Touri Gone Wild

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Stupid Tourist Tricks

International travel can open your mind to new experiences, or help you maintain a closed mind about your fellow travellers.

Huh. I really shoulda saved that elephant fisting photo I posted yesterday for today’s post . . .

There are those whose greatest travel pleasure is whining about the behavior of their fellow touri. And then there are those of whom the former whine about. It’s a universal truth nicely summed up by that well-known adage: Those who can, do; those who have a stick up their ass, preach.

Not that any travel-related behavior should be considered acceptable, but what gets some grumbler’s panties in a wad is nothing more than the sight of someone else having a good time. And sure, you shouldn’t traipse around Bangkok wearing nothing but skimpy beach attire – unless you have the body of a god – but then that sort of behavior is more of an embarrassment to the transgressor than it is to the rest of us. Not that you want to ever see most of those bodies revealed even when you are at the beach.

What constitutes proper tourist behavior and which actions should be universally deplored and condemned are often in the eye of the beholder. It’s a lot like pornography, or as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart put it, it’s hard to define, but I know it when I see it. To some the sight of a touri who has had a few too many brings on a conniption fit over public drunkenness, while most just assume the poor bloke is an Aussie and, karma being what it is, will suffer for his behavior when he wakes up the next morning with the mother of all hangovers. There are a few rude travel behaviors that everyone agrees should be banned, but most depend greatly on where you are from and how you were raised. Even among those who are fussy old queens raised to seek out faults in others in order to maintain their illusions of moral superiority.

Screw the souvenirs, it’s memories that can really make a holiday. Even if you can’t remember them.

International travel was once reserved for the cultural elite. Nowadays, as Air Asia like to brag: Everyone Can Fly. The tourist areas of the world have become a melting pot, bubbling over with a spectacular mass of people who come from different backgrounds and traditions. That can cause problems. What is socially acceptable to one culture results in charges of tourists behaving badly from those of others. Think American tourists and many immediately picture loud, overweight, poorly dressed folk who don’t speak any language other than English and who are totally ignorant of the places they travel to, excluding information that they’ve picked up from Lonely Planet. Think Japanese vacationers and many picture large groups on tour, loaded with the latest models of the most expensive photographic equipment to take smiling pictures everywhere, who willingly over-pay for anything and everything while braying among themselves about how vastly inferior the people of the land they are visiting are.

Brits have long suffered from a loutish image abroad, obnoxiousness seeming to be their #1 export – though to be fair, in a recent survey published in Newsweek, French and Indian tourists ranked higher on the obnoxiousness scale. In fact, while being an Aussie and being an alcoholic are often viewed as being synonymous, the French are the perennial favorite for the #1 spot on Expedia’s annual survey of the world’s best and worst tourists and are generally viewed as being the biggest skinflints, the worst tippers, the least able or inclined to speak foreign languages, and usually rank last in terms of their politeness and behavior. And then there are the Chinese.

Two months ago, according to a China Economic Net report, some high-end vacation resorts in the Maldives have become so outraged over what they consider to be bad behavior on the part of vacationers from China they’ve changed their property’s operating procedures: employees have been instructed to remove the hot water kettle in every Chinese tourist’s room. The social faux pas this new policy was designed to curb is the Chinese nationals’ love of Cup of Noodles; the resorts were upset that the tourists were not spending their money in restaurants but sitting in their hotel rooms chowing down on instant noodles instead. The Chinese, of course, are incensed. Not that the China National Tourism Administration is willing to give their people a free pass on proper touri etiquette while abroad.

20% of touri like to mark their spot globally.

Teaming up with the central government’s Office of the Spiritual Civilization Development Steering Commission they conducted a study on The Frequent Bad Behaviors of Chinese Citizens Who Travel Abroad, which detailed ten popular complaints against Chinese tourists, including: littering, spitting, snatching bus seats, queue-jumping, taking off shoes and socks in public, speaking loudly, bad temper and cursing, and smoking in non-smoking areas. In response, the Ministry of Tourism issued a brochure for Chinese tourists called The Manual on Proper Behavior for Chinese Citizens Traveling Abroad. It lists helpful information, suggesting touri eat their food quietly, not cut into queues, and, in order to ‘protect the environment’ not to litter. It also warns against spitting on the ground, not because it’s a disgusting habit but because everyone needs to do their part to curb the problem of greenhouse gases.

Cultural norms aside, the sight of touri gone wild in and of itself does seem to be the norm. The results of an unscientific survey by travel app Triposo, were recently released which showed misbehaving while on holiday, for many, if just part of the travel experience. Their research covered everything from travel etiquette and manners – like hogging arm rests and asking to switch seats incessantly – to drunken misbehavior and foreign fraternization. Some of their findings may surprise you. Or help you to realize you are not alone. Or give you something more to whine about:

70% of touri’s photographs are more monumentual than they are of monuments.

The Joy Of Sex:
· 70 percent admitted to some form of sexual fraternization.
· 25 percent admitted to a one-night stand.
· 17 percent did it in a public place.
· 16 percent did it with someone who didn’t speak a word of their language.
· 6 percent admitted to cheating on a significant other; and
· 5 percent broke up with said significant other.
· 6 percent admitted to soliciting sex.

The Evils Of Alcohol:
· 60 percent admitted to getting totally blitzed.
· 11 percent reported injuries thanks to having one too many.
· 20 percent admitted to urinating in public.
· 10 percent admitted to vomiting in public.
· 5 percent say drinking abroad led to naked escapades in public.

Bad Boys:
· 20 percent who admitted to stealing while in a foreign country
· 15 percent admitted to buying or selling drugs.
· Almost 14 percent admitted to some form of trespassing.
· 6 percent admitted to smuggling contraband.
· Less than 2 percent report being arrested, though more than 10 percent reported being held at the border.

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Who Knew Iran Is A Gay Friendly Destination?

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That's Gay

Yes there are many hot guys in the middle east and many of them are gay. But calling the Arabian world gay friendly might be pushing it.

I’d like to see a show of hands from those of you who know what the word gay means.
Huh. As I thought, almost unanimous with a few hold outs from those whose hands were busy enjoying the naked dude’s picture I just posted.

You wouldn’t think that gay would be such an undefinable word. Especially among those who are. But as soon as you tack on the word friendly, confusion rules the day. At least among those who have a problem with saying what they mean. Queries about which hotels and SE Asian locales qualify as being gay friendly are a common post on the gay Thailand message boards. But they never really mean friendly to gay people. What they mean is friendly to sex tourists. What they are asking is how open a place is to bringing a prostitute back to your hotel with you. Granted, just like their straight brethren, gay men tend to have active libidos. But that doesn’t mean every gay traveler plans his holiday based on the availability of male whores. No, really.

Recently there was a thread on SGT about how gay friendly Cambodia is. The discussion centered on hotels in Phnom Penh, and how many of those establishments were not friendly to gay clientele. Cambodia is trying to not become the new Thailand. The government is not in favor of sex tourism. Many of the hotels in the country’s capital city post signs stating they do not allow customers to bring prostitutes back to the premises. Nowhere in those signs is the word gay used. But the punters on SGT have decided that makes Phnom Penh not gay friendly.

A Not Gay Friendly sign in Cambodia?

On my last visit to Cambodia I made my first visit to Phnom Penh with two stays in the city, one at the beginning and one at the need of my visit. I stayed at two different hotels. One had a No Visitors sign posted, the other did not. Neither asked, or seemed to care whether I was gay or not. But then I didn’t travel to Cambodia to see how cheaply I could buy a local boy either. Some do, and I have no problem with sex tourists. Depending on where it is I’m travelling, I probably even qualify as one at times. I do have a problem though with those who can’t man up and admit that they are. Only because their inability to say what they mean leads the uninitiated into believing a locale is not friendly to gays when the opposite is true. Not that travel industry professionals do much better. Even those who specialize in info for gay travelers and sex touri alike.

The Spartacus International Gay Guide recently released its updated list of the world’s top gay friendly destinations. Their guide was once the definitive source for all things gay for the world traveller. Back before the internet. That they even still exist came as a surprise to me. As did their determination that Thailand ranks as the 38th most gay friendly country. In a ten-way tie with the U.S., Aruba, Hungary, Mexico . . . and Cambodia among others. Guess those signs at hotels in Phnom Penh haven’t been every effective.

Indonesia’s ranking as the 104th most gay friendly destination would be higher if you only considered Bali. Or this guy.

There is something inherently wrong with either the definition you are using or the criteria you’ve selected to use when you end up with a 10-way tie for any of the spots on your list. When your are judging how gay friendly a country is and you determine that there is no difference between the experience gay men will have in Mexico and Thailand, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark (which came in at the #6 spot, in a 3-way tie with Canada and Iceland).

Spartacus’ popularity as a guide among gay travelers was always its list of bar, pubs, and meting places for gay men in each of the countries and cities it covered. No matter how outdated that information was. But for determining which places were the most gay friendly, they decided to not judge them based on gay nightlife. Instead they used criteria such as the laws and customs of each country as they relate to marriage equality, HIV travel restrictions, hate-crime murders, laws against homosexuality, and others. The availability of male prostitutes was not included in their list.

Vietnam came in at the 48th place along with the Philippines.

While it is good to know in which countries you may face the death penalty for having sex with a local hottie, whether or not you can marry him is not one of the major concerns for the average gay traveller. How you can expect to be treated as either a single gay man or a gay couple is. How many gay bars there are, and whether or not a taxi driver will kick you out of his cab when you ask to be taken to one is of more interest than whether or not gay men are allowed to adopt. What, if any, hassles you can expect when checking into a hotel with your same-sex partner matters more to most gay travelers than does the amount of dollars spent on attracting the LGBT market. And yes, even the availability of male prostitutes ranks higher than the equality of the locale’s age on consent laws (though for some those laws in and of themselves are of major importance).

Using political criteria to define how gay friendly a country is, is no better than using the criterion of how acceptable prostitution is. In Indonesia, which ranked at the 104th spot in a 14-way tie that included Singapore in its group, homosexuality is not illegal. Though it is in the Aceh Province and South Sumatra which have both invoked Sharia law. Yet throughout the country, where 85% of the populace is Muslim, same-sex couplings remain taboo. So its low ranking would make sense. Until you consider Bali, which is pretty much a gay paradise.

Peru joins Singapore and Indonesia as the 104th most gay friendly destination. Though that rank might have just been raised a few notches.

I’m not sure what the laws about homosexuality are in Singapore; every time I’ve visited there I’ve been too busy getting laid to have the time to look them up. As for neighboring Malaysia, where homosexuality is illegal, it came in at the 130th spot with only 8 other countries ranking lower. Which is all good and well but fails to account for all the little Malaysian gay guys on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Finding a sex partner in Malaysia is easier than finding an underage bar boy in Sunee Plaza. Nor does it account for how Vatican City (#127) managed to score as a more gay friendly destination than Malaysia. But then on second thought . . .

Gay friendly probably is a more popular internet search phrase than homophobic countries where they’ll kill me for being gay is, so while it is understandable for SEO purposes that Spartacus would use the gay friendly moniker for their list, when you call it the ‘Top Gay Friendly Destinations In The World” there is a problem when you include Iran on your list. Even if it is in last place. There is nothing gay friendly about Iran. They don’t even have gays in Iran according to the country’s president. But then maybe if the pundits on SGT spent some time in Iran they’d change their mind about what gay friendly really means.

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The Joys Of Pleasuring Yourself

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Transportation

Doing it solo can be a pleasurable experience.

A visit to Thailand, even just a holiday in Bangkok, can be completely different each and every time you go. Sometimes it’s the weather. Sometimes its the people you meet or the places within the city you visit. For me, some trips are heavily filled with business, others provide ample free time to play touri. Not hitting the bars, or hitting the bars nightly, can make one trip totally different from another, as can finding a guy to spend the entire holiday with or playing butterfly instead and sampling the many guys the city has to offer. But nothing has as much of an impact as does who you travel with.

I’ve made the trip by myself. And I’ve gone with a buddy, both gay and straight. I’ve visited Bangkok with a small group of friends, again both gay and straight as well as mixed, and once even made a pseudo group tour hitting the Kingdom with a gaggle of fifteen friends and acquaintances (all gay thanks the gods . . . if you consider lesbians to be gay too). Travelling by yourself or with a friend or group of friends makes the experience unique. That can be a good thing, or a bad thing. It all depends on who is in your wolf pack.

The Advocate had an interview that I wanted to read the other day and while on-line I decided to click through a variety of articles to see what else interested me. Articles on travel always grab my attention and seeing one with the title “Going Solo”, I clicked in for a read.

Travelling on your own exposes you to a different world.

I assumed being in the Advocate it would cover the joys of travelling by yourself. Instead it was a short article covering what the author thought to be the downside of solo travel and how to best negate those problems and concerns. The Advocate is all about gay rights, equality and empowerment for gays but still is cool with discriminating against single men. The author was concerned that the cons of travelling by yourself were too worrisome, and then went on to list the dangers of solo travel such as the cost of a double-occupancy hotel room being almost as much as single-occupancy (huh?) – which he suggested staying in a hostel as a remedy – problems with meeting people (his sage advice was to always carry a lighter with you even if you don’t smoke), and the horror of dining at a restaurant by yourself, which you can avoid by eating at street carts, sitting at a restaurant’s bar instead of asking for a table, or eating early or late to avoid being the sole sole diner in a room full of couples and groups. I was waiting for him to remind his readers that as solo travellers we are required to sit at the back of the bus.

More times than not I travel alone. I’m great company. At least for myself. Solo travel isn’t for everyone. There are a lot of people out there who just are not comfortable enough with themselves, and just as many who are not comfortable visiting a foreign land without the safety net of a companion. I enjoy travelling with friends, but nothing beats the freedom of being on your own. You can do what you want when you want. And can be just as happy doing nothing at all.

Travelling solo opens you to different experiences and I’ve always found strangers tend to reach out to you when you travel solo too. Maybe it’s pity that makes them make that effort; I don’t care. I’ve spent some wonderful times in the company of complete strangers who quickly became friends. And unlike when travelling with friends, if you decide you don’t really like the people you find yourself hanging out with, it’s always easy to ditch them.

Solo travellers find it easy to make new friends.

That can be one of the biggest detriments to travelling with a friend, a lover, or a group. When things become unbearable, ditching your travel companion(s) is not considered good form. Even if not doing so means ruining your holiday. Knowing the people you travel with well, before the trip is a must. Discovering what it is like to live with them for weeks on end while in a foreign country is almost a surefire recipe for a disaster. On any trip there are things that go wrong, things that you didn’t expect that happen, and tons of little annoying things that crop up that can tax your patience. How you deal with those on your own is one thing, how you deal with them in a group dynamic is another. For some those little molehills quickly become mountains and the next thing you know you’re standing at the foot of Vesuvious. Those little problems often become one of the more memorable experiences of your trip. They can be memories that you laugh about later, or cringe at the row the whole thing became because of the reaction by someone you were travelling with. Solo travel avoids those type of conflagrations. But then for some, even travelling alone, means travelling in a dysfunctional wolf pack.

Not long ago I read what I still consider one the saddest statements about travel I’ve ever run across. I think the reason it bothered me as much as it did is because I usually expect more out of those of us who travel. We’re supposed to be the thrill-seekers. Or at least the enlightened ones. Some, evidently, are the exception to that rule:

“After so many trips to the Land of Smiles the awe and wonder about the place has dimmed, but only slightly. Most times I’ve found that it’s been my fellow visitors and the havoc they wreak in pursuit of their Ultimate Holidays that’s been to blame much more than any legitimate complaint about the country or people themselves. The further I get from the less savory areas, the more I enjoy my time there.”

He’s cute and single. And if you are travelling by yourself, so are you.

Huh. I can’t imagine how anyone fortunate enough to fly off to an exotic locale, even when doing so – as for many of us – has become routine can allow that joy to be diminished to any degree by nothing more than the conduct of complete strangers. How completely screwed up do you have to be that the manner in which others – people you do not know and with whom you are not travelling – go about enjoying their holiday has such a negative effect on your own enjoyment? The only thing worse would be if that person was your travel companion and you had to listen to their whining for the entire trip. Travelling solo means not having to deal with other people’s baggage. Or dour dispositions.

I still consider travel to be about discovery. I’m intrigued by the places and people, their way of life, their customs, their oddities, and the differences between their world and mine. Angkor Wat was incredible, the conversation I had with the little urchin selling postcards more memorable. Bora Bora was stunningly beautiful, almost missing my plane ride home from strolling the beach collecting shells with an old British couple I’d met is the memory of that trip that first springs to mind. A visit to Taiwan is a blur thanks to downing far too many boiler makers with a group of straight Aussie guys I met at a bar. None of which would have happened had I been travelling with a companion or group of friends.

Solo travel is comparable to the difference between striking out on your own and taking a group packaged tour. It’s not for everybody; some are willing to give up the experience for the comfort of being shepherded about. But for those willing to stand on their own, the rewards of solo travel can’t be beat. Solo travel is about pleasuring yourself. And that’s a good thing. Because even with travel, it really is all about me.

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Icing On The Cake

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Stupid Tourist Tricks, Transportation

I get the TSA not allowing you on a plane with a knife or other sharp object. Confiscating my 96-year-old grandmother’s knitting needles was a bit much, but okay: safety first, blah, blah, blah. The whole 3 oz. liquid dangerous bottle of water thingy is a bit much too, but again, okay ya’ll thought there was a threat and responded in the only way a bureaucracy can: inanely. But cupcakes? Because the icing poses a danger to the safety of passengers?

I yearn for the days when flying was pleasurable. Now it’s a chore. The screening procedures add another hour to your pre-boarding routine. Savvy travellers dress for the trials the TSA puts you through when travellers used to dress for the flight. The hassles and tribulations of dealing with what the TSA hath wrought that await you at the airport almost overshadows the trip you are about to take. Leave it to the government to make what should be an enjoyable experience an onerous one instead.

Are we any safer today? You can take the republican party’s view that the freedoms and rights we’ve given up have been effective since there has not been another major terrorist incident on U.S. soil, or you can subscribe to the view that we’ve just been lucky. So far. When it comes to safety that it’s better to be overly cautious seems to be the prevailing attitude, but we’ve quickly headed down the overkill path. I think I’m in more danger of suffering a stroke or a heart attack from the frustration of dealing with airport security procedures than I’d ever be from a terrorist on the plane.

Either way, at some point you do have to question whether it is a safety issue or a power issue thanks to the cop wannabes who get hired as TSA agents because no police force would let them within 100 yards of actual authority. Unfortunately, the government isn’t quite as wise and has given them some. Far too much in fact. When the TSA starts messing around with baked goods, the answer is obvious.

Last December a TSA agent at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas seized a woman’s red velvet cupcake, which was baked inside of an 8 ounce jar. The agent claimed that the frosting on the cupcake constituted a gel-like substance; the manner in which the icing conformed to the container’s shape made him suspicious. If he carried the excess weight most TSA employees seem to it probably also made him hungry.

The passenger offered to remove the cupcake from its container and place it in a zip log bag to conform to TSA regulations, but the TSA agent said that once he had identified the dessert as a security threat the passenger could no longer touch it. One does have to wonder just how dangerous all of the confiscated items are at screening checkpoints since they get dumped into a large trash container that just sits there in the middle of the airport. But then in this case we are talking baked goods specifically, and we all know how threatening those can be.

Rather than admit the agent may have overreacted, the TSA defended his actions in a post on the agency’s website in which it claimed the cupcake icing could have been a cleverly disguised explosive. In part, the missive read:

“Our officers are regularly briefed and trained by TSA explosives specialists on how just about any common appliance, toy or doohickey can be turned into a dangerous explosive. When you think about it, do you think an explosive would be concealed in an ominous item that would draw attention, or something as simple as a cute cupcake jar?”

And rather than allow the issue to die its natural under-baked death, the agency now warns passengers that “if they try to bring cakes, pies, and cupcakes through security they might get some additional screening.” I feel safer already.

I guess you have to cut the TSA some slack, protecting the skies is a difficult job and I’d never considered the countless number of items passengers attempt to board planes with that should be considered suspicious and not allowed on the plane due to security concerns. It’s the innocuous things that pose the greatest danger, the most potentially dangerous those that no one would ever suspect as being part of a terrorist plot. I’ve given the matter much thought and need to pass on an obvious source of danger disguised as innocence that the TSA should immediately begin confiscating at security checkpoints: babies and toddlers.

If you think about it, they are the perfect size for hiding a bomb. And who is gonna be brave enough to actually check inside of a toddler’s diaper? Suicide bombers have to be indoctrinated and trained, a costly and time-consuming part of any terrorist plot. Babies on the other hand haven’t a clue about what you are doing to them. Plus they are easy to make and readily replaceable.

I think by confiscating babies and toddlers our skies will be a safer place. Or at least the hours devoted to air travel will be more enjoyable by not having to deal with little rug rats running amok and babies screaming for hours on end. Thankfully, until the TSA implements its new baby/toddler prohibition the agency has made allowances for those of us still have to suffer thanks to other people’s mistakes. The same week that the TSA declared cupcake icing to be a security threat they decided large amounts of weed were perfectly safe and allowable.

Rapper Freddie Gibbs, flying to Denver for a performance, packed a half ounce of marijuana in his checked baggage and it was found by a TSA officer. Apparently, the TSA officer didn’t confiscate the illegal drug according to Gibbs. He said the marijuana was returned with a handwritten note along the border of the Notice of Bag Inspection that said “C’mon Son.”

Gibbs, who might learn some sage advice by sampling One Toke Over The Line, decided to tweet about his good fortune and even attached a picture of the weed in his bag and the note the TSA left in his luggage, stupidly providing photographic evidence of his possession and transportation of an illegal drug over state lines.

The TSA, who must be tired of having to respond to the stupid things its employees do, issued a statement saying the agency would be investigating the matter and that should Gibbs’ claim be substantiated would “take appropriate disciplinary steps and refer the alleged possession of an illegal substance to law enforcement.”

The TSA needs to reconsider its position on cupcakes; if the agency is going to allow passengers to get stoned on flights then they need to allow us our munchies too.

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That's Gay, Transportation

Sometimes you can just look at someone and tell there’s something a bit off about them. It’s not something specific that sets the alarms ringing. Just an air they have about them. Normally, you keep an eye on peeled and get out of their way. It’s not so much that they may be dangerous, but no one wants to deal with crazy either. On an airplane you don’t have that ability. Air travel today forces you to deal with crazies. In a confined space. Possibly even in your personal space.

Airlines have become buses. And attract the people who used to only ride Greyhound. Airlines continue to add draconian rules about conduct of passengers because of the low class of clientele they’ve marketed to. I think that’s wrong. It’s their fault and they should suffer the consequences. Instead you don’t dare even look at a flight attendant these days. If you incur their wrath, federal marshals will be waiting for you when you arrive at your destination. But fellow passengers are fair game.

Not flying in steerage is a good step toward avoiding the mentally unkempt. It’s not that you necessarily are flying with a better group in the font of the plane, just that the truly disgusting tend to be cheap or poor and can only afford to ride in the back with the masses. So on a recent flight, when the odd looking blonde with the slightly crazed eyes came trundling down the aisle I breathed a sigh of relief and momentarily felt bad for whatever poor sucker would end up being that particular lunatic’s seatmate for the next thirteen hours. And then got a bit concerned when instead of passing by she started struggling with her 500 pound suitcase, an oversized piece of baggage she was trying to cram into an overhead bin. That her bag was large enough to hide a body in did not help to lower my concerns.

A cute flight attendant doesn’t really make up for the presence of the gross person you won in the seatmate lottery.

Crazy lady not only held up boarding while she attempted to make her suitcase obey, but once she almost got it squeezed into a space designed for half a dozen pieces of carry on luggage, she unzipped it and began pulling out what ended up being a human-sized pillow and enough food to feed a small country. I quickly said a prayer to every god I could think of. They laughed. She plopped herself down into the seat next to mine.

I enjoy flying. Especially on long flights. Or used to. I don’t so much anymore, but my conscious mind hasn’t yet filed that little fact away and so every flight I get on I’m happy and ready for what once used to be a pleasurable experience. Thanks to code-share flights, it’s been years since there was any chance of nabbing an entire row of empty seats. Planes these days are always packed. No problemo, if they have not yet upgraded me to the front of the plane, before take off I’ll get moved there. Flying solo helps qualify you as the passenger who gets the free first-class seat. Evidently, not being sane and barely qualifying as a human being does too.

Belonging to the top tier of the airline’s loyalty program means I get to board the plane first. On long flights, with some twenty hours of travel still to go, being allowed to stake out your claim to a seat ten to twenty minutes early isn’t much of a prize. But I’ve learned that too many flyers are greedy little pigs and pack their entire household in their carry-on luggage. Wait too long to board and the hoarders will have already filled up all available overhead storage.

Women bring on even more luggage than men. They make sure they have enough baggage to fill a few overhead storage compartments plus the required amount to fill all available below-seating space and any other open area within ten feet of them. It’s that womb thing. They all have a need to cocoon themselves in a fuzzy little space of protection. Even when that means taking up the space of their fellow passengers.

The best seatmate on an airplane is the absent one.

Believe it or not, I’m actually a polite person. Usually. I’ve learned to not be when it comes to air travel. When some piggish fish has stored her crap under the seat in front of me, I pick it up and stick it out in the middle of the aisle. And then ignore the sputtering coming from the seat next to me. Then when the flight attendant comes by and asks who the bag belongs to, I roll my eyes toward Miss Piggy and let the flight attendant abuse her first passenger of the flight.

And don’t even think you are going to claim more than 50% of the arm rest if you are seated next to me.

I should know better, but I start every flight with high hopes of landing some hot hunk – preferably gay – as a seatmate. I never do. That is not my brand of luck. I don’t bother wasting money playing the lottery either. My numbers are never gonna come up. And my seat number is never going to win in the seatmate lottery either. At best, my seatmate will be someone easy to ignore. Who isn’t too intrusive or who doesn’t smell too badly.

I used to book the aisle seat but after too many flights of having to get up every twenty minutes to let the old lady with the bladder infection out to hit the head yet again, I now book my ticket early enough to claim a window seat. And then hope that old lady hasn’t advanced to the point in her medical needs to be fitted with a colostomy bag. Nothing is worse than a fifteen hour flight with someone’s piss bag squeezed up against your leg. Well, okay the 6-month-old who has been fed a steady diet of Doritos and will spend the flight filling a succession of diapers is worse. But if that looks like it will be my flight experience I grab a flight attendant and demand a new seat before leaving the ground.

Optiontown allows you to reserve empty seats next to yours on your AirAsia X flights.

Airlines nickel and dime you to death these days and do little to live up to their claim of flying the friendly skies. Several, however, have recently introduced new programs that help you to win in the seatmate lottery. No longer do you have to use your barf bag to express your opinion of your seatmate.

The best seatmate is no seatmate and Air Asia – the airline I love to hate – will now allow you in-flight solitude for a price. Operating in conjunction with Optiontown (https://www.optiontown.com) its Empty Seat option (ESo) allows you to reserve seats next to yours on flights that are not fully booked. After booking your seat with Air Asia X – the long-haul, low-fare affiliate of Malaysia’ AirAsia – you can ‘reserve’ empty seats in your row by paying a fee which varies by flight time and destination but can be as low as $6.

If you are travelling alone, you may claim the two additional seats in your row, if flying with a buddy you can reserve the remaining empty seat. If your reservation is successful (meaning the flight is not full) you then have the exclusive right to use the assigned empty seat(s) for the entire duration of the flight. It’s not guaranteed, however.

If empty seats are available, you’ll get a confirmation message four to 72 hours before your flight. If no seats are available, the empty seat reservation price you paid is refunded a few days after the flight departs. A few other airlines offer a similar product. At check-in, Air New Zealand’s Twin Seat option gives passengers the chance to buy the seat next to them for a significantly reduced price. Spain’s Vueling offers a second-seat option, called Duo, as well. And Optiontown also offers an Upgrade Travel Option – a program to get you a paid upgrade that is usually cheaper than those offered directly by the airlines – on 10 airlines, including AirAsia X, Aeromexico, SAS, Air India, and others.

Malaysia Airlines and KLM now allow you to choose seatmates from Facebook profiles.

Malaysia Airlines won’t let you get away with not having to deal with a seatmate, but does allow you to call dibbs on the hottest guy on your flight through its MHbuudy program, which integrates Facebook into its ticket booking program. Consider it the Grindr app for flying.

The way MH buddy works is that after booking your ticket via Malaysia Airlines Facebook page, and up until boarding, you can revisit their page to check out the Facebook profiles of your fellow passengers. Skim though and find the hottest hunk and you can then reserve the seat next to him. Better yet, locate the obnoxious parents flying with their brood of devil spawn and you can pick a seat the furthest away as possible from that little bit of hell. MHbuddy also tells passengers if any of their Facebook friends are planning on traveling to their destination in case they want to meet during the trip.

KLM recently introduced a similar program, Meet & Seat, which allows ticketed passengers to review other traveller’s Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. For now, the program is only available on the airline’s flights between Amsterdam and New York, San Francisco, and Sao Paulo. The program is available 90 days until 48 hours before departure. And if you have already used it to choose the fellow passenger you plan on molesting during your flight, as new passengers add their profiles KLM will email them to you. You never know when a hotter stud will show up. Alaska Airlines’ Flying Social program also integrates Facebook in its seat selection process.

KLM‘s Meet & Seat is an easy way to choose the guy you’d most like to join the Mile High Club with on your flight.

This new service connects passengers and aims to give them a more inspirational journey,” said KLM managing director Erik Varwijk in a statement announcing the new “Meet & Seat” program which will eventually be available on all KLM intercontinental flights. Anyone using the word ‘inspirational’ when discussing air travel today has got to be employed by an airline. Or on some serious drugs. While the idea of picking your seatmate sounds good at first, obvious concerns should immediately spring to mind. Sometimes it’s the stalker who is stalked. Your inspirational journey could just as easily become a quick trip to hell.

You know fat, desperate straight women on the prowl for a husband will be big fans of the service. If your LinkedIn profile suggests a high salary, you can bet financial advisors, insurance agents, and timeshare salespeople will all be fighting for a seat next to you. The problem with these programs is that while it is great that you can select which hottie you want as a seatmate, you too can become someone’s obsession. And you can not ‘unlike’ someone once in the air.

On the other hand, there is a lot of potential for helping to make sure your flight is an enjoyable one beyond the stud you line up to sit next to. A fake newspaper story about the airline’s recent record of large numbers of unexplainable infant deaths emailed to anyone whose profile lists a ton of kids may help convince them to take a different flight. Picking out the profiles of those you really don’t want on your flight and then slipping a suspicious bag of white powder into their carry-on just before they go through security could easily improve your pool of potential seatmates. Buh Bye!

Keep in mind that choosing a seatmate via Facebook is a lot like on-line dating. That profile photo might be two decades old. Or worse.

You may also be able to pull off scoring an empty seat next to yours without using Optiontown. Post a Facebook profile showing you are a 500 pound 80-year-old with bad bladder control whose favorite pastime is watching bestiality porn on his personal DVD player while flying, and that seat – if not the entire row – should remain empty. And for the sheer fun of it you could post a fake profile showing yourself as a scrawny bar boy working in Pattaya who loves old fat guys – the sex tourists will be putting up a fierce fight to nab you as a seatmate (uh, but remember that after the initial enjoyment of punking someone, you will have to endure sitting next to those guys for your entire flight).

Since you can only use the Facebook program by including your profile in the airline’s database, you might be better off sticking to Grindr. Log on just before take-off and you may be pleasantly surprised by the number of hot guys, and potential partners, looking to book in some frequent flyer miles in the Mile High Club during your flight. Now that’s a use of social media for airline travel I can get behind!

The House That Juan Built

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And More!

Tink, tink, tink, tink.

Huh. As far as annoying sounds that pull you out of sleep in the morning, it barely qualified. Not after several years of be awoken by a murmuration of myna birds screeching their displeasure at mongeese raiding their tree for a morning snack of betel nuts. Compared to the obnoxious tweeting of cheap plastic whistles that every doorman at 3.5 hotels and above in Bangkok starts up at daybreak, it almost qualified as the sound of silence. The pounding in my head from a night of doing tequila shots was louder. Maybe this holiday’s accommodations wouldn’t suck as badly as I’d thought.

It was a short vacation, a impromptu holiday, a quick trip to Cancun with my friend Ann. Though she’d seen the world, Ann was still a small-town girl from rural Texas at heart and easy prey for the timeshare sellers that engorge themselves on the real estate savvy challenged at resort destinations the world over. Ann had fallen for the come-on of a free case of chocolate macadamia nuts years before, and was now the proud owner of: nothing. But for the large monthly payments and maintenance fees she paid, she was allowed two weeks of accommodation at a nice property on the Big Island each year. That exotic tropical holiday loses some of its allure when you live but a 45-minute flight away. The condo she bought into was a popular one among her fellow timeshare owners, and most years she bartered out her two weeks there for four weeks elsewhere. We were using one of them to holiday at Mexico’s version of Waikiki.

Flip flops for footwear and several stories up, a painter in Bangkok has his safety line attached to: nada.

Ours was a four-star hotel masquerading as a condo masquerading as a time share. With rooms overlooking Playa Nizuc beach, I couldn’t argue about the price; my contribution to the cost of the room was a promise to buy dinner on our first night in town. Having arrived at 10:00 p.m., however, that wouldn’t officially occur until our second night. Our first was devoted to getting to the hotel and settling in. That went off without a hitch until we headed up to our rooms, walking along a corridor open to the tropic breezes blowing in off the Caribbean Sea. The front of the two room suite opened onto the beach. Cool. The entrance side of the room looked out over the hotel next door. Or what would soon be the hotel next door. It’s skeleton was there, rising above several acres littered with construction debris. Not cool.

Discovering your holiday accommodations are next to a major construction project is not a good thing. At least not if your holiday plans include peace and quiet. I served Ann up the appropriate amount of crap, and then with nothing to be done about the situation, we got busy toasting our vacation until the worm disappeared. Enter hangover. Enter early morning construction noise.

Tink, tink, tink, tink.

It wasn’t quite the blaring horns or warning sirens of trucks weighing several tons backing up I’d expected to rouse me from my sleep. I’ve heard wind chimes that were more annoying. As much as my head pleaded for me to stay in bed, curiosity won the day and I headed out to the walkway to drape myself over the parapet and see what was up. A few hundred Mexican workers were what was up. With the break of dawn. And not a gas-powered vehicle or electrical piece of construction equipment among them. They were busy building a thirty-story hotel by hand.

The zen of curb painting while vehicles barrel past inches from your back.

I spent more of that vacation watching the neighboring property being built than I did watching the waves come in. It was as easy to order cervezas to be brought to the room as to be hauled across the sand to your beach chair. The beauty of a hundred buff Latino men working shirtless was part of the draw. The strangeness of third-world construction standards and techniques though were the main event. And that has been a fascination of mine ever since, all over the world.

Bamboo scaffolding framing high-rises under repair in Hong Kong, old men pushing concrete filled wheelbarrows down narrow alleys in Bali – the cementitious mixture drying quicker than they were moving – laborers in Thailand with kerchiefs tied around their faces like bank robbers from the wild west disguising not their identity but that they are women, the laborers at construction sites in third-world countries add a tinge of local color to any trip. The only thing they have in common with construction workers back home is that there are always three times as many as required to do the job and the majority of the workers are never working.

Hard at work and hardly working is the name of the game among construction workers the world over.

I’ve watched a crew of ten spend a full week repairing a three-foot long portion of the sidewalk in Bangkok, finally completed it was in need of repairs again two days later. The scowl of a lady construction worker in Chiang Mai at her dozing co-worker transformed into a radiant smile when my camera came up. Painters balancing on bamboo poles encircling a five star hotel reacted to their Kodak moment by bouncing up and down on the flimsy footing, trusting in their good karma more than the stability of their perch. And the same crumbling buildings under construction at Angkor Wat in Cambodia since the 12th century are still being built and rebuilt today using methods and equipment that would not seem foreign to those who originally started the job. Maybe it’s an odd way to spend time on a holiday, but third-world construction practices always bring me to a screeching halt. It’s not that they are an accident waiting to happen, but rather the strangeness of construction and maintenance techniques employed, and admiration for making due with the equipment at hand. Even when that equipment is only their hands.

Construction going on at or near my hotel? No problemo. That just means an extra hour or two in the morning of kicking back and watching the workers play. Now if they could just do something about those damn doormen and their whistles, I’d be a happy camper.

Siem Reap’s street sweeping crew’s job is never done.

Steal This Room

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Hotels and Restaurants

These days more and more guests check out of hotels with illegal booty stashed in their bags.

Most people who travel pick up some memento from their trip, a small souvenir to remind them of the time they had or to display in their home so anyone visiting will know they were lucky enough to have flown off to some exotic locale. Purchasing a small reminder of their travel is on most traveller’s ‘to-do’ list. And with all the cheap bastards in the world, it shouldn’t be surprising that picking up a small reminder of their hotel stay is too. Stealing amenities from ones hotel room is part of the joy of travel for many. Abbie Hoffman would be proud.

Petty theft from hotel rooms is not a new problem nor is it being exacerbated by the dismal state of the world’s economy. In fact, the ritzier the hotel and the more affluent the guest, the more likely it is that something that does not belong to the guest will be packed away in their suitcase. The five star Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong, not a cheap stay on anyone’s budget, looses 30% of the oriental silk shoe bags it places in its rooms to guest theft every year. And over at the Island Shangri-La, a hotel that has won countless awards for excellence, many well-heeled guests make off with crystals from their in-room chandeliers. A spokeperson for the hotel reports, “The cut-glass pendants have been passed off as diamonds to decorate clothes and for use as costume jewelry.”

And you thought it was only hip hop artist who were into large gaudy pieces of fake bling.

Fluffy bathrobes are one of the sought after and purloined hotel amenities.

Slightly bulkier were the Christian Fischbacher satin sheets that one guest swiped from the Setai in Miami. The guest was staying in a room with two beds and carefully remove the luxury linens from the unused bed, then meticulously remade it so as not to alert housekeeping. Linens are big in Asia too. Hotels have reported that duvets are often spirited out by enterprising guests using a simple technique. The guests arrive with their old duvets packed in their bag and simply exchange these with the inner stuffing of the hotel quilt. But that’s not stealing, it’s recycling.

Then there was the guest who made off with a $300,000 Andy Warhol picture from the W Hotel in Hong Kong. A fast-thinking concierge noticed the man walking out with the piece of art and raised the alarm. Still, the thief got away. Seeing the game was up, he calmly left the picture propped against a lamppost, stepped into a taxi, and sped away.

Guests walking off with valuable art and entire sets of bed linens is not the norm, though for some odd reason guests at the Holiday Inn Silom in Bangkok routinely unscrew and take home their room’s showerheads. In upscale hotels, fluffy bathrobes are the most common amenity to take a hike though François Delahaye, general manager of Paris’s Hôtel Plaza Athénée, says that this is actually a much smaller problem than it was a decade ago, since there is frequently no room in today’s carry-ons for the puffy robes. At the Four Seasons Hotel New York, guests who ‘borrow’ a bath robe for use at home are charged for it. Says Leslie Lefkowitz, director of public relations, “We put a charge for the robe on a card if we can be absolutely sure someone took it, and didn’t just pack it by mistake. Other swank inns take a different route. At the Raffles L’Ermitage Beverly Hills, they not only gift a bathrobe to VIP guests, they monogram it, too.

Artwork and mirrors - practically anything on a hotel room’s walls - are common items for guests to decide would look better in their own homes.

At the pricey Bulgari Resort Bali where rooms run $1,200 a night, not just robes, but any branded item is meant to go back with the guest. General manager Robert Lagerwey says that the hotel has designed those items to be stolen. “The funniest thing is guests who arrive with two suitcases, one of them empty. They always manage to leave with both full to the brim,” says Lagerwey. So there you have it. If you’re paying top dollar, you can raid your room to your heart’s delight.

Regardless of the cost of the room, these days travelers have no qualms about stuffing their luggage with a few souvenirs from their hotel room. And it’s not just the robes, towels, soaps and shampoos. If it’s not bolted down, it will walk. Actually, even if it is bolted down, it will still walk. Hotel managers report seeing flat screen televisions leave the premises, freshly unscrewed from walls by determined guests. Not to mention door hinges, showerheads, the carpeting, luggage stands, and even ceiling fans. So what’s the big deal? It all adds up to $100 millions worth of items every year. In 2008, 560,000 towels went missing from rooms at the Holiday Inn chain of hotels prompting the company to hold a Towel Amnesty Day during which they offered to pay $1 to the charity “Give Kids the World” for every towel-thieving story posted online.

Hotels are not about to take this lying down. Often they can’t because someone stold their bed. More often than not these days, missing items are discretely billed to your credit card. Room compendiums have become a fashionable addition at many hotels, listing every conceivable removable item, and even a few that aren’t, such as the aforementioned ceiling fan. You may not realize it, but you are not longer stealing your booty, you are buying it. But theft continues and some hotels have even resorted to embedding specially crafted RFID tags within their linens, just to help guests avoid “accidentally” stuffing them into their suitcases before heading to the check-out desk.

The Holiday Inn chain of hotels lost 560,000 towels to theft in a single year.

The chips, designed by Miami-based Linen Technology Tracking, are sewn directly into towels, bathrobes and bed linens. When a tagged item leaves a hotel’s premises, the RFID chip trips an alarm that instantly alerts the staff. The system has already paid dividends for one Honolulu hotel, which claims to have saved about $15,000 worth of linens since adopting the system last summer.

The most commonly ripped off items from hotels and resorts are towels, bathrobes, leather items (blotter, telephone pad), alarm clocks, hair dryers, bath pillows, show pillows, cushions, drinking glasses and feather duvets. And, ironically, in America, Gideon Bibles. Batteries, light bulbs and toilet paper frequently go missing too.

While hotels would prefer that guests not clean them out, there are plenty of goodies you can take home guilt-free. The general rule is that if the hotel can reuse it, they don’t want you to take it. Still, there is a on-line debate over whether or not it is stealing when you pack the unused toiletries from your room into your suitcase at check out time. That may have more to do with your moral compass than expectations of the hotel. The truth is that even the most parsimonious hoteliers want you to take their grooming products and paper goods home, the thinking being that every time you use an item that bears the hotel’s name you’ll remember what a wonderful time you had there and plan another visit. And not just to take more stuff.

Docking stations for iPods are the latest trend in hotel room theft.

François Delahaye, general manager of Paris’s Hôtel Plaza Athénée, confirms that most hotels feel that the shampoo, shower gel, toothbrushes and cotton earbuds are good to go. “If you want it stolen, put your logo on it,” Delahaye says, adding that most logo items are considered promotional and it is expected that guests will take them with them. Some hotels even anticipate guests’ illicit impulses: their toiletries read, “This is the cutest soap that you will steal from a hotel. Enjoy it.”

Hotels would be happy if it were just toiletries and promotional items that checked out with their guests, but some travellers just don’t know when to stop. Flower decorations, pictures, mirrors, and show pillows are among the more sedate items to frequently disappear. Alarm clocks, stereos, and iPod dock disappearances are on the rise. And that’s theft no matter how you try to justify it.

Psychological experts scratch their heads over why otherwise moral people steal, but admit that petty theft is common. “For some people there is a rush of naughtiness,” says Terrence Shulman, a therapist and founder of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Stealing, Spending and Hoarding in Franklin, Michigan. “Life is rigged against fairness and everyone breaks the rules — doing right is no longer what it once was.”

Some guests bring an empty suitcase with them to haul away their room’s duvets and bed linens.

Schlman says that many people justify theft by assuming the hotel “can afford it,” that those costs are passed on to the traveler. And they don’t view walking out with a bathrobe or a new set of towels as a criminal act even though some hotels prosecute for larceny. He recounts one incident he was involved with where the guests whose room was adjacent to the parking lot cleaned out the entire room down to bare walls. When the couple were arrested they sited the exceptionally rude desk clerk as justification for their crime.

A Perspective On Travel

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And More!, Stupid Tourist Tricks

Curiosity within ourselves should always be encouraged.

There are differences in culture, customs, and language, but at their most basic level, civilizations share one undeniable truth: orgasms sounds the same the world over. Unfortunately, you can’t share an orgasm with everyone you meet. Sometimes the best you can do is to share a smile. Not quite as gratifying, but equally effective in bridging the culture gap in any country, anywhere in the world.

At least when it is an honest one. That’d be the smile. Not the orgasm. I think you can probably fake an orgasm more realistically than you can a smile. At the same time, I think those who fake orgasms are probably the same group of people who have to fake a smile. And that, in turn, I believe is due to their inability to empathize with people who are different from them. Be that in culture, race, religion, age, or perspective. I think that’s what makes the difference between tourists and travellers. Tourists observe. And often find fault. Tourists begin and end their trip as an outsider. Travellers participate, they become engaged in the culture of the places they visit. Or at least make an attempt to. And that often starts with something as simple as a smile.

It’s natural for any of us to fall back on what’s familiar to us to explain the unfamiliar. It’s often a matter of perspective more than of a closed mind, but the result can be just as erroneous. On a trip to Thailand I was trying to convince my friend Helena to try some food from a street cart. She wasn’t too sure if that was a good idea and decided to take a minute to watch the vendor in action first. It was all good until she saw the vendor wash a few plates in a big pot of brown water. “Uh, I don’t think so!” she said, refusing to try what would have been a gastronomical treat.

She saw a pot full of dirty water instead of the big pot of clean soapy water she was more familiar with for that task. Street vendors in Thailand don’t normally have access to running water. But are just as concerned with hygiene. So they use a pot of tea to wash dishes in. Which is actually a great cleansing agent. And probably a lot safer for you than whatever caustic element Thai manufacturers are allowed to put into their dish soap.

The fish out of water approach to travel can be rewarding.

I don’t know if that food vendor saw Helena’s face or not, but it was probably a good thing she passed on trying whatever was being cooked. If there was a chance for that vendor to pass off an older portion, something that had fallen on the ground earlier that day, or even just a skimpy serving I’m sure he would have as a warm thanks for the look of disgust on her face. Conversely, a wide smile and expression of delight almost guarantees you’ll get a plate full of the best the vendor has to offer. It’s just an ingrained response; we tend to want to please those who already are pleased with us. A smile is the one currency that will never lose value.

An old idiom says “smile and the world becomes your oyster.” It amazes me how many tourists walk around making sure everyone knows that their oyster has been sitting out in the sun for a few days. That you’d take the time and incur the expense to travel to a foreign country so you could complain and be unhappy with everything foreign about that locale . . . I’m stumped. But then that’s human nature too, I guess. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Tourists embrace their displeasure, travellers reign in their natural inclinations and instead force themselves to enjoy the experience of something different. Regardless of how different it may be. Sometimes you need to remind yourself why you visited a place. Sometimes you need to remind yourself that experiencing a different way of life, a different culture, and a different belief system is part of what travel is about. In fact, that’s the good part.

Sitting out on our small balcony the first morning in Luang Prabang, I was enjoying the serenity of the early hour and the beauty of the garden fronting the hotel. Until my eyes focused on a large statue of a hand. Mine was the back view and it made me stop for a minute and think. Huh. Why in the world would a hotel erect a giant hand flipping off potential customers wandering by?

Later in the day I took a photograph of the statue before heading out for the day, and then decided to get a front shot, too. Ooops. It really was a matter of perspective in this case. The gesture of the hand was a Buddhist mudra with a slightly different meaning than the one I’d assumed. It was an honest mistake, and a simple one. But it got me thinking about how easy it is to misconstrue things we see, or misjudge the motives of people we meet when travelling. And it got me thinking that the difference between tourists and travellers is often in how they deal with those misconceptions.

Sometimes it’s all about how we view things.

Countless Westeners have run across swastikas in Bali and have been perturbed, not realizing that symbol predates Nazi Germany. And doesn’t carry a negative connotation in Indonesia. Throughout Asia, I look at bamboo scaffolding erected high along a building’s facade and shudder at the flimsy system used while the place is under construction or being renovated. It may not seem as substantial as the metal scaffolding used back home, but in reality is probably just as safe. I know Americans in foreign lands who grimace at the unusual food being chowed down by locals – stuff too gross to even get close to – never considering that whatever in the hell that stuff is it’s probably more healthy than what’s offered on the menu at McDonald’s back home. As a tourist, it’s easy to look down your nose when you run across the unfamiliar. As a traveller, the unfamiliar is what engages you. The novelty of a place or people and the ability to understand their culture, at least to some degree, is the prize. Becoming part of that experience is what excites travellers. Being able to empathize with people from a different culture is what makes that possible.

It’s the familiar too that separates the tourist from the traveller. The ‘little people’ in a foreign land: taxi drivers, waitstaff, bell hops, salesclerks, security guards, may look a bit different but all fill jobs we are familiar with back home. It’s easy to discount their value to the travel experience. Tourists treat them as second class citizens of third world countries. The Raj is alive and well among tourists. Travellers acknowledge their existence, sometimes just with a smile, more often with a few minutes of pleasant conversation. That small interaction in itself can be rewarding. At other times it can lead into a deeper relationship and the traveller finds himself with a new friend and an opportunity to spend time with a local involved in some activity that no tourist will ever have the chance of experiencing.

Tourists tend to travel in a pack. Even when they are not Japanese. They tend to prefer packaged tours, be that for a day’s outing or the entire trip. It’s the safe way to travel. And they don’t have to think. They get to observe some foreign site while surrounded by people they are familiar with. If they are lucky, they’ll make life-long friends with Mitch and Sue from Omaha. And if they are polite, they’ll tip their local tour guide who spent the day with them a buck or two. Whatever in the hell his name was.

Travellers often go it alone. Rather than head for a place all the guide books tout, which will be overflowing with tourists, instead they head off for points unknown. Discovering the unexpected is part of the thrill for travellers. Even spots frequented by the tourist hordes, when visited at off hours, offer the traveller the opportunity to experience a personal moment instead of a packaged one. Sometimes, logistics dictate joining in on a package tour, but you’ll notice when all the tourists get off the bus and head right, the travellers get off the bus and head left. And if they are lucky they make life-long friends with someone tucked away in some little corner of the world whose name they can’t even pronounce correctly. That just might be the local tour guide all of the tourists spent the day ignoring.

A smile is easily translatable in any language.

I tend to read a lot of travel blogs and blogs about foreign countries. I’m always thrilled when someone tells about the unexpected find they discovered on a trip. I love the reports that brim with a traveller’s curiosity and wonder of the world. I give those writers kudos for trying new things, for opening themselves up to new experiences. Regardless if the result was positive or a disaster. And I wonder why those who always play it safe even bother to leave home. Tourist’s tales are always filled with warnings : Don’t drink the water! Watch out for the hot midday sun! Wash your hands! Be careful of what you eat, you don’t want a case of rumbly in the tumbly! It surprises me they ever make it out of their hotel. But then when they do, you know it is with a bus load full of their fellow tourists: their pictures always include a swarm of heads in the foreground. And you know all those heads came from Idaho.

Travel should not just be about expanding borders but expanding your world view too. The best thing you can do when travelling is to surround yourself with the unknown, seek out the places that would normally make you uncomfortable, engage people with whom you seem to share the least. Your experience will be much more rewarding. And you will probably find that people all over the world really are not that different after all. Whether they are in the middle of having an orgasm or not.

Booked

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Photography

Point. Click. But now what?

I’m not sure if it’s that everything old is new again or what goes around comes around, once again, but one of my newer photography related practices is really nothing more than a variation of an old one. It’s been a slow, multi-step filled journey. To get back to where I started.

When the photography bug first bit, I had a Minolta SLR. A sturdy, work-horse camera, there was nothing flashy about it. I had to learn about shutter speeds, f-stops, and film speed. You may need to Google ‘35mm camera film’ if you are under thirty.

A friend similarly smitten and I used to take off for a day to shoot. Between us we’d take hundreds of shots of some place that really required less than a dozen. But for us it wasn’t the place so much as the photography. Claiming the cool shot of the day was what it was all about. Of course back then you had to wait a week to get your photos back from the processing lab. If nothing else, it was a lesson in patience.

When my pictures finally arrived, I’d quickly sort through them tossing out the duplicates, the bad shots, the blurry shots, and the ‘what in the hell was that suppose to be’ shots. Lots of wasted money in those days when you really didn’t know how any specific photograph would turn out. But it was a good learning curve. The more pictures I took, the fewer got tossed.

After dumping the bad shots I’d cull through the remainder separating out the not so good from the outstanding, deciding which similar shot was better than the next, and adding even more to the wastebasket since many while a decent shot just didn’t add much to those I planned on keeping. Years later I met a man in Penang who proposed The 7 Shot Rule to me. Too small of a number, but even back in my photographic infancy, quality mattered more than quantity.

But then Monk shots were yet to come.

Do they still make 35mm film?

After the first few handfuls of photographic masterpieces I began storing them in a soon to be huge collection of photo albums. The albums were immense. Filled with thick pages with ‘invisible’ glue and plastic page protectors, you could really only display about three shots on each page. It didn’t take long to fill an album. It didn’t take long to realize the invisible glue turned into visible yellow lines with age either. But regardless, I kept shooting. And the photo albums kept piling up.

Canon revolutionized the SLR camera world, introducing their AE1 programmable camera to the market and I was one of their first customers. I still used my Minolta because of the large collection of lenses I had acquired, but the Cannon was my go-to camera of the day. The revolutionary part was that you could shoot in auto mode: the camera would set aperture and shutter speed for you. You could also set one and let the camera adjust the other for you. Amazing. And pretty boring shots. It was a sexy looking camera, so I used it a lot, but seldom used the auto feature; I didn’t like the loss of control over the outcome or the general lack of pizazz of the shots it produced.

And I started shooting on slide film. Those shots that needed to be printed I could easily crop if so desired and the overall color saturation was much richer than print film produced. Better yet, my ever growing collection of photographs could be stored in a box instead of yet more bulky photo albums.

The advent of digital camera was a nonstarter for me. They were all auto focus/auto shoot. I’d learned my lesson with the AE1 and wasn’t having any of that. Photo quality was pretty bad too if you wanted to print any of those pictures. But the technology improved considerably, and rather quickly; when they finally started making digital SLR cameras it was time for me to hop on board. I bought a top of the line Nikon, a camera that actually allowed you to set shutter speeds and f-stops. And was thrilled with the result. Plus, no more boxes of slides. And no more bulky photo albums. Everything got stored to floppy disk.

Which is a format my computer no longer recognizes.

An iPhone is not a camera. But then it’s hard to argue with some of the resulting shots.

I’m not one of those camera buffs who can talk for hours about f-stops and DOF. Well, I can, I just have no desire to do so. I know the lingo, but more importantly know how to use the settings to produce the shot I want. But that’s me. A bit of a control freak. I have a friend who I think I mentioned before who fancies himself a photographer. He couldn’t tell you the difference between an f-stop and his ass if his life depended on it. Or if his ass did. Last year National Geographic selected one of his shots for its annual calendar. The world of digital cameras has come a long way. The world of professional photographers: not so much.

I still take a ton more shots than necessary. But no longer have to wait a week to see how they turned out. Now, as soon as I get back to my computer I run through the same culling process I always have. But use the delete button instead of a wastebasket. When I’m shooting in Thailand, my friend Noom likes to make the initial cut. But he is a bit too fond of the word ‘delete’ – evidently you can’t just hit delete, you have to say it too. He breaks his litany of deletes with an occasional ‘blurry’. But it still earns a quick tap of the delete key. When he’s feeling generous he’ll offer up a “Not good.” But I have to keep an eye on him. Any picture that he isn’t prominently featured in risks being deemed ‘not good’ and deleted.

I’ve stuck to digital, upgraded my camera every few years, went from storing photos on floppy disks to CDs to DVDs to thumb drives, and eventually stored them as slideshows for each trip I took, or whenever I amassed a bunch of shots that covered a specific category. The slideshow format made for a pleasant viewing, something that just didn’t happen with clicking on individual pictures. It was pretty close to browsing through an old photo album. But without the aged, yellow not invisible glue.

So, yeah, sometimes I’m a bit slow on what’s new in the marketplace. Custom photo books were a new idea to me, the industry reports Americans produced 17 million photo books last year.

A few years ago I was chatting with a fellow camera buff and he showed me books he had printed of his photographs. Amazing. A beautiful presentation, they looked as good as professionally published coffee table books. I was hooked. And started turning my digital photos into printed photo books. The photo storage options process took years, and I’m now back to having photo albums to browse through. But they are much thinner than the old fashioned style. And not very expensive to have made.

I just bought a new Nikon. A D7000. I’ll enjoy learning how to not use its many features. I’m still having my photos turned into photobooks. But the word is books are becoming a thing of the past. Electronic media is all the rage. It seems that, perhaps, my journey is not yet over. I think I’m going to be running through the entire set of photo storage steps yet again.

Risky Business

Tags

Money Matters, Stupid Tourist Tricks

Purchasing travel insurance is a financial decision. Not unlike an investment, it should be a rationally thought out expenditure.

This is not a rant against purchasing travel, or trip, insurance. This is a rant about following the other lemmings off the cliff. I realize that other countries have a different medical insurance paradigm than we do in the U.S. And I have to assume the prevalence of, for example Brits, purchasing a policy whenever they travel is due to the workings of health coverage in their home country. Even in the U.S. policies and coverage vary greatly depending on where you live. But it doesn’t matter. Regardless of the underlying insurance scheme, the process of deciding whether or not to purchase some form of insurance to cover possible loss or injury while travelling is the same. Or should be. It should be a carefully thought out decision, not the knee jerk reaction that travel insurance is a must because everyone else buys a policy.

A while back there was a thread on SGT about travel insurance with the usual suspects providing pompous commentary, in this case stating anyone who travels without purchasing travel insurance is a fool. I originally considered posting a response there but realized instead of providing a reasoned alternative to that general (faulty) assumption, doing so would only provide the buffoons who flood that board with their inane comments an opportunity to go on point. So I’ll post this here instead. Those who choose to consider it, I hope, will think a bit before automatically purchasing insurance for their next holiday.

Purchasing a policy for coverage while on holiday is not a necessity. It’s a choice. And it is not your only choice in how you decide to handle potential risk. Insurance is just one form of risk management. You have three options to select from in dealing with any risk. You can retain it, reassign it, or avoid it. (I guess you can also ignore it, but that is just an ill-informed method of retaining the risk.) Purchasing an insurance policy is the middle of the road option.

Retaining a risk means that you decide that should a problem occur, you will deal with it on your own. Some refer to this as being self-insured. This is not an option you should choose on a whim but rather after careful consideration of both the probability of a problem occurring and your ability to cover the loss if it does occur. In most cases, this means being financially capable of handling problems as they arise.

Grandiose statements such as that you need at least a million dollars in cash tucked away if you decide to retain the risk for a trip to a foreign land, only prove how stupid and uninformed some people are. First, no one has a million dollars in cash lying around in liquid form. Or at least no one who has a million dollars is dense enough to have that amount sitting in cash and not earning a return. And just what calamity do you think will occur that takes a million dollars to cover? Be realistic about the amount of money that may be required should you experience illness, injury, or some other loss while on holiday. If you can cover that cost, retaining the risk may be an intelligent decision.

The insurance industry is all about probabilities; like with other forms of institutionalized gambling, the odds always favor the house.

Avoiding the risk is the other less travelled road and only mentioned because it is one of your three options. In this case that means you decide your best choice is to not take the trip. Don’t immediately discount this option. It may only mean, for example, during a period of social unrest you decide to postpone your planned holiday until things cool down.

That leaves us with reassigning the risk, which almost always means purchasing an insurance policy. The risk is still there, but rather than take on the responsibility, for a fee, you assign the risk to someone else: an insurance company. Whose business is risk management. Think about that for a minute. The insurance industry thrives on accepting people’s risks. If the odds were not heavily in their favor, they would not be in business. Instead it is a growth industry with high profits. Thanks to those who immediately assume the best option for risk management is to always reassign the risk to an insurance company.

It is a pass/no pass type of betting scheme, offering house odds that Vegas casinos would kill for. Thousands of time daily, the roll of the dice comes up craps. The house wins, the insured crap out. That doesn’t mean purchasing insurance is a bad bet. It means, with the odds stacked that heavily against you, you really need to think about the bet you are placing.

Typically the risks you are insuring against are illness, injury, harm to others, loss, and delay. Your ‘win’ is funds to cover those occurrences should they transpire. Do you need an insurance policy to cover these risks? Maybe. And maybe you already have some coverage. Before purchasing an insurance policy you should check to see what other coverage you already have.

Some major credit cards offer a free policy that covers loss and delay while on holiday. Additional costs due to travel delays may be covered through these free policies; the airline or travel group you are using may have automatic coverage for these types of loss too. I even have coverage through a group membership that replaces flight insurance: there’s a hefty pay out to my beneficiary if my plane crashes and I die.

It’s dry stuff, but you need to carefully read your insurance policy. Otherwise you may think your are covered, but really aren’t.

If you have medical insurance, your policy may cover you when out of the country and may include coverage for medi-vac costs. Checking the procedures required, as well as the coverage offered, on this type of policy is a smart move before your trip. And before you need to rely upon it. It may negate the need for additional coverage. More importantly, if a problem does occur, you’ll know what you are covered for and the steps you need to take to receive that coverage.

You may have coverage through a group plan provided by your employer that accepts some or all of the above risks. Some group memberships, like AARP also provide additional coverage. Before you duplicate the coverage you already have, you should find out what losses you already are insured against. It may be that you only need to cover a small number of risks, or extend the coverage already in existence. An annual rider through your primary insurer to handle the additional level of risk may be all that is necessary. And it probably will provide better coverage at a smaller cost than a full trip-specific policy.

Reading insurance policies is pretty dry stuff whether it is for insurance you already hold or a policy you are considering. But, as they say, the devil is in the dstails. Assuming you are covered for a specific risk only to find out when you experience a loss that that event was not covered is not a good surprise. An off the shelf policy may not even cover the specific risk that troubles you the most. It’s kinda like buying your plane ticket without checking to see what dates you’ll be flying. You end up holding what amounts to a worthless piece of paper.

Insurance policies are written in the negative. They do not tell you what you are covered for, but rather start with saying they cover everything. And then start listing exceptions to that rule. These are known as exclusions. And they are the important part of the policy (well, one of them). You need to carefully read the exclusions to make sure you are covered for the risks you want to reassign. Acts of god and acts of war are often exclusions. Both apply to a wide range of events. Assuming you are safe just because you bought a policy is as bad bet. Not reading a policy is gambling with your security.

Your policy is also limited by limits. There are usually maximum amounts, both per incident and aggregated, that the policy will pay out. Is it enough? You should have an idea of the amount of money you may need should an accident happen to insure you are still not left hanging, even though you bought an insurance policy. It makes little sense to purchase insurance and then be under-insured. Prepackaged policies often play off the gullibility of the purchaser. They are cheap and offer little in the way of financial remuneration. The policy you bought because someone told you that you needed travel insurance may offer little or no coverage should a loss occur. If you are going to spend the money, make sure it is a considered decision and that you are actually reassigning your full risk.

Statements made about being a fool for not buying travel insurance drip with condescension; while in fact you may already be sufficiently covered.

Deductions, the amount you must first pay when a loss occurs, is a way for the insurance company to reassign part of its risk back to you. Usually the higher the deduction , the lower the cost of the policy. Can you afford the amount the deductible part of your policy requires? It might be a smarter move to pay a higher premium and have a lower deductible. Or maybe it would benefit you to accept a larger portion of the risk and lower your premium instead.

Lastly, and only because this is a very shallow discussion about risk management, is the ability of the insurance company to pay out should a loss occur. Insurance companies are rated on their ability to cover losses. If you have no loss, no problem. If you have a large loss, and you selected a company without the capital required to cover your loss . . . . well, buyer beware. You may think that is nitpicking, that any insurance company is capable of covering your loss. But, first, that is not true. Others have made that bet and lost. Second, if you are considering the options of managing your risk, should you not be considering all aspects? Or are you instead taking the lemming approach and just following the others blindly over a cliff?

I am not saying purchasing insurance to cover your risks while on holiday is a bad idea. What I am saying is that it is a financial decisions that should be thoughtfully decided upon. For some, provided they really took the time to ensure they are insured for what they think they have coverage for, the peace of mind is worth the price. For others, gambling that no loss will occur is the way to go. And for some, crunching numbers suggests the possibility of losses can be covered by money already on hand. A blanket statement that purchasing travel insurance is stupid, is of course stupid. But so is saying anyone who chooses to not do so is.