What kind of gear is really best for the way you travel? Photo: Garrulus

Everyone has their own style when it comes to what they wear and pack on a trip. For example, Tim Patterson wears a blazer on plane rides. My dad likes to sport those vented “safari shirts.” I usually bring at least one good sheath knife whenever I travel. And the year I hiked the Appalachian Trail there was this one dude who carried a pair of nunchucks.

Over the years a definite pattern has emerged: Nearly every time I’ve packed clothing or gear purchased out of some kind of preconception about where and how I would be traveling, or worse–out of feeling that a particular piece of gear somehow reflected my ’self-image’–I’ve found that it was that exact piece gear that inevitably turned around and bit me in the ass.

The following examples illustrate how my way of packing for travel has changed over the years.

Raichle Eiger Boots

When I decided to hike the Appalachian Trail (AT) I knew that the time had come for me to get the baddest boots around.

I went to REI and bought the Raichle Eigers–the heaviest boots sold in the store except for hard-shelled mountaineering boots. I think the final selling point was when the salesman told me they were still “crampon-compatible” (as if I’d be ice-climbing).

I wore them all summer long (pre-hike) to break them in but they still tore my feet apart in the first 100 miles in Maine. I bandaged my feet, hiked in Tevas throughout the Mahoosucs, and determined to “earn” those damn boots I kept at it. 200 miles. 500 miles. 1,000 miles.

Of course I never “broke them in.”

Replacement: Skate shoes. Running shoes. Sandals. Lightweight boots, whatever the lightest footwear is that you can get away with. Mountaineering boots are for glacial travel or places where you need to use crampons or snowshoes.

Saw-vivor

I eventually caught some well-deserved shit for this from my friend Corey who I ended up hiking with on the AT. He told me later: “I saw your pack and thought ‘is that guy really carrying a saw?’”

When you’re on a long distance hike, there’s just not enough time or energy (or in many places, resources) for spending long hours around a fire. Certainly not the kind that requires sawing big chunks. I think the point here was that I ’saw myself’ needing this. It was one of the first things I sent home.

Replacement: Experience. You can cut wood into lengths with a strong knife if you know the proper technique. People in Central America do it with a machete.

“Marlboro” Mini-Fishing Kit

This also fed into my ’survivalist’ self image. It fairly screamed: I don’t fish. But it was small (about the size of hardcover book) and I figured I might use it sometime, even though I’d learned from an earlier trip to Central America that all you really need to catch fish is a baited hook and sinker tied to length of line wrapped around a plastic bottle.

I took it out once in Sayulita. It opened and assembled easily enough, but then it took about an hour to get every piece snapped back into the case. As I was putting it back I thought of how each time I’d ‘fished’ it was more or less me checking to see whether I really ‘liked’ fishing or not.

Replacement: None. You either fish or you don’t. If you don’t, then don’t bring any gimmicky mini-fishing kits.

Freestanding Mountaineering Tent

This wasn’t so much an ego thing as it was just realizing that 99% of tent designs didn’t work with the kind of traveling I liked to do, which was setting up camp for weeks at a time and living out of my tent.

Most of the tents I’d used over the years were designed for mountaineering. But for living out of for any length of time, they were totally uncomfortable. You couldn’t cook in them; you couldn’t stand up in them. You were forced to crawl around in them like a little bug.

If you’re living for weeks at a time out of a tent: get one of these.

On my first long trip to Central America I took one of these (the “walrus”) that became my home for weeks.

Only it turned into an oven in the daytime (I’d end up in my hammock) and even though it had a lot of mesh and supposedly “industry leading” ventilation, it was still too hot on a lot of nights. As far as bugs–I still ended up using an additional mosquito net (purchased at a local hardware store for a few pesos).

Replacement: The Megamid. I had this realization one day that it was all because the tent was sealed up.

In other words, it had a permanent floor. I remembered hearing about a shelter made for setting up over snow pits during winter camping and wondered how this might work over sand.

I ended up buying a megamid before my next trip back down to Mexico and realized immediately that it was a game changing move. I could set up chairs in there, stand up in there, and cook in there. It became the lounge, love nest, my own little house. Most importantly, I could roll up the walls and use it as a sun shelter.

Community Connection

How have you changed the way you’ve packed for travel? What are some of the best (or worst) things you’ve brought on a trip. Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Photo: mrhayata

I was on the rebound with a Chinese clown. My boyfriend, the son of an American diplomat, broke up with me over lunch at the only Western Sizzler in Beijing. The Chinese version of the Sizzler, much like the Chinese Pizza Hut, is considered classy, with white tablecloths, wine goblets and a steady stream of Kenny G.

That afternoon, I told my sob story to the neighborhood clown—a countryside cutie with high cheekbones and a girlish laugh who wore a green and yellow polka-dot cover-all to deliver flower bouquets on his electric blue moped.

“My old boyfriend doesn’t like me,” I stuttered. My Chinese was shaky, and I didn’t know the word for breakup. I improvised. “He says he doesn’t want a girlfriend.”

“Mei shi,” the clown assured me, no problem. “I’m here. I can be your boyfriend now.” It was as easy as that.

We sat outside his flower shop on kindergarten-sized folding chairs. Chinese pop music and the cloying scent of lilies wafted through the humid night air. Two schoolgirls jumped rope on the sidewalk, and a thin man in a Mao suit cycled past, his three-wheeled cart piled high with clouds of Styrofoam.

This wasn’t a first for the clown and I to talk, but it was the first time I hadn’t felt guilty about flirting. That night, I’d accepted his invitation to sit down, and he’d magically produced two big bottles of Tsingdao beer and a package of barbecued chicken feet.

The clown set down his bottle and grabbed my hand. His fingers were thin but strong, skin weathered from a childhood harvesting cotton and corn. I felt the electrifying tingle of a new crush, followed by a hollow disappointment as he let go. “Feng shuo,” he said, break hands. “Ni ming bai ma?” he asked, or literally “you bright white?”

Photo: Katharine Mitchell

“Wo ming bai,” I said. I understand. My hours-earlier boyfriend had never been a hand holder, and in that magical Beijing moment, I understood, clearly and brightly, that he’d already been replaced. I’d traded in a prep-schooled jokester for a countryside clown.

“I like your hat,” I told the clown.

He adjusted the silk rose pinned to his green skullcap then tugged on his plastic nose. In broken English, he slurred, “Thank you…verrrry, verrry much.”

At the time, I was living near the ancient Drum & Bell Tower in downtown Beijing, beside the noisy entertainment district of Houhai, a manmade lake surrounded by hundreds of concrete and plywood bars and old people’s playgrounds.

Our hutong (the traditional living quarters for Beijing families) comprised a concrete maze of alleyways, populated with beer and cigarette stalls, bicycle and shoe repairmen, prostitutes fronting as hairstylists, and generations of families living in courtyard homes, hidden behind formidable, red wooden doors.

Blankets, frilly pushup bras, birdcages, and strings of raw fish, set out to dry, hung from laundry lines crisscrossing the alleyways. Old people sat on the streets wearing pajamas or sleeveless undershirts, playing mahjong on makeshift tables, or fanning their mop-haired dogs. Men and women washed their hair and clothes on the street, pouring hot water from a ticking kettle into a plastic washbasin and chatting with neighbors as they scrubbed.

Amidst this, the clown sold flowers with a twenty-year-old business partner whose Chinese name, Han Shui, sounded like the phrase for “very good looking.” Mr. Very Good Looking arranged the flowers, and the clown delivered, throwing in magic tricks for an extra fee. Weddings, funerals, breakups, love affairs–business was blossoming.

Every day the clown wore two red lipstick circles on his cheekbones, above a big red mouth outlined in white. His suit was half yellow, half green, dappled with multicolored polka dots and a jester’s collar fringed with cherry pom-poms.

The Chinese characters stitched up his thigh advertised, “Clown, Fresh Flowers.” He didn’t wear the buffoon’s long, red lace-up shoes, but he did wear mismatched sneakers—one black All-Star and one red Double Star knock-off.

Alleyways of Houhai. Photo: Zulfipunk

Giddy with this new development with the clown, I wrote home to my American friends for the first time in weeks. I anticipated a slow stream of the usual responses: How’s your Chinese? Are the dumplings amazing? Have you bought a bicycle yet?

But one after another, my friends phoned, texted, or IM-ed after a night of drinking, catching me during my morning coffee. They bombarded me with pie-in-the-face questions about my new crush: Does he have magic fingers? Does his nose squeak? Have you touched it? Can he twist balloons into sex toys?

I responded defensively. “He’s not just a clown. That’s only his day job.” But, actually, the clown worked from 6:00 or 8:00am to 10:00pm every day, and then disappeared into the darkness on his moped. I didn’t really know anything about this fellow. For all I knew, he was a telltale drunk or the victim of some rare, Rudolphian disease.

Over the next few weeks, we continued to spend time together sitting on the sidewalk outside his shop—he cooked for me, taught me Chinese and waved away passers-by who lingered and giggled, spellbound by the sight of a Chinese clown sitting pretty with a pale-skinned foreigner.

He told me childhood stories about slaughtering chickens and sneaking hot peppers into his grandmother’s porridge. He gawked over photos of my tow-headed nieces and nephews, amazed by their fat bellies and white faces. We exchanged cell phone numbers, and then finally, after weeks of flirting, he told me his name.

He gingerly lifted my hand and airbrushed the characters across my sweaty palm, fingertips lightly brushing my love line. Each stroke was a butterfly in my stomach: Song Guang Bin.

Life was a circus. And yet, two things still bothered me. For one, I’d never seen him without his make-up. And second, I wasn’t clear if we were friends who flirted, or if we were dating. Sure he’d cooked me fish and pork dinners and driven me out on errands, me perched sidesaddle on the back of his moped.

Yet we hadn’t actually been out on a date. We’d always socialized during his work hours. And aside from holding hands—if that’s what I’d even call it—we hadn’t made physical contact. I wondered what would happen if he did ever kiss me. Would he remove his nose to smooch? If not, would I just have to work around it—a flashback to kissing with braces and glasses?

Photo: Katharine Mitchell

Even though language and culture were our primary barriers, I questioned if intimacy would be an issue until the day I saw his real nose. My critical self stepped in: Was it really necessary to see a man, absolutely and completely naked, in order to trust him?

Of course not! I’d kissed plenty of people and never even seen their bare feet. So how was a red plastic nose different from a tie or eyeglasses or even flip-flops—they were all accessories, sartorial statements. So what was so irksome about the nose?

It seemed strange that he’d foregone the clown figure of the Beijing opera for the red-nosed wardrobe of the western clown. I tried to think critically about Bakhtin’s scholarship on the carnivalesque in Rabelais’ work, but lofty theories about overthrowing class and social order seemed too complicated to describe a florist, even if he was a clown.

As my curiosity grew, so did my imagination. I considered the Chinese concept of losing face, and too literally imagined that he’d done something so humiliating and dreadful that he’d vowed to forever screen his face from public view. But that, too, was absurd.

Perhaps, I decided, that red bauble cinched to his head with a common rubber band hid something–a hairy mole or a botched nose job. Plastic surgery was gaining popularity among the Chinese, so a knife-slipup didn’t seem too implausible.

But what if…he had a terrifying case of leprosy? Maybe all of his extremities were slowly disintegrating, and he intended to replace all of them–ears, fingers, toes–with red plastic noses! I shuttered at this nightmarish image of Gogol meets Bozo.

I decided I must take action. I implored the assistance of a friend’s younger sister, in China on a Wellesley study-abroad program. Relena was practical and savvy. “Ask him to go swimming,” she told over a plate of spicy eggplant. “He can’t go swimming in that get-up. He might lose his nose.”

Photo: d’n'c

The only near-by, feasible option for swimming was Houhai—the greasiest of greasy lakes. Among foreigners, Houhai is looked upon as a septic tank.

Beneath its green film lurked pollutants, rumors of dead things, and the possibility of the even deadlier Chinese snail—a vicious variety of crustacean that carries an aggressive disease that can literally eat away the human nervous system.

(During the Cultural Revolution, troops of workers waded out into lakes across China, acting as the pied pipers of snails. More recently, there was an outbreak in a rural village.) Yet I refused to be spooked by slime—or snails.

Song Guang Bin was quick to accept my invitation, and we agreed to meet by the lake one night at 10:30pm. “I’ll find you,” he said, in Chinese. “You won’t recognize me without my clown clothes.”

Sure enough, I was startled when a skinny bald man dressed in a drab blue T-shirt and baggy shorts grabbed my elbow. In the milky-green light of a dying streetlight, I held my breath as Song Guang Bin stripped. I went from only having seen him zipped inside a polka-dotted coverall to beholding his reed thin body, swaddled only in snakeskin Speedos.

I beheld his smooth head, angular hips and lovely toes that descended in perfect order. I gazed at his jumbled teeth, gaunt cheeks and delicate earlobes, now evident without the makeup. And last, but not least, I stared at his nose. Not too long, not too slim, pocked with a few blackheads, his nose was as common and ordinary as a doll’s. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about it—except, of course, that it was his.

I followed Song Guang Bin into the lake. We plunged through a school of old men bound in saggy pairs of waist-high tighty-whiteys. We raced to an unmarked destination, and fought off giggles as we treaded the deep black water.

The night was beautiful. A few stars shone through the pervasive pallor of Beijing smog, laughing couples scuttled by on paddle boats, firecrackers exploded on the other shore, and the music and lights from fringing bars blurred into the tinkle of ice in a highball.

Song Guang Bin asked if I could go under. I took a deep breath and plunged. The water was warm and soothing and I wondered why I hadn’t asked him to go swimming before now. I came up for air, hair sticking to my face, and he reached out and brushed back a clump of wet strands from my forehead.

I asked him to go under and he disappeared. Ten seconds passed, twenty. Thirty, and I started to worry. And then his arms were around me, and he was lifting me out of the water. He kissed me—short and intense. I shook my long black hair and felt as lucky as Brook Shields in Blue Lagoon.

As I raised one hand out of the water, it felt heavy and disconnected from my arm. Yet when I squeezed his nose, ever so gently, I felt the shudder throughout my body. The nose, our relationship…all of it was real.

Don’t try this in downtown San Jose. Photo: Ed Yourdon

[Editor's note: This note is an excerpt from the first chapter of Wanderjahr, an in-the-works narrative recounting the story of a young traveler's explorations of place, people, and self during a research year abroad in Central and South America. At this point in the story, the narrator has recently landed in San Jose.]

As often happens to me in cities, especially when just getting oriented, I wandered around aimlessly stringing together small acts of consumption. I bought a topographic map of the country from a newsstand near the Parque Central, bitter espresso from the café in the National Theatre, and some of the best pineapple I’d ever tasted from a bald man with a blue cart welded to the front of a bicycle.

I even bought a sleek pack of John Player Specials, a fine English smoke that cost a third of what they would have in the States. I hadn’t really enjoyed cigarettes since Ecuador, but they went with the city life, and I figured they might help me blend in with the Costa Ricans, who seemed to approach smoking as a national pastime.

Yet, looking around it was obvious, cigarette or no, that I blended in about as much as an orangutan would have.

By mid-afternoon, I was beginning to feel savvier. I’d already found a hardware store with bencina blanca, as white gas is locally known, and my tongue was remembering how to roll with the language. The Tica Linda was too depressing to hang out in, so I chose a vacant bench in the Plaza and stretched out to do some reading.

No sooner had I reclined with my book then a policeman loomed over me tapping my feet with his polished nightstick. I stared at him for a second, wondering what he wanted—his cleanly-shaven, round jaw and pursed lips, a ridiculously tasseled green uniform and cop cap, a chrome gym whistle hanging from his neck, and an outdated single-action revolver holstered at his side.

“Get your feet down,” he commanded, informing me of my crime. I swung them to the ground, and he grunted and walked off in the direction of a couple engaged in some heavy petting across the way.

Looking around I saw another officer in the same silly regalia, watching over the scene from beside the Theatre. Plaza pigs, protecting the public good from horizontal lounging and other acts of gross indecency.

Here at Matador, we know that travel—and travelers—rock.
But how can you write about your amazing adventures—and your amazing self—without sounding like a showoff? Here are some traps we can fall into as writers, and how to avoid them.

Photo: Sami

Example #1

“The last time I was in Trondheim, or Trondhjem, as the locals call it in the Trondsk dialekt, or Trondheim dialect, I made sure to ta en tur to one of the beautiful stavkirker, or stave churches, for which the region is deservedly kjennt.”

So you’re bilingual. Trilingual. Omnilingual! That’s great, and will certainly enrich your travels and your travel writing. But as tempting as it is—and as natural as it may feel when you’ve been living in another language for a while—try to resist the urge to use excessive numbers of non-English words in your English writing.

Unless you’re experimenting with a new bilingual style (an admirable pursuit, if a tricky one to pull off) or you’re certain that all your readers share your knowledge of Norweigen or Quechua, use only words that genuinely have no English equivalent, words whose meanings are obvious from context, or obvious cognates—and even then with a light hand. You want to add a little local color to your writing, not give a demonstration of your perfect command of Italian to all your amici, or friends.

Example #2

“The lusterless red paint was once coruscating and neoteric.”

Photo: Eralon

We’re writers, at least in part, because we like words—and there are a lot of them out there.

Sure, it’s more fun to say “coruscating and neoteric” than to say “new and shiny,” but the simple truth is that it makes you sound like a pretentious jerk at best, and a loser with a thesaurus at worst. Keep the unnecessarily fancy words to a minimum unless you’re writing an academic treatise.

And if you simply can’t resist using “coruscate” or “perspicacious”, consider putting those five-dollar words in unexpected contexts. The gold trim in a cathedral can coruscate, but what about that abandoned Coke can on the side of the road? A perspicacious professor is a yawn, but how about a perspicacious three-year-old? Or better yet, a perspicacious dog? (There’s really no excuse for “neoteric”, though.)

Example #3

“As the plane skimmed over the jungles of New Guinea, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the small Nicaraguan village where I worked with the local coffee co-op for two years in the early 1990s.”

Photo: Dan

You’ve traveled to so many incredible places, that it feels natural to start most conversations with “When I was in [insert exotic locale here]…” Well, you’ve learned a lot from your travels, and you’ve got all kinds of stories. But in your writing, focus on the subject at hand.

If you’re writing about New Guinea, write about New Guinea. Even if you genuinely were reminded of Nicaragua while you were there, it’s difficult to mention that without sounding like a showoff—and for your readers who haven’t been there, the comparison won’t be especially illuminating, anyway.

Example #4

“I flipped my long blonde hair over my tan shoulder and looked up at the mountain. I nervously planted my small, Chaco-shod foot on the path.”

You readers might well be curious about what you look like. But let them Google you if they really want to know. If you describe your physical attributes and cool clothing too often, not only do you rob your readers of the chance to imagine you, but you sound hung up on yourself, and not the experience you’re describing.

Photo: Ballistik Coffee Boy

That said, there are some instances in which some aspect of your appearance or physique may well be relevant to the story—your blonde hair in a remote Chinese village, perhaps. Go ahead and describe it, but be brief and avoid sounding self-congratulatory. If you can laugh at yourself a bit, even better.

Actually, that’s a pretty good rule of thumb for sounding like someone your readers will trust and like: take yourself just a little more lightly than you take anything, or anyone, else—except maybe mimes, and politicians.

Have you committed these jerk-writing examples? Share your thoughts in the comments!

I made the decision to quit smoking days before I boarded to boat for Uruguay to renew my tourist visa. A couple kilometers from shore, the smog that shrouds the city is a visible line. The city is a pint of Guiness, sky of foam, city of stout.

View of Buenos Aires from Rio de la Plata

In Buenos Aires it’s invisible. Above it’s blue, the eye not perceptive enough to pick up on the color of the tainted air so obvious from Rio de la Plata.

This is the last day of smoking for me. I’ve made up my mind to change a lifetime habit in a city where it would be easy to justify it. What difference could it possibly make to a set of lungs exposed daily to a smog so thick it obscures buildings in broad daylight?

Dissecting the impulses one by one: I congratulate myself for completing a task, I smoke. I finish dinner, I smoke. I go outside, I smoke. I’m frustrated, I just woke up, I need something to do with my hands, I smoke.

Is it a choice? In the end, if I develop lung cancer from my dependency on Buenos Aires, I might have to admit that it was worth it. The advantages to choosing this city would at least give me something to look back on fondly when compared to huddling outside on a freezing winter day among a stinking pack of exiled smokers or the emotionally bereft imagery of curled, yellow extinguished butts in a filthy ashtray.

Here, there’s a beauty to the small things and the details of this lung damaging environment that wrap me in nostalgia even as I walk through the streets. I miss it and want it and I’m still here.

Goodbye, cigarettes. I’ll miss you, but this is about priorities.

Photo by Giorgio Montersino. Feature photo by procsilas

1. What’s the purpose?

Does one of you travel to meet people while the other is focused on museums and architecture? Are you traveling to relax and lounge, while your friend is anxious to hop on the nearest tuk tuk to discover the surroundings?  Find out why your partner is traveling and what they hope to experience.

2. How much are you comfortable spending?

This might seem like an obvious question, but it’s crucial. Make sure your travel partner has a similar budget. If one of you is looking for street food and the other looking to sip Dom Pérignon in an upscale hotel bar, then problems are bound to arise.

3. What are your comfort zones?

Everyone has knee-jerk reactions to being surprised, in new situations, or not in complete control. How will your friend behave? Will she shut down? Become defensive? Will he open up and enjoy the difference?  Have you seen your potential travel partner uncomfortable before? How did they act?

Photo by <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/drown/”

4. What’s your concept of time?

If you say you’ll meet at 8:00 AM, does that really mean 8:00 AM or more like 8:30? How about your friend’s clock–is it in sync with yours?

At home, these differences can be overlooked, but when traveling you might not want to be waiting around while the line to the Eiffel Tower, hoping your travel buddy is on the way. Even if  the goal is just to beat the crowds at breakfast and start the day early, will your friend leave you hanging?

5. Can your friend become immersed in the moment?

Will your friend be able to let go of home for a while and focus on what is in front of their eyes in a foreign land? Some people can’t do this, and a conversation in Belize could be about a trade-gone-bad in New York City. It can take the wind out of the trip.

6. Does your friend have the potential to drive you crazy?

Does your friend smack while eating? Does she talk with empanadas falling out of her mouth? Bottom-line, is there anything that slightly annoys you now about a future travel partner? If so, this annoyance level will intensify on the road. Be ready.

Photo by Hamed Sabert

7. What are your patience levels?

Some have patience; others don’t. When you are waiting for a meal and it doesn’t come out for 45 minutes, will your friend be upset? Will you? A train is 10 minutes behind schedule. Are you complaining together, or is only one of you piercingly perturbed by the delay?

8. Will you be flexible?

The trip is a month long; the route is planned. But in week two a particular beach is absolutely amazing and beckons you to stay longer. Will both of you decide to change the schedule a bit and stay an extra day? Or perhaps both of you decide to stick to the planned itinerary? Does one of you recognize the present opportunity, while the other is a stickler for the game plan?

9. Will you be co-dependent, independent, or a mix?

Do both of you plan on spending a majority of the time together on the trip? If one person wants to see an art exhibit and the other decides on a beach to check out the scene, will it be OK to split up? Some people do not like to be left alone when in an unfamiliar land. Others relish this single exploration time, and then enjoy coming back to a friend later in the day to tell of the expedition.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Having conversations about travel plans can be challenging…whether you want to hit the road with a friend or go it alone. If you’re eager to try solo travel, but aren’t sure how to tell your partner, be sure to read this article from our archives.

Q: What’s better than a road trip? A: A road trip funded via scholarship. Photo: wili_hybird .

Everyone at Matador has been so amped on community member Pat the Digital Vagabond’s Roads Scholarship that we decided to sponsor the event. Look for chapters from the winning writer’s travelogue here at the Notebook.

If you haven’t yet heard about the Roads Scholarship, here’s the basic outline:

• The winner will be paid a stipend of $1,200 a month to travel North America this summer (June through September of 2009).

• The winning writer will get to share their travel articles and photo essays on Digital Vagabonding.com and here at Matador.

• The winner will also get a ticket to the Burning Man Festival, which is held during the last week of August in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

• Two runner up winners will also get free tickets to Burning Man.

• Winners will be chosen in May 8, 2009 and their journey will culminate the first week of September at Burning Man where the Digital Vagabonding tribe will welcome them home.

For more details, as well as how to apply for the scholarship, please check Digital Vagabonding’s Road Scholarship. And if you’ve never heard of Burning Man, that alone is worth checking out.

We can’t wait to see who gets this first scholarship. There are also rumors floating around of some kind of crazy launch party. Whoever gets this thing is going to be stoked.

Photo: film_fatale

Sometimes it’s the local water supply. Often it’s the result of a chatty all night smoking/drinking binge. Or it could be just one too many dairy or baked treats, coffee, anxiety or simply failing to properly hydrate ourselves.

Whatever the cause, gastrointestinal upset including heartburn, gas, cramps, headache, nausea and sluggishness are always a part of traveling. In my experiences I have come across several widely available herbal alternatives to antacids and alka seltzer which can be used to negate these effects, making you and your accomplices happy.

A small kit will only add ounces to your bag. Consider some of the following:

Peppermint

Photo: tillwe

Pepermint (Mentha x spicata) is native to Europe and is an excellent digestive antispasmodic (relaxant) soothing the nerves upon scent relieving nausea and freshening the breath.

In lieu of proper bags, an infusion of one ounce herb to eight or so ounces of boiled water can be steeped in just a few minutes. The Mint (Lamiaceae) Family in general contains many plants good for the innards (Oregano, Thyme, Sage, etc.).

Licorice

Native to southern Europe and W. Asia, Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) is often added to many herbal tea mixtures in the form of powdered root to add sweetness and body to the infusion.

Often it is available whole in twig-like root stalks that can be gnawed on for the hell of it with pretty girls or boiled in water for fifteen or so minutes to create a tea that soothes heartburn and relieves gas.

Chopped, it can be infused in a wire mesh steeper on a cup by cup basis in half the time. Licorice mixes well with Peppermint.

Ginger

Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is native to Asia and familiar as the gnarled golden roots in produce sections of grocery stores everywhere. I used to take home a half a kilo of crystallized ginger per week when I sold supplements at a health foods store in Cincinnati and would eat ten to twenty chunks at a time, perhaps an acquired taste.

An icy hot tea can be decocted (boiled) from chopped, fresh root in about twenty minutes and works wonders for nausea and motion sickness. Drying it first is ideal, but far more time consuming.

Coca

Photo:audrey_sel

I became wise to the delights of Coca (Erythroxylum coca) herb several years back on a trip to Peru. Immediately out of the airport in Cusco, several women approached with two to three ounce baggies of dried leaf.

Although traditionally chewed fresh with a bit of slaked lime (Calcium hydroxide) to enhance absorption, I utilized it in hot tea form drinking several cups a day, offsetting the worst and preventing rough Pisco hangovers all the while staying hydrated. Coca has a mild “planty” taste and is just fine at room temperature. It is super effective in treating he debilitating headaches and nausea of altitude sickness.

Other Herbs

While those are my favorites, several more options remain available. Chamomile (Matricaria recutita) with it’s light apple scent, is great as an all around soothing tea.

Individual Clove buds (Syzigium aromaticum) can be worked inside the mouth as a breath freshener and tooth ache reliever or delivered as an infusion for the innards.

Anise (Pimpinella anisum), Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) and Caraway seed (Carum carvi) are all of the same botanical family (Apiaceae) used in many gin, liquor and baking recipes (And no, copious amounts of Raki, Ouzo or Absinthe will not endear your belly to you further). All have tastes reminiscent of Licorice with broad digestive benefits attainable via chewing or steeping the crushed seeds.

Or consider the following plants to relieve indigestion…. Bananas (Musa sp.[technically the largest herbaceous plant]) replenish potassium electrolytes after a bout of diarrhea and vomiting.

Pineapple (Ananas comosus) provides the highly effective protein-digesting enzyme bromelain which contributes to calm stomachs and friendlier smelling dorm rooms.

Where / How to Find Herbs / Herbal Supplements

Herbal Supplements can be purchased (regulated by the FDA in the United States and Commission E in Germany) in bulk or, tablet, capsule and tincture form, although absorption rates will differ with the later three.

Due to pretty packaging and processing they tend to be more expensive and harder to find in whatever godforsaken (Edenesque) hell hole you may find yourself, therefore I don’t recommend them.

What I do recommend is determining your degree of allergy and potential side effects with whatever prescription medications you might be taking then hitting up the local grocer. Keep in mind several cups of tea are often needed to feel the full medicinal effects, and hot water increases absorption.

Also, don’t neglect your sense of smell, which will capture the stray volatiles as you gulp away. I have found that a cup or two with meals and a couple hours before or after works best as a preventative with the strength of my doses varying with mood, hunger or availability.

Honey is an excellent additive for it’s sweetening, antimicrobial and throat soothing effects. Don’t forget the cold showers, steam baths, ambient music, companionship or complete silence as compliments to your need to feel better.

And next time you find yourself in a far off market perusing bins and bushels of colorful and fragrant herbs, don’t hesitate to haggle a purchase, before the party starts.

Note: this piece is a kind of ‘follow-up’ to last week’s Notes on Marketing Language and Youth.

The biggest problem I have with most people’s writing (including my own) is when it strings you along on one emotional level. When it’s emotionally flat-lining.

When this happens, the writer tends to come off as if he’s been sheltered his whole life, as if nothing unpleasant or difficult has ever happened. There’s a kind of mild ‘wonderment’ or ‘excitement’ over whatever experience is being recounted, and that’s as deep as it goes.

Photo: mangusfranklin

I’m talking more about narratives here, but this same kind of emptiness also kills a lot of informational-style pieces about travel or social media or whatever subject.

Authors of these kinds of pieces would have you believe that all you need–in a metaphorical sense–is to pay for a ticket, pay for insurance, and everything will be taken care of.

People who know who they are

What saves me is good writing. Stuff that’s real, that hits all different emotional levels. Sad, happy, funny, whatever. David Sedaris comes to mind immediately, as does Sherman Alexie.

[As kind of a side-note: It seems like a disproportionate number of these kinds of 'alive' writers have always been gay, from Whitman on up the line. I have a weird theory about this. Basically my theory goes: gays / lesbians have traditionally been discriminated against in most if not all societies. Certainly ours. So, in my mind anyway, gay people are probably forced to do a lot of extra thinking about and 'coming to terms' with who they are.]

What most of my favorite writers, gay, Indian, Jewish, or not, seem to share is this sense of total self-awareness. They know who they are and write from that ‘place’. Or they’re still don’t know what the hell but still write from that ‘place’ anyway.

Self Awareness as a ‘technique’ in fiction

. . .to me, self-aware writing is smart writing. I never forget I’m reading a book. I’m never reading a book and transported into Narnia and forgot where I was. I always know it’s words on a page. So I’m not going to try to pretend that the person who reads my book isn’t going to be as smart as I am or is basically going to give themselves up to whatever concept I might be proposing.

Chuck Klosterman, interview at Boulder Weekly

A different, but perhaps slightly related form of self-awareness happens in fiction when the narrator basically breaks in and reminds you that this is all just a book. It goes against the tradition of creating a kind of seamless fictional realm where the reader ’suspends disbelief’.

You can apply a similar kind of self-awareness to nonfiction, which is one way to check yourself from ‘glossing over’ a subject or narrating a story all on one emotional level.

There are many ways to do this. Here are a few obvious ones:

• Connect the writing of the story back to real time. Example: You tell the story, only to come back later and say “This all happened three weeks ago. In the time since. . ”
• Recognize things you didn’t understand or feel or notice at the time that you’ve now learned or feel or maybe still don’t but at least are revealing it.
• Recognize your vulnerability as a traveler and a writer instead of maintaining the appearance of your journey as a kind of seamless event culminating in a tidy conclusion. Life is never like that.

Conclusions?

On one hand I feel like I’ve conflated the idea of ‘knowing who you are’ with ‘utilizing self-awareness as a kind of contrivance’. The main idea is basically that you think about who you are–and trust in that–and not be afraid to break in and let all different parts of yourself flow into the writing. There’s already enough boring crap out there. Say what you really need to say.

Moynak is a depressing place. There’s no other way to say it and no reason to hide it. Everyone knows what has happened to this once well-off community.

Moynak used to lie on the southern shores of the Soviet Union’s great Aral Sea, today part of Uzbekistan. Since 1960, the sea has shrunk to 10% of its original size and is now nearly 100 kilometers from Moynak. The town’s once thriving fishing industry is entirely shot.

The local climate, once kept stable by the sea, has grown hotter and drier in the summer and colder in the winter. Now winds pick up residue from salt, pesticides, and fertilizer from the dry seabed that surrounds the town, contributing to the severe decline of the local population’s health.

Once in Moynak, our driver dodged herds of bony cattle most of the way through town, taking us to the WWII memorial up on a hill.

“The water used to come up to the bottom here,” our driver commented. “Now you can’t even see it.”

Just then a local with a war tattoo and sun-darkened skin approached me with a limp.

“Why did you come here?” he asked me accusatorily. I fidgeted trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t offend him.

Why did I come here? Perched on this cliff, overlooking what used to be the Aral Sea, in one of the most remote places in Central Asia. What was I doing here? I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth. I came to see one of the biggest environmental and ecological disasters that the earth has ever seen—the destruction of the once fourth-largest inland sea.

But he knows why I came. He knows his livelihood and that of almost everyone else in his once prosperous town has been taken, unjustly destroyed by the previous government’s mismanagement of natural resources.

“You’re young now…you don’t really understand the concept of history.” he continued in accented Russian, “Thirty years ago when you came to this monument you could see the water.” His squinting eyes and wrinkled face radiated seriousness and frustration.

So we looked out with somber expressions—the barren desert speckled with few waning shrubs and rusting ship skeletons far in the distance.

We left the monument preserving the memory of these local soldiers and drove across the sea bed to get a closer look at the ship graveyard. These decaying vessels, stripped of nearly all usable scrap metal, haven’t seen water in years. We climbed over them as if we were children at a playground.

It was hard for me to justify why I had come to visit these people’s misfortune as a tourist attraction. An awkward feeling weighed me down the whole day. But I validated my trip hoping that educating the outside world would perhaps bring attention and thus aid their cause.

On the way out of town, we stopped at the museum, which contained many remnants of what once made Moynak proud—fishnets, a boat, preserved fish, and a photo album of the old fish cannery. We moseyed through the gallery. On the walls, children’s artwork depicted the rusty skeletons.

On a marathon Holy Week trip across Mexico:

Salina Cruz, Oaxaca

This morning’s spectacle put Doña Charo in a melancholy mood.

We stood out on the water tank earlier and watched some poor, sweaty guy carry a cross up the steep road, while Roman

Photo: Andresg. Feature photo: Jesse Millan

soldiers in shiny golden helmets whipped him and yelled insults. Behind them, a good sized crowd sang, “God, forgive your people” over and over, and Doña Charo blinked back tears.

Now, in the blessed cool of the evening, my mother-in-law and I are rocking in the hammocks, talking about–what else?–The Baby. “Having a baby is the most wonderful thing that can happen to a woman,” she tells me. “Es lo maximo para una mujer.”

I’m not sure about that, not yet anyway, but I keep quiet, and she continues, “I keep hearing about these girls who abandon their babies. They just have them and leave them in a trash can or on the street. I can’t understand it.”

I put my hands on my barely-round belly and wonder how far to go. Doña Charo is the best person in the world, but she’s also on a Catholic guilt-bender today, and you never know.

Finally I tell her, “I think most of those girls didn’t want to be pregnant in the first place, and they don’t see it as a baby. Just as a…thing that’s causing them problems, and they want it to go away. And probably they didn’t have the kind of lives that taught them to be nurturing.”

We swing for a while. You can’t see the ocean from here, but you can smell it if you concentrate. I concentrate.

“Maybe so. But couldn’t they leave them somewhere safe? Those poor babies.”

I imagine the mango-sized baby inside me, plashing in a private ocean. I want this baby. But I think, “Those poor girls.”

Tuxtla-Gutiérrez, Chiapas

Ibis is at his interview, and I sit in a plaza, hoping. We live in a city that we hate; we want to come live here. There’s more riding on this day that either of us is willing to articulate, and I’m trying not be annoyed that there’s nothing I can do about it but wait.

So I watch the people.

A young woman walks by with maybe her grandmother. The old woman is bent and slow moving, but the younger woman leans heavily on her shoulder—her heels are so high, she can hardly walk.

A chubby baby, following the balloon man with the staggery, determined walk of the newly ambulatory, with each step stabbing her foot into the ground as though she means to plant it there.

Photo: Kojotomoto

One little girl, maybe four years old, is chasing pigeons. She shrieks with laughter, running around and around the basin of a dry fountain. Each time she grabs at a pigeon and it flutters away, she screams with surprise and delight. She is perfect.

After a while she climbs out of the fountain and careens across the plaza. She crashes into a man’s legs and almost falls, but he grabs her arm without even looking at her and keeps her on her feet.

At a government building across the street, elderly people are lined up in the hundreds, a sea of beige cowboy hats and grey braids. The men wiry and impossibly thin, the women thick and slumped from too much childbearing and too much work. They each clutch a manila folder. It’s so hot, and some of them look so frail. They inch forward. I wonder what’s going on in there to inspire such patience.

I turn back around and the little girl is a streak of yellow shorts and flopping black hair, far across the plaza, scattering pigeons like confetti.

Somewhere in Tlaxcala

It’s going on two o’clock in the morning, and we’ve been driving since two o’clock in the afternoon. Almost halfway across Mexico, the long way. We have to be in Pachuca tomorrow, and we’re buoyed mainly by the fact that Ibis’s interview went well, though there are still no promises.

We pass through a corridor of strip clubs—The Moon Night Club, Top Hat Men’s Club, Peaches, Tahiti. (One of the many enduring mysteries of Mexico is why nearly all the strip clubs have English names.) It’s quincena, payday, and the parking lots are all full.

Photo: Iamagenious

Just past the night club lights, on the side of the highway, two pale apparitions of bare legs and long hair, waiting for business. Such a lonely sight. I wonder if their families know where they are. I try to imagine the anticipation and dread, standing there: Will this one stop? Will he pay up? Will he hurt me?

Long after we’ve passed them, they flicker behind my eyelids every time I start to fall asleep.

Pachuca, Hidalgo

We just miss the first rain of the wet season. We left behind a city as dry and cracked as a chapped lip, earth so dry it made you thirsty to look at it. Now, at three in the morning, our tires hiss over wet asphalt.

We’re greeted, as always, by a larger-than-life Iran Castillo, TV star and erstwhile nudie model, who is the face and body of a massive campaign to bring more tourism to Hidalgo. She stretches on across billboards all over the city, smiling seductively, with Hidalgo’s natural wonders superimposed over her naked body.

Photo: Coloboxp

I would feel better about this, I think, if she were quoted somewhere: “I went to Hidalgo, and it was beautiful!” If it had anything at all to do with her as a person, if it even pretended to. But no.

And then–is it a quirk of the plastic she’s printed on? An exhuastion-induced hallucination? Headlight glare plus wet? Does she wink?

We drive through our silent neighborhood, bump into the driveway, stumble out of the car, past the damp magenta bougainvilleas, and into the house. My last conscious act of the night is to open the bedroom window, to let in the smell of rain, the promise of life.

Photo: mezone

The problems I have with a lot of people’s writing styles (including my own) usually seem to fall into a couple semi-related categories / situations:

• Copying writers from other generations
• Marketing language

Copying writers of other generations

“An author ought to write for the youth of his generation. . .”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald

All writers start off as readers and tend to go through phases where we imitate certain writers we like. There’s no other way to learn. It can be super obvious when someone is in his or her Hemingway or Bukowski or some other phase. I’ve had several of these, including a protracted Jim Harrison phase.

This problem gets exacerbated when people are ‘taught’ how to write by teachers who themselves are still caught up in their Amy Hempel or David Foster Wallace or Peter Matthiessen phases.

How then, to write originally? Part of me says just ‘write through’ it. Go ahead and keep copying. Get it out. Get past it. But recognize that you’re doing it, copying someone else. The other part says: look at how you write emails. How your friends write emails.

Listen to how you talk to each other. How you describe things. How people talk on the street. This is the language of our generation. It’s way different than that of Fitzgerald’s.

Sometimes I tell people “Write the story the same way you’d tell it to your friend.”

Marketing language and clichés

The danger of writing how people talk however is when you confuse advertising and marketing language for communication on a personal level. But this is easy to recognize and fix. All you have to do is go line by line through your story and use the “would I say this to my friend?” test.

Example: Would you really tell your friend that the restaurant you visited had “a casual pace with a nice flavor of real Mexico”?

If you need to use a cliche for some reason, denoting it with quotation marks shows that you’re recognizing it.

Once you start recognizing these things about your writing style you’ll begin to notice other complexities and nuances. We’ll talk about more next week.

Choosing your hammock

First you need to decide on the material. Depending on where you are, you may have locally-harvested materials / options (ixtle hammocks—scratchy but beautiful—are available in Chiapas, for example), but the most common hammocks are either silk, nylon, or jute.

A silk-thread hammock is the most luxurious—softest, coolest, lightest. But you’ll have to pay for that luxury—a silk hammock can easily run you over one hundred dollars.

Nylon-thread hammocks are most readily available in most areas. While the nylon thread can heat up uncomfortably in the sun, it’s much more affordable than silk—a nylon hammock should cost you around fifty dollars—but check the quality of the thread before you buy.

Run a fingernail over a single thread—if tiny threads pop out, it’s not high quality, and if your hammock is going to be a souvenir and not just a temporary bed while you’re on the road, you might want to look somewhere else.

If you’re in an area where jute hammocks are available, they’re an even cheaper option, and jute won’t heat up like nylon. However, they tend to come in more open weaves that give you less support when you lie down, so if you’re planning to get your eight hours a night in a hammock, they’re probably not your best bet.

When you’ve decided on a material, if you’re going with silk or nylon, you have to decide on the weave. There are many different local and regional designs, but be aware of whether the weave is single, double, or triple.

Look closely at the pattern—if it’s only two threads deep at any point, it’s a single weave, and should be somewhat less expensive. If you can find places in the pattern where three threads cross (one sandwiched between two others), it’s a double weave. More than three, triple. The thicker weaves give you most support and are most comfortable to sleep in, but they cost a little more.

Finally, consider the size and type. A double hammock will theoretically sleep two people, though that’s less sexy in practice than it sounds—especially in the heat. If you like to stretch out or spread-eagle in you sleep, a double can be worth the price, even if you’re sleeping alone.

Hanging your hammock

Because it gets you off the ground, a hammock is an ideal lightweight shelter when used with a tarp. Photo: Henri Bergius

Some hotels and hostels in costal areas have designated hammock areas. Otherwise, look for two trees or other sturdy objects about three meters apart.

Cam straps

If you’re planning on using a hammock while you’re traveling, a pair of Cam Straps can be very helpful. Cam Straps can be used for quick and easy hammock hanging and also for things like strapping your surfboard or backpack to the tops of buses or taxis.

Knots

There are all different ways of hanging hammocks with knots, but over the last decade, I’ve ‘evolved’ to the following method, which allows you to quickly adjust the height at which the hammock is hung. It uses two very simple knots, both of which are easy to untie even after putting a lot of weight on them.

The key is to have two ropes, each approx 3 meters long, and to tie loops into the ends of them. Here’s how:

1. Tie a Figure 8 on a Bight at the end of each rope. Instructional video below.

2. Wrap the rope around a tree or branch and then pass the other end of the rope through the loop and cinch it tight around the tree trunk or branch.

3. You can now use the free ends of each rope to connect with the hammock using simple sheet bends. [Note, in the video here, the thicker rope--the one in her left hand--represents the end of the hammock. The rope in her right hand represents the rope you'd have coming off the tree.]

Sleeping in your hammock

Keep in mind that even the hottest day can cool off significantly late at night—if you’re sleeping in a hammock, keep a sheet, sleep sack, or at least a towel handy to ward off midnight chills.

Sleeping two to a hammock—while a pleasant way to spend an afternoon—is only a viable all-night option if you’re a pair of extremely deep sleepers. Your every movement will send the hammock, and thus your partner, swinging. If you do go this route, try sleeping with your heads at opposite ends to give yourselves a little more room to maneuver. (Attempt hammock sex only if you’re willing to risk your neck for exotic nooky.)

Hammocks strung up on the deck of a boat on the Amazon. Photo: Bruno Girin

For ultimate comfort, get a friend to tie the long sides of the hammock together above you. Enclosed in a cool, breezy bubble, you can toss and turn as much as you like without worrying about falling out (though that’s pretty hard to do, anyway).

However, never (never never never!) sit down on a hammock without unfolding it under you. A hammock is not a bench. Try it, and you’ll go over backwards, land on your head, and no one present will ever let you forget it. Also, it will really hurt.

But—here I speak from experience—even that trauma will not sour for you the sweet, sweet sensation of swinging to sleep in a hammock on a warm tropical breeze.

Layla. Champion rock thrower. Photo Laura Bernhein

1. Over the weekend my bro Segundo left a message on my phone where he sang this passover song Dayenu.

Segundo is not Jewish but half-Italian which is close. He’s also really good at imitations which is all you need when it comes to songs and ceremonies, especially ones for which you feel a slightly whimsical if misunderstood ‘fondness’.

2. How this all figures into a week’s ’roundup’ of the Notebook I’m not sure. I just got the sense when I woke up last Thursday that millions of dining and living rooms across the world were about to get hit up with new remixes of the story of how Moses parted the Red Sea. And that that counted for something–not the Red Sea part so much but the re-telling.

3. Yesterday I was walking with Layla through Ravenna park in Seattle. There was some kind of Easter race / scavenger hunt going on involving the local hipster / tight pants / fixie bike crowd. The racers skidded down the hill, dropped their bikes, then had to fish a can of PBR out of this reeking, algal-skinned pond. The kid taking pictures told me it was to represent how “Jesus was a fisherman.”

4. This all made me feel somewhat ‘proud’ of Seattle.

5. Last week I published a piece by David Johnson. Afterward he wrote me back saying:

“sort of blows me away to think that that many people saw a bunch of lines I drew when I was going out of my head in Rio. . . anyways, still going out of my head. Now in San Luis Obispo. Surfed Montana de Oro this morning.”

6. That’s one of the ceremonies he and I have had going since we were kids in Georgia: basically stoking out on whatever the next set of views are or might be and considering each new stage to be part of some progression even though you always end up feeling the same.

6. Layla looked up at the kids pushing at the beer cans with long sticks. She was only mildly interested. She was busy with her own ceremony: throwing rocks in the water. I picked up some more and handed them to her.

Photo: Please Don’t Smile.

This week’s “Lines of the Week” come from Rebecca Scott, who lived in Iran for over a decade.

At one point she decided to dress “like an Iranian Muslim woman, which means that the arms, head, neck and legs are covered in public.”

She writes, “I would have preferred not to, but I was trying to fit in and earn the respect of my new family, who cared very much about the opinions of neighbors and friends.” Later she’d find herself at a religious ceremony.

For the full story, please visit Adapting to Iranian and Islamic Culture.

Community Connection

Lines of the week is a weekly feature where the editors pull their favorite bit of writing from the Matador Community blogs.

Photo: Joanne O’Sullivan

On a sticky-hot August evening in Salina Cruz, my friend Joanne and I step into Doña Teo’s living room.

Lately the meeting place for a prayer group, it’s now decorated in my honor, with red-and-white foam cutouts of lingerie and hearts, and an impressively realistic pantyhose penis, complete with pubic hair, resting on top of a cake.

Of course I’m not supposed to know, or let on that I know, just how realistic it is. The ostensible idea behind the Mexican despedida de soltera, or “farewell to the single girl”, is that the bride-to-be is an innocent virgin who requires a non-threatening introduction to the male anatomy, lest she be terrified on her wedding night.

The thirty or so women who brave the heat to attend the party don’t much care about that, though. I only know six of them personally; the rest aren’t here so much to ease my transition into married life as to spend an evening laughing their asses off about the organ, and the act, that may or may not be cause for laughter in the privacy of their own homes.

Doña Teo pushes margaritas into our hands and Joanne as I concentrate on getting as drunk as possible. One of Doña Teo’s wild daughters pins a sequin-adorned scrub-pad to my shirt, which marks me as the bride-(and dish scrubber)-to-be. My soon-to-be mother-in-law, Doña Charo, is working away in the kitchen, but waves at us encouragingly now and then.

Photo: gorriti

The games kick off with a banana-eating contest. The banana must be consumed both sensuously and quickly. There are five contestants. A skinny woman in an embroidered blouse dances around a pillar in the middle of the room, shaking her hips.

My sister-in-law-to-be is embarrassed at first, then gets into it—she’s not married and I’m vaguely surprised that she’s chosen to participate. (A few months later, the first family crisis of my marriage will involve her surprise pregnancy.)

The inflate-the-condom-without-popping-it game is next, and then a confusing word game which Joanne and I manage to win without really understanding what’s going on. At the end of each game, I am required to stand up, scrub-pad dangling from my chest, and present the winner with her prize: an elaborately wrapped Tupperware container.

Just as Doña Charo begins dishing up the food, Doña Teo’s daughters pull me out of my chair and usher me upstairs, where women in various stages of undress are complaining about the heat and putting on costumes. Another pantyhose penis, this one as long as my arm, sits on the bed.

Before I know it, I’m stripped to my underwear and a wedding dress is pulled over my head. It won’t button up in back but ni modo.

One large woman, dressed as a priest, is painting a beard on her face. Doña Teo’s daughter Mari is wearing a suit jacket and is strapping the huge penis to her waist. Her other daughter is doing something painful to my hair, trying to get the veil to stay on. Another woman stuffs a pregnant pillow-belly under her dress.

Suddenly the wedding march is playing and we’re descending the stairs. Mari waves her penis about wildly to the cheers and whistles of the guests. The priest chants dirty blessings. At frequently intervals I’m required to hold or stroke the penis.

Photo: mexikids

The woman with the pregnant belly rushes in and accuses the groom of knocking her up. Mari swears to me that she’s never seen this woman before, then turns around and winks at the crowd, shakes her hips to make the penis wag. “Do you believe me?” she asks. I’m at a loss, but: “Sí, mi amor,” I tell her, making a simpering face.

When the “ceremony” is over, Mari and I dance, while the rest of the women call out instructions: “Kiss it! Hold it! Touch it!” they yell, and I oblige. When they cut in to dance with me, they bear a tequila-filled clay penis which they hold to my mouth, tipping my head back until my neck aches.

After I cut the cake (and, of course, pay appropriate attention to the penis that adorns it), the ladies begin saying goodbye. I open the presents: a tiny red thong, an electric mixer, two sets of juice glasses, sequined teal pajamas, a ceramic duck with a rather obvious seam down the middle where it broke and was super-glued back together.

Doña Teo tells us about her wedding night: how frightened she was, even though she married for love, how her mother-in-law pounded on the bedroom door until they were able to pass her the blood-stained sheet, the proof of virginity.

Photo: Joanne O’Sullivan

As Doña Charo herds Joanne and I home through the warm, salty night, I think fuzzily how I’ve been introduced to more than the male anatomy tonight.

Through a tequila haze, I picture myself married, wearing nothing but a red thong, mixing cake batter with one hand and stroking a man-sized, disembodied penis with the other, while dirty Tupperware spawns in the sink and pregnant, barefoot women bang on the windows, demanding paternity tests.

Rocinha. Feature photo and photo above: Fabbio.

So I found the sickest view yet of Rio.

I was just going to take the combi from Leblon to São Conrado to just check it. See if I was missing surf spots. Beautiful of course. Some surf. Then I look up and see the favela looming above.

I asked some kid. He said that was Rocinha. I said, “I cant go up there can I?” He said, sure, tudo tranquilo.

So I was just going to walk to the edge of it and look in. Then I see the horrible jeep tours with dumb tourists sitting in the back, so I figure it can’t be that bad.

I just walked in, found a restaurant and ate something, sort of hid in a corner with a view and drew a little sketch. The moto taxis flying buy at breakneck speed. I saw combis with signs for Gavea so I figured the street must pass through. I was going to just take a combi and ride through it.

Sketch of Rocinha. David Johnson.

But then the mototaxis were flying by for 2 reais to the top. I was like, ‘if I am going to go up, I want to go on the mototaxi’.

So this kid carries me to the top. The road up is just a series of cutbacks to the top. Favela is pretty normal. Restaurants and stores and papelarias and street vendors. It just happens to be built on a hill as steep as anything in San Francisco, all sorts of little alleys and passages and smells.

The favela is huge though and wraps over and around this huge morro. Sick views abound.

This kid dropped me off close to the top. I wanted to get one little sketch. I got good at five minute sketches.

I drew a couple and passed the top where it starts to drop back to Gavea and I see the bend that keeps on going up.

It’s like I just peer around the corner and everything looks normal. Nobody was staring at me too much. People walked by looking at the drawings and all are like, shit que massa. I only had ten reais to be stolen if anything.

Then this kid walks up and looks and tells me there is a sweet view just around the corner looking towards Rio. He was like 14 or 15, talking about soccer and asking about the drawings. He seemed alright, so I was like cool, I want to see it.

Hill is super super steep and it sort of winds back and forth. Sick views towards Barra. Then we come around the corner. A parked car with its doors wide open, joints being smoked in full view, the hip hop blasting, and about five guys armed with m16s, in full view, and radios talking back and forth.

My friend Charles was right: there are hills that the cops just do not go up in Rio. I had fully crossed the line.

I sort of paused but it was too late. They saw me and the kid and were like, ven aqui ven aqui. At this point I thought it sort of unwise to just shine them and turn my back. I had nothing to hide, and the view that they were sitting at…..

So i just walk up. I was sort of shaking. It was cool, but I was still sort of shaking. Really only the second time I had seen guns flashed like that, but it was sort of heavy to see.

Fica vontade loco, fiqa tranquilo, não pasa nada. Voce está em casa.

They asked me what I was doing and I said desinando. Showed them my sketchbook and before I knew it they were flipping through telling me that they are very good sketches. One guy is asking me something about me drawing him for a tattoo for his girlfriend.

5 minute sketch of Rio. David Johnson.

It was cool, but just didnt think it was exactly the spot I needed to sit back and kick it at. I wanted to draw something, but i dont think i could have held my hand still. But something about my face and just walking up and looking them in the eye smiling and saying tudo bom. tudo tranquilo. And its all cool.

Views. David Johnson.

I sat for a minute and looked out across Rio. Wah, you could see the lagoa and all the morros and Corcovado all the way to parts of Niteroi, like looking down the line of a sick wave or something. They were radioing up and down the hill. The beeps of walkie talkies. Then i just turned and said:

Muito obrigado irmãos, mais con tudo respecto eu acho que e melhor si eu vou por embaixo.

They smiled, we exchanged the Brazilian international sign of tudo bom, the thumbs up, and I walked back.

The moto-taxi kid apologized, said he didn’t know they were there, that he wouldn’t have taken me there if he had known it.

I was actually glad he took me up there just to see it.

Those guys had the sickest view of Rio I have seen yet.

The realization came at a guesthouse in remote Laos, the kind of place that miraculously hovers inches above the ground on six concrete blocks. I was coming home from a night of desolation drinking. The generators had long since expired and I had only a flashlight to guide me.

A sleepless night on an inch thick mattress awaited. The fan clanked with a unique beat, as if trying to keep up with some arcane drum ‘n bass song that the big-pants people liked in the late 90’s. I wasn’t expecting to see the snake, curled up next to my bed.

“SNAKE! DO YOU SEE THIS? SNAKE! IS ANYBODY ELSE SEEING THIS?”

No one came running. No concierge, no guest-relations expert, no complimentary upgrade or oh-my-gosh-sir. I bravely threw Three Cups Of Tea at the snake, pissing it off enough to do that thing where it revealed, yes, it could stand up too.

That night I slept in the unlocked room next door and decided, well, that’s that. No more of this reptiles-under-the-bed nonsense. I would have to swallow my pride and become a…ugh. Flashpacker.

And so it went for the past year. I hunted online for mid-range deals, becoming an expert at finding better accommodation for twenty bucks more, happy to spend the extra dough in order to avoid the poop-smeared toilets at Hostel Incontin-ental. Guesthouses and teepees only became a viable option when everything else was sold out.

Then my day job went bye-bye, my 401k stopped growing and we all started loudly cursing airport taxes.

I was resigned to travel the world for 2009. That extra $20 per day had suddenly become more important for the survival kitty. Flashpacking went right out the window. I moved back to rooms with lime green paint jobs, roosters under the floorboards and showers with pervy peekholes.

I’m not alone. I’ve been away for three months and it’s startling to see the adjustment that has taken place since I was away in early 2008. Mid-level guesthouses, some only open a few months, look positively grim at night. There’s no hiding it when only two rooms have lights on.

You’d think that this would encourage a shift in pricing but it’s been my experience that they’re holding onto that +$20 rate, playing a game that probably won’t pan out in the long run.

On the other hand, cheapies are packed to the rafters and I’ve bumped into quite a few of my fellow former-midscalers along the way. We’re all bargaining out here, quite happy to remind the owner that his “eco-tourist property” is really just a series of termite-ridden huts, and that his nightly solar-powered electricity will last only about as long as a good lay. We’re politely elbowing for the room that faces the garden and violently face-masking for the bulkhead on flights.

I’ve opted out of guide books in most countries. This week in Laos I splurged for a $5 PDF of the always-dependable Travelfish guide, somehow feeling better about giving money to the little guy and content that I pocketed the extra twenty bucks.

I use hostel booking sites that don’t require fees, rather than Expedia or Hotels.com. I find myself pillaging Kayak and Cheapflights for the best airfaires, then booking directly with the airlines so as to avoid their racking fees too.

I call airline reservation lines until I get the right agent, usually a wrinkled warhorse in Houston or Chicago. She will sometimes hit magical F keys and, after a pause that makes my heart pound, will come back with a “Well, would you look at that?”.

These women (and lispy men named Charles) have been pulling backroom shenanigans for years and are often thrilled to speak with a system-scammer. We reminisce about the days of back-to-back Supersavers and how it used to be glamorous to working the counter at LAX, and now it’s just a goddamned mess. A goddamned mess, I’m telling you.

I know which airline websites will charge me for baggage at the last click and which of their competitors won’t. I’ve turned back towards train travel, knowing at least that I won’t end up 30 miles from town and swallowing an unexpected $20 cab ride. I’m also reading all of the fine print, like when I discovered this week that my Eurail pass would snag me a £100 discount on the Eurostar.

This thriftiness has also made me savvy about things like travel insurance. I’ve spent hours comparing policies on insuremytrip.com and reading about other policies on message boards. I’ve pondered just how much my limbs are worth, since every policy tends to pay out per limb lost (multiple amputations often yield three cherries and a bigger payout).

I’ve opted for a more expensive policy than the one I’ve used in the past because, after really getting into the nitty-gritty, it smells about as good as a post-sauerkraut fart. I’d rather splurge a bit up front than get hit with a thousand dollar morphine drip later.

You know what else? The cheapies are thrilled to see me again. They may not have painted the joint since Carter was president but they sure appreciate the business. Gone are the dour faces and the year of entitlement that follows a rave Lonely Planet review. Conversely, the mid-level employees seem pissed off and resentful, angry that I might ask them to bring down their prices, or that I used two towels.

This isn’t to say that bargains aren’t to be had. I recently caved and spent $100 for three nights in a Bangkok five-star. I locked myself in the room for days, thrilled to spend my CNN time with sheets over 200 count. Checking into a guesthouse the night after, I felt ridiculous for having spent the money, but not for spending so much time being seduced by Anderson Cooper’s dreamy eyes.

Truth be told, I’m having a better time traveling now than I have in years. I’m writing this article from a ‘splurge’, a riverside residence that sits just north of budget. A travel agent in Vientiane tried to sell me two nights here for $100, “breakfast included!”. I pondered plunking down my Visa, and then walked outside to call the hotel directly.

I got it for $10 a night.

Photo: Zara

“She won’t get out of bed,” Fatima said to me worriedly, in French. I was a month into a trip through Morocco, and Fatima had picked me up in a train station and brought me home along with a few other backpackers. Carmen, the girl in bed, had been there for a month.

Carmen was fine when she arrived from the bus stop like the rest of us, but after a week at Fatima’s, she stopped going out as much. Then she stopped going out at all. She stayed inside the house, then inside her room, and finally, in her bed.

Nobody had spoken to her, although several people tried. First she was there, and then she wasn’t, like she’d been kidnapped out from behind her own eyes without anyone noticing.

What is Clinical Depression?

Photo: Bandita

Nobody knows quite where clinical depression comes from; like the proverbial thief in the night, it sneaks in and takes your sense of humor, your motivation, and sometimes, your ability to get up in the morning. The prevailing theory is that it’s genetic in nature, meaning that if an immediate family member has it, you might too.

Having depressive symptoms doesn’t mean that you’re about to leap from the Golden Gate Bridge; it might mean that you’re suffering from a milder form of depression. Also, most depressive disorders can come and go; while someone may never be completely healthy, they will usually have good periods and bad periods. These variations are more similar to a cancer and remission than everyday “ups and downs.”

It’s important to stress that depression is not just “being sad.” You can’t “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and just get over it; it’s a serious illness. It requires treatment, which should be supervised by a doctor. Being depressed can be debilitating, but most people with milder depression can work, parent, and also travel.

Depression and Travel

Photo: MeAndTheSysop

If you’re already aware that you have a mood disorder, and still want to travel, there are several things to consider. First, if you’re taking a medication, make sure you have enough of your prescription to last the length of your trip.

Tell your doctor how long you’ll be away, and she may give you a larger-than-usual refill. She may prefer to give you several refill scrips that you can have filled at pharmacies wherever you are. Remember to have her list both the name-brand and generic versions of the drug. In some countries, medications that are only available by prescription in the United States can be purchased over the counter.

It’s very important to note that not all countries have pharmacies outside large cities; if you’re visiting Thailand, the quality of medical care decreases dramatically outside of Bangkok. If you’re going somewhere out-of-the-way or your doctor won’t give you refill scrips, consider making your trip shorter.

It’s better to come back a little early than run out of medication abroad. However, if you lose or run out of your medication while traveling, you may be able to get refills from a drop-in clinic. Provide a copy of your original prescription (you did photocopy your prescription to carry with you, right?).

If they won’t dispense it or don’t understand, go to an emergency room. This may seem over-the-top, but unless you’re heading home in the next day or two, it’s pretty darn important to keep your medication dosage correct: abruptly stopping any kind of drug can lead to serious withdrawal symptoms, and you don’t want to be stuck getting sick again when you can avoid it.

If you’ll be somewhere unusually warm, ask about storing your medication in a refrigerator, or at least, keep it out of direct sunlight. Check the drug insert or ask your pharmacist about how temperature affects your medications.

If you’re not on medication for your disorder, then make sure you feel comfortable with whatever treatment plan you’ve drawn up. If you plan to write in a journal every day, or have Skype conferences with your psychologist, do it. You might consider setting up regular check-ins with someone who knows you well, so you have an external perspective on how you’re doing. You might not be aware of symptoms creeping back in until the evil spirits are in full force.

Recognizing Depression on the Road

Photo: r.f.m.II

So what if you’re already traveling and you start to show symptoms of depression? The onset of depression can occur at any time, although women have a significantly higher risk than men.

Some symptoms to watch for are:

• feeling sluggish or unmotivated
• losing interest in things you previously enjoyed
• feeling hopeless
• crying
• trouble sleeping
• irritability and restlessness

Having any of these things isn’t a sign you should go rushing to a doctor, but having lots of them, or if they last for longer than a week or two, might need some more investigation.

Dealing with Depression on the Road

The first thing to check is whether you are physically sick. Some illnesses have the same symptoms as depression. Second, consider what you’re putting into your body, including recreational drugs. Larium, a commonly prescribed anti-malarial treatment, lists “hopelessness and permanent depression” in its side effects.

Remember that you may be in danger if you go OFF a drug as well; being unprotected for malaria in a mosquito-infested region is hardly optimal. The best-case scenario is not taking drugs that can cause these symptoms in the first place. Do some research and make an informed decision.

If you think your depression is unrelated to other medications or illness, try to see a counselor or other health professional. Ask in the ex-pat community if anyone has doctor recommendations. If you’re in a place where English isn’t commonly spoken, seek out organizations like Amnesty International or the Planned Parenthood Federation; they often have English-speakers as volunteers, and may offer counseling services.

It’s hard to make decisions about whether or not to go on medication when you are away from home; doctors usually want to monitor your progress and check the dosage level. Some doctors may refuse to issue psychiatric medications, or be unable to do so.

You may run into doctors who won’t acknowledge your illness as valid, or may label depression as “weakness.” If this is the case, go to another doctor.

Some people find alternative treatments like meditation or physical exercise can help. Herbal supplements like St. John’s Wort are unregulated and untrustworthy; they can also interfere with other medications, including birth control pills and psychotropics.

If you continue to have symptoms, please see a doctor, either abroad or when you return home. Remember that mental illness is an illness, which means it needs treatment like any physical illness.

Overall, mild depression, or a more serious depression receiving proper treatment, shouldn’t stop you from traveling, but it’s important to be aware of yourself and your situation. Take care of yourself first and foremost.