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Tuesday, July 22 Thai Die
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Christine Peters |
The hubris of going "where the tourists don't go"
i am a "horrible" tourist. I've been known to do 5 attractions, including Disneyland and Universal Studios, in 3 days. I just lovelovelove all that kitschy stuff that you find in touristy places, and you can get some fabulous easedropping done, too. But this is a taste issue, and I know that my friends don't always agree with me. They would rather send me to one of those places while they find uncharted territory and have me tell them about it later. Maybe part of it comes from not having seen enough of the Big Stuff yet (Big Ben, the Parthenon, the Kremlin, etc.) to yearn for the back alleys. For some reason, I feel more culturally bereft for not having seen those things than not having spent a week where no tourist has gone before. Andrew J Bower |
Weirdest thing you ever saw or heard of in your
travels
this isn't spectacularly weird or bizarre, but it sums up the reason I love to travel, which is to experience situations and settings that transcend the routine of my everyday life (I'm an accountant). In Vietnam recently, a group of us hired motor scooters (with drivers) to take us from Nha Trang to a more secluded and attractive beach about an hour's ride north. We had a few technical difficulties with the bikes, culminating in my bike running out of petrol (Australian to American translation: gas) about 10 miles out of town. Everyone else was too far ahead to hear my driver and myself screaming at them to stop, so they all disappeared into the distance as we coasted to a stop next to the highway. We started walking along Highway One through the rice fields, as the twilight faded. Nearby was a loudspeaker broadcasting a constant stream of public announcements, adding to the surreal atmosphere. It was a one of those moments of pure dislocation which I travel to experience. We made it to the top of a hill, and stopped at a tiny house where two women were sitting in a doorway. After a few words from the driver, they produced a small plastic bottle of petrol, for which I gave them a couple of dollars, and we were on our way. I saw lots of spectacular sights and exotic scenes in Vietnam, but it's the quirky incidents like the above that left the most impression on me, for some reason. ian perlman |
Venice - La Citta Piu Bella Del Mondo
i think it is really interesting that the 'Venice' of popular affection is only half of a municipal entity, the other half being the touristically undesirable mainland town of Mestre. Together Venice and Mestre are one 'city.' They have the same council, mayor and annual budget. Mestre is not pretty, but it's curious how completely it's presence has been erased from tourist literature. Mestre gets up early in the morning, works hard, produces saleable commodities, pays the bulk of local taxes. Venice is the pretty host, teetering on the brink of a kind of post-Disneyfication in which actual historic edifices are culturally reduced to homogenised amusements. Well its not that simple, but the functional split between the two halves of a single urb is as clean as it gets. Perhaps that's why Wim Wenders shot the Venice segment of his film 'Until the End of the World" entirely in the Venice car park. Bookmark Readers' Tips and Tales Issue No. 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 |
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