David Simon, creator of The Wire and now Treme, said this about travel:
Well, you know, there's two ways of being a tourist. The first way is you get on the tour bus and the guide grabs the microphone and you drive down the streets that everyone has driven down before. And he tells you, you know, when this church was built and then you go in for 15 minutes and you come out again. And you go to the next country.
And then there's the other, which is when you go somewhere for a while and you dont have a tour guide, and you walk into the nearest bar or shebeen and you just be. And you start figuring out a place from the people up.
Mr. Simon hits it on the nose. How fulfilling is it when you can get your hands dirty and be one with the locals!
There was the time my friends and I were walking down the streets of Cairo to our hotel, when some guys asked us to join them for tea. Or the time I tried to get a pot-laden cake from a coffeehouse in Amsterdam. Or the time I was approached by a tuk-tuk driver in Chiang Mai, asking if I wanted a lady. All these times involved interacting, breaking out of the "tourist bubble" I'm used to putting up abroad.
As I get ready for Tokyo and Hong Kong, I ask myself how can I travel from the people up? And for you, Faithful Traveler, what would that look like for you?
1 comment:
Are you learning some Cantonese and Japanese? :) I'm trying to brush up on my French before I go to Paris next year. That would be my way of trying to mingle with the locals, unless they're too snooty to include me. lol.
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