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Sometimes, throughout our travels, a specific place can pull at you so intensely that you feel compelled to hold still and remain in this place for a significant amount of time. Most of the time these places take us off guard and we surprise ourselves. You’ll never truly be able to predict which cities, countries, or areas of the globe will most strongly capture your heart or your intrigue.
When settling in a foreign city for a significant length of time, one common thing travelers do is to enroll in the local college or university. It’s a good way to make friends, to learn the local language, and perhaps knock off a few credits or finally seize your intellectual passions.
However, sometimes the price of these institutions comes not in steep tuition payments, but in accreditation conversion once (if) we settle back into our country of origin. That’s where wes.org comes in. If you’re wondering how your foreign degree will hold up once you return to the States, or if the credits you earned while abroad can work toward additional study, World Education Services offers an International Credential Evaluation on hundreds of institutes of higher education around the world. You need not have completed a degree to use WES services; individual courses can be converted too.
WES offers a document-by-document evaluation for employment purposes, or a course-by-course evaluation for university comparison. The service is a tad pricy, ranging from US$100-160, and takes up to 7 business days. However, if you submit an online Evaluation Preview, and follow up with an official WES report within 7 days, the fee is reduced by US$20.
Back in September I traveled to rural Wales for the excellent DO Lectures series, which features talks and presentations by cutting-edge experts from a wide variety of disciplines — from mountaineers to sustainable architects to graphic designers. I spoke on vagabonding and the ethic of long-term travel, and video from that lecture is now available online. My talk is in keeping with similar presentations I’ve done for my Vagabonding and Marco Polo Didn’t Go There books — only this time (in keeping with the spirit of the gathering) I challenged the audience to make “do” oriented goals for their lives. One of these “do” goals was to see time as your truest form of wealth in life — to live out your days in an extraordinary way. My second challenge was to be where you are now — to live a life that is less mediated and more informed by the people and places that surround you. The entire lecture can be viewed online here.
Here’s what else I’ve been up to lately:
My travel tale “Something Approaching Enlightenment” appears in the anthology Best of Lonely Planet Travel Writing
, which debuted in bookstores last month. Other authors appearing in the book include Pico Iyer, Simon Winchester, Tim Cahill, Jan Morris, Jason Elliot, William Dalrymple, and Tony Wheeler.
I recently learned that my 2008 Believer essay about Kansas publisher Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, “The Henry Ford of Literature,” was listed as “Notable Non-Required Reading” in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009
, which is edited by Dave Eggers and Jesse Nathan. Main selections in this book include essays by Jonathan Franzen, Denis Johnson, and Nick Flynn.
It’s widely acknowledged that travel widens your perspective. The more you open yourself to the world, the more of a chance that you may meet somebody who will change how you think about things for the rest of your life.
A couple of years ago, my husband and I visited the island of Hvar, part of Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast. The lush, green island is popular with the swanky jet set (actually, more like the yacht set), but we were there just before high season began, so we could beat the crowds.
One afternoon, while wandering the steep stairways within the walled city, we happened upon an empty konoba (family-run dining establishment) among twisting grape vines. Traditional Dalmatian folk music filtered out from an interior room. We needed a break from our adventures, so we slipped inside and found a seat on a bench set against a stone wall in the grotto-like front room.
We were the only customers, so had time to talk with our host, Dinko. We learned that the building had been in his family for generations, and for a time, part of it was used as a wine cellar by his grandfather. Because his grandfather was an excellent and dedicated wine maker, Dinko eventually developed the home as a restaurant in his honor.
Between his stories, Dinko brought us items from his menu—all cold Dalmatian specialties. We tasted cheeses, ham, bacon, stuffed bread, anchovies, octopus, olives, figs and homemade wine. He explained that all the food had been produced by small, local businesses. All of it was delicious, but I enjoyed hearing Dinko talk about his business and how his main interest was to help save the traditions and customs of the area.
After a brief, terse instruction to his daughter about her evening curfew, he told us with a sigh that he wished his children would eventually take over the restaurant, but he ultimately wanted them to be happy. If they didn’t care about the traditions as he did, he’d be sad, but ultimately OK with their decisions.
There are Dinkos in many places in the world, very likely more than I imagine. But it was our time with him (we returned night after night to Konoba Menego, for conversation as well as food) that changed my mind about being a business owner in the tourism industry. I’d been convinced that I’d have to be more of a salesperson, instead of just myself, in order to cater to visitors. But I realized that Dinko, with his genuine interest in his culture and the willingness to share it, was able to be the perfect salesperson while being himself.
Briefcase to backpack. Photo from Simon Fraser University website.
With the recession ongoing, it’s as a good time as ever to go vagabonding. On my trip around Southeast Asia, I met loads of accountants, financial analysts, etc. who had gotten laid off. Many got sizable severance packages too, providing an immediate travel fund. (If only we could all be so lucky!) Many were actually glad to finally have the time to see the world.
How do you handle the transition from a fast-paced job to the more contemplative pace of vagabonding? Here’s the perfect website, Briefcase to backpack.
For those looking for real-life role models for encouragement, look no further. There are many profiles of ordinary people who adapted to life on the road just fine.
One of my favorite articles is by Michael Bontempi, How my career break helped my career. He stands out for the thoughtful way he planned out his departure and his “re-entry” after his stint of vagabonding. Some might accuse him of over-planning, but I thought his strategy made good sense. His list of preparations would be helpful reading to any career breaker.
The website playfully points out that “career breaks” are a common thing in the U.K., Australia, and Canada. There’s just that certain country south of Canada that needs to start giving its people longer vacations . . .
Anata, West Bank
In my book 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia, I offer several non-standard reasons for hitting the road. Here is the most counterintuitive of the bunch: “Hating”.
In a perfect world, of course, there would be no need to hate, because we would all treat one another rightly. Governments wouldn’t slaughter citizens, forty-year-old men wouldn’t sleep with ten-year-old girls, and guys in an Indonesian restaurant wouldn’t laugh after telling you how they had recently beaten a man just because he belonged to a different religion. There would be no Auschwitz, there would be no Killing Fields, and there would be no brothels filled with village girls. There would be no torture wounds, no reality-induced nightmares, no heartbroken refugees living in exile because they have been expelled from their homes.
But our world, as any observant traveler well knows, isn’t perfect. If you’re a reporter like Nicholas Kristof, your travels take you to the extremes of imperfection, such as into the shade of a tree on the Chad-Sudan border, where you encounter a shell-shocked 4-year-old girl carrying her 1-year-old brother, their parents recently slain before their very eyes. Or if, like me, you’ve traveled much in Israel and the Palestinian territories, you’ve seen ample heartache on both sides, including broken individuals like the Palestinian man above, whose home has just been demolished in a practice human rights groups roundly condemn. Or in Nepal (and just about every other place), meander through a back alley or two and you’ll quickly meet people living in impoverished conditions. Perhaps you’ll walk into a home (the size of many suburban bedroom closets) and find a child lying on a mat, his body contorted by severe cerebral palsy. As you look at him, the mother might explain how medical care has always been beyond the family’s reach given their $30/month income.
Travel frequently introduces us to beauty, but it shows us other things too. As we lay eyes on situations and listen to voices in places we previously knew little about, our love for the world and its people will deepen. The flipside of this, however, is that our hatred—of attitudes, ideologies, and policies that take advantage of others and harm—will also deepen. For if we love with all our might, we will also be bound to hate some things with all our might.
Or so it has been for me in my own journeys. And I’m thankful for this, for constructive hatred is an attribute, I think, even if little spoken of.
In Surviving Paradise, author Peter Rudiak-Gould recounts his year as a volunteer English teacher for WorldTeach on the South Pacific island of Ujae. Part of the Ujae Atoll in the Marshall Islands and measuring only one third of a square mile in area, Peter circumnavigated his new island home before lunch on his first day.
Fresh out of college and hoping to find a remote paradise, to be a big fish in a small lagoon (actually, not that small, being 72 square miles), it’s not your typical coming-of-age story. He very quickly realized that paradise is an ideal that doesn’t always match reality. While still idyllically beautiful and warm, there were also barking dogs, unruly children, loud music, bland food, and bugs galore. This latter point can best be summarized through a local song;
“Bunniin bunun naam, bunniin bunun naam,
Iban kiki, bwe eju naam ekkan niin”
Translated, this means;
“There are zillions of mosquitoes tonight,
there are zillions of mosquitoes tonight,
I can’t sleep, because there are ludicrous numbers
of mosquitoes and their teeth are sharp.”
Throughout the book we learn along with Peter as he unravels more of this unique language which has 11 words for coconut, 35 words for wind, and where there are both words that have very specific meanings such as dentak (striking needlefish with a long piece of wood as they float on the surface of the water on moonlit nights), as well as words with multiple meanings like yokwe eok, which is used for “hello”, “goodbye”, “I love you”, and “I’m sorry for you.”
He comes face-to-face with his own Western identity as he struggles to understand and accept Marshallese values of kindness, generosity, communalism, conflict avoidance, stoicism, conservatism, strict social roles, idolization of the old, and the marginalization of the young. The overriding rule of the land is to maintain harmony at any cost, which includes suppressing emotions and ignoring the grave importance of suicide and the effects of global warming.
The book is a captivating journey, offering vivid descriptions of life on a small Pacific atoll with insights on how a remote island nation deals with the inevitable influence of the Western world. You can also read Rolf’s interview with Peter Rudiak-Gould as this month’s featured writer.
The preparation of a feast is underway. Just-cut string beans, snow peas, potatoes. Scents materializing. Cabinet doors flying open and threatening foreheads, then smacking closed with a shot.
A dozen socks competing for space on the tile floor. Bubbling oil and fast chopping. Aboriginal techno from an MP3 player. Water running.
The chaos is streamlining into a simultaneous finish. The wiped-off table is still waxy. I turn to see Sherwin glugging wine into a pot, wine left over from last night. It’s like a fuse is burning down.
Why do I feel like Thanksgiving is right around the corner?
The lines above are from a journal I kept in Berlin in May 2005. I returned to the journal last night in a desperate effort to find something to blog about today, and stumbled across those notes.
Travel gives us so many moments that are mini-Thanksgivings. Let’s give thanks for that.
Photo by Jeff Bauche via Flickr.
Blue Highways is one of my favorite books. I still remember reading it for the first time, and though back then I had yet to venture far outside of the US, I was filled with the desire to set out with no plans, no fixed destination, just an imperative to wander, to explore. I remember reading the words of William Least Heat-Moon and feeling like I was there in those towns, discovering America alongside him.
CNN photographer Ed Alior recently retraced Heat-Moon’s journey, photographing exact places described in the book. The results, of course, are beautiful. Many of the places remain as they were, but, as Heat-Moon laments in the accompanying interview, many are gone – rural areas and small towns have been swallowed up by urban sprawl and mom-and-pop shops were forced out of business by chain stores.
Heat-Moon complains about the chain stores especially in regards to food (“Yes, it’s likely ordinary and undistinguished, but it’ll be consistent. But why travel if consistency is all you want?” he asks) and in lodging. He says that today’s travelers have to head to the highway off-ramp to find lodging in many towns, which segregates them “from the heart of a community.”
Heat-Moon says these two changes have had a detrimental effect on travel. He also says that speed is a problem. We’re a nation of speeders and “speed corrupts.” To really experience a place, whether it be a far-flung foreign land or an undiscovered part of our own country, we need to slow down. With limited vacation time, we can all be guilty of moving too fast, but, says Heat-Moon, “If you want to learn the territory between your place of departure and where you end up, you have to have time and use it wisely.”
Photo credit: christian moser via Flick
Everyone remembers the strangers that stopped to point you in the right direction, offer a tip on where to eat or practice a bit of English, but what about the hundreds that passed you by?
Tom Swick has a thoughtful essay over at World Hum, musing on the crowds of indifferent strangers that we pass everyday in our travels. Those who are, as Swick writes, “shy, or running late, or lost in their music, or just not interested… They are too busy living their lives to notice needy travelers.”
Much of the time these are precisely the people that are most interesting when you’re traveling… to stand in the middle of a great crowd far from home is, to me anyway, to feel bit like you really are in the middle of the great river of life.
I have to say that I disagree with some of with Swick writes, particularly the idea that such people are indifferent. To me what’s amazing about crowds of strangers is that it’s impossible to know whether they are curious or indifferent; it’s a reminder that you can come and you can look but you will never be one of them. Which isn’t to say we are isolated from strangers, in fact it’s the opposite we’re connected — we are all outsiders somewhere.
Swick’s essay reminds me of something Proust writes, that “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” In this case, looking at ourselves through eyes that hardly see us at all.
Or, to borrow a popular saying from my hometown, we’re all bit actors in everyone else’s movie and they in ours.
[Photo credit: Bracketing Life, Flickr]
In my traveling about the web, I keep an eye out for beautiful art that you can take with you. This little illustrated web story, about an exchange student who comes to visit, is from the Guardian.
Everyone can use a little art to brighten their day.
@Backpack Foodie & Kim:...
