Guest Nomad: Going Local –Yesterday and Again Today

This week’s Guest Nomad is Ethan Gelber. Ethan manages media and communications for the WHL Group, which is the largest local-travel company in the world and whose member companies include whl.travel, Urban Adventures, Green Apple Transfers and WHL Consulting. Ethan also writes and edits the whl.travel blog.

There’s always a lot of banter about travel “back in the day.” Each generation of sojourners loves to lose itself in a halcyon haze, reflecting back on a time gone by when travel was clearly at its best… and then lost to the ever-denser droves of insensitive and irresponsible touring ogres.

My golden age was long after Across Asia on the Cheap (Tony and Maureen Wheeler’s famous ground-breaking guidebook in 1973), but solidly pre-Internet. I too get a bit misty-eyed just thinking about it.

I first hit the road in the very late 80s, when the four Ks – Kao San Road (Bangkok), Karachi, Kathmandu and… just what was that fourth K? Kerala? Kochi? – had been thoroughly Lonely Planetized and “going local” was a frayed hippie cliché, although there was still arguably way more world off the beaten path than on. They were the days when the most cost-effective way of keeping in touch with home involved a full afternoon visit to the main post office to send an expensive telefax. That was already a quantum leap up from the earlier wallet-thinning times of international direct dial.

It was also a period of spreading local realization that travelers were not just willfully displaced and resourceless refugees out to experience the world. They were increasingly seen as commodities to be caught and rolled, ambulating banks with loose controls. This process has accelerated considerably since the cyber revolution vulgarized travel.

Some people believe – as I do – that with these changes, a wedge has been driven between travelers and hosts. Both parties now float through a common space that is, alas, no longer a shared one. Most locals keep to residential areas (or keep to themselves when outside the gates), while travelers Spirograph through set circuits complete with canned commentary, the delivery vehicles of which (from buses to guidebooks to smart phones) are little more than horses of a different color.

Those same ‘some people’ – actually not an insubstantial bunch – now wonder how we can ever experience Oz again the way its emerald citizens do? Just how can we bridge the divide between host and visitor, and resuscitate the merits of “going local” without any of its past discredits.

The answer? The Internet. One primary reason for the lost link between local and guest has been the absence of an easy direct line of communication. For too long, all travel arrangements were left to agents and handlers. Not anymore. Today, multiple new travel services have found solid footing in the favorable, responsible and mutually beneficial fusion of locals’ and visitors’ interests.

So as more and more mindful travelers jump for the pendulum as it sweeps back toward instructive and constructive one-world travel, let’s set aside reveries about when in the past travel was best and try to make better our shared future. Let’s make it one in which we’re all happily local wherever we go.

Interested in adding momentum to a growing Local Travel movement? The sergeants-at-arms have called for the bugles to sound. Stay tuned to this space (and others) for more news to come very soon.

Tags: asia, Kathmandu, lonely planet

Travel Experts Reveal More Dirt From The Road

Well yesterday’s article was pretty revealing. I mean we had some very sinful travel experts get a lot off their chest. In fact it got so bad that I needed to close down the confession booth for 24-hours. But I am back with even MORE travel confessions.

I will try to keep it a little cleaner today I promise. When most travelers confessed to me, one topic seemed to come up quite a bit and that was “I have never been to…”. Below are some places that these vagabonds have yet to mark off on their “to see” list.

• Johnny Jet, a man you would think has touched every inch of this planet, has yet to make his presence felt at the Grand Canyon.

• Nomadic Matt is another globe-trotting individual that has also seen most of the world. He also runs one hell of a travel blog. But Matt confesses that he has not yet rolled the dice in “Sin City” Las Vegas.

• Stephanie Yoder of Twenty-Something Travel visited Amsterdam, but skipped the Red Light District.  That is like going all the way to New York and not trying pizza! Stephanie also mentions here why she has yet to walk the streets of Paris.

Have you ever visited a popular destination and wound up being extremely disappointed? You’re not alone. Two such travelers shared their dismay with a certain Italian destination that millions of vacationers flock to each year.

• Andy Murdock of Lonely Planet told me, “I’ve only been to Venice once, and all I wanted to do was leave as quickly as possible. It was the height of summer so it was hot, filthy, smelly and just crammed full of tourists and hawkers selling tacky trinkets at every turn, and the geography makes it really difficult to escape the hordes. I hate telling this to people because they’ve either been and loved it and try to convince me to go back and give it a second shot, or they haven’t been and hold romantic notions of the city that I don’t especially want to dash because of my one bad experience. Maybe one day I’ll return off-season, but for me it’s like an expensive restaurant that everyone else loves but gave me food-poisoning: why should I spend the money and effort to go back when there are so many new places to try, not to mention places I would love to return to?”

• Gary Arndt ,who runs the extremely popular travel blog Everything-Everywhere.com, also did not enjoy his time in Venice. Arndt confessed, “My first reaction when I arrived in Venice was ‘Wow. This looks just like EPCOT Center!’.”

• Spendthrift Shoestring’s Alex Robertson Textor fessed up and told me, “I’ve been to 98 countries/territories, but I’ve never visited Sydney, Tokyo, Mexico City, or Orlando — or a cruise ship.”

• The Elite Travel Gal herself Stacy Small has been to many great cities around the world, but one seems to keep getting away from her. Small told me that she has never been to New Orleans. “I had a few trips planned,” Small stated. “But I always had to cancel due to inclement weather!”

• Mike Barish, contributing travel writer to Gadling.com, expressed that, “It took me 30 years to get to Paris. Still haven’t been to London. Yet I’ve been to India twice.”

• Sarah Schlichter from IndependentTraveler.com told me that she likes to keep it simple for accommodations and that, “I never stay at luxury hotels. They’re too pretentious, and I don’t feel like I belong there. Give me a B&B or a mid-priced guesthouse any day.”

Wow! The confessional’s line is out the door. I am going to have to shut it down for today. Check back tomorrow for part 3/3 of travel confessions.

Tags: amsterdam, australia, cruises, england, florida, france, grand canyon, italy, japan, johnny jet, Las Vegas, London, lonely planet, louisiana, mexico, mexico city, nevada, new orleans, nomadic matt, orlando, Paris, red light district, sydney, tokyo, travel confessions, venice

Sinful Travelers Confess Their Deepest, Darkest, & Downright Bizarre Secrets

Step right up!

The other day I was conversing with a friend of mine who is just about as obsessed as I am with gallivanting throughout this planet. It seems that when one of us is on the road, the other is planning the next “big” adventure and vice versa. One day over a few adult beverages at a local pub we got onto a topic I like to call “travel confessions.” This is when you get some travel nerds together and try to shock them with stories of odd occurrences on the road, places that as a serious traveler you have never visited, and possible habits you picked up while bouncing from one locale to the next.

My friend, who swears to have been just about everywhere, told me that he has no intentions of ever visiting London, England. He says it just looks like a real “boring city and expensive place to visit.” I was taken aback, not only because London is such a popular travel destination, but that this guy had recently become obsessed with the Manchester United football team. I figured someone who loves to travel for sports and concerts would eventually wind up landing at Heathrow Airport and then check out London en route to Manchester for a game.

It was my turn to share a few secrets or to squash some assumptions that people just believe since you call yourself a travel junkie and a nomad. Well for starters, I have yet to visit two “must visit” countries – France and Germany. Yes it pained me to tell my pal and some others sitting with me that I have yet to walk by the Eiffel Tower in Paris or raise an over-sized beer in Munich. But I swore that both were on the top of my list of countries to check out within the next few years…I promise!

Another confession that will probably make many hotel owners out there frown is my love of hotel key cards! I have a shoe box full of those digital door openers from all over the world. They are like mini-souvenirs that remind me of the many great places I was lucky enough to visit.

But enough about me. I decided that the only way to get over being such a guilty global navigator, was to reach out and ask some other travel experts to join me in a group confessional. Below are some uncensored secrets, habits, and revelations that they felt compelled to get off their chest. God have mercy on their sight-seeing souls.

• First up in the confession booth is Gabe Saglie, Senior Editor and “Travel Guru” at Travelzoo.com, who revealed to me that, “When it comes to hotels, I always check-out with 2 things: amenities and stationary. Amenities are something hotels identify with, and even advertise, especially the upscale hotels. So this started years ago, when my traveling really began to pick up and I found myself forgetting where I’d stayed. Those little shampoo and shower gel bottles were miniature mementos of stays at great hotels. Somewhere along the way, I started passing them on to my mom, who lives in L.A. but travels little (by comparison), as souvenirs of cities I’d visited. Today, she has hundreds and hundreds of amenities from cool hotels all over the world. She gets them faster than she can use them and files them away in neatly organized cabinets.”

Saglie continued, “As for the stationary, I get a kick from mailing letters or bills inside hotel  envelopes. I think it adds a sense of intrigue for the person opening it on the other end. Plus, I haven’t had to buy envelopes in year.I also figure the hotels get some nice PR out of it, so it’s a win-win, no?”

• Lonely Planet’s Andy Murdock also feels the need to snatch hotel items when he travel. Murdock confessed, “I like to swipe hotel room pens – I’m always in need of a pen and often seem to lose or forget them, plus I like finding them in a drawer years later and remembering where the pen and I first met. I think you can tell a lot about a hotel by the pen they provide: some hotels put a lot of thought into it and pick out a pen that writes well, has an interesting design, and suits the hotel’s look and feel; others don’t give it a moment’s thought and just buy thousands of ultra cheapo ballpoints that aren’t worth taking with you. The pencil hotels are the most mysterious to me because they invariably fail to provide a pencil sharpener. Be wary of pencil hotels.”

• Sean O’Neill, Senior Editor for Budget Travel, felt compelled to express to me that while he may be a world traveler, there is just one kind of vacation he has avoided. “I’ve never taken an ocean cruise!” he exclaimed. “I feel silly about having left this off my travel to-do list. For millions, it’s an essential experience. But I’ve been turned off the idea ever since I read a Harper’s essay by David Foster Wallace, in which he ridiculed cruise-going. Sometimes I worry that I’m missing out. But I never worry enough to actually do anything about it.”

I must admit that I too have not gone cruising on vacation. Just not my thing. Next up is another troubled traveler that just needs to get something off her chest. I must warn you though that confession is a tad bit on the R-rated side.

• Adena Harford, who runs the blog at tripwolf.com, told me that, “I kind of got into not using toilet paper in India.” I asked her to please explain that exactly that meant. She continued, “Let’s see – well, first of all, we noticed only the tourists stop at little stand to buy toilet paper – and that there is a faucet and a bucket in every bathroom stall. I was secondly inspired by Jack Kerouac’s idea that most (western) people think they are so clean, but they are actually going around with dirty assholes because we only wipe them with paper. So well, I got into using the water and faucet, and truly felt like I was cleaner than usual – we all referred to it as ‘going local.’ Like, have you ‘gone local’ yet? Sorry if this story was a little TMI.”

Hmm…

• Moving right along we have flight attendant extraordinaire and travel blogger Heather Poole. Heather once told me on Twitter that she does in fact collect hotel “Do Not Disturb” signs, but her confession today was about someone else…or so she says. “I once knew a flight attendant who washed her panty hose in the hotel room coffee pot. NAST-AY!”

• Where Ive Been’s Katy, who is both the Community Manager and #traveltuesday initiator on Twitter, shockingly told me , “Alright, my travel confession is…I always remove my shoes on flights. Even when I have EXTRA smelly feet.  Hee hee hee!” She also confessed that as a young traveler she used to steal the blankets on long, transatlantic flights. But in Katy’s defense she expressed, ” Come on, I was 10 years old!”

• Monica Wong, who runs the travel blog  “A Pair of Panties & Boxers” confessed to me that, ” When I was studying abroad in Shanghai, I took a weekend trip to Hangzhou. I initially planned to stay for one night but I fell in love with the sunset at the West Lake. I wanted to see it again so my boyfriend and I stayed an extra night. The only problem was we only brought one change of clothes. Which meant, we only had one pair of underwear. We had to wear it twice. Inside out, of course. That incident gave birth to the name of my blog.”

Geez, these confessions are just getting dirtier and dirtier. For shame you travel experts…for shame indeed! I am going to clean up this confession booth and will be back with part 2/3 of  travel confessions tomorrow! In the meantime be good you sinners.

Tags: budget travel magazine, cruises, england, france, gabe saglie, germany, heathrow airport, hotel, London, lonely planet, Manchester, Munich, spain, travelzoo, tripwolf, twitter, where i've been, whereivebeen.com

Best Town Square #1: Prague, Czech Republic – Old Town Square & Winner Of The Lonely Planet Guidebook

#1: Prague, Czech Republic – Old Town Square (26% of the vote)

Tags: amsterdam, belgium, brussels, california, czech, england, estonia, europe, italy, krakow, London, lonely planet, moscow, pennsylvania, philadelphia, poland, Prague, republic, rome, russia, san francisco, seville, spain, the netherlands, town square, Travel

Best Town Square #2: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Rittenhouse Square

#2: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Rittenhouse Square (19% of the vote) The City of Brotherly Love sure did love voting for its town square. Unfortunately the surge of voters might have come a few days too late. While Philly did shoot up from 7th to 2nd in one day, it just could not beat out the top dog and will have to settle for silver. I will be visiting this great city in September and look forward to grabbing a cheese steak en route to this beautiful part of Philadelphia.

Lonely Planet review

Rittenhouse Square, in Philadelphia’s centre of creativity, commerce and culture, is the most well-known of William Penn’s city squares. For more information on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, check the Lonely Planet guide.

Tags: lonely planet, pennsylvania, philadelphia, rittenhouse, square, town square, Travel, united states