Get Out There

A lot of people never travel. Maybe around 64% of Americans never leave the country, and given that many people in less developed countries can never afford to travel, I'd guess that between 70-80% of the world spend their entire lives in one country. Among those who can afford to travel, a lot either don't or stick to the same familiar safe spots.

One of my main goals on this trip is to figure out how to reach tentative travelers or non-travelers. I've seen a lot of manifestations of this mentality now. There are the Americans who don't think about leaving home, there are the Europeans who are so focused on how much there is on their continent, and there are Hong Kongers whose trips rotate around the same familiar comfort spots among Taiwan, Singapore and Japan. This last demographic is one I've long struggled to reach. When I told coworkers of my plans in Southeast Asia, they thought I had made a bizarre choice. One coworker legitimately asked if I was going to Vietnam to do opium. I asked him what he likes to see when he traveled, and he said he likes scenery. So I Google image searched "Sapa", my first stop, and beautiful mountain rice terraces came up. He merely shrugged. "You can see those in China."

I think I did a better job expressing myself the day before I left. I was having lunch with a thoughtful local developer, and he asked me why I would start in Vietnam of all places. "Hong Kong people would normally go to places like Japan or Singapore or Western Europe where it's clean and nice." I paused for a moment and said, "It's the exact opposite for me. I come from a clean and nice country country. I know what that's like. What I don't know is what it's like growing up in a developing country. These places have seemed off limits to me, growing up millions of miles away. But they're not actually off limits for me, I just need to make the effort. But for most people who grow up there, coming to a developed country is what's off limits. So I'm lucky, I'm in a position to travel, to see very different lives and share as much as I can about my life." And the developer nodded, and said something to the effect of, "I still won't go, but I'm glad you are. If I ever go to Vietnam I'd go on a tour."

Fair enough, everyone has their limits. But as I travel I try to practice my personal travel philosophy that I've developed over the years. Perhaps the first commandment in this philosophy is, "Thou shall not join guided tours." Now I'm not talking about getting a tour guide to explain what the significance of this castle is - oftentimes you need that knowledge to make the stone walls meaningful. I'm talking about the tour company trips that pick you up on arrival and shepherd you around from site to sight on a bus. I've joined these before with large families and I understand the demand. If you can pay to remove stress from your life, why wouldn't you?

But for my travels this is unacceptable. It's not just that it's cheaper to go on your own. Behind a tour guide dictating where you have to go, you can't actually discover a country's real character or offerings. You only discover what your tour guide lets you discover, and you have no idea what that might entail. Is this really a market where locals buy their groceries? Is this really a traditional alpaca farm or is it a modern zoo for tourists? Shedding that oversight and navigating the streets on your own gives you so much more understanding of how life actually works where you're visiting, even if you need to supply your own narration. 

What's even more crucial, hiding behind a guided tour reduces the local's exposure of you. A tour contains very few organic encounters where you and a local can see each other as individuals instead of a part of an incomprehensible foreign blob. I think this impacts national reputations. So many Chinese, as well as many other East Asians (and Europeans to a lesser extent), travel by tour and this is what locals will see of them. It doesn't do much for your standing abroad when all anyone knows of your country is a bus full of your people ignoring local customs and obnoxiously reducing the surroundings as lifeless photo opportunities. It's very different than seeing one couple walking into your restaurant, struggling to order off your menu and having a nice laughable lost-in-translation exchange in the process. The former builds resentment and the second raises curiosity. In my opinion, the travel habits of Chinese have done much harm to China's international reputation.

I'm also looking to find the balance between "getting off the beaten path" and "seeing the must sees." Really these are overused buzzwords. Perhaps I can phrase it as a balance between reaching the celebrated beautiful wonders of this world and uncovering the beautiful within the mundane. In this specific case, how can I spend so long in Vietnam and not go to Halong Bay? There's nothing wrong with venturing to one of the most beautiful places on the planet - even if it's overrun with tourists. One just has to be wary that the cruise trip teaches one little about the Vietnamese way of life. Such tours can be supplemented by spending some time in average towns and smaller cities, the flip side being that a lot of that time spent can be very boring. The places where regular people live and work are generally pretty mundane and get old fast. It's a tough balance to strike, an experience that is organic and not packaged and also riveting.

Other commandments are more like guidelines. Support the local economy, eat the regional cuisine, learn some of the local language, walk around as much as possible, smile as much as possible. Be flexible - a lot of the greatest travel tips will come from the people you meet along the journey. And don't buy too much cheap crap - those sort of souvenirs don't last (lesson learned the hard way).

Thus far I've had a fairly fly by the seat of my pants trip. I got off the airport in Hanoi needing to take a bus into town and catching a sleeper train to Sapa. I asked a Canadian couple for directions and ended up sharing a hired car with them. I was greatly embarrassed to find out at the end that they had already paid for the ride, and proceeded to buy them 6 beers and apologize in a most Canadian manner.

I've yet to book my lodging more than a day in advance. Twice I've just shown up and asked for a room. I've depended on the kindness of strangers and friends several times. Barely two weeks ago I was engaged in a life of routine and tasks and now I am comfortably removed from such restrictions. There have been many situations where I'd pause and chuckle at the absurdity of it all. There's been a moment where I thought I had seriously screwed up, and a day that started poorly but turned out impossibly well. And I've been brought to tears by separation anxiety in one of the filthiest places I'd ever been. Stay tuned for these stories.