The Trip We Opted Out Of

     I spent several weeks planning a trip to the Philippines. I had heard that the nation was an interesting place to visit but when I began to read about it in detail, I got quite excited because it featured my major travel fascination- various indigenous peoples whose lives were quite distinct from their neighbors'. I learned that the geography of the area was also worthy of exploration- diverse urban areas, wonderful isolated islands, lonely and lovely beaches, etc. So I did the usual trip planning and off we went. As soon as we arrived in Manila, it started raining. It never stopped. We made the most of our stay in the Manila area by sampling the delightful festivals held in nearby villages. Each day, we got up and headed for another village. The celebrations were varied and colorful and never disappointed us. And the rain kept coming down. It poured on the parades, it drenched the religious objects carried on palanquins and on carriages propelled by massive bulls, and it soaked the multitude of creative displays constructed for whatever festival was being celebrated. We usually had good luck with the weather in our travels, but not this time. We decided it was time to leave Manila.

     We headed north in our car toward Banga-an, a small village located in the center of the Ifugao culture. We were on our way to visit the wonderful rice terraces in that area. The awe inspiring  Banaue Rice Terraces are located in the north of Luzon. More than 2,000 years ago, the lfugao people who lived in that area, carved the rice fields out of the mountainsides with peaks rising up to 6,000 feet high using simple tools and their bare hands. Our visit was not to be. When we left our Manila hotel, it was still raining heavily. At the entrance to the toll road which led to the terraces, we were informed that the road was closed and no cars were permitted in that area. It was flooded. It was then that we finally came to realize that the infamous monsoons had come early and our weather timing was destined to make our Luzon tour impossible.

     From the toll road entrance, we made our way to the tourist agency we had made a few reservations with and discussed our intended travel to the southern islands, most of them rich with beautiful beaches, interesting tribes and lots of worthwhile sites. No such luck. Of course the weather in the South was fine, mostly sunshine and warm breezes; the political situation was not.  It was strongly suggested that a trip to Palawan and the towering marble cliffs of El Nido or a stop in Cebu with its lovely shores and snorkeling as well as its fine cultural sites would be a great risk to our safety. The Maoist guerrillas were apparently quite active in the that area. Their effort to peel off southern islands where the Muslims were a majority was brutal and destructive. Tourists had been captured and even beheaded. Even the airport we would have flown into had been bombed and damaged significantly. If that was not enough to discourage us, perhaps the headline in the Manila papers the next morning would have been. It was about a bombing at the department store where we had shopped the previous day. Manila was more than wet. I did not customarily worry greatly about safety but I did have to confront the reality that was presented to me

     My wife, sick of the rain and our relative immobility, said to me that morning  "Get me out of here." Although I do not quit such activities easily, I had to agree she was right. We pleaded our case to the agents which they immediately empathized with and we got a refund on whatever reservations they were holding for us. They secured a convenient flight to Spain for us the next morning and off we went. When I told my son what had happened, he had two responses. You guys don't have the clothing for Spain- a completely correct observation (we take few clothes and usually our oldest attire on our typical trips) - and you won't get Mommy back to the Third World after she visits Spain. That turned out not to be accurate. We had a different kind of trip in Spain which we enjoyed very much but we both relished a later return to the kind of places we were used to traveling to and we have continued to roam the Third World ever since. Life goes on as ever.

                                                                          
                                                       Restaurant, near Madrid, Spain

Places You Can't Go Anymore

     The world was never completely open to the traveler. I will not try to go back through history to enumerate the multitude of places that were unwelcoming in ancient or middle aged times but what has happened in the Third World over the last couple of decades makes voyages to some places which were available before quite undesirable, if not impossible, to visit now. Obviously places where there is revolution or armed rebellions are in that category. Syria, Libya, Burundi, Gaza and other places where tourists have not been an important source of income are especially undesirable today. But Tunisian tourism was coming along before the recent rebellion there and, for Egypt, visitors have long been a large component of the economy. One can still go to those places but many fewer do and the danger is far greater than it was before the Arab Spring. Central Africa was also a relatively untouristed area because of the difficulty getting around but the Hutu-Tutsi struggle and its reverberations in the entire area have made the whole region treacherous for potential visitors. If one is intent on visiting the remaining gorillas, it is still possible. The motivation to do so has to be considerably higher than it was a decade or more ago. Just watch out for those other guerrillas. The current violence in Nigeria makes that West African country a fearful place to visit as well.  It should be obvious that important countries like Iraq and Iran currently draw very few tourists to their great ancient sites and marvelous mosques. One may go to those places but not for personal pleasure these days.
     
     Of course, things do vary from year to year. The civil war in Columbia has enabled more visitation in the last few years. Although it is not a Third World area, urban centers of Spain are much quieter now that the Basque separatists (ETA) are less active. Myanmar may be become less of a political dilemma for potential tourists because of developments over the past several months or so. It has welcomed travelers of late but tourism has been minimal because of the unwillingness of many travelers to support the repressive government. Some of the small countries in West Africa are now visitable while others are less so. It is a fluid and unpredictable area. One might hesitate to go to the Ivory Coast these days, a country with magnificent crafts, an interesting Colonial past and a lot to see. I am glad I got there in time. Mali has become more violent near the desert area and the Tuareg people who occupy that region are in open revolt. How can one go there and not visit Timbuktu? Sounds like the fifteenth century when Westerners were banned completely from that mysterious city. Sri Lanka's civil war has finally ended although there are occasional, isolated incidents there. One can surely visit that beautiful island at this time but I am glad I did not wait for peace to arrive. The country is now more ready for me but I am not so ready to travel that far any more.

     South America and Mexico change from year to year. The good news is that Columbia is now accessible and reasonably safe- quite a difference from just a few years ago. Peru has been more stable also although the great tourist sites were always a distance from the fighting between the the Maoist insurgency and the violent military forces that engulfed the country. Many of us went there in spite of that bloodshed because there were places that just had to be seen and no solution to the problems seemed to be on the horizon. Glad we were wrong about the country settling down. Mexico, a country I have visited a dozen and half times or more, is now beset by drug wars and crime which has plagued visitors as well as residents. In urban areas there was a high rate of crime for many years but one could still travel with care. Now, it depends on where you want to go. There are sections of that fabulous country which as are safe as ever and other areas where the drug cartels are in charge and beheadings are taking place with regularity. I cannot list now all the desirable areas and all the places where danger lurks, but there are many news sources on the Web to inform the traveler. So far, the Mayan areas and the Yucatan in general are relatively untouched by the violence.

     The traveler who can wait is often rewarded. Well within memory, it would have been quite unwise to visit Chile or Argentina unless one wanted to reward vicious dictators. Even more recently, Guatemala and Honduras were off the tourist track. If one wanted to see Copan or Tikal, you would have had to dodge bullets from every direction. Now the jungle where Tikal lies features quite a few bandits along the roads but they pose a risk of robbery, not usually a high risk of life or death. As always, the trick is to go where you can when you can. Don't wait for the planet to settle down and make way for the traveler. Excitement and danger sometimes go hand in hand and Third World adventure is surely no exception to that fact. Happy travels.

Cathedral, Merida, Mexico

Cultures Through the the Masks

      At the top of my stairs stands a large mask from Papua New Guinea called a gable mask. In the jungle region of that country these masks are placed on the front of special buildings (spirit houses) to ward off the likelihood of bad spirits entering. Since I placed the mask there I have not had any bad spirits pass it so I guess it serves the function for which it is designed. This mask has a special memory for me. I bought it soon after I entered the Sepik River area of the country at a small market in one of the towns along the river. It was much too bulky to put into a suitcase, though it was not heavy, so I wrapped it inside a plastic bag and dragged it around with us for a couple of weeks until we got home. At the time, I was not certain it was worth all that effort but I am am quite convinced it was now that I have enjoyed it for quite a few years. I have mentioned the fact that I collect masks in my Third World journeys as artifacts which remind me of the places I have visited and the experiences I have had. They fill the walls of my dining room and kitchen, my foyer and halls and enable me to relive so much of what I have seen and learned. But their real meaning lies in the function they perform in the cultures where they were created.

      In West Africa where the greatest diversity of these creations exist, masks are used for ceremonies of many kinds and their varieties include depictions of human and animal faces as well as other figures which have specific meaning to the makers such as snakes and birds and other representations of spiritual significance. At dance ceremonies in Africa one might well see young masked men who are unidentified appear from the nearby forest, dance their assigned parts and return to where they came from to complete their tribal initiation rites. These dancers hide their identities behind masks so that the dance is the focus rather than the individual performing them.  The spirit worship of West Africans as well as several other peoples around the world is symbolized in these ceremonial objects. They are also fine representations of traditional art often created with great skill and detail. 

       Among the other masks in my collection are depictions of Colonial figures, animals and other subjects carved in Africa or Mexico, another center of mask making. Since I have been to Mexico many times, my masks remind me of the variety of Indian tribes that still carry forth many of the traditions of their history. Quite a few of these masks are palpable representations of old, spirit worshipping cultures influenced by the Conquistadors who imposed Catholicism yet allowed such traditional art and notions to flourish. Similar masks exist in some areas of South America where celebrations like Carnaval motivate mask makers to continue to carve and experiment with their artistry.

      But masks, though they may be influenced greatly by the traditions and values of a particular group, may also be just artistic objects. A few of my masks are simply lovely craftsmanship. One of the first masks I ever bought was carved in the Berber area of Morocco, hardly a major mask-making location. While it is only tangentially related to the culture where it was made, it is definitely a lovely piece of art. In places like India and Nepal, many masks represent gods. Some of these are used ceremonially while others decorate temples and pagodas and walls in homes of the reverent, well-off citizens. And some of the masks I encountered were the product of wonderful serendipity. A passing mention to the captain of a small ship I was on in Borneo resulted in an unplanned stop in a small village on the Mahakam River where I secured a wonderful mask created for the upcoming celebration of an event there somewhat like our New Year's celebration. A brief walk from my modest hotel on the little island of Sumba east of Bali took me to a store which was full of antique, interesting masks created by the tribe that inhabits that area. One of my favorites is a mask of a bearded man I bought in that store for next to nothing. Whatever their use or purpose may have been before I bought them, these wonderful artifacts decorate my home and constantly bring me back to some of the most wonderful places and fascinating experiences I have ever had. The gods and the devils, the dogs and birds, the alligators and tigers all follow me as I walk through  my house. What a sublime byproduct of my travel.

Rangda Dance Mask, Bali, Indonesia

A Few Things I've Learned from Travel

     Did you know that Peru is directly below the East Coast of the United States? I may have had an inkling of that even before I started to roam the world but superficial knowledge is different than having a palpable understanding of the world. Flying into Lima as opposed to Rio makes one understand physically how much farther east South America lies from its northern neighbor. One can learn an enormous amount from books and lectures and other such sources but only experience paves the way for such knowledge to actually become part of you. It is that kind of  awareness that the tourist gains along the way. Anyhow, that is one of the things I have learned. There have been a lot more revelations.

     I have discovered that all people have the same basic needs even though the forms can vary greatly. There are houses built of palm and houses built of stone and others of wood or bricks or ice. They are all creations to protect us from the sun and the rain, but their design rests on the imagination and traditions of those who built them as well as the materials available in the area where they are located. We all need to eat in order to live but what we eat depends as much on circumstance and habit as it does on available food sources. Snakes and eels are not universally part of the diet. Guinea pigs are treats in certain places and unimaginable food in others. Even in a culture like Vietnam, there are folks who eat either dogs or cat yet consider the other repugnant.

         Every culture has its own customs and taboos and the visitor should be aware of these before voyaging to a new society. There are places where one symbol means OK and places where the same symbol is a gross insult. In some places one eats with the right hand and never touches food with the left. In others, eating with your hands would be considered quite gauche. Don't touch Koreans you are conversing with and don't use a handkerchief in a restaurant in France or your behavior will be considered rude. I found that Muslims and others remove their shoes before entering a holy space while the Japanese do so before they enter a home. I could go on and on with this list. One would never learn about such differences by staying home. They may not seem significant to the non-traveler but they have been quite interesting to me.

     While it seems that most of the people in the world require some spiritual base, if not an organized set of religious practices, the ways that need is satisfied could not be more varied. There are some who decorate skulls and stack them on shelves for ancestor worship. Others ambush natives from the next village to bury their severed heads with their ancestor's to serve them in the next world. Some folks bow to statues, others to rocks and stone. There are folks who consider washing oneself unholy while others wash thoroughly before prayers and still others who say a blessing before they wash in the morning. Such variations are what helps to make travel so fascinating.

      I have learned about the incredible variety of religions practiced in the world at large. Being among the practitioners is quite different than reading about their philosophies. In Orthodox churches and in mosques there is no furniture; but Orthodox stand during their ceremonies while Muslims kneel and prostrate themselves. Orthodox churches are filled with colorful paintings and icons of saints; Hindu and Jain temples feature lovely statues in addition to wall decorations; Muslims forbid the representation of living beings in their holy places. Zoroastrians leave the body of their deceased in open areas to be eaten by birds and other creatures who return the flesh to nature. Most other religions bury their dead in graves but these can be either above ground or below according to custom. In some areas there are people who choose to bury their loved ones in small houses which are replicas of dwellings for the living; in other places the bodies are burned and the ashes scattered. All of these variations are minor compared to the ideological differences that underlie them but they do make travel a bit more interesting. I would have been incognizant of most of these customs hanging around in my own neighborhood exclusively.

      So what does knowledge of all these tidbits contribute to the traveler's life? For me they enlarge my awareness of the world and make it more interesting. They feed my travel desires. They enrich my sense of man's creativity and imagination. They increase my wonder. Such discoveries are lots of fun and downright delightful. One more reward of travel off the beaten path.
    

                                                        Monks at Lunch, Myanmar

Third World Sites Not To Be Missed

     Most travelers are quite familiar with famous places in the West. St. Peters, Notre Dame, the London Tower, the Prado Museum, Red Square and countless other such sites are commonly visited by Westerners. America and Europe offer enough of these to last a lifetime of travel. But what is their equivalent in the Third World? The answer is a plethora of far older and often more magnificent places where man or nature have exercised their creative force. We are all at least cognizant of some of the major Third World Sites. A natural wonder is the magnificent Victoria Falls where the Zambezi River rushes over a mile and a quarter in width and whose torrent in the greatest water flow in the world comparable only to Iguassu Falls of South America. Then there are the Taj Mahal in all its marbled glory, the Great Wall of China, the magnificent Blue Mosque of Istanbul and other places we have some familiarity with. But the Third World contains far more sites of man's historical glory and earth's endless variety.

       Southern Asia offers the greatest collection of amazing tourist sites of any part of the world. The tourist can start in Myanmar with the incredible Disney-like Schwedagon Pagoda in Yangon.  It is not only the holiest Buddhist site in the devout county but it shimmers with gold and diamonds from dozens of stupas large and small some of which contain relics of the Buddha. It is a remarkable experience to circle the site and view the multitude of worship places in this one location. Not too far from Yangon is the city of Bagan which features a vast field dotted with millennium old temples, each more interesting than the next. It is awe-inspiring to think of a civilization that would create such an assemblage of holy sites in a relatively short period of time. Borobudur, another sumptuous Buddhist stupa, is located in the central part of the island of Java in Indonesia. This UNESCO Heritage site  dates from the eighth century and features 72 open stupas each containing a statue of the Buddha. It, too, is one of the great monuments of Buddhist history. In the same area of the world, the neighboring country of Cambodia features relatively intact ruins of several great capitals including Angkor Wat, the one the Western traveler is most likely to know about. The ancient city was a religious and a political center of the Khmer civilization from the 9th to the 12th century and retains it external wall intact as well as many of the temple structures and an amazing collection of art and sculpture. Nearby are impressive remains of other great capitols of the Khmer people. Not far away is the area called "The Killing Fields," one of the most moving monuments to man's cruelty in recent history.

      I mentioned the Taj above but India alone has several of the most incredible sites in the world. Not too far south of the Taj is the town of Khajuraho where a host of beautifully carved erotic temples mark what was once a center of Hindu worship and culture. Still farther south are the Ajanta caves, remnants of ancient Buddhist and Jain temples carved inside granite mountains and decorated with countless paintings and sculptures. Each of these sites is a wonder in itself and makes a trip to India worthwhile. I would add one more amazing building still farther south, namely the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. Not only is this Hindu monument fascinating with its approximately 2,000,000 carvings, but the ceremonies that take place inside are totally unique. Every night Shiva beds with his consort, Meenakshi, on the opposite side of the temple after an elaborate procession carries him to his pleasure. In Varanasi and Pushkar, one can witness devout ritual bathing in holy waters by endless crowds of worshippers who come to fulfill the dream of their lives.

     When we journey through South and Meso-America we find equivalent delights.  The monumental temples and cities built by the Mayans and the Inca are as impressive as any other sites in the world. One might start at the gigantic pyramids of the Teotihuacan civilization near Mexico City and then trace the Mayan religious centers from Chichen Itza and Uxmal down to Palenque and into Guatemala to Tikal and Honduras to Coban. There are many other such sites but a visit to any of these will give the tourist a good idea of how the Mayans centered their political and religious activities in palatial cities. In South America, Macchu Pichu is probably the most impressive example of Inca culture anywhere and should not be missed. Add in Easter Island and the natural and historic wonders of the Galapagos Islands or the Atacama Desert of Chile or the Amazon River and you have as meaningful and wondrous a trip as can be imagined. 

     There is one more category of travel that the Third World offers exclusively- traditional culture. The Omo Valley of Ethiopia is one of the places in Africa where relatively few white travelers have journeyed. The lip-plate tribes of Mursi and Suri are probably worth the difficult journey alone. There are other tribes all over Africa where one can see rare customs and traditional dress and meet people quite unlike themselves. In Papua New Guinea, one can visit unusual hill tribes like the Huli and see a way of life that will disappear in the near future but remains vibrant enough to provide a great travel experience now. Pockets of traditional life also abound  in the Amazon region and other jungles in South America. Each one of these offers a very unique opportunity for the tourist. More densely populated areas in Vietnam and Indonesia contain small groups of people who still exist as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. The tribal peoples of India are in this category as well. They merit a journey through their extensive rural habitat.

     If the tourist thinks a visit to the Louvre or a view of Niagara Falls does the trick for him, so be it. If not, there is a great deal more for the traveler's delight. Just wander a bit off the beaten path.

Schwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Myanmar

Coming Home

     Who would ever have thought that one could shower without making sure to keep their mouth closed? Not the folks who travel in the Third World. Ah, the sweet sound of a toilet that fills, flushes and empties clean. And toilet paper and a seat! Fresh pillow cases and clean sheets welcome me at night time. After each journey I spend time pondering the wonders which abound in my house. How about the pleasure of selecting a restaurant to go to that evening? That is another wonder for whichever one I select the food seems to have familiar names and is served on plates that look washed and carefully handled. What about the streets I drive on where ruts, if they are present, are usually marked and relatively few in number!  The drivers have their lights on - headlights that is, not just the parking ones, so I can see them coming well before we pass one another. Even bicycles have reflectors. The streets themselves are lit and there is often a yellow line to mark the paths for drivers. Oh the pleasures of home!

     In additions to the plethora of hazards of Third World travel, there are a multitude of inconveniences one must also endure. Cold water showers are not surprising to me anymore. Doctors and dentist offices are not necessarily meticulous. As a matter of fact, they can be open stalls looking out onto bustling markets. If you are driving a car, it may not be in shape to get you where you are going. Unless you are driving, transportation may be limited to overfilled buses or crowded trains. Many local residents travel by hanging on to the outside of public vehicles and, I suspect, praying a lot. Restaurants and food stalls customarily lack proper refrigeration and sanitation. This is especially the case where the people are very poor. Dangers to travelers or shoppers or just about anyone are unprotected (one finds regulations rare and usually unenforced if they do exist.) There are few inspections of bridges or road conditions or just about anything. Even more rare are warnings about potentially dangerous places or activities. These all  make the trip more adventurous and exciting but they also have their downsides as you can imagine.

     When I get home or to some other highly Westernized setting, I leave most of these hazards behind me as well as most of the inconveniences. Yet being home is, in a way, a continuation of the travel experience. The lights all work. The refrigerator and freezer and dishwasher, all things we take for granted even though we use them every day, become items of wonder. The warning signs on roads seem like luxuries when we realize that so many people in the world have no such guidance. Window screens are another example of home return appreciation. For the most part they separate humans from insects in a remarkably effective way. I realize how much I appreciate this one simple artifact and how much I prefer the separation between my bedroom and nature. Everywhere I look around me, I marvel at the comforts I have. After traveling in far away places, I take far less for granted and I become so much more aware of the things that make my life easy and predictable. Unfortunately, that feeling does not last very long so I have to travel once more in part to refresh my enjoyment at eventually being back in my own house and my own neighborhood. But surely one aspect of any trip to distant places is the return and the opportunity to appreciate anew the comfort I have built around me. Most of the non-travelers that I know just never think about such matters. You can learn to enjoy the awareness of the presence of safe water or the warming effect of central heating systems in wintertime or the absence of unwanted life forms crawling or flying about to revel in the availability of such artifacts. This renewed sense of the multitude of luxuries that surrounds us is one more benefit of the kind of travel I do. In addition to the excitement in the travel, there is also the comfort of eventually coming back home to be appreciated to as we look forward to every journey through the Third World. Just another exotic travel bonus!

Barber Shop, Rural Ghana

Driving in the Third World

     All things being equal, I prefer to self-drive when I travel in the Third World. Doing so provides the most flexibility and best views when I can stop any place and spend the time I want there. Sometimes, if the next destination is along a complicated route which would be hard to follow or you need language skills you don't have in order to make the trip or the route requires some other skill or knowledge you might not possess, it is good to have a local driver behind the wheel. Actually that arrangement lets you spot events off the road and find the best photo opportunities. Either way, the tourist has the most control over the trip. That is, if all goes right. There is no guarantee that the voyage will be uneventful however. I do confess that there are some places so forbidding on the road that I won't get behind the wheel in spite of any convenience that might offer. If people drive on the opposite side of the road, I find I need to concentrate more and miss some of the sights although that depends on the place. Ireland, though not Third World, with its narrow roads and multitude of tight circles is one example of this. I even found the the gears were reversed in my rental car there and that made for disorienting moments from time to time. But generally the things that dissuade me from getting behind the wheel are unusual traffic obstacles (India- cows, dancing bears, carts and rickshaws for example) or dangers (Pakistan-  rough, unmarked highways, lurking bandits or terrorists) or lunatic drivers (Rio and a few other centers of road calamities.)

     I wrote earlier about a trip along the Silk Road in China which included two flat tires, both occurring many miles from any place they could be repaired. Fortunately, the driver carried a pump to put air into the tire with the slower leak so we were able to limp into the next town stopping and pumping, stopping and pumping. It was a close call on a lonely and rather dangerous road but we made it. That's not the best driving experience I have had but it was probably not the worst. I remember riding in another junker in West Africa along a road which went through an unpopulated and barren area and having the car stall on us. We had put gas into the car some fifty miles earlier and there must have been something unwelcome in the gas. It turned out that the driver knew a mechanic in the next little town about thirty miles ahead. He decided to bring him back to the car in the hope that he could repair it. He hitched a ride to the other town but our guide was able to start our car in the meantime, ride a bit until it stalled again, and repeat the process until we hobbled into the town not far behind the driver's arrival there. He had already secured the services of the mechanic who then disassembled and cleaned the carburetor and put it back into the car. (He charged us $7.00 for that service. I wish he lived closer to my home.) The ride was smooth from then on. I asked the driver where the next mechanic was located. He said about 200 miles ahead.

     The experience of getting lost is another driving hazard in strange places. My first such experience occurred in Jamaica many years ago. I was driving through the countryside and took a questionable path into the hills. We twisted and turned, enjoying the scenery, until the road hit a dead end in a mountainside village where the folks were not particularly happy to see us Americans. The country was not too friendly to tourists at that time and we felt quite threatened by the people who mulled around us. The road had ended right there so a quick turnaround and a descent back to the main road was the next step. We made that without further incident. I also remember getting terribly lost in the hills of central Mexico. We were again ascending a steep, climbing road when the path ended right at the edge of a cliff. Somehow, I managed to turn the car around but my level of confidence was not high. It was hard to feel comfortable, especially as the sun began to set. Getting lost has become a recurrent adventure for me when I am behind the wheel in the Third World.

     Another hazard is running out of gas. In many of the places I have driven there were very few places along the road to fill up. Usually the gasoline comes out of a bottle purchased in some small, all purpose store, often the only one in the town. Sometimes there is no town. I was on a deserted road in southern Mexico and badly underestimated the opportunity to get gas along the road. The result was a long drive in a deserted area as darkness enveloped us while the gauge showed empty. We must have gotten some fifty miles out of the vapors in an empty tank. I managed to schedule in a couple of such adventures in my travels. It is so titillating to drive on empty in an area where safety is a concern under the best of circumstances. Not that it is only the Third World where one can have interesting rides. Recently, in the south of Spain, we drove our van down a small street in a little town which we stopped at to walk around in and found that the road ended right at the edge of a steep cliff. It was too narrow to back up so we decided to turn the van around in a street which could not have been much more than about six inches wider than the van. After assistance from one of the street residents and about forty or so backups, we finally got out of that mess.

     The foregoing does not exhaust the opportunities for special driving experiences in far away places. Running into the flood in China and getting stranded in the mountains as I wrote about earlier is another. Driving over a road covered by a slick glacier is a bit challenging. An overnight drive on a narrow road in fog so thick one can barely see the front of the car is an exciting undertaking. So are drives along high mountain roads with no lights, no markings, and no guardrails. If one is lucky, adventure is just a few miles ahead. The trick is to keep it at least that far away.

                                                Bridge, Central Sumatra, Indonesia

Through the Door Marked E

     There is something about being in the kind of place we call exotic that is like no other experience I can imagine. The word is generally used to describe things which are foreign or strange and that certainly fits many of the places you can visit in the Third World. Exotic denotes cultural settings where folks still live in traditional ways, dress in traditional clothes (although that is changing rapidly), eat unusual foods, and, most of all, demonstrate different values than we are accustomed to in the West. I have written about exotic burial customs, about forms of hospitality quite different than we are used to, about religious practices totally foreign from ours, about safety and security concerns quite unlike those in Western societies, and other such basic differences. Of course, unusual languages alone contribute to a sense of otherness in certain places. On the Island of New Guinea one could experience almost 800 of those dialects alone. All of these and more examples of diversity add up to exoticness. When we walk through the door marked E instead of the one with the V for vacation or the S for safety or the one with the H for home and comfort, we venture into another world, a parallel experience where the unexpected is common and the unknown lies just beyond the next turn in the road. There is something so exciting and stimulating on the other side of door E that only the timid and disinterested are likely to pass it by.

     Once one passes into the Exotic, the newness and the unfamiliarity of what surrounds us calls for us to experiment with new behaviors. That place demands that we increase our alertness and our spontaneity and our energy to cope with the novel demands that are placed upon us. Why do some of us try that door. Partly because we find differences refreshing and exciting. Many tourists already have lives filled with adventure but even those persons can occasionally use more stimulation, can achieve a higher level of challenge and self-exploration. When we are in isolated places among folks who do not know us, who are less inclined to take care of us, we need more from ourselves at every turn. That enables us to test ourselves in more ways and to discover more about who we are.

     What does one do climbing a jungle path and meeting half-clothed, angry looking men with weapons along the way? How does one summon the moxie to cross a crevice or a creek with only a frail looking rope bridge or log in the road? How does one deal with a desperate child tugging at your sleeve seeking a coin or a candy? What is the coping mechanism for dropping into a hotel and finding there is no hot water available or the lights are so dim that reading is impossible though the day has ended and the time for bed is hours away? How does a traveler find the right route with no language clues or discernible directional signs or proceed with an empty gas tank to a place whose distance is unknown? How do you manage in an airport when you don't speak the language and you don't have your luggage? What do you do when your very life is in danger from armed robbers or hostile natives? I have had to manage all of those circumstances and I have survived to write about them, to tell their narratives to my friends and family and to feel the accomplishment that comes with success in the face of challenge brought on by being in the unusual and sometimes intimidating world of exotica. Thanks to plugging through such difficulties, I have become a bit more courageous and a less worried person. Those changes in my makeup have helped me to navigate more than a few situations I have encountered even on the near side of the doors, events in my normal, daily life.  I am much more inclined now to take the door marked E, not because I know what the other side holds for me, but rather because I know what skills I will be taking through that door.

Facing off with the Komodo Dragon

Fun on the Road

     Although I have written about the value of Third World travel for personal growth in several of my past blogs, I do want to emphasize that travel should be fun also. If you don't have fun on the road, your motivation to keep going will flag and you will have wasted one of the real potential assets of the whole undertaking. I recall an abundance of moments which strike me as just, plain enjoyable. Such happenings are always desirable though they are hard to plan for.

     The first such event that jumps to my mind was an unexpected thrill I had at a popular diving resort on the island of New Britain some miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea. We stopped there because we understood that the nearby reef (an extension of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia) offered some really fine snorkeling as well as the presence of some interesting cultural groups on the island. The first morning of our stay there we went out in a boat with a group of scuba divers to the heart of the reef.  The divers got out at one site and my wife and I went into the water a few hundred yards away to do some wonderful snorkeling. We when got back into the boat, the captain asked us if we would like to scuba dive as well. We had taken no classes, had no license and were both significantly nervous about the prospect of learning in deep water off a remote island. But we could not say "no." It was too exciting an offer. About 20 minutes or so of instruction and a guarantee that the captain would take us down and stay with us led us to strap on a tank and jump back into the water. As it turned out, after about fifteen minutes of descent, my mask filled with water and I indicated I had to come up. The captain was disappointed but he left my wife sitting on a rock about 20 feet below and took me up. She felt quite lonely down there, especially since she did not know how she would ever be found and could not swim one bit. I guess I had just not gotten his instructions quite right. Must have missed the part about clearing the mask if water gets into it. When they returned to the boat, I was ready to try again and did so with more success. The diving was great. We found ourselves keeping company with several reef sharks, many rays and a few other impressive denizens of the deep. It was one of the most exciting and enjoyable moments of our travels.

     In a recent blog, I wrote about our moped experiences in Southeast Asia. The one in Vientianne, Laos was pure fun. We rented a moped one evening with a plan to spend the next day motoring from temple to temple and town to town in the area. The problem we ran into was a heavy morning rain. I was inclined to hand in the moped and do the touring by taxi but my wife said that the whole town was on the street on mopeds so we could manage just like they did. She found a large umbrella in the lobby, rode on the back of the moped with the umbrella covering most of us and we had a ball. She was right. Most of the town residents seemed to be on the road much in the same way we were and we laughed the entire day.

      Camel rides can be fun too. I have been on camels in the Sinai Desert, the Sahara and Rajasthan, India to mention a few such experiences. Of these, our ride into the Sahara from Timbuktu accompanied by a Tuareg guide was probably the most fun. We rode quite a few miles out of town and then got off for a desert walk. At one point we came upon a group of Tuaregs who had become aware of tourists in their area, gone back to their tents and brought back artifacts to create a small market. We did buy some nice things from them leaving all of us satisfied but it was truly an unusual and enjoyable experience. The fact that they were all armed with knives was one inducement to our making some purchases. Our second most enjoyable camel experience took place at the Camel Fair in Pushkar. We got to the fair grounds stadium early enough to obtain good seats to see the horse and camel competitions but as the time passed we were virtually crushed by other arrivals and could barely see what was happening. What could we do? We decided to rent two camels for the afternoon which we parked right next to the ceremony giving us private, well placed viewing and enabling us to have about as good a vantage point as was possible. Our camels were happy not having to drag us around and we had the best time.

     I wrote earlier about a piece of luck I had on the Island of Lombok one day which surely qualifies as unadulterated fun. At our beach hotel one evening, I asked the waiter if he knew of any local events which we might witness while we were there. He replied that there was to be a wedding in his tribal village the next morning and, if I wished, he would take the day off and accompany me there. That offer was irresistable; we were off to my adventure early the next morning. Along the way, we stopped at fascinating markets I would otherwise been unaware of and we toured much of the island. Unfortunately, it turned out that the wedding was to occur a day later than the waiter indicated. No problem. Instead we went to his village, visited his family in their small, tent-like home and I got to see more of real life on Lombok than I would ever have imagined. It was a traveler's dream day, an abundance of fun.

     I am not sure if my wife would classify it as fun but there was a day in the Copper Canyon I will never forget. In the evening in our hotel dining room, I overheard a Mexican family planning a horseback ride through a colorful area of the Canyon the next morning. Since my wife had ridden horses on several occasions, I told her about it and she decided to join their group. The next morning I had planned to do some hiking with a youngster I met on the train whose mother worked at our hotel. I am no horseback rider so I left my wife off with the group that was about to ride through the hills. The only problems were the that the man in charge spoke not a word of English nor did anyone else, the older woman I assumed was going with them was not going at all, my wife's horse had a knack of going to the edge of the mountain scaring her to death, and another horse which was not behaving well needed to be tied to the leader's horse so, since she was dependent on him, she went back and forth all morning. At the end of her ride when I asked how it was, I got a look which I will never forget. Did I mention that she was afraid of heights? I really enjoyed the hike. She almost left me. I laughed the rest of the day.

     Getting totally soaked in the spray of Victoria Falls in Zambia, bumping into people we knew in Puebla, Mexico or folks who lived right near us on an elevator in Cold War Budapest, finding celebrations in unexpected places, noticing that our lunch was looking at us in a small Greek restaurant that had no English menu, encountering the same salesman at the Kenya-Tanzania border who recognized us and remembered the good deal he gave us the last time we came his way and let us know immediately that we would not get that deal again, and many other such circumstances were all a great deal of fun. If you are open to it, fun just happens helping to make travel one of the most enjoyable activities one can ever undertake.

                                                 Ready to Enter the Mine, Potosi, Bolivia

Material Gems of the Third World

    In an earlier blog, I wrote about how I have surrounded myself with memories of my travels in the form of artifacts- paintings, masks, carvings, and other travel mementos. For me the purpose of collecting such items is to remind myself where we have been and to revive memories of our travel experiences. A collector views such items differently however. They are judged by their intrinsic worth. There are wonderful works of art created in one place in the world only that are valuable for the labored and highly aesthetic craftsmanship that they require as well as the hours and energy and beauty that they represent. Such items can be expensive, even for Westerners, although they are surely not as accessible nor as reasonably priced anywhere else in the world other than the locale of their creation. Collecting can be a sidelight of travel for those with an interest in art or the possession of objects that no one else has. I would personally find my travel distracted by seeking out unique objects to place on my walls or my shelves in part because I would not want to spend the time shopping that this would require or endure the worry about getting them home intact and undamaged. Yet I understand people's desire to bring home objects of great beauty or unique design. For that reason, I suggest here a few places where unusual and talented workmen labor (usually at very low wages) to create rare objects. I encourage the shoppers among us to make sure that these artisans receive a fair wage for their efforts. Cooperatives where such objects are sold tend to have better quality merchandise and to pay the artists more equitably.

     Third World craftsmen are quite aware of the existence of collectors who visit their area. They often create rough and inexact replicas of the products of their culture to dupe buyers. Collectors need to become rather expert in evaluating the crafts they are interested in if they are shopping for value. As a person who collects masks for memories rather than show, I have no need to be an expert, yet I find that many places feature tourist masks worth little which represent only the desire of Westerners to bring them home. If you don't care about this or just want them to decorate a wall, no problem. If you prefer authenticity and talent, you have to be careful. Choosing from hundreds of inferior masks in the markets of Chichicastenango or Abidjan does not a positive memory make. Finding a mask maker in a little town in Borneo or Mexico who has just created a piece of work for an upcoming ceremony that has meaning for him and is unlike any other you have seen is exciting and meaningful. By the way, if you share my interest in masks and their place in cultures, you would not be surprised to know that West Africa offers the most extensive array of choices and the greatest variety of materials and forms. Papua New Guinea is next, followed by Mexico. Well-crafted masks may also be found on the islands of Indonesia, the specialty stores of India or Nepal, or anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
     
      There are many other artistic creations that are specific to certain places. The most varied of these are oriental rugs but information about the qualities that make a particular one valuable is definitely required so the collector needs to become a virtual expert to make a wise selection. Southern and central Asia are the most bountiful and productive places to shop for a rug with Turkey following closely behind. My favorites are Iranian tribal rugs but Indian silk rugs, the beautiful woolen pieces from southern China and Tibet and the intricate and delicate creations from Pakistan and the surrounding area are also lovely to choose from.

      One collector's item is even more convenient and more accessible than rugs or masks- woven goods. Weaving is a major craft in many countries and the variety of techniques enables the collector to specialize and find spectacular pieces of work in out of the way places. One example of this was my discovery on the island of Lombok of two distinct styles of weaving which were specialties of that area although they may be found in a few nearby cultural areas as well. The first was Songket Cloth, a style of weaving with silk or cotton woven by interlacing the cloth with threads of gold or silver. These pieces are generally used for fancy dress in places like Sumatra and Bali and Lombok and can be shimmeringly lovely. There is sufficient variety among them to make for a impressive collection. In the same area of the world, Ikat Cloth, a cotton based product which is colored by waxing part of the cloth before dipping it into colored liquid to make the pattern is one of the artistic products. It is a very intricate process which lends itself to producing unique and often very valuable and detailed examples. But fine woven goods can be procured all over the planet. From the market town of Tarabuco, Bolivia to the hill villages of Vietnam and Thailand and Laos, there are outstanding examples of finely woven materials, each style unique and interesting. I even discovered lovely cloths in Burma made by weaving a strand extracted from inside the lotus flower stem in the same way one would work with silk. The degree of care needed for this process is extraordinary.

     Another fine craft is lacquerware; the choice is between Vietnam and Burma. Both places feature very finely painted, detailed examples of this craft. Another place to obtain exceptional examples of fine lacquer pieces is Kashmir where papier mache is molded onto a light wood frame and incredible miniature painting is done by craftsmen using a rat's tail and gold paint to decorate their elaborate creations. And of course there is fine art as well which may be found anywhere by luck. For well done Batiks, East and West Africa and and Southeast Asia are the places to buy. It is good to remember that many of these crafts, while they may be rewarding to collect and show, are the products of families handing designs down from generation to generation for countless years. That is especially true for rugs. The collector is bringing home perhaps one or two hundred years  of accumulated experimentation and skill. That is valuable in and of itself.

 Bronze Tribal Figures from India