Monthly Archives: October 2011

Traveler Distastefully Expresses Distaste: A Quarrel in Twitterland

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A former friend of mine once told me that visiting a particular country didn’t “impress” him. I found it offensive that someone thought a country should impress him. Who the heck was this guy, anyway? That trip marked his first out of Europe and the US. I didn’t press the issue then. Last night, however, I fear I’ve repeated his offense. I seriously offended a Canadian by expressing dislike for a certain Asian country that I lived in.

Here’s how the conversation went, via Twitter of all things (though I can’t recall exactly what he tweeted to precipitate it):
NLR: The big, long, monotonous wall that’s supposedly Great in China seemed as monotonous as its people. + I can’t stand Beijing; I skipped it.
NLR: Trying to avoid visiting Machu Picchu here in Peru. After all, I’ve got ruins 25 feet away from my house + I’ve already been to Pachacamac.
CAN:really?! a billion people and you can say they’re monotonous! i think that’s maybe a generalization. in fact i’m married to one who isn’t…
CAN: i don’t mean to be testy on the subject, but i’m always wary of generalizations about people and i focus on specific cities only…
NLR: I didn’t live in BJ; just traveled through a few times. Lived in Huludao & Shenzhen. Got to travel 2 w/ an architecture firm I consulted for.
CAN: people are always trying to get me to compare cities and peoples and i just won’t. i prob. come across as defensive..maybe canadians are!

Here’s my big flaw:
NLR: I’m glad you like it. With the exception of half a dozen people I loathed it. Memories of my time there make me empathize with Vietnam vets.
CAN: ok now that’s just ugly. please don’t contact me again.
NLR: Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you personally. Maybe you feel like I did when a friend told me 1 city ‘didn’t impress him.’ Apologies.

My heart sunk all night after our Twitter tiff. While it’d be easy for me to chuck it up to his simply having thin skin, I wanted to see it from his perspective.

Consider these different yet related examples.

Two expats in as many days have told me they didn’t like Lima. I disagree, and while I don’t plan to stay longer than my six months’ tourist stamp, I didn’t find their dislike offensive. Maybe marriage to a Peruvian would have made me feel differently.

Upon arrival in Lima, I asked locals and expats what places around Peru they liked to visit. Sitting at a table with a Peruvian and an Englishman, the former raved about Mancora. The latter took advantage of the Peruvian’s absence a moment later to just as strongly suggest I avoid Mancora at all costs. To this day I have no opinion formed of Mancora, except that there are a dozen places higher on my wish list to visit than that northern surf town. This conversation came back to me today when passing a man who was wearing a T’shirt that read: “Mancora es una puta madre” (Mancora is a MoFo). I don’t find Limenos to have an ironic sense of humour, though perhaps this T was meant to be ironic. Whichever way he meant it, some places just aren’t for everyone.

Should all Peruvians or Mancorians start a civil war because this Limeno was wearing that T? Should the Peruvian cease communication with one of his best friends because they disagree on Mancora?

I finally saw the underbelly of India after having lived there. Many terrible things happened to me there, yet my enchantment with the culture remains and I’m sure I’ll return. I can understand why others have no desire to go there. Many people have asked ignorant questions about India. Should I excommunicate them? Some places just aren’t for everyone.

My heart has sunk that this guy took such offense to my calling the country monotonous. On the other hand, after spending almost two years in a country, doesn’t one earn the right to form an opinion? In all truth I tried to love China. I tried to learn the language, understand it through its art, architecture, philosophy, literature, and history. I approached it with such high hopes. And time after time of trying to gain insight and appreciation, it just wouldn’t come. Therefore I was only too happy to leave it. While there are some points worth remembering (spending the 30th anniversary of Shenzhen’s opening with two Chinese friends; its inspiring high-speed rails; a six-year-old who made my uterus rethink having children; street food at the university where I first taught), most of the memories I’d rather just forget. We just couldn’t meet in the middle.

Now I’m wondering if those of us who travel can’t even express a dislike for a country. Is everything lollipops and cremesicles for other expats? This one’s worth thinking about for a few days.

I’d love to hear from you. Which countries have you disliked? Have you had arguments or turgid disagreements as the Canadian has with me?

Lose a Day in Indigenous Peruvian Arts and Crafts

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An exceptional afternoon of gallery and architecture hopping for a piece I’m working on regarding Barranco, Lima, Peru’s bohemian center. The day grew markedly better when I quickly located a tucked-away store specializing in indigenous Peruvian arts and crafts. After three months in Lima this store has finally decided to make itself known to me.

These shawls contain woven language that bespeak marriage, weather conditions, and other things that are happening to the tribes. While most indigenous Peruvians have lost the ability to read this woven language over the past 50 years, a few still do.

Women in tribes use these pins much as an elegant Victorian (and even a few contemporary) women did– to keep their shawls held in place. However, they were very long and sharp at the end, like Victorian clothes pins, as they doubled as weapons. Those on the left are roses; on the right are spoons. Notice they’re longer; they were meant to go all the way to an assailant’s heart. The pins in the center feature fish, a good luck charm, and blue crystals that represented a pre-Conquistadore mythical god with blue eyes. What must indigenous Peruvians have thought when the blue-eyed Spanish arrived, only to rape, plunder, and brainwash with religion?

These were my favorite finds. Indigenous Peruvians tell tales, show scenes, or render awesome images of nature on gourds. On these gourds, some of which make rattle-like sounds, artists painstakingly, intricately carve with triangular instruments. Then they burn the pieces or rub them with charcoal to manifest the shading techniques and grant the piece dimension. I, for one, could have spent hours just looking at these piece.

One of my favorite parts of the day was when this arts and crafts store owner described the loathsome experiences she’s had with tourist groups. “My store only appeals to the culturally elite,” she said. Despite the fact drool was running down my chin over the exceptional beauty and materialized loved that oozes from these artifacts, I felt like Frasier Crane in liking that membership so much.

WanderingJustin’s Travel Blog Reveals the Passion & Fun of Flight

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This Media Monday installment features coverage of the travel blog WanderingJustin.

Arrival of a WanderingJustin blog post in my RSS feed makes me long wish to be flying. The posts of his travel blog harken back to the glamor days of flying, when travelers dressed up and made an event of the experience. Today, however, most of us, myself included, are more inclined to discuss the movie we watched or the options we had, how late you departed or arrived, the snottiness of the flight attendants, the turbulence after which you saw God, or the baby screaming two rows up. As Paul Theroux wrote, “You define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.”

WanderingJustin’s travel blog centers on plane travel, though it covers mountain biking and coffee frequently too, and makes good reading for casual tourists, serial expats, or hard-core adventurers like himself. His posts are brief and entertaining, injected with a tapered level of skepticism in some, sardonism in others. They make readers smirk, injecting you with the feeling you know something others travelers don’t. Never are they preachy or bitchy; rather they’re humorously reflective, well written, and informative. His blog is indeed a reprieve from most travel blogs which read merely as journal entries, “Look what we did!”

His passion for flying shows clearly. “The beautiful new bird known as the 787 makes me a little weak-kneed,” he wrote in a post about the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. In another instance he writes about the American Airlines Airbus A300 flight from Miami to San Juan, “This one surprised me. I didn’t expect a heavy headed to a Caribbean island. Then I learned that eastern folks have this weird fetish for Puerto Rico. I still don’t get it.”

In his post on the Phoenix Sky Habour International, Justin’s knowledge of his own city’s airport rings impressively. For instance, he recommends, “Hawaiian Airlines– a way to fly international from Phoenix without a stop at LAX.” Good advice from someone with definite experience.

(Now, I don’t always agree with him. He prefers foreign airlines to American airlines. I, conversely, feel better surrounded by a bunch of Americans and getting American service when flying home after six months–or two years– away from the States.)

This travel blog is super easy to navigate, presents a clean and clear design that subtly catches the eye, and contains writing that bespeaks WanderingJustin’s quality effort. If you’re about to make an international trip or want to compare a trip with his, check out his Trips page. Check out WanderingJustin’s guest blog post on ArchitectureTravelWriter here.