Traveler Tips: Q&A from the H.I. Event

So for those who didn't get to go to the Hosteling International event on Monday, I've pulled some of the questions I got that I don't think I've answered before here, and some that my friend Pam answered that I didn't know, plus at least one good suggestion from an audience member.

Q: Should you ever deal with the black market when changing money?
Not if you can help it. It used to be that you could do this in many countries and get a much better rate than you could through an official money changer. I've heard rumors that this might still be true in places like Venezuela, but for the most part, not only is this no longer true, but the black market has almost exclusively been filled by scam artists, especially the ones that just operate in the street at border crossings and major cities. You will get fake currency, bad exchange rates, and slight of hand to trick you into thinking you got more than you actually did.

If you must use the black market, then it's a situation where someone official can point you to the reliable guy on the black market. I have asked police and border patrol personnel and they have helped me with this. I got a good rate with real currency. You'd think the people I asked would rather arrest the people instead of giving them customers, but in some places (mostly Africa), they know this is the only way to change money, so they'll just kind of give you a "if this doesn't work, it's not my fault" spiel beforehand.

Q: How would you feel about driving a car in the developing world?
Eh... I'd be nervous. I wouldn't do it until I'd spent enough time to become familiar with the driving local driving style, roads, and traffic police habits. In East Africa, the police pull over foreign-looking drivers all the time to try to fleece them for bribes. If you don't pay, they find something to fine you for. In South America, people will take blind corners on steep mountain highway with no shoulder or guard rail, and just drift into the lane of opposing traffic. As driver, I know I wouldn't be able to handle these sorts of things without a good amount of practice and familiarization first.


Q: If you need medical attention and you don't speak the local language, how do you find a good doctor and someone who can translate for you?
Doctors all over the world are expected to learn some English. It's the international language of many disciplines in the hard sciences, so they're expected to know some as part of their studies. Finding an English speaking doctor or pharmacist shouldn't be nearly as hard as you might imagine. As for making sure it's a *good* doctor, use local recommendations. If you have made friends where you are, ask them. If you haven't yet met locals, talk to the staff of the hostel or hotel where you are staying, or the local tourist info center. They all know better then you possibly could. Some travel insurance providers will give you an emergency number you can call that will tell you where a doctor they recommend is located.


Q: What are some things you had a hard time finding on the road that you should get at home?
Most things you can get at home, you can also get abroad, but not necessarily the brands or quality you want. Pam talked about how she was never satisfied with foreign band-aids (I never had a problem with this personally, but I didn't use many). I could never find peanut butter when I wanted it, and very few people outside of the US know what root beer is. Also, if you're like me and have big feet, shoes can be an issue in many countries. I had to get special imported ones from an American mall in Quito once. It was expensive, and a little embarrassing. Finally, I get picky about my clothes being packable, quick-drying and decent looking. Shirts I could usually find. But for some reason, finding pants like this was often a challenge.


Q: What's a good way to help secure your room if you have a private one?
Get a little doorstop. I never had one of these, but it was suggested after the event, and I think it's a good one. This assumes of course that you aren't sharing the room and the your door opens inwards, and that the bottom of the door is close enough to the floor for it to work, but in those situations, a doorstop could be handy to make you more secure.

Hope that's helpful. Thank you very much to all who attended! If any of you had a favorite question I haven't included here, comment or email me, and I'll add it.

Come See Me In Seattle!

Next Monday, June 28th, thanks to Hosteling International USA, I'll join fellow traveler Pam Perry to answer your questions about traveling less developed countries.

As it says on the pretty flyer to the left, this event is free and open to the public, at the American Hotel (also known as the new HI Seattle hostel) at 520 S. Kings St. We'll be in the common room at 6:30.

I plan on bringing some of my gear, including my backpack, to show what kinds of stuff I packed for my trip, and what I do and don't recommend that you bring as well. We're not just going to talk at you, this is going to be an open discussion, addressing concerns and questions of whoever is there. The focus will be on helping first-time independent travelers who want to go to less developed areas, but there might be a few stories to share as well.

So, come and bring friends! I'll see you there.

(BTW, for the Facebook inclined, the event is online here.)

Unpacking

I've been waiting to write this entry for a long time. I've had a million ideas about what to say. Sometimes, only halfway through my journey, I'd think I knew exactly what I was going to say at the end. But those things are not what I thought they would be. They were what I thought at the middle.

As much as I hate writing it, this is the end. For this trip. My backpack is sitting in my closet, empty. This trip is over.

I'm not technically home, but in some ways I'm closer to home now than I could be when actually there. I'm sitting in the house my grandfather built out of stone, all those years ago, after coming back from World War II. I'm sleeping in my mother's old room, which wasn't ready for her to sleep in until she was almost a teenager. It's very pink.

Outside is the river valley my mother and her brothers played in up to adulthood. If you see how my uncles spend time with their tractors and dirt bikes, you could argue they never stopped. Halfway down the dirt road between the stone house and the barn is a half-disintegrated truck, the back of which was the playhouse for my cousins and me when we visited. I think we spent most of our time making gourmet meals out of mud. Maybe they were just pies.

Surrounding us is the garden my grandmother spent most of her life tending. Just up the hill, along the road that bears our family name, is the stone that marks her final resting place. The cows we kept have been sold, but the horses are still around. I can't remember being somewhere with so many birds and wild deer, something I never really appreciated much before leaving.

This ranch is one of the few places I know with no cell phone reception. My aunt and uncle's place on the other end of this part of our property has the only internet, connected by satellite. Every month, my mother comes for a long weekend. Growing up, every couple of months, depending on my school schedule, I would come up with her.

I used to think of it as being not that worthy of note compared to the other wondrous things in the world. But now I've seen those other things, and, this spring, this place looks as beautiful and deep as the best of them.

It makes sense to end my journey where my journey began. It's not exactly the same place it used to be when I left, but I'm not the same guy I used to be when I left it, so I guess fair's fair.

Ever since I turned about eighteen, my life has had a lot of goodbyes. I got good at them. Either they came with leaving Seattle for college in Chicago or coming back, every break, or to some other place entirely and home again. Parting ways with people and places is like going to sleep. Part of life.

The secret to handling it is knowing that, short of death, none of them are permanent. I never really say goodbye. I just say "see you later." Because there's no way of knowing you'll never see each other again.

So when I say goodbye to this adventure, it's not goodbye to adventure. Adventure and I go way back now, and I expect we'll cross paths again sometime. Maybe sometime soon. But for this trip, it's time we went our separate ways.

I've learned a lot. I've become more of a risk taker, comfortable with anyone I meet, adaptable to any circumstance, and resourceful in any situation. I hope for new chances to put all those things to good use.

So while I sit here at one of the places that smiles when I call it 'home,' I can relax, trying my best to hold on to all the memories of the world, knowing at least half of them will slip through my fingers back to where they came from. I'll have the photographs, the journal entries, and the tidbits I wrote here. Beyond that, it's going to be me trying to hum the tunes somebody played for me somewhere far away, hoping I still get some of the notes right.

So, what's next for me? Well, I'm in a play, going up in the end of June, in Seattle (EDIT: No I'm not. The show has been canceled. Twice.). I'll be making some music, spending time with my family, keeping myself busy with all those things I could never do on the road. After that, unless some big opportunity grabs me somewhere else, I'll be heading to the next adventure in New York City. Before that, I have a lot of things to sort out from this trip. Tickets, guidebooks. Pictures. Videos. And I'll keep writing.

This blog will be reorganized, to put emphasis on the places I've been, rather than the most recent thing I've written. And any future public announcements regarding my travel, writing, music, new blogs, or anything else interesting will show up here, the usual online outlets (twitter, Facebook, google buzz), and on a new website I'm tinkering with (as of this writing, still under construction): www.joelrputnam.com.

But this will probably be the last blog post of its kind. I'd like to post a few more tips. Maybe a "where is he now" sort of post in a few weeks. I might even upload a couple of those videos I mentioned, if I think they're good enough. That's all.

Thank you, everyone, everywhere. This adventure has been everything I hoped and more. I will leave you all with three words that I think sum up my feelings nicely:

Best. Planet. Ever.

---
Check out this entry's Photos.

What I Think

Halfway through the trip, sitting in the Beijing bus station, before heading to Mongolia, a Chinese man asked me about my trip. I told him what I was doing.

"Well, what do you think?" He asked.

"What do I think about what?" I asked.

He looked confused. "You're going everywhere. You've been to many places."

"Yes."

"So... what do you think?"

I wasn't prepared for that question. I still only think I understood the gist of it. But it's something I thought about a lot over the next half of the trip.

After getting back to Seattle for the first time, I had lunch with a couple good friends of mine. They're smart people who I've known for a few years now. When I made an offhand joke about how everybody asks me what my favorite place was, one of them immediately nodded and said:

"You see, Joel, what they mean when they ask you that is, 'what did you learn?'"

Whether or not that's always true, it's a good question. Reminded me of Mr. "What do you think."

I've spent a lot of time writing. Not just this blog, but just... stuff. Things I thought were interesting. True stories that were too long for posting. Fiction, and lots of it. And some of the things I read, was told, and observed that made the most sense to me.

Often I get cagey about my opinions or life lessons. Partially it's because I'm only 23, no better than anyone else, why should I try to pretend I know something others don't? Partially it's because I don't want find out I'm wrong, and have someone in the back of the room get up and yell that everything I just said is a lie

But I've been around the world now. And I have learned a few things. Maybe they aren't all correct, but after going halfway to everywhere, they make sense to me. Now that I'm home, I figure I could share some of those things.

We humans are great at finding what we look for. When we travel, we look for something new, out of the ordinary. When we're at home, we have the same opportunities, but don't see them because we're not looking for them. People are fascinated with what is foreign to them. Things that are far away. So much so that sometimes, when they come that distance, they keep everything around them far away. When they come home, it's as if they were never actually close to where they went.

Time may be money, but good information can be worth more than the two combined.

People usually believe anything you tell them, unless they have reason not to. We tend to obey authority figures, or even just those who seem to be authorities/have symbols of authority.

Telling people you care is often better help than just doing their chores or feeding them. Everybody loves to be given a genuine smile. People have a hard time focusing on altruistic things if they are dealing with personal things.

When you're the last of your kind, you get stuck in conservative ways to preserve your culture and status. When you're in a big group of your kind, you try to do things differently, to innovate, to stand out. People all over the world want to be accepted, yet they want to stand out. They refuse labels, but they will vigorously defend those they feel to be like them. People have a nasty disposition to decide people who aren't like them are less than human, or at least inferior to those like them. Usually they will have logical reasons. If you treat people like scoundrels, they'll often start acting like them. If you treat them like responsible adults, they'll often start acting like them. Peace usually isn't bought about by moderates. Lasting peace is when two most extreme enemies come together in agreement.

The fastest way to convince people of your point of view is not by arguing based on shared facts. It's by teaching them different facts. Most disagreements come not because people disagree about what should be done about a problem, but because they are operating on a different set of facts. The easiest way to get people to do something is to offer it to them as a choice. Nobody wants to be acted upon, everybody derives satisfaction from control. Some people think that's where happiness comes from. Let them choose as if it is completely of their free will.

People often observe their actions in order to determine their beliefs, instead of letting their beliefs guide their actions.

People love to say the world is getting smaller every day. Well, I've seen the world, and I'm here to tell you it's still pretty big.

Maybe you don't agree with everything I say. Probably a lot of it is wrong. But I hope it will make you think about yourself, people and the world we live in.

The Trip by the Numbers

This is a rough idea of my route, thanks to Google Maps.

I've been spending the free time over the last couple days re-reading my journals and sorting the photos I took. I'll have some big fancy homecoming blog entry for you in a few days. But first I thought I'd throw this and some facts at you to make curious people happy.

So, here's the trip breakdown. Request other statistics and I might add them.

Departure from home: Sept 23rd, 2008.

Departure from USA: Sept 27th, 2008.

Continents visited: Seven.

Countries visited: 63-69, depending on how you count.

Country list (*-indicates v. brief stay, layover, or not really independent country): Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands*, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile*, Antarctica*, Brazil, Uruguay*, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong*, China, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland*, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Vatican City, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian West Bank*, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, USA.

Return to USA: April 27th, 2010-- 19 months after departure from USA.

Final(?) return home: May 23rd, 2010-- 20 months after departure from home.

Longest bus ride: 3 days, Ushuaia to Buenos Aires.
Shortest plane ride: 25 minutes, Quito to Guayaquil, en route to Galapagos islands.
Longest plane ride: 13 hours, Buenos Aires to Auckland (slept through the whole thing)
Number of times crossing equator: Six
Plane rides: 18
Long distance boat rides: Six
Long distance bus/train rides: 1 metric f--- ton.
Photos taken: More than 11,000

In Memory of Tommy Nez, 1926-2010

A picture of pictures. Us sharing memories of Tommy most of us were too young to ever have ourselves. This was after the service, before we came to his home to find his final message for my father. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, our arrival.

The first thing we did was to get ourselves a hotel room. That way, when we visited each family, we could say "Oh, no, thank you but we already have a place to stay!" The next was to figure out who to visit first. There was no right answer to this. So we just went. The next tricky bit was remember not to compliment them on any of their material possessions-- if we did that, they would insist on giving them to us, and would only be dissuaded after a lot of haggling. Hosts don't get more hospitable than this, and I've met some hospitable hosts.

Weirdly, what it all reminded me of was my experience in Japan. It's a very different culture, but it's similar in that I was expecting a somewhat closed, subtle people with cold undertones. Instead, I met friendly, vibrant, easygoing people who could chat about anything seemingly without end.

There are some rules to observe. Eye contact is not encouraged. If you shake someone's hand, a firm handshake is not appreciated nearly so much as lightly holding their hand for a second. Silence is not the awkward absence of conversation, but the presence of something familiar. If you do say something, there's not much need to be short and to the point, or to connect it to whatever anyone else happens to be talking about. Things like touching and hugging happens between only close friends and family.

Which is why it was a surprise to me for my father, mother and I to get warm, long hugs from almost every person we met. That's what really drove home the love and respect my father commanded in this community. He'd lived in the area for about 17 years, so I shouldn't have been surprised. I don't think I heard a single person call him "Bob." It was always "Dr. Bergman," or "Uncle." Tommy's son, upon meeting us before the service, gave him a very long hug and told him "I guess I'm going to be calling you 'father' now."

While the hugging is unusual, a friendly greeting to everyone present is customary. The morning of the service, we got full demonstrations from each person who drove up to the front of the little church, just over the border into Arizona. Like all the other dry, high plains I'd been too, it was cold at night and hot in the day. We were out early enough to still be comfortable in jackets. We stood in a circle, quietly chatting. Some crying, most smiling. Ron, Tommy's son, was smiling when he excused himself, and as he walked away, called over "Uncle." My father and he stood apart, talking quietly for a moment before coming back to us.

"He want's us to come back to the home after the service" My father said. "Apparently, Tommy left something for me."

I'd known that Ron had moved into Tommy's old house on the part of the reservation called Wide Ruins. We'd heard how he had performed the traditional rite of keeping a fire burning there for the four days after the loved one has died.I had only the vaguest memories of the place, small buildings at the end of a dirt road in the Arizona desert.

The Franciscan monk, charged with leading the service, arrived, and promptly showed his lack of cultural know-how by walking right through the crowd, acknowledging it, barely, without a single handshake volunteered. He was surprised when the one person at the end wanted to shake his hand. A few minutes later, we followed him inside.

The pink-beige stone church was tiny. We had come early, and were asked to sit in the very front with the immediate family. The place filled up slowly, even as the ceremony began. The first and main part of it was awkward. It was Catholic. Very catholic. The monk had the repeated and awkward habit of talking about how devoted Tommy was to Jesus. Some of the principal mourners clearly had no intention of participating in this. After all, this was the funeral for a road man (spiritual leader) of the Native American Church. In the sermon, the monk admitted freely that had actually never known Tommy. But I did like the story he told of talking with the family: "I asked whether I should call Tommy by the name of Thomas, or Tommy. They told me 'if you called him Thomas, he probably wouldn't answer.'"

The service went on, accidentally skipping the eulogy, on out to the procession to the graveyard.

To my mind, this is where the real funeral began. A tall Navajo man with two eagle feathers in his hat stepped forward, and explained he would be singing a few songs and saying a few words to the best of his ability, and that those who could were welcome to join him. He was the head of the local NAC.

He started with a long, thin whistle. An eagle bone. It made a noise that made me think of seagulls. He dipped an eagle feather in water, and flicked it to the four directions: east, south, west, then north, to follow the course of the sun. And then he, and those around him, began to sing. It was a desert kind of song. The melody wasn't so important. It was the rhythm and words, rocks bouncing on the ground in the wind. More whistle, more water. Some from the feather, some tears.

But it wasn't over after that. Next was the military. An honor guard of ten Native American veterans had come to honor their fallen comrade. A speech, a three-round gun salute, and taps on the bugle. The American flag on the coffin was removed, folded, and handed from ranking officer to private, with a salute. Several men in the audience, veterans of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, quietly joined the salute. Then from male soldier to female soldier. Then from female soldier, to Tommy's widow. Another salute. Then a big hug. A man in the crowd gave two sharp hoots and an "oorah" of the marine corps.

The coffin was lowered six feet. Then its plywood cover. Then the first flowers and fistfuls of dirt, one mourner at a time. Then we pulled aside for the earthmover to do the rest of the burial. It was there that the family finally got to read Tommy's eulogy.

This is where we finally got to tell the world about the Tommy Nez, born into the Red House People Clan to the Towering House People Clan, February 6, 1926. Veteran of WWII and the Korean War. Roadman to Navajo, and throughout the western United States and Canada, receiving his fireplace from one of the originals, and heralded by his family as the last of his kind. A father, brother, uncle, grandfather and great-grandfather. A charismatic and compassionate leader with a legendary sense of humor and love for seemingly all people. Loved in his life, much missed in his passing. With this, and the flowers on his grave, the service ended.

A few hours later, after we had shared photos, memories, and a lot of food with the "dearly beloved gathered there that day," my parents and I set out in our rental car, and made several false turns trying to find Tommy's old home. Even though the desert is made of rocks and not sand, Wide Ruins' dirt roads have the habit of shifting when your back is turned for a few years.

When we did find the place, we were invited into one of the buildings-- a one-room home, the kind I'd seen in so many developing countries, with simple walls covered in posters and calendars, and in this case, an American flag. Ron sat on the bed, My father on an overstuffed easy chair and a blanket. Ron pulled out a case, opened it, and lifted out two ceremonial rattles. Then he glanced up at us, gave a mischievous grin and said, "No. No." Just the way tell off a dog staring at your dinner.

He dug a little bit further and pulled out what he had been looking for: an elaborate, beautifully decorated ceremonial fan, made with white feathers.

"Before he left, my father said you'd come down here." Ron said, "He said 'when your uncle gets here, you honor him, and you give him this.'"

"You think he knew that he probably wasn't coming back?" My father asked.

Ron nodded. Tommy knew.

Driving away from it all, my father said that part of him still doesn't believe it. I've never known anyone who called me brother to die, but from what I know, it's a long time before any of us will believe he's gone. Maybe we never really will.

---
Check out this entry's Photos.

We're Not Done Yet.

I thought my trip was over. I was wrong.

Thursday, I leave for my next destination. Something tragic has happened. I love travel, and I'm going somewhere I wanted to go. But I didn't want this to be the reason why.

A long time ago, there was a young doctor who went from Chicago to the southwestern corner of the United States. To avoid being drafted into a war he didn't believe in, he had taken a job with the Public Health Service. The job was on the Navajo reservation. Most people who came to Navajo for these jobs do it for two years and then leave. 

This doctor didn't leave. He stayed. Soon after the two year mark, he was approached by a medicine man of the tribe named Tommy Nez. It's not clear what expectation either man had of the other. But it's doubtful that either could have predicted then what later occurred: the doctor was adopted into the Nez family as Tommy's younger brother.

The doctor rose became the chair of mental health programs for the Indian Health Service. While he climbed the ladder of his career, his adoptive brother showed him things he didn't think were physically possible. Miracles.

Years later, after the doctor had given his position to an Indian man, as seemed proper, he fell in love with a young woman who lived in the north. They married. They wanted to have a child, but they weren't able to. The doctor told his brother, the medicine man, and asked for his help. Together they held a ceremony in a sweat lodge.

Nine months later, I was born. My father still credits my existence to my uncle, Tommy.

Since my father's time on Navajo was long before I even existed, I don't know that much about that side of the family. I've been to the reservation only twice when I was old enough to remember, and most of the time I spent playing with kids. The last time I saw Tommy was when he showed up at our door one day when I was about fifteen. I was the only one at home. Neither of us recognized the other at first.

He was up in Canada these last two weeks, visiting his friends and family. He suffered a heart attack and had to be hospitalized. My father came out to see him. They spent some time together there. My father knew that Tommy wasn't in good shape. The doctors didn't think he was in any condition to undergo any procedures. It could very well be the last time they saw each other. Knowing all this, as the visit came to an end, my father said goodbye, and left the room.

He went down the hallway, turned into the washroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Then he turned around and went back to get the hat he had forgotten in Tommy's room.

"I guess I'm reluctant to leave." My dad said. Tommy smiled at that.

The next Friday, Tommy died quietly in the hospital.

I'm going with my mother and father to his funeral. We fly to Albuquerque Thursday morning, rent a car, and drive a few hours from there to look for his family. Our family.

This isn't the usual sort of adventure I like to post about on here. But it seems like it may be a story worth telling. I don't know what we'll find. The service could be Catholic, or if could be Native American Church, or something else entirely. But I'll see what I can share, in honor of a man who might have made me possible.