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Illustration: Azby Brown
The news is full these days about a “green revolution.” Is it really the wave of the future? Or is it actually a return to the past, when living in harmony with the environment was standard practice?
The Tokyo expat magazine Metropolis published excerpts from a new work titled Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan.
Author Azby Brown also produced dazzling drawings of rural life in Japan, from houses to ordinary people. It causes one to pause and reflect on how our quest for modernity has caused us to lose our connection to the world.
Have you seen traditional practices abroad that could be used for green living at home? Please share in the comments.
Ko Phangan, Thailand
Not many years ago (in the grand scheme of things), most of us were in diapers, not yet knowing what country we were from or even what a country. We didn’t yet know we were Christian, Muslim, Skeptical, or whatever. We didn’t know we were Republican or Democrat, male or female, or that we needed to fear and maybe hate one another, or that this might lead us one day to kill or be killed. As babies we looked out at the world with wide eyes, reaching out for anything we could grab, wanting to feel and understand it. We were open to learning and we trusted, even when it wasn’t wise to trust. And then — well, we became adults.
The paragraph and photo above are pulled from my book 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. Others more famous than me have mentioned babies as well. Carl Sandburg, for example, wrote that “a baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.” And this from Vincent van Gogh: “If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.”
So what does all this have to do with travel?
First, babies model some of the traits a good traveler might wish to cultivate, particular wonder and an openness toward learning. To prepare for your trip, read a guidebook but also consider sitting down in front of a baby for a few minutes and seeing how they relate to the world. I love the image of a baby grasping for the moon because he or she has not yet mastered the concept of distance.
Second, if you’re traveling alone for an extended period and find yourself feeling down (as I sometimes do), having a local family put their baby in your arms, even for a second, will do more for your spirits that any bottle of beer. Every now and then, at least in the developing world, a family will ask me to hold their baby so they can take a picture of him or her in the arms of a Westerner. I never say no.
We travelers usually don’t wear diapers, but may we have something of the spirit of those babies who do (and those babies who don’t!).
As I noted in last week’s column, I am now on the ground, quite literally, in Jacmel, Haiti. Here I lie in my REI tent that I purchased off of craigslist last week, in a field next to the United Nations outpost, across from the small airport where large white helicopters emblazoned with the letters ‘UN’ arrive and depart daily. I share this field with the two Canadian founders of Shelters International Disaster Relief and about a dozen Haitian volunteers who bust their ass for $5 and 3 meals a day, removing rubble from one crumbling site after another. Breakfast consists of corn flakes with diluted condensed milk, lunch is rice and beans with chicken and sauce, and dinner is spaghetti. The weekdays consist of waking up before 7am to dress, eat, and load a pickup truck with wheelbarrows, shovels, and pickaxes, in order to be onsite by 8am. Work ends between 3 and 4pm, with an hour for lunch, and water breaks.
Today we started a new project – clearing a large grade school, L’Ecole Trinitie, where many children died during the earthquake on January 12th. While we’ve been told that all the bodies have been removed, we may still come across more. The work is back-breaking, first using pickaxes to break up the rubble, then shovels to load the wheelbarrows, and then pushing them into the street.
In just a few days I’ve become accustomed to the sight of destruction such that it seems normal. Rubble is everywhere, many second floors are now the first, and tents line the streets. But what I find heartening is that everyone I see is carrying on, running their shops from the street, smiling, laughing, playing music, washing laundry, and zipping up and down roads on the motorcycles that outnumber all other vehicles, honking their horns in a complex form of conversation. Even as the effects of the tragedy are everywhere, the Haitian spirit seems to shine above the debris, giving everyone a sense that life continues on.
Initiation ceremony — it conjures images of torchlight processions, Masonic robes, fratboys with paddle bruises, Navy SEALs hoisting logs. Initiation ceremonies mark a transition from one place to another, and it’s often more of a psychological step than a physical one.
While settling into what I’ll call “India mode” over the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to observe the initiation rites of travel — the tiny events that accumulate into a feeling of comfort in a foreign country.
Some are things that happen to us — things beyond our control. The choices the bus driver makes. The buffalo that blocks our path. The power outage in the internet cafe. The midnight buzzsaw beneath the hotel window. The stares.
Some we bring upon ourselves. The trip to the barber. What we accidentally step in. The foray into public transportation. The first bite of street food. The first dance.
Fellow travelers also have been noting their progress — they make announcements like, “This is my first hot kathi roll in 3 years!” or, “I thought I forgot how to squat.”
What initiation rituals help you immerse yourself in a journey?
Photo “Sara likes bugs” by Michael Sarver via Flickr.
Sometimes travelers feel like they can only be instrumental while on the road, or that their services as a volunteer only fall within the spontaneity of their on-the-road lifestyle. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap. If you have experience in service related volunteer work, you know just how instrumental one person can be. If you’re wondering if it’s really worth it, chances are the answer is a resounding yes.
What will we bring back from our time on the road? Of course we will be filled with new insights to other cultures and even ourselves, but what kind of service can we bring back? How can we take some of the skills that we have learned along the road and make them valuable enough that others benefit from them once we return home?
Why not turn your flare for teaching ESL around, and offer to volunteer teaching a foreign language at your local area grade school, kindergarten, or summer camp while you’re in the States? Sure, teaching at any level in America comes with a list of required credentials and background checks. However, upon learning about my interest in foreign languages and my history of teaching ESL, I have been invited to teach master classes in French at local grade schools and speak about travel and language learning opportunities at local high schools in my hometown.
Even if they only invite you to teach once a month, or even once a semester, it’s novel experiences such as these that will stay with a child right up until they are ready to choose a major in college – or decide to go vagabonding for a year before beginning their studies.
Friends that I have made on the road have brought their skills back home and started volunteering in local dive shops. One friend trekked the Appalachian Trail and came home to volunteer with local Boy Scout groups and shared the tips he’d learned on wilderness survival and edible plants in the wild. I’ve met people who were endeared to the economic struggle of certain destitute regions they’ve traveled. One friend returned home such a place and got involved with local organizations and now does talks in high schools to spread awareness.
As we travel we are constantly assaulted with new sensations, new ways of life, new philosophies or religions. Why not volunteer and share your experiences and the information you have learned? Teach a cooking class after you return home from those years teaching in Korea? Start a Flamenco class at your local community center when you get back from Chile. What can you bring home from the road?
(Photo credit: bbc.co.uk)
BootsnAll, the company which hosts Vagablogging, has been in business for 12 years and been a regular contributor on this site for many of them. Which is why we’re pleased to have this space in which to spread the word about our latest adventure – the BootsnAll Travel Writers Platform.
This program will give us an opportunity to partner with passionate travel writers who are eager to share what they know about places they love, and it will give those writers a chance to earn a steady income from doing something they love. Writers who are accepted into the program will earn a base amount of up to $500/month and will also get as much as 40% profit-sharing (the percentage is higher the longer the partnership lasts).
There’s definitely going to be work involved with the program, from both the writers involved and BootsnAll. We’re going to be dedicating our knowledge and resources to these sites, and we’re looking to work with writers who are willing to dedicate something to us as well.
If you think this sounds like a dream job, if you think it sounds too good to be true, or if you just want to learn a little bit more about it before you decide what you think, then we encourage you to check out the information about the BootsnAll Travel Writers Platform here. You can also read an article by BootsnAll’s CEO, Sean Keener, about why he’s so excited about this program.
We welcome your feedback about this program, and – if you like it – we hope you’ll help us get the word out to travel writers all over the world.
Generally speaking, questions about how much money someone makes or what they spend on a trip might seem like they’re a tad too personal – but when you let on that you’re planning a RTW trip, for some reason decorum goes out the window. People are so fascinated by the notion of traveling long-term, especially if they’ve even remotely considered it themselves, that they want to know – how do you do it?
So it’s not surprising that questions like “how can you afford such a long trip?” are fairly common ones. But what many people don’t realize is that traveling can sometimes be cheaper than life at home. Depending on where you live and where you’re going, your monthly expenses could potentially be a fraction of what they are right now. If you’re fielding indignant questions about how you could possibly afford to travel for so long, you might want to refer the skeptics to this article about why living on the road is a good option in a down economy, or how you can live quite well in Central America on $25 a day.
Luckily, all of this month’s RTW ticket specials routes you through some of those less-expensive destinations.
Here are the new special deals on multi-stop airline tickets available through BootsnAll – these deals are good through March 31, 2010:
If some of the stops on these itineraries are too rich for your blood, then creae your own itinerary tailored to your specific budget with our RTW trip planner. And if you’re still in the process of padding your savings account for your own trip, check out this great article on 28 ways to save money for travel.
Gregory Rivers. Photo: CNNGo.com
The Chinese language is notoriously complex. There are the tones, the accents, and not to mention the writing! China and Singapore use simplified Chinese characters, while Hong Kong and Taiwan still use traditional Chinese characters.
Then there are the different dialects. Mandarin is spoken in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Hong Kong and China’s southern Guangdong Province mainly speak Cantonese.
That being said, there’s few sadder sights than an expat who’s lived in Asia for years and still doesn’t speak the language of his adopted home. CNNgo profiled two Westerners who defy that stereotype in this article: How two gwailos learned to speak perfect Cantonese.
I give those two a lot of credit. I’ve studied Mandarin, and man, it’s hard! The first few months are just brutal, nothing makes sense.
Cantonese is supposed to be even more difficult. Mandarin has four tones, while Cantonese has nine tones! Cantonese is also an older dialect, so the Tang dynasty poems are said to sound better in Cantonese rather than Mandarin. The curses in Cantonese are very colorful, which is a nice bonus!
Have you ever studied an Asian language? How did it change your experience in Asia? Any tips and tricks for faster fluency? Please share in the comments.
Gulf of Thailand
There are no icebergs in the Gulf of Thailand, but at any given moment there is, in this and many other seas, someone thinking about the Titanic—or at least about Leonardo Dicaprio.
I almost didn’t take this photograph. For most of three hours I had been lying on a bench on deck, seeking out that elusive position where a severely herniated disc wouldn’t make me wish there were icebergs in the Gulf of Thailand. On top of my physical pain, there was the psychological terror of knowing I still had 20 hours before I reached Bangkok – 20 hours of ship, bus, and train, some of that with 75 pounds of cargo hanging from my shoulders. Only the day before did I come out of a 17-hour gala of agony in which it felt like a herd of elephants had collapsed on my lower back. The possibility of returning to that state somewhere between here and Bangkok was all too real.
I was alone on this portion of deck except for two German university students on a three-week holiday to Thailand. Feeling eight times their age (and almost eight times my own) as I navigated my bad back on the bench, we didn’t engage each other that much. But when the girls turned giddy as they conspired in German to reenact the Titanic bow scene, I eased myself into an upright position and grabbed my camera. The bow was off limits to passengers—the girls seemed unaware of this—and I thought the expression on their faces would be priceless when the captain roared out the window from the bridge above us.
But the better picture, I think, is the one I’m posting here. Taken three seconds before the captain got the bridge window open to commence his roar, I love how it seems to capture the feeling of youth, freedom, and lightheartedness. It was a fleeting moment in time that will never be repeated.
By the end of the week they would be back in university, and the week after that I would be on an operating table in Bangkok. Two years have passed since then, and I imagine their Thailand experience, like my pain, now feels pretty distant. As the wise old narrator in Wendell Berry’s book Hannah Coulter says as she looks back on her life:
You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind.
And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence.
(Note: Wendell Berry’s novels, though not travel writing per se, are some of the best books I’ve read because of how they speak about values, community, and remembering. Concerning the idea of living in the now, many have found Ekhart Tolle’s The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment helpful.)
Two days ago, I spent all 14 hours of the New York – Delhi nonstop flight worrying that my seatmate was quietly infecting me with something nasty.
He stayed bundled in his ski parka and wool hat the enitre flight. He had a telltale IV drip bandage on the back of his hand, sat eyes closed with a grimace, and didn’t eat a bite (except for the occasional pill from the bag in his pocket).
Has anyone else ever borne the weight of travel-induced hypochondria?
Maybe it comes from the battery of shots the docs recommend for going almost anywhere these days. Get ‘em and you’re attuned more closely to the threats; skip ‘em and add a dollop of risk to that awareness.
Maybe it’s an unavoidable side effect of Western culture, obsessed as we are with hand goop and Airborne and sneeze technique.
Maybe it’s just me. But I’d like to chalk it up to travel’s tendency to push us to find the story in any given detail — to make us reach for reasons and explanations to make sense of it all (no matter how quixotic it feels).
Pursuing countless such paths per second, it’s no wonder some of them swerve into fear. Some rightly so, some as false alarms. Moving forward, the goal becomes keeping the number of alarms roughly equivalent to the number of legitimate threats — and thus eliminating that pesky brick-in-the-backpack known as travel hypochondria.
Photo by Jaako via Flickr.
