Dec 5th, 2008
Ask The Readers: Choose my own adventure.
Okay, people. Welcome to your chance to tell me what to do. Time to stop reading and start talking. Here’s the deal:
I read a great five-part article yesterday by Kelly McEvers on Slate about how she found a real pirate in Indonesia. It took her three weeks of hanging out with shady ex-pirates to finally connect with him. It’s a good story. Inspirational, too.
As I read through it, I thought, “That could be me. I want to do things like that. I could go find pirates. Why the hell not?”
“But, Nathan, what does this have to do with me,” you ask?
I want you to come up with ideas for what you’d like to see me do in the coming months.
What sort of missions and concepts can you think of? Got anything you’d like to know about the world? Something you always wanted to try? (Or at least have a human guinea pig try for you?) Use “find a real pirate” as what I consider to be a good example. It can be anything, though — interesting, funny, dangerous, inappropriate, stupid, gimmicky, crazy, sexy, cool (big ups TLC?) — whatever.
You come up with it, I do it, document it, and report back. It’s like the Subservient Chicken of travel blogs.
Some other good examples are some of the travel segments done by Vice Magazine’s vbs.tv. For example, they went to Colombia looking for a drug called scopolamine used by criminals to render victims completely open to suggestion who are then robbed and raped. Apparently half of the emergency room admissions in Bogota are related to scopolamine. The guy initially thought it would be a funny story, but it ended up being a terrifying and awful drug.
They went back to Chernobyl 20 years after the melt down. They hung out in a gypsy village in Bulgaria. They found people that have sex with donkeys in Colombia like it ain’t no thang. New Years in Kabul, an actual Pakistani arms market, a Japanese porn producer who puts live eels inside his actors (yeah, eel porn), gay leather culture, people that live off of garbage in Manilla, etc.
Seriously; throw anything out there. It needn’t even be super crazy or topical. Cool if it is, though.
Obviously, where I am could affect your suggestions. I am leaving Poland next Thursday, December the 11th to go to Budapest. From there I’m headed to Turkey. Then to India and then Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam). As per usual, these destinations are not set in stone. I’d be glad to go somewhere else if there’s a good enough reason to go there.
Got an idea? Got two? Write ‘em in the comments. Let’s see what we can come up with.
Shoot, I’m guessing it’s too late for the donkey sex in Columbia. I’m going to say you should move to India and become a call in tech support worker. Surely your moderate command of the English language would make you a shoo-in. Maybe you could even help people install printer drivers.
That is awesome. I actually asked an Indian girl if she thought I could get hired at the call center one time when I called an airline and got routed to the sub-continent. The script had nothing for that and it threw her off. Thanks, Gage.
pee in the danube. should be easy enough, right?
take pictures of you peeing on the daube. then send them out as christmas cards. full frontal exposure necessary.
@ brian: Hah. Done and done. Easy.
@ joey: Oh yes. Assume that there will be pictures and/or video of any attempted or completed venture. Maybe we’ll save the special full-frontal ones for you and Jayson, though, instead of the whole family.
Long time reader, first time commenter. I had to give props for using Matthew Lesko to start off this post (he was my Halloween costume a couple years back). You should probably direct your inquiry to him, as he probably could get the Gov’t to fund your whole trip for you through grants!! (he would have said it in all caps)
As far as my suggestion; I’ve seen cool pictures of abandoned amusement parks in, i think, Japan. According to wikipedia (which, like George Washington cannot tell a lie) there are no abandoned amusement parks on your planned route, so I vote for anything abandoned (or haunted) that you can find.
1. Go to Afghanistan/Pakistan and look for Osama Bin Ladin.
2. Gain access to a nuclear missile silo in the Ukraine.
3. Talk local politics with a Kurd politician from Turkey.
4. Open a Swiss bank account and negotiate for the rental of the country of Liechtenstein.
I’ll think of some more as time advances.
Hi Nathan – really enjoyed catching up on your travels! When you get to India, it would be a shame not to take a dip in the Ganges – if you can find an area that’s not too disgusting or polluted! Some Hindus believe life is incomplete without bathing in the Ganga at least once in one’s lifetime!
Definitely have to visit a hamam in Turkey. Seems too obvious though…
Eric says you should go to Greenland and find a Viking, but I don’t know about that. I think you should go to Seville during Holy Week and participate in one of the many Catholic processions as an altar boy/man. I don’t why, but I think that would be awesome. Plus after the processions everyone goes off and drinks a shit ton of sangria.
DiOs MiO!!!!…. me va a dar ataque de nervios con esto!!!, que no seria mas facil que me mates de un tiro??
Excellent, people. This is getting good.
@ Cory: Abandoned stuff. That’s good. I like it. Also good because it will likely require interaction with the locals to find things. I wonder how many people with limited English know the word “abandoned?” Also, glad you noticed the Lesko, though I just Googled “question mark guy” to find him.
@ Gromski: A stand-out list! I’m actually seriously considering number 2 — the Ukrainian nuclear missile silo option. I’ll need to come up with a reasonable cover story to get in. Time to do some research on where the silos are. Surely there’s a Google Maps mashup or something, right? I’d want something further west and south, near the borders with Moldova or Romania. How hard could it be? (The other ones are funny, too, if a little implausible. Especially renting Liechtenstein.)
@ Sue: A dip in Ganges. Sure thing!
@ Gillian: Turkish bath: check! Wonder what we could do to make it more challenging or off-color?
@ Chris: Pretend to be an altar boy and infiltrate a Holy Week procession… That’s good. I like that a lot, actually, and it would be especially challenging because I’ve only been to one mass in my life and know nothing about Catholicism. Only problem is that I’m going to be nowhere near Spain (or Vikingville) in the spring.
@ Gaby: You’ll get over it.
… Keep ‘em coming, people! This is a good start.
It only costs $170,000 to rent Liechtenstein. If you got a Swiss bank account, you could pretend you had the money for the negotiations. In the end you would have to back out, but it would be a great story. How many people attempt to rent a country?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein
Look at the tourism portion.
I feel like the Ukraine would work because they don’t have nuclear weapons anymore but they are still decommissioning silos. The security is probably not real high for those.
Find a real-life vampire. None of this goth-looking, leather-clad, all talk crap. An honest to goodness human blood drinker (bursting into flames in sunlight and undead-ness not required).
I think Romania (or the surrounding area) might be your best shot.
Odds are good you’ll have to pretend to be into it.
Bonus points, find a cult of many.
DOUBLE bonus, watch “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” with him/her. Report back reactions to the vampire musical portion of the film.
Find a yogi in India. More than that, actually, convince him to teach you. And like many yogic teacher-student relationships (those I’ve read about, anyway), base the entire spiritual journey on a single question that you ask repeatedly: “Master, what is the point?” Maybe best attempted post-call center, for your sake. Or pre-call center, for the cusomters’ sake.
Feel free to alter the question to suit.
If you happen into Korea, check out the DMZ. I hear it’s been commercialized.
@ Jeff: Real vampires! That is stand-out awesome. I love it.
@ Ms. Veach: Indian spiritual guide. Check. Maybe I can try to turn it in to a marketing campaign for Jeff’s Yogihead Music venture without the knowledge of the actual Yogi.
Too bad you’re out of South America, find one of these in Eastern Europe.
http://www.newstatesman.com/south-america/2007/08/argentina-workers-movement
YES! I love the vampire idea. I think you need to visit a quintessential super creepy castle (that is most likely haunted with vampire demons and probably even werewolves or zombies) and stay overnight. Mmhmm.
Oh, but please don’t die of exposure.
I think you should go to Calcutta and hang/volunteer with the Mother Teresa nuns. You should also sail the Mekong when you’re in Southeast Asia.
Well, Mister – count me out of this one. No suggestions here – except don’t lose your head (or neck – as it were) chasing after vampires. Yikes.
don’t go to live in an ashram in india. they’re all bloody cults.
i think that you should include some good, old-fashioned physical exercise into your traveling. just to get your heart rate up every day. perhaps hire some kind of local guide and spend some time in the country.
perhaps body building??
or get a part time job somewhere so you can do work and see the fruits of your labor, then make a documentary about it.
ricardo wants you to take pictures of graffiti when you see a good roller, mural, stencil, or whatever.
you could learn how to cook.
shipley out.
Yesssssss!!!….ellas saben……..ya tu sabes!! hehe ..mmmmmmm wont say more about this,ya listo! mua!
@ Stiles: I actually did see a lot of protests in Argentina, though I must have missed the ceramicists defending their factory with slingshots. I’ll be sure to have a closer look if I stumble across anything of the ilk.
@ Erin: I actually spent about 2 mind-numbing hours yesterday reading about real vampires. I think my best bet is going to be a goth club. Details to follow…
@ Amy B.: While I question my ability to make a good or interesting connection with nuns (I think they might just hate me), I’ll give it a ponder!
@ Nanfan / Mom: That is very, well, motherly of you. How apropos!
@ Amy S.: While exercise and becoming a better cook might be good for me, they’re not quite in the spirit of what I’m talking about. They’re more in the unlisted “boring” category. Now maybe if I could get a job as a chef for a bunch of Samoan body-builders…
I like the graffiti idea. There are actually a couple of pictures in my first set from the trip. Ryan’s Indian call center may fit the bill for a job.
Remember the pirates, y’all. That or, “interesting, funny, dangerous, inappropriate, stupid, gimmicky, crazy, sexy, cool.”
Follow the path of the tunnel rats in Vietnam. I saw a Cities of the Underworld about that, very cool and freaky.
Learn how to be a snake charmer in India. That would be awesome. Just you and a cobra.
2 missions:
1. You should go to some of the places where my Dad was stationed in Vietnam. I know he reads this, so not sure what he’d thnk of that. But I’d certainly like seeing photos of you at the same spots he stood. I can contact him and see if there are any specific places of interest for him if that sounds interesting.
2. Zach Richer is in Turkey. Find him. Tell him that you were sent to find him. And that he’s urgently needed back in the States for some reason. Make it seem real. And strange. Involve the CIA. And Dan Somerville.
also….(beat) trip hop.
@ JD: You have stepped it up. I’d almost rather try to be a snake charmer than go exploring VC tunnels, considering my hatred of spiders. I’ll look in to it!
@ Dan: Don’t suppose there’s any chance your dad was a tunnel rat, is there? Probably too tall. Otherwise, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask him where some of the cities are that he had pictures taken in. I’d be glad to go looking for the spot and try to re-create the picture if I was in the area. Like it.
As far as Richer goes, I had forgotten he was in Turkey. I do like the idea of pulling a prank on him. He’s not my friend on Facebook at the moment, so I doubt he reads the blog. Maybe you could send me an email with what you know about where he is.
Hi Nathan,
I have something for you:
Can you hide a “treasure” for me and send me then the map so I can look for it?
I have a page on my blog dedicated to treasure hunt…
Can you do that? I will hide a treasure for you too.
Well this one has been kind of a toughy. There are already a lot of good suggestions, and I’m just not that creative.
-I had to look this up, I saw it on Planet Earth or the like. Certain oceans off the coast of Goa, India have bioluminescent bacteria in it so it looks like the water is glowing. It looks neat. You should drink the water.
-Travel somewhere by animal. Preferably an elephant.
-Eat at a McDonalds in India. I’m just kind of interested to hear what’s on the menu, without the beef. I’m sure it still tastes like a combination of hot sick and grandma.
-Visit a glacier, along with the Himalayas and the Ganges.
-And sorry to be so crude, but you shouldn’t be surprised. Take a crap in public. My former neighbor spent a month in India and said that he frequently saw people squat on the side of the road. And I don’t mean that to denigrate the people of India in any way. I know that it is more necessity than choice, and I still have nightmares about what some of the knuckle dragging trash did in the bathrooms at menards. They had a plethora of toilets to choose from, but many chose the floor, the toilet seat, or from time to time some creative hilljacks liked to do some finger painting. For me, smiley faces are now in the same nightmarish category as clowns and midgets. You should also stand by it smiling for an hour or so. I would think that would be very liberating.
And I think I have a suggestion for making the trip to Turkish bath a little more off color. Get a big sharpie and write on your chest “This is my BOOMstick” or maybe just the Turkish equivalent to $5 and draw a big arrow pointing down. Flesh colored speedos (I’m guessing bright white will do) would be a good investment, too. And pics or it didn’t happen. If you do, Andrew will sing any song of your choosing at the LVL when you return, as long as it is Trapped in the Closet by R. Kelly.
Comedy. Gold.
Do all of that.
Everyone in the hostel is looking at me like I’m crazy right now. I am crying from laughing so hard.
OK, I’m a lil’ slow so no surprise that someone (thank you Brian
already suggested Turkish bath. Though touted as “touristy” I say why seek the diamond-in-the-rough when you are next to the real deal. Seriously, I support it, when traveling to the City of Baths you should bathe! What could be more healing than soaking in the tepid bacterial soup as aged as humanity?
Finally I ask, “Will you hop down to Istanbul?” On a street level ask mano-y-mano (o mujer), Why did Constantinople get the works? And whose business is it anyway?
A few other ideas for India –
Take offerings to the temple Rajasthan, which is devoted to rats, and pray for their well-being. (The temple is chock-full of the little guys.)
Get a job on a Bollywood set – pass yourself off as an avant-garde director with international influence.
Participate in the Gujarat festival celebrating the god Shiva, where naked, ash-covered worshipers suspend boulders from their penises!
If Mongolia or Tibet appear on the schedule – some lessons in throat singing would be interesting!
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