trip to Sri Lanka in association with EthicalTraveler.com. Stories about travelers rallying to help tsunami victims have also appeared in The Independent and the Boston Globe. The Christian Science Monitor ran a good story about the usefulness of traveling in south Asia right now, and Lonely Planet has set up a responsible travel website for tsunami-affected regions here.
Elsewhere, travel writer Brad Newsham is rallying San Francisco-area travelers to a bonfire to get together to talk about grassroots solutions to the crisis. The bonfire will take place at Ocean Beach in San Francisco this Sunday night, Jan 16, from 5-8 pm. Meet Brad and his family in the area in front of the Beach Chalet Restaurant, and bring any food or drink you might want (and bring firewood if you can). Sunset is at 5:15. Email Brad for details at brad@backpacknation.org.
“I suspect it’s impossible for some people to stay in one place for good, once they’ve left the city of their childhood.”
–Stephen Vizinczey, In Praise of Older Women (1965)
This month at the RolfPotts.com Writers page, I interview Larry Bleiberg, who has been travel editor of The Dallas Morning News since 1999. Having spent his entire career in traditional newspaper journalism, his perspective is especially useful for those who are interested in writing for the travel section. “Often the people that pitch the best aren’t necessarily the best writers,” Bleiberg notes. “Usually the tentative, quiet submissions offered without any fanfare end up working out best. But the truth is you have to be good at both skills: selling and producing.”
Bleiberg also emphasizes the practical matters of travel writing, such as:
“With most travel publications, the story really isn’t about you,” he continues. “Even if it’s first-person. Arthur Frommer said it best: ‘Tell the reader about their trip, not your trip.’ This doesn’t mean you need to write guidebooks, and that your story can’t have voice. Every trip doesn’t have to be perfect either. But for the most part, your job is to entice other people to travel. Some personal touches are fine, but when it becomes an essay about how you bonded with your son/mom/girlfriend/sister-in-law in Puerto Rico, I lose interest. Quickly.”
Bleiberg’s full interview is online here.
“I think the most dangerous thing in a world that is ever more connected is to close your eyes and to draw the curtains. In any neighborhood the person who doesn’t even try to look at the neighbors is the one who is endangering himself and the others. And I think the other danger is, you can get in a vicious cycle, scared on seeing the world, and before you know it, you’re a sort of cultural agoraphobe.
“I traveled a lot in the week of September 11th and shortly thereafter, and during the bombing of Iraq I deliberately went to Dharamsala, to hear about peace, not war. I think it’s presumption on our part to assume we know what’s dangerous and what isn’t, and my life has shown me that danger comes when I least expect it. And safety, too.”
–Pico Iyer, in Michael Shapiro’s A Sense of Place (2004)
I am still dealing with limited online access in New Orleans, but I wanted to post a quick couple of items:
1) First off, in light of the enormous scope of the south Asian tsunami, I’d like to encourage everyone who reads my blog to donate 10% of their December earnings to tsunami relief efforts (a list of aid agencies can be found here; if you’re not sure who to give to, the Red Cross is always a good bet). Ten percent of one month’s wages is a modest amount, and it can make a difference for people in countries who — while comparatively poor — have been so kind and curious and hospitable to us vagabonders over the years.
So this means you: Take ten minutes and make an online tithe to an aid agency that is on the ground in the disaster area. It can make a difference.
2) To everyone who’s written me asking if they should still travel to Thailand in coming months, my answer is a resounding yes. And I say “yes” for several reasons, the first being that most of the country, such as Bangkok, the north, Isaan, and the Gulf of Siam coast, is unaffected by the disaster. Secondly, Thailand is still a good staging area for the rest of Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia and Laos. Thirdly, I have many reports that even Phuket is 95% intact (most of the damage being on the coast), and locals are already encouraging tourists to return. Fourth, you may well be able to turn your Thailand trip into a private charity mission, bringing money or supplies directly to the people who need it. Marc Gold, for example, has already made a lifestyle of this type of travel, and his website can be a good example of how private giving can be implemented by travelers. (As you travel, just take care to identify true victims, and avoid the local cons who invariably surface to profit from such disasters.)
My last reason for why you shouldn’t cancel your Thailand travel plans is somewhat counterintuitive at a time like this — and this reason is that travel to Thailand is fun and amazing and life-changing. Despite the sorrow of the current situation, one very tangible thing you can do is travel there, spend money in the local economy, and have a good time. This will help support all the people (not only in Phuket, but in Bangkok and Chiang Mai and Koh Samui and points in-between) who make their living from travelers, and might suffer as travelers are scared off because of the disaster. So keep those plane tickets and go to Thailand!
3) On a final item, I encourage those of you who are in Thailand, particularly the Andaman coast (and, if possible, Ranong, from where I still hope to receive more news) to post here with reports of the human and travel situation in the area.
