Posts with Category Travel

I smuggled Anti-flatulence Underwear Past TSA

I take out my laptop and set it in a bin. I slip my shoes off and smile at the TSA agent as if I have nothing to hide. As if I’m just another normal passenger. As if I’m not wearing anti-flatulence underwear.

My brow grows moist as I fight the urge to adjust my Gas Eaters while at the same time not letting my eye wander to the full-body scanner. No doubt a man wearing unisex, airtight underwear with a quarter-inch pad of activated carbon sewn in the butt would throw up a few flags. The “Underwear Bomber” really ruined it for the rest of us.

I try to walk normal. It’s not easy. I feel like I’m…

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1 of 35 Million living with AIDS

Yesterday was World AIDS Day. I couldn’t get this voice out of my head so I thought I would share it. Susan is a single mother of six. I met her this past spring in Kampala, Uganda. She lost her husband to AIDS and later tested positive herself. Because of funding cuts at her clinic, she doesn’t receive the proper ARV treatment and no longer receives food for her and her children. She’s 1 of 35 million living with AIDS.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaHkE2LaR4w&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube] …

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Travelers Give A Shit

SoccerPlayers

I give a shit about the Great (shrinking) Barrier Reef because I’ve chased a turtle around it.

I give a shit about melting glaciers because I’ve climbed on one in New Zealand.

I give a shit about the persisting tension in Kosovo because I’ve played PlayStation and shared countless cups of tea with college students in Pristina.

I give a shit about hurricanes hammering Honduras because I’ve played baseball there.

I give a shit about garment workers in Bangladesh because I’ve taught them how to throw a Frisbee and been to an amusement park with them.

I give a shit about orphans in Guatemala and Nepal because I’ve played Hacky Sack with them.

I give a shit about those…

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Invoking the Great Touron King

GreatTouronKingSmall

Cartoon by Geoff Hassing

So this fella Matt Long wrote this piece titled, “Don’t be a Touron.”

Gasp!

Hand me my backpack, scepter, and crown. You might want to back up a little.

(adjusts crown, raises scepter which is really just a stick that happened to be nearby)

“By the power of Grayskull, I am the Great Touron King!”

The flashes of dozens of disposable cameras fill the sky.

That glow that you see radiating from me isn’t my aura of power. That’s just the sun reflecting off of my SPF 80 sunscreen.

My first published sentence was, “In the Land of Tourons I am the Great Touron King.” It appeared in the Key West City Paper in 2002. Each week for the following three years, I recounted my experiences in places that weren’t home; places that I didn’t always know how to act or where to go; places that I found new and creative ways to make myself look like a jackass.

Here’s Matt on Tourons:

The Urban Dictionary defines a Touron as “The derogatory term combines the words “Tourist” with “Moron” to describe any person who, while on vacation, commits an act of pure stupidity.”

Ultimately, a touron is a person who apparently hates to leave home, but for some reason has decided to spend coin and time to do just that. After a recent trip to New York, I was reminded of how awful these individuals can be and as a public service want to provide some tips on how not to be a touron, in the classical sense.

When traveling, it is vital to have at least a modicum of self-awareness. You are a visitor and you should comport yourself as a guest, not an invading army. Pay attention to what local people are doing, and then do that! Also be a smart traveler. No matter how much you try to blend in, you usually won’t.

Here is my definition of Touron:

1) A touron is one part eager tourist and one part well-meaning moron.

2) Faced with a deluge of new sites, smells, sounds, and behaviors, a tourist turns touron because of an enhanced curiosity and innocent unawareness. The farther behind we leave the familiar, the more touronic we become.

3) Matt Long

4) You

In his “Don’t be a Touron” piece Matt says he came across the term “Touron” when he was “a college student in Williamsburg, Virginia, which is inundated with millions of tourists every year. Of these millions, there is a not-so-insignificant percentage which may be described as being tourons.”

I came across the term in Key West while working as a dive instructor and taking thousands of tourists into an environment where they found new and creative ways to try to kill themselves. I would give the dive briefing, “Whatever you do, don’t swim over there where you see the waves breaking onto the reef,” and five minutes later a diver would emerge waving his arms as he was slowly pulverized into bloody coral powder. Then I would swim like hell over to him, keep him from dying, and drag his sorry scraped up butt off the reef.

Although I cussed at these people through my regulator on a regular basis, I never looked down on them. They were my people. I respected the fact that they were brave enough to enter a world in which they didn’t belong. And some of them REALLY didn’t belong there. But I didn’t belong either. You can’t travel through a more foreign environment than swimming along a reef at 60’ beneath the Atlantic with hammerheads, puffer fish, and spotted eagle rays.

This is how I feel about traveling in general. Whether you want to label yourself a tourist or a traveler, I could give a flying flipper about, but if you pack your bags and head out the door to somewhere in which you are a foreigner, you are my people. You are a Touron.

Like a SCUBA diver, you’ll likely stick out like a sore thumb. You won’t lug your tank around, but you’ll be hefting plenty of cultural baggage. You’ll do your best not to kick the coral or cultural norms, but no matter how much you try, you will on occasion.

This is the beauty of the word Touron. It tears downs all these “my traveling is better than your traveling arguments.” It embraces all our inherent faults as travelers and unites us in our love for travel.

I love that Matt travels the world. I’ve never met him, but I’m guessing he has loads of tales of how he’s looked like a jackass around the world.

I do. It’s pretty much required to be the Great Touron King.

And as the GTK I hereby dub Matt Long (adjusts crown – these Burger King crowns just don’t fit like they once did. Places stick on Matt’s left shoulder and then his right) Sir Matt Long, an honorary knight of the knights of the Touron Table.

(If you want to read my first published piece “The Land of Tourons” it’s below the cut)

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Friday the 13th, let the adventure begin

tibetanprocession

I was once held hostage by monks in Nepal. (old column from the experience below the cut)

When I finally convinced them to let me go, they consulted some scrolls to see if the date was a good one to release a hostage. It wasn’t but the next day was.

That trip, my first around the world, began on a Friday the 13th. I traveled for 6 months in Hawaii, Australia, Thailand, Nepal, and Western Europe. Those first experiences traveling led to my writing a travel column. I wrote about 200 columns about that first trip and other trips that followed. The column was my grad school. It was where I found my voice and started to do what I do today.

Friday the 13th was the first day of the rest of my life and a great time to hit the road.

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Tornado Tourism: It's the journey not the destination…trust me

I can understand most acts of God.

If you live somewhere as beautiful as Key West or any other Caribbean island you might have to pay the price of dealing with a hurricane now and again.

If you live in Hawaii, there’s the occasional volcano.

If you live in the rugged outdoorsness of the West, there’s the occasional forest fire.

If you live in Santa Carla, there’s the “damn vampires” that need dealt with now and again.

But explain tornadoes to me.

What are the peaceful folks of the Midwest paying for? The majestical flatness? Sweeping fields of corn? Low cost of living? It doesn’t make sense. Until now.

Enter Silver lining Tours: Are you ready for the atmospheric adventure of a lifetime?

Do you get giddy…

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I want a shark bite

In honor of shark week, I’m dusting off an old piece from my column writing days. It’s from 2006 so the stats might be a bit out of whack.

Sharks Bite?

The waters don’t feel sharky, but I’ve been wrong before.

I’m 85 miles off the coast of Cuba, 40-feet beneath the ocean’s surface. The water is murky and I am tooling along a lengthy coral finger. People dive in these waters to see all of the bright colors and unique fish. All I can see are shadows.

The coral finger is the big unmoving shadow to my right. The small shadows floating around it vary in size and shape; they are fish such as parrot, squirrel, snapper, and angel fish. …

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Breathless

Because I’m up to my ears in an audio project and being a dad and because I wish I was underwater…

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How I travel

I’ve got a lot of love for the BootsnAll Travel Network. Their community of travelers is great. I often turn to fellow travelers on their message boards for on-the-ground advice. Plus, they played an important part in my story.

Outside of my family, they were the first people I told about my wacky idea to go all the places my clothes were made. They liked the idea, hosted the original Where Am I Wearing blog, and then gave me some love in their newsletter.

So, when Steve Bramucci asked me to participate in the wonderful “How I travel” series he edits, I was thrilled.

You should go read it now if you are interested in having longer-lasting, spine-tingling…travel.

Warning: It’s hard…

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So You Think You Can Dance?: Ethiopian Edition

There is no better way to feel culturally superior than to go to a country, turn on the TV, and watch their music videos.

The guesthouse I’m at in Addis Ababa has two channels. One of them is usually featuring videos. The videos often show a wide range of folks from ultra-modern slick-haired BluBlocker-wearing studs to happy-go lucky, frolicking farm folk. They are either stepping off their motorcycle or herding goats when spontaneously bust into dance.

My first reaction is to make fun of this. My next is to think about MC Hammer, Kriss Kross, and the chicken dance.

Last night I went to the Ethiopian Cultural Restaurant for dinner. While I ate some great food, six dancers performed traditional dances from all over Ethiopia. It was amazing. They were…

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