Tips for Fellow Bookworms Abroad

The intrepid explorer off on her
adventures.

I, by no means, consider myself an expert on international travel. There are certainly more well-traveled people out there (the entire staff at Lonely Planet and author Bill Bryson come to mind); however, my three trips to Europe during my high school years and my three months living in Southeast Asia during law school certainly gave me some basic knowledge on how to survive and, dare I say, even flourish when travelling in foreign countries. Through those experiences I have picked up a number of tips and tricks that would serve anyone well when travelling in exotic and far flung locations, particularly when travelling in third world countries, which is an entirely different kettle of fish than travelling in first world countries.

International travel is a topic that is never far from my mind (I dream daily about all the wonderful countries I would visit if I only had the funds. *sigh*), but it is humming particularly loudly today as a friend from my yoga studio recently returned from a two month trip abroad. She spent an entire month in India (one of the top 5 countries I want to visit) and she hated it with a fiery, burning passion. I must say, I was surprised. From everything I’ve seen and heard India appears to be a beautiful country with a vast array of cultures and the food is top notch. (Of course, a great deal of my information comes from watching dozens and dozens of Bollywood videos, which I’ve been told, don’t always stay 100% true to real life. I find this hard to believe. I mean, it sounds perfectly logical that two best friends from childhood would go to the same college where the boy meets and falls in love with a new girl – Girl B – who happens to be the headmaster’s daughter, never realizing that his childhood friend – Girl A – has been secretly in love with him for years; so in love with him, in fact, that upon realizing the boy is going to marry Girl B, Girl A drops out of school on the fictitious excuse that her mother is sick and then cuts off all communication with the boy and Girl B who eventually do get married and have one daughter. But then Girl B dies from causes unknown and on her deathbed tells her husband goodbye and leaves secret video messages for her 8 year old daughter telling the daughter to help the boy find Girl A because Girl B always knew that the boy and Girl A were soul mates, but Girl B just couldn’t resist loving and marrying the boy, but now he deserves to be with his true soulmate. But Girl A has moved on and is now engaged to be married to a new guy through an arranged marriage and there’s just not enough time! However, Girl A is doing one last summer of teaching at a basketball camp before her wedding and the daughter of the boy decides to enroll at the camp in order to get the boy and Girl A together before the wedding so that they can fall in love like they were supposed to years ago. And luckily the boy realizes he does love Girl A – who is no longer a tomboy, but a very beautiful and composed woman – after some pretty epic basketball fight/flirting, right before her final engagement ceremony on the last day of the basketball camp and they all live happily ever after except for Girl B, who is dead and the poor, jilted fiancé. Doesn’t that sound perfectly plausible? But I digress.)

There are perks - like delicious drinks!

After yoga, my friend went on a rant about her issues with India and her disappointing time abroad and it didn’t take long for me to realize the issue with her trip wasn’t the country, it was her. As lovely and smart a woman as she is, my friend went to India clearly unprepared for what it’s like to travel in a third world country, which is a very different experience from travelling in a first world country. Unfortunately, this is a pretty common mistake and it’s really too bad. With just a little research before you travel to a third world country and some mental preparation for the differences you are about to face, you can have the time of your life and discover some of the most beautiful countries and cultures on earth.

The ultimate piece of advice that can be offered to intrepid explorers who plan to travel in third world countries is to accept that you’re going to have to do things a bit differently and be open to new cultures and new experiences. It’s crazy to travel to certain parts of the world and expect a 5-star hotel experience that you would find in the United States. It’s just not going to happen. Remember why they are called third world countries rather than first world countries – they are not as developed and they are monetarily poorer (well, that’s one definition for “third world countries” and the one I will use here). Additionally, the cultures are likely very different from your own. Expecting the creature comforts of home is a good way to be disappointed fast. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to have a bad experience travelling in these places. Travelling through countries like Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam (all places I have visited) can be hugely rewarding if you open yourself up to the possibilities of the places. Yes, you are probably going to have to do without toilet paper at some point (it doesn’t take long to realize that you’d better carry some with you if you can’t bring yourself to use the cup and bucket of water in the corner). Yes, you are going to have to be very careful to never drink the local, unfiltered water. No, you will probably never find a guesthouse to stay at that doesn’t have some prostitution going on within the building (just follow your guidebook and pick one that is clean and safe). Yes, people will try to rip you off if they can (remember, these are poor countries filled with poor people, if they can get you to pay 4x the going rate for a tuk tuk ride, they will do it. You should have known better and if you didn’t, well, now you’ve learned the hard way. And, let’s be real again, it’s just $4 to you – one Starbucks latte – but it’s worth four days of food for them. And take this as training for bargaining. In many of these countries it’s standard practice to bargain for everything. The listed price or opening price you are quoted is a starting point for negotiation. Learn to love to haggle or be prepared to spend a lot more money than you should.). But you shouldn’t let any of that stop you.

Yes, that is me eating snake in Cambodia.

To truly enjoy your travels in third world countries simply let go of your expectations, dismiss your longings for the familiar and immerse yourself in the surrounding culture. Eat the local food (a good practice is to go to the place where the locals are eating – these places are less likely to give you any stomach troubles). Shop the way locals shop (sometimes this means buying fresh fruit from carts with mountains of pineapples and durian on the side of the road after work). Learn at least some basic phrases in the local language and start honing your charades skills (it’s amazing how well you can communicate through a word here or there and pantomime). Be friendly to everyone you meet (international travelers, particularly Americans, can have a pretty bad reputation. Don’t react poorly if you’re initially judged based on your country of origin. Instead, show them that you are better than the stereotypes they expect.) Show your interest in the local culture (some countries, like Laos, are filled with very humble people who don’t expect you to be truly interested in them. Be sure that the locals know that you want to get to know them and their culture specifically.) And, if you want to see the true local life, make it happen. Often you will be shown the tourist traps. While these areas can be amazing, they are often geared toward travelers and don’t give you an authentic experience in the culture. It’s 100% ok to travel to foreign countries and just hit the highlights and tourist destinations. But if you want a deeper and richer experience, work hard to ensure you’re given a glimpse beneath the surface.

Vientiane, Laos, Southeast Asia

Travel in general and international travel in particular can be an immensely rewarding experience, but only if you go into with the right frame of mind. Prior to my travels in SE Asia I had never wanted to travel to any third world country. I had only ever been to Europe and my top 5 places in the world to visit list was generally comprised of other Western countries and first world nations. After my SE Asia experience, however, my perspective changed completely. Now I daydream of backpacking for months through India, camping in the deserts of Morocco, exploring the archaeological sites of Egypt, and travelling to Easter Island in Chile. To be sure, first world countries still make the list – I long to travel through Japan, visit Greece and eat amazing food (and take many siestas) in Spain – but now that I’ve travelled through SE Asia, I know that I can travel anywhere, so long as I keep an open mind and remain open to the possibilities. And I promise, so long as you approach your travels in the same way, you are guaranteed to have the time of your life.

And for those of you who are ready to go and just need a little more practical advice, this is for you…

1. Do your research before you go. This may seem like a gimme, but it’s surprising how many people will go somewhere without reading anything about the culture before they depart. How do you even know what to pack if you don’t know anything about the culture? For instance, SE Asian countries are more conservative than many around the world and they prefer it if people wear shirts that cover their shoulders and longer shorts. Additionally, you should never wear shorts into a temple (it’s considered disrespectful), only long pants. Doing your research as the first step of planning your trip will ensure that you are at least packing correctly and have some basic idea of what to expect.
2. Buy appropriate luggage. There’s a reason that when you think of a “backpacker,” you imagine someone with one of those huge backpacks on their backs that extends over their heads and somehow manages to carry all their belongings inside and has no convenient wheels on the bottom. It’s because those backpacks are lifesavers in third world countries. You are travelling in places that are largely undeveloped. Dirt roads will be common. Mud will be even more common. The best type of luggage you can take is the kind that you can strap onto your body in some way and just carry. While there will be times you will miss the convenience of wheels, those times will be few and far between. Most of the time you will instead be thanking your lucky stars you invested in your backpack and don’t have to struggle to carry an awkward suitcase in places that clearly had never seen those contraptions before.
3. Get your meds. Always, always look up medical alerts for the areas to which you are travelling. SE Asia is known for yellow fever, dengue fever, malaria, intestinal parasites and myriad other ailments that are just waiting to take you down. Don’t, however, let this discourage you from your travels. With some proper preventative measures and a good dose of common sense, you can have a wonderful and (mostly) illness free trip. Get any immunizations you can get before you go (yellow fever is no longer an issue), learn what meds you can buy in the country you are visiting (anti-malaria medication is enormously expensive in the US, but available like vitamins in Thailand), get prescription strength doses of anti-diuretics and laxatives (let’s be real, your stomach is never going to be normal while you’re travelling in a third world country), and pack some DEET, which you should apply every day after you shower (more protection against malaria and now that dengue fever won’t be a problem either).
4. Make and take photocopies of your passport – NEVER, EVER give your passport to anyone besides government officials, airlines, etc. and then get it back immediately. NEVER give your passport away. You hold on to it until death. If someone wants your passport, say you will give them a copy, but that is it. I once had a guesthouse in Vietnam request that I give them my passport for “safekeeping.” I categorically refused and after some additional requests on their part and further protestations on mine, I told them I would leave and find a different place to stay if that was necessary. They finally caved and let me keep my passport and accepted a copy. While it may seem like I made a fuss over nothing, you must keep in mind that you are a foreigner in a foreign land. That passport is what got you into the country and it gets you out. It is what says you are there legally. And in a country like Vietnam where you have to apply at least 3 days ahead of time to get on a special list saying you can come into the country and also have a letter from a government official giving you permission to enter the country for a limited number of days, it’s a really good idea to keep hold of the document that ensures everyone knows you are there legally. Additionally, if you do somehow lose your passport, a photocopy will ensure that you get a replacement much quicker. 
5. Trust in Lonely Planet. I cannot recommend the Lonely Planet guidebooks highly enough. “Lonely Planet’s SE Asia on a Shoestring” was an absolute life saver. These guidebooks give you insights into the culture, recommendations on how to travel between countries, lodging and restaurant recommendations, and ideas on where to go and what to do. These are also excellent books to tell you how to get to see the real country, not just the surface that so many people see. These books are worth their weight in gold when you’re travelling and they will not steer you wrong. 

This is only a small dose of all I learned through my travels in SE Asia. I hope that it serves you well in your travels. Happy trails to you all! 

Snorkeling in Thailand

The Lost Art of Letter Writing

When I was a little girl, nothing excited me more than getting a letter in the mail. The envelope addressed with my name (possibly with the addition of “Miss” to make me feel grown up and fancy) and sent via the United States Postal Service to my house. The stamp in the upper right hand corner with the postmark covering it, letting me know that it had been posted from far off places like Los Angeles and Eureka, California (I really only got letters from my older brothers and sisters, so the destinations were rarely too exotic, but in the mind of a seven year old, these were far flung destinations indeed). And the best letters were those that came between special occasions. Not the obligatory “Happy Birthday!” or “Merry Christmas,” but a letter or note that came for no reason at all other than to say hello. Everyone in my family must have known about my love of letters because my brothers and sisters would send one to me fairly often and sometimes even wrote a message inside that basically said, “Dear Lauren, I’m writing this letter because I know how much you love getting mail. Love, Your Favorite Sibling.” (I must admit that this was a viable method of becoming my “favorite.” Of course, that also meant that the next sibling who sent me a letter immediately usurped that position, but…them’s the breaks.)

To this day, I still love receiving letters in the mail. A miserable day can instantly be made better by the sight of a personalized envelope sitting in the mail. On those days it doesn’t even matter what the letter says. The fact that someone cared about me enough to take the time to put pen to paper makes my day just a bit brighter. Unfortunately, the art of letter writing is swiftly being lost.

Now, I am not the type of person to wax nostalgic for a prior period of history. I don’t think there has ever truly been a “Golden Age.” Every era comes with its own problems and hardships and no time period has been (or probably will be) perfect. But there are standards and qualities that fall to the wayside over time that probably shouldn’t and I think letter writing is one of them. Prior to the invention of the telegraph, the telephone and email, writing letters was the major, and outside face-to-face meetings, only way to communicate with family, friends and acquaintances. People would write long, multi-page letters with everything from business transactions to daily gossip. And those letters became a part of history. So much of what we now know about a time is based on letters that were written between people in positions of power and ordinary people that history would otherwise have completely forgotten, but which reveal so much when we’re looking back hundreds of years later wondering what life was truly like for people in all levels of society.

In a recent interview, Doris Kearns Goodwin, well known biographer and historian who has written books on several U.S. presidents, lamented the loss of letter writing. In her interview, she stated that true histories such as those she’s written about Lincoln, Johnson, the Kennedys, etc. will not be possible in the future because that fundamental cornerstone of historical documentation, the letter, almost no longer exists. Instead, our society has turned to the immediacy of the telephone, email and texting to communicate. Some will argue that emails and texts leave a record, so communications are documented somewhere. To this, I can only laugh. Emails rarely include extraneous information. In fact, emailers often forgo even salutations, preferring to get to the point as quickly as possible. Very few of the elements of letters that made them so historically useful appear in emails. (And don’t even get me started on the travesty of text messaging with its bastardization of the English language.)

But more important than this general loss to society, however, is the loss to me personally. Few people write me letters anymore and that is so disappointing. My most faithful correspondent is my friend Torrie. We met in law school and quickly realized we shared a love of receiving mail. Upon discovering this fact, we declared that we would write each other letters regularly, each doing our part to keep the USPS alive. I’m happy to say that after 7 years of friendship, I now have two shoeboxes full of letters and postcards from Torrie and she has an equal number from me. Even when we lived less than 5 minutes from each other through law school we kept up a regular correspondence schedule and now that she lives half-way across the country in distant (and exotic) Chicago, IL we send each other at least two to three letters per week and care packages filled with small goodies every couple of months. We still call each other on the phone, send emails and text to share news as well, but a great deal of our life updates comes via old-fashioned, hand-written letters.

I’ve tried at various times to start similar correspondences with others (even going so far as to send thank you notes for thank you notes), but eventually they all peter out as my letters go, increasingly, unanswered. When meeting new people, if the subject of letter writing comes up (as it did with all my co-workers one day two months ago when it just so happened to be National Letter Writing Day – a British holiday, but one that I feel I can celebrate as well – a fact that I quickly reminded them of) I gently (forcefully) reminded (insisted) people write letters to their loved ones. Most people don’t understand why I feel so passionately about the subject of letter writing. I, in turn, don’t understand their apathy. I pity those people who have never felt that small surge of joy at seeing a letter waiting for them in the mail, knowing that the writer cares enough to take the time to put pen to paper. That is a feeling that can buoy your spirits just when you need a pick-me-up and surround you in a small bubble of warmth and happiness, the perfect remedy to many of your minor ills.

And so I urge you all to write a letter to a loved one or a friend. It might be just the thing they need. And if that doesn’t convince you to give letter writing a try, think about the fame. In just a few short centuries those letters may be priceless.