The Other Side of Travel

Many of the posts we write focus on the things we find fascinating about where we are: interesting customs and ceremonies, historic sites, beautiful landscapes. I’m sure it’s enough to make many of you jealous!

So I thought I’d write about the less wonderful parts of being a vagabond:

  • We spend enormous amounts of time outdoors (which I love), but it does leave us at the mercy of the weather. It’s scorching hot and humid here in Bali every single day. If we are at our wits’ end and can’t handle it any longer, we spring for air conditioning in our lodgings, but mostly we just have a fan in our room. Nowhere we visit or eat ever has A/C. So most of the time we are just hot.
  • In Spain, by contrast, we froze during our first two weeks in Granada, where we shared a 4-bedroom apartment with other students at a language school and could only turn on a space heater in one bedroom at a time without blowing the fuse. In Italy, we got rained on every day for a month. And some of you have probably heard our story about huddling under our towels and extra clothes when we got to a mountain town in Guatemala where it was suddenly cold at night and our motel didn’t have heat or blankets.
  • Guidebooks make so many places sound wonderful—if only they were always right! But sometimes we arrive to find the “magical lake” dirty and unappealing, the “fascinating temple” locked, and the “charming guesthouse” looking like it hasn’t seen a guest (or a mop) in 10 years. There’s almost always something worth seeing in any given place, but it isn’t always obvious what that is.
  • We try to stay in decent (or even nice) places, but we have had our fair share of bizarre or dirty bathrooms, as well as rooms with mold or mysterious stains on the walls. We’ve slept in places with mice, lizards, spiders, and various other critters. We are frequently awakened in the night (despite our earplugs) by some combination of roosters, traffic, loud neighbors, religious broadcasts from a local ceremony, or night-long firecrackers (thanks for that one, Honduras).
  • We get sick. Rather a lot. Ten percent of the time we spent in Central America involved one or both of us having stomach problems. So far, that percentage has been lower in Asia, although Chris had a deep and dramatic splinter-removal operation that lasted 15 minutes and involved a needle and two earnest local staff members at the Bali Silent Retreat. (No bad aftereffects, we’re happy to report.)
  • Getting from one place to the next is often an adventure. There are rough dirt roads, twisting mountain roads, and city roads with terrifying traffic. A bus might be so crowded that people are sitting wedged together in the aisle between the seats (common in Guatemala). Or the bus might be in such bad shape that we have to stop at a mechanic to arrive at our destination (as happened just two days ago). Or, my personal favorite, the bus just doesn’t show up (the guidebooks being wrong again).
  • Once in a place, we tend to get around mainly on foot, but that can be even worse. If there are sidewalks here in Bali, they are usually crumbling, with large holes to jump. More often, you just have to walk in the road, constantly being buzzed by zooming motorcycles and trucks (all of which kindly honk to let you know they are there). My nerves are often frayed just by walking across a town.
  • Many of the places we visit are dirt poor. It can be hard to see that and hard to know how to help. My beautiful landscape photos don’t show the trash on the streets, the endless rows of tiny concrete-block shops that make up any town, or the stooped old women carrying loads of rocks on their heads to construction sites. My photos of adorable kids on the beach don’t show that those same kids spend hours a day trying desperately to sell bracelets and toy boats to the tourists in hopes of making enough money to pay for another expensive semester of school.
  • And then there are the inevitable tourists. I mean, we’re tourists too, so how much can we complain? But it is annoying sometimes to hear more English and French than local languages . . . and to watch people parade around in tiny clothing that is deeply disrespectful to local standards of modesty . . . and to struggle to get spicy food because the cooks tone everything way down for anyone with white skin.

Despite our (usually) glowing posts, we do spend a fair percentage of time on the road being tired, sweaty, stressed, and kind of miserable.

But because of the interesting things we get to do and see and learn the rest of the time, it’s all worth it!

2 comments

  1. I think it is good that you share all of these travel situations. The poverty and living conditions in some areas are so bad, and it makes you realize how good we have it. Thanks for sharing both sides of travel.

    • I’m glad you feel that way! It really does make me feel grateful for all the advantages that I and those I love have just from where we were born.

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