*Every single bad experience has either happened to me or a close friend. Not a single one is made up.
How
many people can you think of who traveled to "find themselves?" There
is this expectation that when you travel you feel something profound and
meaningful. The travel in and of itself is somehow supposed create
situations that make everything up until that point seem bland. I am
guilty of this myself. Not so much the finding myself thing since I
actually know myself really well (a little too well...) and have known
myself for quite a few years. However I do expect traveling to result in
this magical melding of a perfect experience that fills me with wonder
and delight. This is actually the reason that I continue traveling and
then travel some more. The truth is that I rarely if ever get that
feeling.
Granted I do have grass-is-always-greener
syndrome and it is a burden that I am learning to deal with but the
glamor of traveling the world is an illusion. The truth is, the world is
surprisingly mundane and the journey itself is usually riddled with bad
luck: missed planes, unending bus rides that bounce you to your bones,
that sick sinking feeling when you have been robbed/cheated of your
money/belongings. Trains will miss the station you needed to get to,
printed ticket times will be wrong, sitting between two third class
train toilets in India for eight hours, and finally, you might just find
yourself at the wrong airport and end up missing your flight.
Depending
on the amount of luxury that you can do without, you will likely need
to use at least one toilet that is a hole in the ground or even worse,
an unventilated concrete outhouse where nice smelling things go to die.
Showers won't work, water (that may or may not be tinted brown) will
spray everywhere, and you will get sick at least once. Keep in mind that
you will be getting sick in whatever horrible bathroom you are stuck
with, so have fun and make sure to choose one with a comfy toilet
seat/wide bowl depending on which end it's coming out of. If you are a
woman, at the very least you will be ogled and at the other extreme you
will be groped or worse. If you are a man, watch out for opportunistic
women who are looking to leave their current place and shemales, I doubt
you want many surprises (unless you are gay and this is a happy
surprise, in which case watch out for shemales that are likewise looking
at you like a walking green card).
Depending on which
country you are in you will need to watch out for the animal population.
Crafty klepto monkeys will snatch your food/scarf/jewelry, you may fall
off an ill-tempered camel, and you might get attacked by a rabid
animal.
Finally the people. No matter where you are
from, people are surprisingly similar. In every culture in the world you
will find those who are friendly for no reason, those who are friendly
in order to swindle you, and those who are just straight up
hostile/rude/aggressive. Looking for an untouched population, pristine
in their tribal ways? Sorry, Lady Gaga has made it around the world in a
path blazed by Michael Jackson. Sure, you will get those quaint
cultural quirks that only one specific people tend to exhibit but
chances are those quirks will start to wear on you after awhile. For
example, I like my personal space and while I don't mind sacrificing it
out of necessity (Hong Kong) it just drives me crazy when people stand
really close to me/stuck like a barnacle on my side when there are miles
of space around. The two experiences that vividly spring to mind are:
1. in Chennai in a movie theater where I was the only woman in line for
popcorn and at least 10 hands were on my butt and all the guys were
pressed as close to me as possible. 2. In Lhasa in the temples. I guess I
look Tibetan and Tibetan nomads (at least the ones I have encountered)
love to stick close to their own. The Boy started speaking Tibetan to a
monk and all of a sudden I had ten nomad barnacles popping out from all
around me. I will literally spooned while standing upright as they
gawked at the spectacle of the Boy.
That being said
there are so many cultures that have some of the most genuinely
friendly people I have ever met. Lhasa was one such place, and Istanbul
and Alanya are two others where I have just fallen in love with how
fabulous the local population is. Honestly how similar people are to
each other regardless of nationality is one of the best things about
traveling. The world stops being this scary place where anyone who is
"other"is automatically labeled a threat. Seeing people as people is a
great perk.
Anyway, to continue on with bad
experiences: beggars. At some point during your travels, you will feel
the burden of being privileged. You will feel guilty and/or the desire
to change whatever society has impacted you. Eventually realizing that
you can't really help anyone individually, you will grow a thicker skin
and learn to ignore that poverty that surrounds you.
If
you are traveling in a nation that is pretty much like where you grew
up barring the fact that they may speak some sort of European language,
then you will likely not be able to relate to most of what I have
written.
While you travel, be it alone or with another
companion, you will likely feel lonely and cut off at least once. If
you are traveling for an extended period of time, this feeling will
grow. I don't care how many hostel friends/local friends you have met.
Uprooting all the time to backpack off to the next destination makes you
start over again and again and again. And maybe it's just me, but it
takes its toll.
Having experienced everything I
listed, you then get to see whatever site/museum/natural wonder that you
dragged yourself all that way to see and are, most times, inevitably
let down. Whether it be the super-souped up photos from Nat Geo, etc. or
from it being built up in your mind, the reality rarely lives up to
expectation (cough cough Mona Lisa cough cough). Either that or you are
overwhelmed at first and then get used to the sight.
Through
all this you haven't felt that profound moment that started you on this
quest. So you take a whole bunch of pictures of you looking happy and
doing crazy things and post it onto
Facebook/Instagram/insert_social_media_tool and make everyone jealous of
the awesome adventure you are having. You don't document the days of
tedium.
Having thoroughly depressed whoever has
bothered to read this far down, I will say there is a silver lining:
it's the bad experiences that make travel worth doing. All of those times that you were holed up crying to yourself in some
godforsaken hellhole, praying to local gods, and wishing you were
somewhere, anywhere else, just know that those tears are going to make
the funniest, most entertaining stories. They are also great for subtly
bragging that you traveled but done in such a self-deprecating manner
that no one thinks you're full of yourself.
Think back
to any of the travel stories that your friends told you. Honestly, how
much do you really recall of those times where they were overwhelmed
with the beauty of _____________ (insert sunrise/sunset) on top of
______________ (insert temple/mountain/other tall structure) versus
those experiences where they were squished between two old women with
chickens while the bus careened on one wheel because a cow was caught in
the wheels? If you answer overwhelming beauty moment, good for you,
this post doesn't apply to you. If you answered the latter, then we have
something in common.
Bad experiences are bonding
experiences. I am telling you that the fastest way to make a new friend
is to open up with some sort of horrific food poisoning moment that had
you projecting through one end or both. Best ice breaker in the world.
If
you are traveling with a partner then bad experiences will forge a much
stronger relationship than if everything went according to plan. The
first time I was ever truly honest with the Boy about what a d-bag he
had been to me in the beginning of our relationship (but only at the
beginning, he learns fast!) was after one such shared awful
train-wrecker of an experience. We were in western China on a 10 hour
bumpy-as-all-get-out bus ride (which we were told could last anywhere
from three hours to seventeen) on very little sleep and ending in a crap
hole of a hotel room (it literally smelled like feces). At that point
no one could contest that I was pretty darn committed to the kid and so I
just let loose. I remember this fondly, for the most part.
Bad
experiences can also give you new found respect for some and increased
respect for those who you already regarded highly. This actually
happened with me for my dad. Only a few months ago, when we were in the
Philippines, someone nabbed his briefcase and then thoughtfully left it
on a bench behind us minus a lot of USD. The amount of restraint,
acceptance, and positive thinking from my dad was awe-inspiring. I can
honestly say that I have never been prouder of him as a human being than
during that trip.
The reason I wrote this post is
that I have noticed a trend in each of my submissions to travel writing
agencies/guide book publishers/travel writing contests: all of my
stories were about negative experiences. I can't help but wonder if this
is a contributing factor for why they aren't so fond of my writing.
Travel writing is supposed to inspire people to travel and I worry that I
can achieve the opposite effect. It is actually an effort for me to
write about stuff that has just rocked my socks off. And then even the
positive ones (Sunk in Coron)
are slightly dark (you should have read the first draft...). I can
quite confidently say that if my positive and negative travel memories
formed two separate teams, my negative experiences could beat the
positive in whatever field you name. They are the Gabby Douglases, the
Michael Phelpses of my psyche. The reason that I hold onto the
ridiculously bad situations that I find myself in is because those are
the ones that make me really feel like I have been placed out of my
comfort zone and survived. And that is the point of travel. To go
beyond your world.
I have most definitely experienced
some moments when I have fallen silent in awe and feel nothing but
wonder for whatever it is that I am seeing. Those are definitely the
highlights and are the more precious for how rare they are. Those are
memories that should be treasured. But the awful ones are just so much
more fun!
I am not saying you should hope for
something to go wrong, just accept that it will and get excited for some
center-of-attention party stories!
If you would like to read more, feel free to hit up my blog: Unsettled TCK
