At this point, Megatrip is well past its infancy. It started out as a loud, obnoxious baby that consumed every ounce of our energy. It partied its way through its teenage years, ricocheting from debauched beach rave to deranged river tubing to deplorable red light district. But now it’s youthful years are well behind it. And as Megatrip barrels past middle age with depressing momentum, it has accumulated enough experience and wisdom to partake in some hard-earned self reflection. Although it can be easy for us to forget, what with all the daily search for food, lodging, and streaming-quality WiFi, every once in a while it is incumbent upon us, the lowly passengers on this inverted runaway train of our own invention, to shut up and listen to what it has to say. And every time we do that, we come away with something vaguely resembling a lesson from all of this.
Below is a list of some of the wisdoms (or lack there of) that Professor Megatrip has imparted upon us over these past few months. You’ll be happy to know that there will be no quiz on the below materials, because, as you’ll see, Megatrip has proven to be quite the unreliable teacher; typically preferring the knowledge gained from contradiction over clarity. Who knows, next semester we might find that all of these lessons were just decoys designed to teach us that the real Megatrip has been within each of us all along. Or something. Until then, these are some Megatrip-isms that have left an impression on us over the past few months. Office hours are now in session.
1. There Are People There
Did you know that people are everywhere? Of course you did. But did you know there are people there too? And don’t read this as a comment on overcrowding, although any visit to places like Bangkok and Saigon will make a case for that too. What I’m talking about is this visceral, humbling feeling that arises from seeing places that, until you inhabit them, were merely Instagram posts or sections in guide books or recommendations from friends. But there are people there. People buying laundry detergent. People hitchhiking. People reading newspapers. People selling drugs. People falling in and out of love. Lives constantly materializing in all corners, crannies and crevices of the planet, each with an entire history and a personality and a repressed childhood memory and a favorite song. Because of people. And there are people everywhere. Even there.
2. Everywhere Is Different, And That’s OK
You prepare yourself for the humidity, and for the time change, and for the rinsing your toothbrush by spitting bottled water onto it, but it’s the small, taken-for-granted things that jump out at you. Like lines. In the States, lines are a sacred code of conduct with the same normative significance of facing forward in an elevator or not rapping all the words to the song. You enter a line and you receive whatever is waiting at the end of that line when chronology runs its course. Everyone knows this and acts accordingly. In Vietnam, lines don’t hold that familiar cultural importance, and their narrative flow seems to take more inspiration from Tarrantino than Chekov. They are mere suggestions, starting blocks under the pretense of order that quickly deteriorate into shoving, sneaking, and angry staring toward whoever dares abide by this arcane Euclidian ritual.
And while having an elderly 4-foot Vietnamese woman continually elbow the small of your back and shout at you in a god damn airport security line can be jarring, it also elucidates the fact (one that this kind of travel repeatedly beats you over the head with) that there is no one right way to do anything. Whether that be lines in Vietnam, the basic notion of personal space all across Asia, or the shocking toilet seat shortage in Italy. Your way is one way, but it’s not the only way. And judging by how long people have been doing things their way and getting along just fine, perhaps it’s sometimes best just to step aside and let the world be its quirky self. You might find you enjoy getting lost in the weirdness.
3. Everywhere Is The Same, And That’s Awesome
Different different, but same. I was crawling through a crypt under the sands of Egypt, keeping an eye on the slabs of sandstone above me to avoid probable head trauma, when I passed the site’s caretaker sitting next to a wall of hieroglyphics. He motioned for me to come over to him and began pointing out a remarkably well-preserved etching of a pharaoh. I smiled at him, appreciative of the astounding piece of cultural heritage he was inviting me to experience with him. His hand hovered for a moment around the detailed carving of the pharaoh’s head, biding his time until he couldn’t hold back any longer. When his hand dropped suddenly to point directly at the gigantic stone penis dangling for eternity between the pharaoh’s petrified legs, he erupted in laughter and started slapping me on the shoulder like we had just qualified for the state tournament.
A dick joke. Beneath the Egyptian desert in a tomb built over 3,000 years ago. This, and the countless other moments like it on our adventure, may have been the most optimistic I’ve ever felt about humanity in my life. If only this literal crypt keeper could show that pharaohic phallus to the masses, think how many wars he could end. Never let a different language or time zone or religion or UV index let you forget that people are the same old gossiping, arguing, farting, fucking, drunken, unhealthy screw ups all over the world. And that dicks are always hilarious.
4. Don’t Let The Map Get In Your Head
This is one of the hardest things to remember when you’re planning a trip and start to feel anxiety about a destination. Luang Prabang is how many timezones away? Jordan is how close to Syria and Iraq? Florida is actually part of the United States?? But here’s the thing, when you’re on the ground, you don’t see the map. There are no gridlines reminding you how close the latest Ebola hot zone is, there are no labels pointing out active fault lines, and there are no pins denoting nearby registered sex offenders.
Not only does the map have a habit of disproportionately highlighting things you might be concerned about, it can be outright deceiving in a lot of ways. It’s ok at distance, but isn’t so adept at time or history. It’s fine for roads, but needs to brush up on geology. It knows its borders, but can’t help you with economy or ethnology. It’s functional as a paper towel, but it’s way too firm and waxy to use as toilet paper. There are a million different things you have to consider when traveling somewhere. And getting tunnel vision on the map can take your mind off the actual places it so artfully converts into lines and dots.
5. Places That Remind You Of The Map Are Something Special
There goes old Prof. Megatrip, flipping the lesson plan 4 minutes in like it’s a hamburger patty. Yes, it’s true the map is more focused on the larger scale, big picture stuff that isn’t the most relevant when you’re trying to hail a cab, or immediately find the nearest bathroom, or pick a menu item, or immediately find a place to buy new pants. But every once in a while you’ll encounter a place that is uniquely inseparable from its coordinates. A place that can’t help but evoke the map and all the big picture, tectonic, planetary curvature stuff that comes with it. And these places are ones to savor.
The Maldives, for example, are borderline impossible to even find on a map, consisting of not much more than a sneeze of sand surrounded in all directions by hundreds of miles of (rising) ocean. And they won’t let you forget for one tide-changing, fish-spotting, aquamarine minute you spend on them. Or consider Cape Town, which on the map is essentially situated at the end of the earth. And boy does it look like it. Table Mountain and its surrounding cliffs may as well be the sudden, climactic, and definitive exclamation point on the world as we’re familiar with it, ending this insane earth-bound story with a rocky bang, only to be followed, dozens of blank pages later, by a somber, chilly, Antarctic epilogue. Or consider Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park, in which you walk between a widening gorge borne of continental drift, the very bones of the planet and time’s liquefying effect on even the sturdiest of matter rubbed in your face in vivid Scandinavian detail.
If travel is meant to make us realize how small we are in the world, these are the places that cut the chit chat and get straight to the belittling. To spend time there is to truly understand what the map was trying, often unsuccessfully, to say all along.
6. Litter Is A Serious Problem
I once believed that reviews and testimonials admonishing a beach’s water as “polluted” were overreactions and potentially even snobbery. Oh, did the visibility drop from 50 meters down to 48? Is the water now vibrant turquoise rather than vivid azure? In my experience I had found the word to be used as travel hipster code for “discovered” or “mainstream”, the pollution in question being more cultural than physical. “Oh Grizzly Bear? Yea I used to like them before they sold out and their sound got all polluted…”
But that was until I swam in the waters of Kuta Beach. We had been warned that Bali’s main tourist town was a “dirty” beach by media and fellow travelers alike, but we assumed this had to be another occasion of a pretentious travel euphemism for “developed”, “crowded” or “overrun with prostitutes”. But within seconds of entering the hot-car-temperature ocean at Indonesia’s preeminent shoreline, I was attacked, not by sharks or jellyfish or territorial surfers, but by plastic bags, empty bottles, and a latex-like item whose identity I don’t have the mental fortitude to contemplate.
The story was the same in Vietnam’s iconic Halong Bay. You come ready to see a sound congested with all manner of touristic transport, but the sightseeing boats were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the plastic detritus floating by every few yards. The same goes for the towering trash pyramids of Giza, South Africa’s wildfire-inciting glass bottle issue, and Jordan’s unfathomable level of roadside debris, even in the absolute middle of nowhere. Surprisingly, in lots of cases the visiting tourists appear to be only small part of the direct litter creation, with the lion’s share coming from the population profiting off their visitation. But our presence is undoubtedly the initial domino tap that created not only the often hastily assembled industry the issue derives its power from, but also the very domino-strewn mess on which we’re now puncturing our feet when we walk to the fridge at night or try to take a picture of the sea without a Dasani bottle floating in it.
I don’t have a solution. But as far as recurring observations go, litter has been more frequent on this trip than hearing Despacito, which is to say, extremely and despairingly frequent.
7. Age: How Old Is Old?
Does you city have a neighborhood called Old Town? Has your city decided to refer to a section within its radius as “historic”? Do you obsess over a Broadway musical that details the founding of a country a mere 300 years ago?
We in America have a conception of time and history that traveling past our borders exposes as almost infantile. When you go to London, the average alleyway has several thousand years on any brick in the United Sates. When you travel to Cambodia, you see an ancient city that was a bustling metropolis when London wasn’t much more than a neighborhood. When you go to Jordan, you see things that are named after Biblical figures, not because of Christian influence but because those figures actually fucking lived there. When you go to Rome, you see the origins of civilization as we know it, wandering a city center that makes even the Bible look like a hot new bestseller.
If you want to be confronted with you own mortality and speck-of-dust presence in the lifespan of the world, visit some real history and have your conceptions of time pushed to their limits. There’s a good chance none of us even have the capacity to understand time in a way that would enable proper appreciation of how old some places are, but it’s certainly a more memorable experience than admiring the newly installed Edison bulbs in “historic” Kenosha, WI.
8. Duration: How Long Is Long?
When Megatrip is over, we will have been traveling for just over 4 months. Back in our former lives, that was about the length of one season of Vanderpump Rules. For the majority of anyone who has even noticed we have been gone, it probably feels like we took a long weekend to visit family. We maybe missed a few new restaurant openings. We didn’t get to see Black Panther in the theater. A sports team threw a slam run or two. And then we’ll be back.
But from our perspective, we are entirely different people than the ones who left in the simple and quaint era that was February 2018. How young we were then. Full of verve and plucky energy. Both nervous and overly confident. Completely unaware of the breathtaking clarity of the Namibian night sky, or how logo-prominent purses are apparently the most crucial aspect of any travel photo. It’s hard to even recognize those crazy kids.
When any week can include multiple continents and any day can include multiple wonders of the ancient world, the regular rhythm of counting time and mapping it to familiar events and processes is tough to maintain, not to mention kind of obsolete. We often play a game on Megatrip where we reminisce about a memory from the distant past. We retell stories of far off places, wild nights, close calls, stupid mistakes, and friends we’ll likely never see again. The joke of course being that they all happened a week earlier. And while having days extend into eons isn’t the worst kind of mind fuck one can endure, just keep in mind when we return that time moves at different speeds in the wondrous black hole of Megatrip. It may take us a few seconds to adjust.
9. Soup Is Good
Hi, this is David. Have you heard of soup? It’s this water food that people eat all over the place. It comes in a bunch of different colors and you make silly noises when you consume it. Soup, it turns out, is amazing. Whether it’s Vietnamese Bun Bo Hue, Laotian Kao Soy, or Moroccan Harira, you should probably try soup. Cuz soup has apparently been good the whole time you may have been letting its intimidating temperature and questionable hunger satisfaction ability deter you. So if you don’t eat soup yet, try and eat soup. Soup is good.
And with that, office hours is closed. Class is dismissed, but student debt is welcome to stay for as long as it wants. There will likely be more lessons as the semester goes on and Megatrip keeps finding new ways to warp minds, shake heads, and drain wallets. But then again, with a professor this mercurial, there’s no telling when, if, or why that might be. If we’ve learned one thing for sure, no matter what happens, working plumbing won’t be guaranteed. Until next time.
Brilliant! Loved every word