Travelers’ Tales’ annual Best Travel Writing anthology is out in bookstores now, and — as usual — it’s a fun read that’s filled with great examples of quality travel writing for those interested in the craft (or a vicarious journey). Contributors this year include Alain de Botton, Patrick Symmes, Tony Perrottet, Jeff Greenwald, Bob Guccione, Jr., and Bill Belleville. I have the honor of appearing in The Best Travel Writing for the third year running (with my story “Road Roulette”), and I was tickled to see that Thomas Swick’s story “The Place You Could Be Looking For” was included — as this marks the second year in a row that a story about Bangkok’s classic budget hotel, The Atlanta, has made the pages of the anthology (last year, it was Donald A. Ranard’s “The Accidental Hotel”).

In addition to showcasing good writing, the book is also a celebration of travel, and the good and bad experiences that come with it. As James O’Reilly says in the preface:

The virtues of travel have long been touted, and we are all familiar with the clichés. Travel broadens the mind, dissolves dogma, rattles the cage, brings new vigor to the step. It is hilarious, romantic, life-threatening, enlightening, toxic to weak relationships, invigorating to the strong. Travel is tedious and soporific, exhilarating and addictive. Is it expensive because evanescent, cheap because the traveler is forever rewarded with memory and story. You wish you were home, you wish you never had to go home. All of things are true, and if you are lucky you may well experience each of them on the same trip.

Award winning author Tom Miller will give a three-day travel-writing workshop in the high mountain air near Taos, New Mexico in early June. Miller will offer practical advice, one-on-one sessions, and lively talks about favorite travel writers and books. Details and registration here.

Tourism slogans aim to lure us in. But what really influences where we travel? This is the lighthearted question at the heart of my latest Traveling Light column at Yahoo! News. Entitled Searching for the Cave of Evil, this essay uses an experience on the Greek island of Naxos to ponder just how important your intended destination is to the travel experience. Included are a few tips about choosing a destination:

1) Don’t worry too much about your destination

Remember that you don’t ever need a really good reason to go anywhere; rather, go to a place for whatever happens when (and before) you arrive there.

2) Let your travel inspiration be personal

Feel free to tap personal inspiration - no matter how stolid or silly - when considering where to go. A yen for pork barbecue, for instance, might make you consider visiting Memphis. Curiosity about your ancestry might call you back to Lebanon, Ireland, or Korea. Maybe you’ll even hit Djibouti simply because mention of this country once made you giggle in junior high geography class. The most esoteric of interests are a good enough reason to travel someplace.

3) Don’t be too ambitious

The world is a big place, but that doesn’t mean you have to pack it all in at once. A one-week journey is best spent exploring one city (instead of five), and — even given a year — the slow, nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty. Go slow anywhere, and you’ll discover the subtler rhythms of a place.

4) Celebrate the unexpected

Whatever the original motivation for going someplace, remember that you won’t always get exactly what you expected — and this is almost always a good thing.

Full column online here.

“In some ways, I think travel is about learning how to see, learning how to pay attention. It’s an alarm clock in some ways, and it’s a jumpstart to putting our senses on the setting where they’re universally receptive. I think theoretically we could do that at our homes, and yet somehow, surrounded by familiarity and the routine we know too well, our eyes tend to close and we don’t notice the things that are so wondrous for a visitor. But as soon as we physically start moving we awaken to the beauties around us.”
–Pico Iyer, from “A New Kind of Travel for a New Kind of World”, a speech given at the Key West Literary Seminar, January 5, 2006

Last month, San Francisco Chronicle travel editor John Flinn wrote a great column called “Idle thoughts on street food, postcards, diets and bribery“, which collected random bits of savvy travel observations and advice. Here are my ten favorite:

• When you’re on a lean budget, one step up from rock-bottom is always worth it. Five dollars is often all it takes to upgrade from squalid to tolerable. It’s the difference between sweaty torpor and air conditioning in a Marrakesh hotel room, between a writhing dog-pile and a seat of your own on the bus to Dharamsala, between dicey hygiene and the meal of your life in a Luang Prabang restaurant. Don’t be a cheapskate masochist.
• Street food is always cheap and often excellent, but limit yourself to items fresh off the grill. Don’t eat anything that’s been sitting around; watch the guy cook what’s going into your mouth.
• You know those weekly 2,000-word dispatches you send to family and friends from Internet cafes? They’d rather get two witty sentences on a postcard. Really.
• Force yourself to be an extrovert. Talk to people. You might find that the white-haired man at the bus stop in Yorkshire flew in the Battle of Britain, or that the Indian woman on the ferry to Koh Samui is a vacationing Bollywood movie star.
• Build time into your schedule to wander aimlessly. Those magic moments rarely happen when you’re following a tight itinerary.
• Everyday experiences take on new poignancy in foreign countries. Wandering through a Guatemalan supermarket or attending a church service in Rarotonga can provide more cultural insight than a week of guided tours.
• Leave your diet at home. This is the time to indulge in coq au vin, a genuine Sachertorte or a slab of Argentine beef the size of a catcher’s mitt. If you get out and walk every day, you’ll come home a pound or two lighter.
• Force yourself to get up early. Before 9 a.m., even the most tourist-clogged of cities belong to the locals. You’ll find corner vegetable markets, fishermen hauling in their nets and nobody but locals in the cafes. Jet lag is your friend here: On your first day or two in Europe, you won’t have to set your alarm to wake up at 5 a.m.
• When things go wrong — and they probably will — remind yourself that if this doesn’t kill you — and it probably won’t — it will make a great story. Your friends don’t want to hear how beautiful the Taj Mahal is. They want to hear about the psychotic driver who kicked you off the bus and left you stranded in a one-dog town.
• An imperfect trip is always better than a perfect trip you never get around to taking.

I’ll be interviewing John Flinn on my Writers page next month. For a sneak preview, click here.

This week in my “Traveling Light” column at Yahoo! News, I interview David Farley and Jessie Sholl, who co-edited Travelers’ Tales: Prague. As Czech novelist Ivan Klima writes in the introduction to the book, “I do not like stories about tourist experiences and I refuse to accept generalizations about a place, let alone people. Fortunately, my concerns were unfounded. The essays in this anthology are based mostly on encounters and experiences, sometimes life-changing and sometimes ordinary.”

In the interview, I quiz Farley and Sholl on whether or not Prague has suffered from overpopularity. They reply:

DF: Much like Venice, Prague is so bewildering and bewitching, and therefore it’s no surprise the historical center is swimming with tourists. To some degree, it has suffered — try walking across Charles Bridge on a summer afternoon, and you’ll see what I mean. But on the other hand, I think the people there are happier and that makes a difference with tourists. I’m not hearing as many people complain about the indifferent service there like I used to. In terms of avoiding the crush of tourists in Prague, I like to stroll through the center of town early in the morning when I almost have it to myself. But really, when I’m there, I usually spend a lot of time in the outer neighborhoods, where many young Czechs have retreated. Neighborhoods like Vinohrady and Zizkov, beautiful districts with 19th-century tree-lined streets, have a lot to offer, including great clubs and restaurants and a legion of old school Czech pubs you won’t find in the center anymore.

JS: Some knucklehead dreamed up the “Prague Piss-up” a few years ago; these entail cheap group flights on Ryannair or another European budget airline with accommodation usually included in the — low by Western standards — price. The “roving parties” of mostly British guys get extremely drunk on Prague’s cheap beer and rampage (always loudly, occasionally violently, and sometimes messily and publicly in regard to bodily functions) through the city. It’s a real shame. Some pubs now have signs outside saying “no stag parties.” The same thing is also happening in another favorite city of mine, Krakow, and I wish there was a way to stop it.

Full column online here.

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Elliott Hester’s account of his yearlong round-the-world trip has plenty of moments common to most travelers. Who hasn’t spent an uncomfortable day at a legendary destination, distracted from the beauty and timelessness of the site by the need to find a marginally acceptable toilet? Whether the cause was Delhi Belly, Montezuma’s Revenge or a gut-wrenching form of Egypt’s Gyppie Tummy, anyone who has traveled widely has had that moment.

Some of the author’s experiences (involving high explosives, camel riding, transvestite advances and film festivals) are dangerous, chilling or just plain weird. Most of these have nothing to do with the fact that he is sometimes mistaken for Samuel L. Jackson; he is just in the “right” place when bizarre things happen. In addition, he is a risk taker, leaving himself open to situations and activities that contain a degree of peril.

Hester is the kind of writer who knows how to keep out of the way of a good story. He does not pose as a Zen master of living abroad or a guru for aspiring travelers. He is just a guy, a veteran flight attendant who takes advantage of the industry downturn after 9/11 to take a year off and go around the globe. He is not wandering aimlessly. His round-the-world ticket sets a rough east-to-west itinerary. He has friends and friends of friends scattered along the route for safe havens. He has money in the bank. He’s like us. In short, he’s Everyman, one of us. And likeable.

This book was beach reading for me, consumed during a pleasant Spring Break at an all-inclusive resort on Dominican Republic’s Bavaro Beach. I laughed enough to provoke some of my fellow baskers to ask what I was reading (and enough for some people to move their loungers a little further away). Perfect light reading.

One feature of Hester’s writing did grate on me. He saw the airline system as a sort of home away from home. When things got tiresome, too grimy, uncomfortable or dull, he just pops up at an airport and turns himself over to “the air travel system.” As a former flight attendant, he is on familiar and comfortable ground. This is not my experience, however, as post-9/11 hassles have invariably made the “air travel system” the least enjoyable part of my travels.

In the end, the year of travel was life-changing for Elliott Hester. His new mantra is “Stay single, stay liquid, keep traveling for as long as you can.” He no longer has an address or a job other than writing. You don’t have to buy into that. Just read the book, laugh or gasp, then close your eyes and think about your next trip.
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Note: Bill Jenkins is a world traveler, semi-retired social studies teacher, former BTK suspect, and regular columnist with the alternative weekly F5 Wichita. He last contribution to Vagablogging.net was a review of Martin Gurdon’s Travels with My Chicken : A Man and His Companion Take to the Road.

“Realizing that you will die greatly clarifies your vision of life, and stimulates opportunities for making the vision real. To take anything for granted is to de-energize it. If you can’t feel your own miraculousness, you are missing the quintessential experience of life.”
–Ed Buryn, Vagabonding in the USA (1980)

Note: I realize I announced this last month — but the initial announcement happened to coincide with my early March website crash. Hence, since none of the vital information was available at the time, I’m going to announce this again:

Creative Writing Workshop
at the Paris American Academy

July 1^st through the 28^th, 2006

I’ll be teaching an intensive, month-long creative writing workshop this summer at the Paris American Academy. College credit is available for this hands-on English-language writing program, which includes courses in:

• Fiction
• Poetry
• Travel Writing
• Memoir
• Screenplays and dramatic writing
• Literary journalism
• Journal Writing
• Presentation and Performance

In addition to taking classes and amassing writing portfolios, students will participate in one-on-one critiques with professional writers (inlcuding myself), give readings in Parisian bookshops, and receive "survival" French lessons. Other instructors include O. Henry Award-winning author and playwright John Biguenet, and novelist Lauren Grodstein.

Between classes and tutorials, there will be ample time to experience the city, attend cultural events, visit museums, learn history, take day-trips to the countryside, read books, hang out in cafes, dance by the Seine, and make friends from around the world.

For more information, including costs and course descriptions click my Paris American Academy page here.

To receive an application, email an inquiry to info@pariswritingworkshop.com.

The Paris American Academy is located in the heart of the Latin Quarter, on the rue Saint Jacques, a block from the Luxembourg Gardens, and less than a mile from the Seine and Notre Dame cathedral. Class size will be limited to 20 students, and slots are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Above: The Paris American Academy, in the heart of the Latin Quarter

“To my mind, there is no greater gap in the anthropological study of tourism than the one that exists in our reluctance to study hospitality as an important and dynamic partner to travel. We have allowed ourselves to imagine that the commercialization of much of the tourism industry has replaced culturally based conventions of hospitality, and that’s simply not true. A better appreciation of the vital role played by hospitality would not only help mature our theories of tourism, but would, I believe, make us all better travelers.”
–Erve Chambers, “Can the Anthropology of Tourism Make us Better Travelers?”, NAPA Bulletin 23 (2005)