Destination: Uncategorized

I was at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show this weekend. I speak there every year. It’s my favorite…probably the best in the country. I found this year’s show particularly enjoyable.

Speaking in front of a thousand travelers, trying to project my voice above the Tahitian drums and the hula shows, I had the fun of making the point that the vast hall around us was filled not with information, but with advertising. At least, smart consumers should assume as much.

The show, packed with travelers who paid $10 each to get in, was a shrill festival of brochures and catalogs with mariachi happiness bouncing off the walls and expertly eye-catching women promoting their booths by prancing around like peacocks in heat.

One thing I complimented the show staff on was how the editors of the LA Times travel section rather than the paper’s advertising department put on the event, distinguishing it from many other big travel shows. Still, I was interviewed by a film crew after one of my talks and found they were not talking about travel…but making an ad to promote next year’s show.

The show reminded me how anyone sorting through information to help make travel decisions needs to understand how just about everything you encounter is promotional — pushing someone’s business interests.

I spend 120 days a year in Europe researching my guidebooks, and last year I kept thinking how a major part of my work is simply picking up promotional fliers and talking to people paid to promote. As a consumer advocate, I need to sift through everything and come up with what is truly worth the vacation time and money of my traveling readers. The pickings are often very slim.

In Europe — where tourism is a leading employer and source of foreign revenue — local tourist boards are pushing whatever has seen the big investment in the previous year. Whether I’m researching my guidebooks or making TV shows, local promoters of tourism are eager to slip on a dirndl, meet me at the airport, and steer me to what they want promoted. I get the feeling that most “travel journalists” are easy prey in this regard. Arriving in a new city, I often find a gift from the tourist board waiting on my hotel bed — a binder filled with advertisements. Sorting through it, there’s almost nothing worth keeping.

In Switzerland, the tourist board is particularly aggressive and strong. They support our TV production work generously with guides and hotels when we ask. It’s tricky to explain that rather than the new casino and the new chic restaurants, I find other slices of the culture more interesting to film: the riverside hike, the subsidized bike-rental program (that gives work to “hard-to-employ” locals), and the heroin-maintenance clinic (to show Americans a creative and pragmatic Swiss approach to drug policy).

Typical bus tour companies also struggle with their economic needs corrupting the product they offer. For instance, the standard whirlwind itinerary makes time in Amsterdam for diamond polishing, but not for Van Gogh. Why? It’s money. The awesome Van Gogh Museum costs $15 per person ($750 for a busload of 50 tourists), while the diamond-polishing exhibition is free for the tour company and offers 20 percent kickbacks on diamonds purchased. No wonder tour guides promote the notion, “If you haven’t bought a diamond in Amsterdam, you haven’t really experienced the city.”

One of my least favorite writing gigs is when the European Tourism Commission hires me to write an article about what’s new in Europe, and they require that each country in their group is worked into the article. That’s understandable, as Malta and Iceland pay just like France and Germany to be a part of this promotional agency. But it’s hard to write a good article when the driving force is treating all member nations equally rather than what’s new and of value to traveling readers.

The Web has become a primary source of information for many travelers. I love the Web as a tool, but it’s tough for consumers to know what’s real information and what’s slick promotional material. When assessing hotels, for instance, what looks like information is often a carefully crafted sales pitch. This is a major pitfall for naive travelers.

That’s why I believe, even in this Internet age, an ethically written guidebook remains the best source of information for the independent traveler. A good guidebook gives you hard opinions rather than paid ads. Actually, the contract my publisher and I have comes with a little clause (nicknamed for an author of a B&B guidebook who made lots of money charging for listings, and then showcasing them as guidebook entries rather than ads) prohibiting me from accepting any payment for any listing in my books…something I wouldn’t do anyway.

To sum up: Travelers — like any consumers — need to understand who paid for the information that’s trying to shape their decision-making, and why. Twelve million Americans travel in Europe every year. The bestselling guidebook to any European destination published in the USA (which, last year, was my Italy guidebook) didn’t even sell 100,000. There’s a lot of fish left to catch…and even this blog has a promotional agenda: to get every traveler to bite.

Let the traveler beware. (And happy travels!)

Jon wondered about my Balinese experience, so I dug this up.

This is the only thing I ever wrote with the help of a mushroom omelet. Back in the 1980s, I wouldn’t have admitted I had a hallucinogenic helper. It’s fun to share it now, exactly how I wrote it — exuberantly over-the-top — as a twentysomething travel writer.

Bali is great. And an evening super-sensitized in that tropical Hindu world is magical. Recalling just three hours in the village of Ubud, the “Balinese Florence,” I realized that some of the greatest moments in travel are yours when you become a mute poet. Just observe. Put yourself in a personal tiki hut, let your jaw hang loose, permanently awestruck, and open your eyes and ears so wide they touch.

I sat under my thatch writing by flickering light while the smoke from my quiet mosquito coil did a cobra dance. Here are some thoughts straight from my journal recalling just one evening on the road in Asia.

*****

Lanterns painted a rutted dirt road through the new darkness. Thin, unloved street dogs played with my shadow, which walked before me…as if leading me to the candlelit temple.

Batik smiles ushered me to a bamboo chair where I joined 30 people seething like barnacle tongues to the churning beat of a 20-piece gamelan orchestra.

A gamelan is a kind of xylophone, usually accompanied by a busy Balinese bamboo band of flutes, strings, and percussion instruments. To the casual tourist who gives it no more than an ear-glance, it is a jumble of jungle noise worth a photo and a few minutes, but nothing more. But if you look into the musicians’ eyes, you see they are dancing as one, high above that dirt floor, and making music in tongues that’s as pure as Mozart. Children hide attentively on the laps of the performers, and all are lost in the same musical beat.

The temple was a peacock of happy candles; its warm outline against a starry black backdrop empowered the music below.

Through the temple’s door danced a goddess-gowned girl. Just another sorry sight on the street, now her Krishna eyes dug deep into mine. She quivered like entranced butterfly wings. Then, suddenly, there were four dancers waving like sea leaves; their eyes, fingers, and the gamelan mallets are puppets from paradise tied to the same god’s strings.

They throb with the gong and flute, like fish Eskimo-kissing, intensifying to the speeding gamelan churning like a train in heaven. Orion reaches for the temple, and I find myself breathing heavily in this seductive tide pool.

Down the lane is a volleyball court, the local equivalent of “Chuck E. Cheese,” where 25 kids sit cross-legged in fake Levis under a TV on an eight-foot pole with a mini-thatch. “TV Jakarta” is beaming in an Indonesian Donny and Marie. “Marie” has big heart-shaped lips under jet-black hair, and “Donny,” every bit as dreamy, plays an organ with a rhythm box. The kids eat peanuts, clap after each song as if the performers were actually in their midst, and wonder why I’m sitting with them.

Ten o’clock is late in this town. As I wander home past huts with well-combed bangs and sleeping dogs, I enjoy smiles and eye contact with the few locals who are still out. Couples sit on rails enjoying cheap talk, genuinely focusing on the present as all that matters.

Back home in my simple, dimly lit bathroom, a 10-inch lizard startles me. Then I’m literally driven out of the place by a ferocious three-inch beetle. I fall asleep wondering what creatures will crawl over me in tonight’s darkness. Dogs are barking Morse code for miles around, and soon the roosters will tell me the sun has risen and another day has begun.

*****

This kind of experience can be yours. Find a culture like India’s or Bali’s where if a drop of menstrual blood touches a man’s head, he’s sterile, and a child’s first toenail cutting is a sacred and magical ritual.

Here are answers to a few of your questions:

Question: What is the one place that you would never go back to?
Answer:I was recently in Orlando and couldn’t stop thinking how miserable I’d be if I had to write a guidebook chapter on that city.

Question: If you were taking your very spry, 73-year-old grandmother to Europe, where would you go?
Answer:Down the Dordogne River in a canoe, and then cap the day with a fine riverside meal — letting her enjoy the liver of a force-fed goose (explaining what it was to her later) with the finest glass of red French wine she’s ever had. While I don’t think I’ve ever ordered the most expensive bottle on a wine list, I love to be in a fine Italian enoteca or French restaurant and order the most expensive glass of wine…especially if I’m with someone who’s never had the experience.

Question: How much of your travels revolve around places you’ve never been before?
Answer:All of them…originally. Now I need to revisit places I report on to expand and update the coverage. While I like to think impressions and assessments made 20 years ago are still sound, things do change. (For example, Berlin is now much better than Munich. Tangier is no longer the armpit of North Africa, but a delightful city. And Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the best side-trip from Dubrovnik.) So, I need to stay focused on my beat (Europe — which I see as America’s wading pool for world discovery) and spend four months a year “working” there.

Question: What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten? Have you ever been served anything that you just had to refuse?
Answer:A hallucinogenic mushroom omelet in Bali was the weirdest (in a delightful way). I refuse energy drinks. I’ve never tried Red Bull or anything like that.

Question: What inspired your love of travel?
Answer: I realized I loved traveling in Europe when first dragged there by my parents — I was a 14-year-old schoolboy with a bad attitude. Things quickly changed. Watching the 1969 Apollo moon landing in Norway and celebrating it as a human as well as American achievement; being enamored by a beautiful blond German woman, and then seeing her reach for something on the top shelf and expose a shaggy armpit — and still being enamored; learning to enjoy mushrooms (non-hallucinogenic) in the home of aristocratic German piano-builders; gazing at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and not understanding how it could look like an ancient arch but be modern…and then learning about the French Revolution and Neoclassicism; witnessing a riot in West Berlin, and then seeing how effectively the German police and media bottled it up, making it a non-event on the evening news; collecting bottle caps for the fun design and the name of the city of the bottling plant. From that first trip, exploring and learning from Europe became my passion.

My recent posts have generated some great discussion. While I generally try to stay out of the discourse, I’ve enjoyed reading the comments so much that I must share a few ideas that came to me from them:

When people say that’s the last time they’ll use a Rick Steves guidebook after I spout off politically, I’m sad and I wonder why. Then I remember that I used to love Dennis Miller (and all his hilarious “rants”) until I learned of his conservative politics. While I’m sure he’s as funny as ever, I no longer find him entertaining (and therefore no longer buy his CDs). So perhaps for me, too, speaking out is bad for business.

If someone’s politics really annoy me, it’s usually because they are either flesh-and-blood relatives (my Dad) or smart and funny. Mixing funny, smart, irreverent, and conservative (Dennis Miller) confounds me (maybe like I confound some people who wish they could still like me).

I always find it interesting that I most offend some people simply by being willing to sacrifice a little business in order to share political ideas I’ve picked up in my travels. The norm in our society today is to protect your career or business by keeping your ethics and personal beliefs to yourself. I keep meeting people who support the war they know is wrong because they work for a company that builds airplanes. I meet people at NORML conventions who can’t tell their workmates that they’re at a conference working to change marijuana laws because it would threaten their chances at a promotion. I keep meeting quiet people who believe in freedom who tell me it’s courageous to speak out.

Kathy: I once literally stood on a soapbox in London’s Speakers’ Corner and gave a little lecture…it was fun and drew a huge crowd. I like how you likened a blog to Speakers’ Corner. Now that you mention it, I think you’re correct.

I’ve been visiting Speakers’ Corner for 30 years. It’s like a dozen blogs raging simultaneously. Each loudmouth has his Humberd-ian sidekick. Gentlemanly, tone-deaf, and uninvited, he chimes in rhythmically, adding to the strangely lovable, eccentric mix that keeps people heading down to Hyde Park each Sunday morning.

Some people say I should stick to travel. After 25 years of giving my “budget travel” talk all over the USA, I now give a talk called “Travel as a Political Act.” It just feels so much more worthwhile. Maybe that’s why, when my church friends were moving from my conservative suburban Lutheran church to the hip, progressive one in downtown Seattle (back in the Iran/Contra days), I chose — as a matter of principle — to stay with my neighborhood church even though I was politically the odd duck.

I find that people who are most adamant about our right to militarize the Middle East to protect our access to its oil are also generally the most evangelical about the free market. If they believe in the free market, why not just let it work? Whatever you might think of Arab states, their natural resources are captive to the wonderful (and ultimately omnipotent) laws of supply and demand. They can only charge what the market will bear. If they charge too much, it will stimulate international markets to find an alternative. With military intervention, we subvert the free market. Come on, hawks and conservatives…trust in the free market (and trust in your ability to make money without wars). I believe that the $2 trillion we’re spending on this war has, ironically, created a vast and extremely profitable industry (more so even than in past wars) that cheats the free market…and the rest of us, too. I believe the free market will humble the Arab oil barons much more effectively (and economically) than our military.

Kent: I’m the first one to admit that travel takes oil. I wish there was bold and honest leadership to put an effective carbon tax on airfares so that those of us who fly had to pay for some program to make it carbon-neutral. If it cost $500 more per ticket, I’d be thankful for the opportunity to pay the true cost of the flight. If half as many people would then travel, I’d be perfectly willing to make half as much money in my business. (In a recent interview for an airline magazine, they asked me my prediction for the hot destination in the future. I said, “Our own backyard — as that’ll be the only place we’ll be able to go if we don’t get serious about climate change.”)

The problem as I see it is that our government is “government by the people via the corporations the people own.” Therefore it is elected primarily to create and protect a business-friendly environment for those corporations to profit-maximize (which is what they are legally obligated to do in the interest of their shareholders). A fundamental difference between us and Europe is that their government is by and for the people, even if that means legislating something not good for short-term business (e.g., making people pay for the disposal costs of a car when they purchase it). While I would much rather run my business here in the USA than in Europe, in the interest of people who will follow us, the environment, and a sustainable economy, I’d trade off a little business-friendliness for European priorities and ethics.

To Kent and others who wonder: For the record, as a matter of principle, I have never paid a penny beyond the price of an economy fare to fly. If someone bumps me up to business class, I’ll happily take it, but I really wish planes only offered economy class. (Frequently as I fly, I don’t keep track of my miles, either…but that’s for another blog entry.)

Maggie: I don’t take tax breaks for my “women’s violence shelter.” Until we need it ourselves, my wife and I have used our retirement nest egg to buy an apartment building that we let the YWCA use to house 24 single moms and their kids who would otherwise be homeless. If enjoying the tax-free joy of housing people rather than earning taxable interest income is a tax break, then maybe you’re correct. But I just think it’s a smart way to put your equity to good use until you need it later. (For all the details, go to the “About Rick/Media Corner” of our website and look under “Social Activism.”)

Laura: If you’d like the text of my “Travel as a Political Act” talk, go into that same Media Corner and find the article called “Innocence Abroad.” It’s pretty close, but I’m working on writing up the talk better.

Jeff: I didn’t feel the Marine acted disrespectfully to me. I respected his confidence that he was doing the right thing. You say the tone of my comments is “growing more anti-American and hateful every week.” I don’t mean to be unpatriotic or hateful. I actually believe I am motivated by a love of my country. And if I point out that we (via our military) have killed far more innocent people than terrorists have killed innocent Americans, I inject that truth into discussions not in a hateful way, but as a patriot. Allowing our country to be dumbed down by the media…now that’s anti-American. Dumb electorate = dumb government. And that’s a mistake that we can no longer afford.