Bangkok
THAILAND
In Retrospect...
By LYNDI
Saturday, August 20, 2011
If you thought you were going to get a blog about Bangkok – you made a bad call. Aaron and I spent one night just off of Khao San Road and did the stuff that the other 1,000,000 blogs about Bangkok explain.
This is about the bigger picture – what we learned in 3 1/2 years abroad, what we did wrong, and what we wouldn’t change for the world. And these are not mutually exclusive.
1. Go. Now.
In Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man the main character looks back on his life with regret and says, “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”.
Our society teaches us from a very young age how to be successful – and rarely does that include leaving your good jobs, selling your home and blowing your savings on a long trip abroad. But that’s exactly what Aaron and I felt we needed to do before we could settle down. I feel very lucky that we both had the nerve to do it, despite the impracticality of it.
And the sooner you can do it, the better. There are a million good reasons not to – especially because Paris will still have an Eiffel Tower when you’re retired, Argentina will still make good wine in 20 years, and African safaris will be just as impressive after the kids are out of school.
But there is an urgency to go now. Globalization is spreading rapidly – for better or worse – and the Annapurna region is building a road to bring tour buses to remote villages, the wild Sumatran orangutans are dying out, and the Quechua people rarely wear their traditional dress and instead prefer used t-shirts and jeans.
As the roads less traveled become worn, we are losing the uniqueness and mystery that made us want to travel in the first place.
2. We can learn a lot from the developing world.
It is a common misconception that we are “better off” in the western world than in second and third world countries. I don’t want to understate the importance of access to reliable healthcare, personal and social freedoms, and the peace of mind that our network of support provides. But it is unequivocally true that money does not equal happiness.
When you don’t have a machine that washes your clothes, you must spend at least an hour a day at the washing hole with your neighbors – scrubbing, chatting, gossiping, and laughing. When you don’t have AAA, every passing car stops to ensure the driver and his disabled vehicle are okay. When you don’t have a television or Netflix to wile away the hours, you play with your children outside.
These are the relationships that our society is drifting away from. As we come to rely more on time-saving devices and wireless internet connections, we may know what Kim Kardashian tweeted last night, but we don’t know our neighbors’ last names.
3. Talk to the locals.
You don’t have to speak the local language to communicate with people abroad. The language barrier is not as great as most people think. It is rare that someone does not want to practice their English – it may take a little more patience, but well worth the extra effort.
There is a wealth of knowledge that guidebooks can’t give you. Ask your Cuban hostel owner what they think of Castro, ask the guy next to you in line at the Nepalese border what the best local restaurant is and see if you can buy his beer, and ask your Kenyan taxi driver what he thinks of Obama. And listen.
Aaron and I had a great advantage in Latin America as we could speak to the locals in Spanish – those that were not directly involved in the tourist industry usually have had less exposure to foreigners and therefore distinctly different observations on their country and yours.
There are a LOT of problems with the old British Empire, but the end result is that in many countries from India to Tanzania to Belize, English is one of their first languages. We are incredibly fortunate to speak a language that is the designated language of the world, but I think it can dissuade us from attempting to speak to those we cannot easily communicate with.
4. Use the guidebook wisely.
The Lonely Planet guidebook series is a victim of its own popularity. They are usually an excellent reference on how to get where you’re going, but by the time the book is published with recommended restaurants and hotels, they’ve either become over-run with tourists that follow the guidebook religiously or the owners have rejoiced on their inevitable popularity and thrown customer service and cleanliness to the wind.
Your best bet is word of mouth of course. You can’t always find someone that has been where you’re going, so starting with a night or two at a recommendation in the Lonely Planet is fine – but take the time to look around the city and seek out family run options. You didn’t travel halfway across the world to hang out with a bunch of other travelers – you wanted to experience the culture.
So grab a beer at a local pub while trying to memorize your Swahili flashcards or seek out the small, busy wine bar well outside of the touristy part of Venice. Not only will you save money, you’ll pique the interest of the locals and enhance the experience the guidebooks tried to direct you to in the first place.
5. Slow down.
Whenever possible, take the slow road. If you need to get from Florianopolis to Punta del Este, why not stop in a sleepy Brazilian beach town enroute? I’ve done plenty of “I-have-four-days-to-see-all-of-London-GO!” trips – which of course is better than nothing – but you’ll miss local rugby games and farmer’s markets that define a city as much as their museums and palaces.
Buses are quite the conundrum – air travel is safe and reliable in nearly every country nowadays – but you miss the fantastic scenery and stops in little villages. If you fly from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap – how are you going to get to sample the roadside-staple roasted tarantulas? If you fly from one Galapagos island to the next – where will you see the 15-foot marlin chasing your boat?
On the other hand, buses can be UNFATHOMABLY uncomfortable and long. Each time I think I’ve had the worst bus ride of my life, I take one a few months later that is even worse. I did not know bus rides could be so painful and boring. I’m not sure whether to award the Delhi-Kathmandu 40-hour bus ride the blue ribbon, or maybe the Managua-Little Corn Island fiasco? We can’t leave out the pot-holed, dusty and smelly ride from Santa Cruz to Puerto Suarez either. Now that they are over, I can look back and laugh at the ridiculousness of chickens literally falling on your head or going 26 hours with no food or bathroom breaks – but at the time it can put your sanity and patience on the line.
Though I wouldn’t wish some of those rides upon my worst enemy, the vast majority are rather pleasant experiences that provide the opportunity to see epic scenery and visit little-known locales and cuisines.
6. Your money means more than just dollars and cents.
We have the colossal blessing to be from a country where we earn enough money to travel to faraway places and participate in different excursions. With this opportunity comes a responsibility. It is up to us to give our money to those organizations and businesses that deserve it. Not that one person is more deserving than another, but some operators are much more environmentally sensitive and give much more back to the community than others.
Safety is always a number one priority when choosing anything from a hotel to a Death Road Bike Tour in La Paz. But by spending your money with companies that hire locally and use resources wisely deserve to be rewarded with our cash.
Usually the first thing to go when choosing a cheaper option is environmental protection. When you shop for dive operators make sure their dive masters don’t touch the underwater sponges or rest on coral. When looking for a tour to the Amazon, make sure your guide doesn’t pull an anaconda from it’s nest so that everyone can get a good look. Seeing wildlife is an experience that sells, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of permanently damaging the environment.
This list certainly isn’t exhaustive – in fact I just came up with it as I sat here. But sitting in our little apartment in Portland, Oregon one year later (sorry to both of our blog readers… it has taken us a full year to finish the last entry), these are the things that come to mind.
And it is true – had we not spent thousands of dollars on this trip, maybe we would have made a down payment on a house, maybe we’d have a car with de-foggers that actually work, maybe we wouldn’t be working entry-level jobs in our 30s, and maybe our apartment would have working heaters. But we wouldn’t have dozens of photo albums with cherished memories, we wouldn’t have a world-wide network of friends, and we definitely wouldn’t have the same outlook on life.
The new house and new car will come in time. The opportunity to really live may never come again.
