Travelers’ Advisory
We asked our globetrotting alumni and faculty for their advice for first-time international wayfarers—and for some stories from their adventures.
Put away your cell phone and the GPS.
Get lost.
Ask for directions.
Jake Moore ’12, Director, ScholarShop Africa, Cameroon
Choose the Complete Unknown
About a decade ago I went through an existential crisis. I had lost my direction and grown melancholy.
Remembering that travel always fed and renewed my soul, I took out my globe and spun it. My finger landed on New Zealand. So I booked a two-week trip to Auckland with the goal of doing whatever came my way.
En route to the hotel I’d already booked and paid for, I asked the driver what I should see and do. He told me to tour the country. So I changed plans and was renting a camper van when some young ladies told me that I couldn’t leave Auckland without jumping off the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere.
Within two hours of landing in this far-off place, I found myself standing at the edge of the SkyTower, a structure very similar to the Seattle Space Needle. I was trembling (I have a fear of heights) but opted to take the leap and trust my mission. To this day I consider the jump suicide without consequence.
It took mere seconds for me to land, yet I was transformed completely by the time my wobbly feet felt safe again on terra firma. I spent the next two weeks in the camper van traveling the whole of the north island of that country. Reignited with a zest for life, I bungee-jumped for the first time, took my virgin jump out of an airplane at 15,000 feet, slid my body into a giant air ball and went Zorbing down a mountain side, and accidentally, nearly drove off the cliff of the northernmost tip of New Zealand.
Smike Wallen ’90, founder, Smike Wallen Living
Traveler’s Lexicon
Coddiwomple (English slang): To travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.
Taste the Place
Where: A makeshift Chinese restaurant, plastic tables set up every night in a parking lot in Petaling Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
When: After sunset
What: Curry leaf crabs
Who: We were usually the only Anglos in the place, but the clientele often reflected the general demographics of Malaysia—about 50 percent Muslim Malays, 25 percent ethnic Chinese, and about 10 percent Indian, primarily Tamil.
A group of Sikh guards from a local jewelry store regularly patronized the place, consuming copious amounts of food and merrily swilling multiple bottles of hooch they brought to enhance the occasion. At first we experienced some trepidation, as they were armed to the teeth with rifles and we were slightly concerned that armaments and high-octane alcohol might be an unhappy combination.
But over time they grew comfortable with us and we with them, and every evening that we met them we all smiled and nodded in friendly acknowledgement as we ate our crabs under the stars and the streetlights.
Kay Widdows H’07, John H. Schroeder Chair and Professor of Economics
Read Up
Read up on where you're going and consider what is good behavior and what is not.
Also, be wary in large cities: Americans can be easy pickings.
I recall meeting up with Wabash Professor Melissa Butler H’85 in Rome many years ago. My pocket was picked on the bus we took from the station. It was a real adventure to get any kind of restitution.
Then there was a time, years ago, when a Wabash student was visiting me in Athens. He went out one night and was cajoled into a bar by someone who said that his brother had a bar in the student's own hometown in the U.S. The naïve student was then seated in the bar next to Chrysoula, a woman of age and size, and champagne was ordered. The student had to pay.
He went to the U.S. Embassy to report the incident but nothing happened.
Be aware!
John Fischer H’70, Professor Emeritus of Classics
Traveler’s Lexicon
Strikhedonia (Greek): The pleasure of being able to say, “To hell with it!”
Pay Attention to What the Locals Do…
…and emulate them.
Consider the problem of crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for example. The streets are multi-laned and clogged at any time of day with all means of conveyances—buses, cars, trucks, motorbikes, carts, scooters. Traffic laws do not seem to apply.
But if you watch and wait, you will observe that the drivers and pedestrians in this city have developed and perfected an elaborate and subtle ballet that allows both to coexist. You walk directly into the traffic at a steady pace, exactly matching the pace of the people ahead of you, and under no circumstances do you stop even if you perceive a bus bearing down on you.
Kay Widdows
Take A Leap of Faith
Professors Ethan Hollander and Christie Byun found casual encounters with locals to be the most memorable moments of their three weeks in Cairo. They recall one in particular in this excerpt from a Wabash On My Mind podcast:
Christie: Egypt is a very social society. People hang out at cafes and on the street—they’re friendly, open. If you start a conversation with one person in Cairo, a crowd forms. All these helpful onlookers—it becomes a communal activity.
Ethan: Even if you don’t speak Arabic, and they don’t speak English.
Christie: Especially then.
Ethan: Remember those kids at the tower?
Christie: Minaret.
Ethan: … minaret. Essentially a tower on the old city walls of Cairo. We're up there, and there's this little step at the very end of it. We’re 10 stories up in the air… Christie: It’s scary up there.
Ethan: We're scared of taking this little precarious step out onto the viewing balcony of this minaret. But there are these kids there. They don’t speak English. So they use gestures, trying to coax us to take that step. They make it clear that they're going to catch us as we come across.
And that’s what they do.
Then a whole conversation without words ensues. We're taking pictures with each other. We're exchanging Facebook information. We're Facebook friends with some of these people now. We still can't really talk to them.
Christie: All their posts are in Arabic. If anybody out there knows Arabic, you can at least tell us what they are saying.
Ethan: Now we’re getting a translator?
Make Room for the Unexpected
One evening in Tatvan on the shore of Lake Van in far-eastern Turkey, my wife, Kay, and I walked up and down the town’s main street in search of beer. We saw nothing except men drinking tea. Resigned to return to our hotel room sans beer, we were waiting to cross the street when a young red-haired man approached and asked if he could be of service.
Turned out that he and his father ran a kind of local tourist agency. When we told him that all we wanted was a beer, he led us to a back street and up a dark staircase to an even darker room whose only light came from a beer cooler against one wall. I purchased three bottles of Efes, and we found a seat. As our eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, we saw other drinking parties of men only. All were Kurds, singing Kurdish songs and speaking in that language as well.
We engaged our new friend for the following day to show us some sights in the district. These included volcanic mountain clearings with large, warm-water pools whose color was either bright green or bright blue. Driving across a surreal volcanic plain, our guide led us to his family’s farm where we met some of his several brothers and sisters. We were treated as honored guests, given tea, fresh bread, cheese, and produce from the farm. At one point, our guide’s mother took us to an outbuilding to show us how she made cheese and yogurt.
Eric Farber ’65, Istanbul, Turkey
Traveler’s Lexicon
Vagary (English): An unpredictable instance, a wandering journey; a whimsical, wild or unusual idea, desire, or action.
Dream Like You Mean It
Many people never achieve the things they want to because they dream vaguely, and dread specifically. They want to travel the globe, but they're vague about how to get there, and they allow dread to distract them from doing the work and the planning required.
My wife, two children, and I sailed our 43-foot catamaran Hakuna Matata around the world. We had actually made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Caribbean, and through the Panama Canal. We were now in the Pacific. Wow! The fishing line was out and the tuna were biting.
The magnificent Galapagos Islands were about 600 miles away, but as it turns out, they might as well have been on the other side of the world. The sun was out, the mainsail and genoa were filled, but we weren’t making any meaningful progress toward our destination.
There’s a concept in sailing called “velocity made good” (VMG). Because a sailboat won’t move if pointed directly into the wind, you have to sail at an angle to it. You can be speeding along but not getting any closer to where you really want to go. VMG is the speed you’re actually moving toward your destination. Our VMG toward the Galapagos was simply awful!
The same thing may occur in our day-to-day lives: Our VMG just isn’t good enough. We have our eyes on a goal, or a dream, and yet there are forces—both seen and unseen—working against our realizing those dreams.
A key question to ask yourself to begin counteracting those forces is: Do I really know where I’m heading and where I want to go? Said another way—how am I dreaming?
You need to be highly intentional about your dreams.
Jeremy Cage ’86, president, The Cage Group
(excerpted from All Dreams on Deck: Charting the Course for Your Life and Work, by Jeremy Cage)
Traveler’s Lexicon
Yügen (Japanese): An awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and mysterious for words.
Choose the Right Travel Partner
The best travel partners are adaptable, adventurous, intellectually curious, patient, and able to discern beauty in great monuments as well as in the smallest and most humble places. Melissa Butler and I have been so many trips together—from sailing the Galapagos Islands to getting up before down to make it to the Temple of the Three Windows at Macchu Picchu for sunrise on the day of the summer solstice. She is fearless, tireless, relentlessly positive, and ever ready for what might be coming around the corner. She has been a great mentor and role model for me. She’s from a long line among the great Wabash travelers that includes John Fischer and the late Hall Peebles H’63.
Kay Widdows
Taste the Place
Where: Deborah and Andrew Firth’s Hillcrest House, Wigtown, Scotland
When: Breakfast, dinner
What: Hillcrest features a Scottish breakfast, including a choice of six or eight varieties of jam and marmalade made from locally grown fruit.
Here are a few of Deb’s choice dinner dishes: a rump steak known as a Pope’s nose; roasted vegetables like fennel, sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots, and russet potatoes; locally sourced lamb chops that, because they came from animals raised in the nearby salt marsh were, Andrew claims, self-marinated; baked chicken rolled in bacon and served with a casserole of chickpeas, chorizo, tomatoes, mushrooms, and fennel.
There are lovely desserts, too. One of the best is summer pudding molded into tower shapes and surrounded with fresh blueberries and raspberries. Eric Farber ’65
Something magical happens when we are forced to eat, sleep and be conscious of ourselves without the comforts of our chosen life back home. In Bali, I’ve had this experience many times, and it’s perhaps the reason I return. The stillness and angst of being a foreigner alone in an accepting cultural environment renews the soul.
Smike Wallen ’90
Traveler’s Lexicon
Smultostalle (Swedish): A special place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation.
Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist
The Catholic author G. K. Chesteron wrote, “The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” It is one of life’s most important maxims: Be a traveler, not a tourist, especially when you are visiting countries whose governments and economies may not be as advanced as yours and whose citizens are often, as a result, more self-conscious and sensitive about foreigners’ opinions.
Travelers are true, spontaneous visitors, guests who mingle with their hosts, eat their foods.
Tim Padgett ’84, Americas Correspondent, WLRN-Miami and the Miami Herald
Taste the Place
Where: Any good local cantina in Mexico
When: Around 3:00 p.m., when much of the country still eats its long lunch, la comida.
What: tequila reposada (aged) with the accompanying glass of sangrita, spicy tomato juice. Have some queso fundido con chistorra (cheese and Spanish sausage) and a sopa Azteca (tortilla soup). Follow that with some tacos al pastor (shepherd’s tacos) or huachinango (red snapper) or pollo en mole (chicken in a heavenly chocolate-and-spices sauce). Enjoy a tres leches (milk cake) for dessert, then have the waiter bring you a set of dominoes and play a few games while keeping your tequilas in the drink holsters you usually find on the table legs.
If possible: Pay one of the guitar trios that often wander cantinas to serenade you with a tune like “Esta tarde vi llover.” Talk to someone—if you do not speak Spanish, this is a good way to start learning.
Tim Padgett ’84
“Take Off Your Jackets and Ties!”
In Strasbourg, France, during an immersion trip that Professor Melissa Butler and I led, we made arrangements to visit the office of a Dutch member of Parliament. The students were all nicely attired in their jackets and ties as we made our way to the European Parliament Building.
We never got there.
The French dockworkers union was staging a very vigorous demonstration outside the building protesting a bill that would lengthen the workweek.
When we arrived, the scene was pure chaos, with the police in riot gear armed with truncheons and teargas. The police screamed at us to get out, but it was not immediately clear where we were to go.
Then some of the rioting dockworkers noticed our students and began to move toward them. Professor Butler realized what was happening and yelled at the students, “Take off your jackets and ties! They think you’re EU bureaucrats!”
We eventually threaded our way out of the pandemonium, without anyone being tear-gassed. The students missed the interview with the MP but we all got a great lesson in French politics.
Kay Widdows
Traveler’s Lexicon
Numinous (English): Describing an experience that makes you fearful yet fascinated, awed yet attracted.
Accept An Invitation
A few years ago while driving through Armenia, I stopped at sunset in a town near a monastery I wanted to visit. I quickly discovered that there was one hotel, and all four of its rooms were all taken.
I walked into the main square and finally found a young man who spoke a bit of English. I asked this fellow if he knew of anywhere I could stay. He thought for a moment, then asked if I would be willing to stay with his parents. We went to their apartment. The parents agreed and moved out of their bedroom so I could sleep there. Then the mother cooked me a very good Armenian meal.
Of course I left them a nice payment, but they never asked for it and were sincerely grateful.
On another day I decided to drive about six hours to a medieval Armenian monastery. After some careful navigation I eventually rounded a bend in the road, and there was the monastery in all of its beauty. And it was being attacked with guns and swords by men on horseback with big fur hats.
What in the hell was going on? Had I time traveled? Are Cossacks still roaming the Caucasus?
As I stood watching this with disbelief along with a few other people, someone explained that a movie was being made. Within two hours, I was in the monastery and mingling with real monks and actors dressed like Cossacks and smoking cigarettes.
Wherever you are, do more than the guidebooks tell you to do. If you are willing to drive in a foreign country, then don’t just get on the super highways and drive from city to city. Wander. Wonder. Stroll around both towns and countryside. Accept an invitation. Be ready when opportunity comes along.
As Auntie Mame says in the book of that name, “Life is a banquet and too many sons of bitches are starving themselves.”
Don’t starve yourselves, men of Wabash!
Bill Cook ’66, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, SUNY Geneseo
Traveler’s Lexicon
Eleutheromania (English): An intense and irresistible desire for freedom.