The End of the Affair

Over this last holiday I traveled a little bit differently than I normally would, I traveled with people which was unusual for me, and I had a couple of dour experiences. At the end of all of that I knew that something had changed for me. This lust within me to travel has dimmed considerably. This does not mean that I don’t intend to travel in the future; it just means that my perceptions have radically changed. .

When traveling it is always a goal to leave the things of your life behind for a time. This is not necessarily because you think they are bad or want to escape them. It is simply because to fully embrace the experiences of traveling you must be able to be a conduit. That is very hard to do when you are carrying the baggage, literal or not, of your normal life. It’s wonderful to see all of the monuments, museums, and icons of a culture in real time, but it’s the electricity of a people and place that are what traveling is really about.
The shape of a street sign, the style of dress, the look in a person’s eye, and the smell of a corner market. All these things become mentally noted, processed, and interpreted.

Travel is not easy. It can be enjoyable, but is not necessarily vacation time. If you want vacation time go the Florida or the Caribbean where the land will be/is already ruined. Travel often involves long bus/plane/ferry/car/donkey rides that are sometimes very sweaty and sometimes very cold and the kicker is that much of the time you don't know which it will be until you are about to embark and you’ve only packed one pair of pants so tough beans if you don’t like being smelly. Many of the places that you visit will not have a room or they will, but it will be small, dirty, and most likely infested with something. Speaking of infestations, lets move on to bug bites. There are many types or bugs bites from the massive red lump left by some spiders to the sometimes hundreds of small bites left by sand flies or mosquitoes. There is also the risk of injury. Kidneys are especially vulnerable as they are often being jarred about while traveling. Oh lord, please take care of your feet. They are your most loved travel buddy. Consider all of that on top of the mental energy it takes to move yourself through places where you often don’t speak the language and a lot of the time no one cares to understand your gestures.

A long time ago this is all that traveling really was, a big pain in the butt. A person would set out the door and go thousands of miles and that in itself was their accomplishment. It didn’t matter if they traveled well or not. It only mattered that they had gone because no one else had and it was exceptional. This is no longer true, although it still can be found. A fairly affluent person can travel to all corners of the earth if that is what they desire. The old barriers are breaking down. This is a terrible and great thing all at one time. As people interact more and more they learn how to better engage each other, which is good. However, some of the natural beauty of a place and its people gets lost in the trampling feet of tourists.

People had always told me that Thais were very friendly. Maybe they are, I don’t want to be too quick to judge an entire people on a weeks worth of interaction, but they did not appear to be all that friendly. It’s not that they were mean like some people I have encountered. Its not that they had anti-American sentiments, although I did encounter such a person in Thailand, but he was a Kiwi. It is not the climate or the regime that makes these people so down turned to foreigners. It is the foreigner themselves.

You may remember a movie a few years back called The Beach (I’ve been told by many people that the book is much better). The movie was based on a book of a similar theme written in the mid-nineties. It starred Leonardo DiCaprio along with a few other famous names. The jist of the film is that Leo is a young American traveling through southern Thailand looking for something that is off the grid. Everyone is looking for this magical place because they have already ruined the places they have found. They are looking for the next big thing, the untouched land. With the help of a crazy old expatriate he finds an island paradise inhabited by a few very guarded westerners. They except him, but are so extreme in their desire to keep the island a secret that they allow the deaths of many people. The most terrible thing about their actions is that the very thing they are trying to preserve has already been destroyed by their presence.

This is why the Thais are no longer as friendly as they were. It seems now like they are shrouded in a sort of sadness because so many foreigners have converged on Thailand so quickly that they have had time to properly deal with them in anyway except to start prostituting themselves, sometimes literally. The lands that people had come to see in the past will soon not exist at all. The island I stayed on was a great example of this.

Fifty years ago no one lived on the island. Ten years ago there was not a paved road. Now there are many paved roads, trucks, motorcycles, four story buildings, all inclusive resorts, motorboats streaming up and down the coast and with it the inevitable destruction of the island. I saw coral that was dead, and not because of some kind of natural cycle. I saw ditches choked with trash. I saw foreigners abusing the local people’s good will. It disgusted me and this perhaps is what swung my mind.

I will never again go to Thailand. I will do my best never to enter a culture in that manner again. I tore through Thailand; I encouraged the death of its unique land. I was just as bad as the drugged out ravers who exploited the people and land at every turn. Accomplice! Never again.
The romance of travel is gone. Yes, of course I will still make long journeys. Yes, I will still enter foreign countries. Of course, of course the love will return. I just have to deal with the shame and disgust of what my people have done to another and try my best not to encourage that any further. I have to be very careful in what I do.