Check
out The Volcano Climb to
Hell under Glimpses of the
Road, back on Randy's Travel
Page. Excursions
There you are, back on a bus again! "Guided Tours" are mostly for tourists, but group excursions with other travelers can be a convenient option. Some just take you to the usual tourist sites that you could just as well visit yourself at a leisurely pace. But in the countryside, it may be easier to organize a van to take you around to several remote sights that would be difficult or impossible to visit on your own. Sometimes the excursion is a hike to a village, a reef-diving trip, or the exploration of caves. In the bush, these excursions become serious safaris, jungle adventures, and guided mountain treks, but I'm just talking about a day out in the countryside. If you can "organize" this, it is probably already organized, and you only have to put together a group of five to ten people to hire a guide (and maybe a vehicle) for the more-or-less predetermined tour. It's a good way to get to know other travelers, too.
As tourism swells, there is an increasing number of places where such excursions to outlying sites can be put together cheaply for travelers. I have taken one day outings like this from Turphan and Kashgar (China), Lhasa (Tibet), Bukittingi (Indonesia), Nairobi (Kenya), Goreme (Turkey), Luang Prabang (Laos), Cairns (Australia), Sagada and Tanabag (Philippines), and probably a few other places I can't remember. Before taking advantage of such services, find out if you could see the same sights just as easily on your own at a more leisurely pace, in a smaller group, and for less money.
Check
out The Volcano Climb to
Hell under Glimpses of the
Road, back on Randy's Travel
Page.
Dogs
In the Third World, many dogs are of the "junkyard" variety, raised to be vicious watchdogs that keep strangers away. They may charge at you as you walk by, snarling, showing their teeth, and nipping at your heels; not a few of them will bite you without provocation! It can not only be frightening, but dangerous. I have been nipped numerous times and know people who have been seriously bitten. After these experiences, I cannot get rid of my extreme caution (fear) around strange dogs at home. You do not want to go through the hassle of trying to get the police to test the dog, and you do not want to suffer through a series of rabies shots! If you want to go jogging and there are any dogs within 10 kilometers, they will all gather just to watch each other bite you! Some countries have lazy, docile dogs, but they are the exceptions.
When you walk in the countryside, or even in some towns, it is a good idea to find a solid, heavy walking stick that you can use to keep dogs at bay. A knife is threatening, but won't keep you from being bitten. If you don't have a good stick, the best alternative is to keep a couple of big stones in your hand. In fact, just bending down and pretending to pick up a stone will make any dog back off for a while. They are used to people throwing stones at them. The Mexicans have a colloquial word for dog, "chucho", which can be understood by dogs all over the world. If you say it loudly and sharply, it sounds threatening to them. Or make up your own words, but use something besides "nice doggy."
A more elaborate alternative is a small squeeze bottle of ammonia that can project a good stream. This won't be very practical on the Road unless you are constantly plagued by animals. Ammonia in the face will strongly discourage just about any living thing; it is very strong stuff, but won't cause permanent damage, although it feels like it.
You can also assume that most dogs and cats have fleas, if not ringworm and other diseases. And those pathetically skinny dogs that love to lick your face are the ones who eat shit as a regular part of their diet. (Pardon my French, but these are the facts.) If you get in the habit of petting, picking up, and cuddling cute furry animals, the best that will happen is that you will get fleas; the worst is that you will get rabies, hepatitis, and fleas.
The planning doesn't stop when you leave home, it's still one of your major activities on the Road. You will spend many wonderful hours -- sometimes every night -- pouring over guidebooks, maps, and calendars, planning out your next moves, and wondering what it will all be like. Don't forget to interview as many travelers as you can, to get their varied opinions about where to go and what to see. It's also amazing to look back at all the places that were once only exotic mysteries, but which you now know like the back of your hand! "Oh, yeah, Kathmandu? It's a pretty fine place, but let me give you a couple of pointers..." You will be saying things like that all the time!
Cultural Research
Reading is not exactly a chore, and reading purely for pleasure falls under relaxation, but "research" can be a pleasant task. Aside from planning the mechanisms of your trip, some more interesting research you can do is to read literature that teaches you more about the countries you are visiting. I confess that I had never heard of Jim Thompson until I got near India, or Bruno Traven until Mexico, but their writings really opened my mind and heart to the traditional lives of the common people in those countries, and even taught me some vocabulary.
I also confess that I usually end up reading in depth about cultures only after I have already experienced them. Some people can study everything before they even leave home, but I have trouble remembering it without the context. Once I have experienced a culture however, I often become a rabid reader, and I return home with a long list of cultural and historical subjects to study.
If you are lucky, you may be able to find more serious studies of the cultures along the way, but nowdays, you can often at least find translations of the local classics, or tales of early western travelers. They may even send you off to discover new places that you hadn't heard of before. You can find plenty of lists in your guidebooks, and follow your own nose on the Road to discover rich sources of cultural background that are little known at home.
Chores are the everyday activities that take up the traveler's time when not traveling, eating, looking for hotels, seeing the sights, or just relaxing. Shopping is another chore that is covered in another section.
Sewing
You may think it odd, but sewing is one of my favorite chores. I admit that I actually like to sew; for some reason, the mindless concentration has a meditative effect on me. When clothes start to wear out, I can sit for hours sewing up the seams. Most machine-made clothing is sewn with a chain-stitch; if the thread breaks in any one place, the whole seam can be pulled out by tugging on the loose thread. This is especially true of buttons, which is why I usually re-sew all my buttons before leaving home.
It is difficult to get reliably strong thread (cotton) in the Third World, so I take plenty with me. If it breaks when you tug hard on it, it won't last long in your clothing. In a pinch, I have used dental floss, which is very strong, but tends to fray easily when abraded. When the tip of a needle begins to rust, it pulls on the fabric and becomes pretty useless, and rusted eyes quickly fray the thread. Start out with some good needles and keep them in a moisture-proof container, or stick them in soft wax like sailmakers do. Coating them with a little chap stick also does a reasonable job. Needle-threaders are a great convenience and hard to find, so take a couple with you. A thimble is definitely needed to protect your fingers.
As soon as you get a little hole -- especially in your trousers -- sew it up quickly to prevent it spreading. When repairing rips in most materials, put a backing of similar material under the rip and sew the old material down to it. For sewing on buttons or straps that will be taking a lot of strain, put a heavier backing behind the material to take up the pressure. Any good day pack should have leather patches behind the points where the straps are sewn to the bag. If not, consider adding some to fortify this important connection. If you need some serious sewing done to a pack or tent, try a shoemaker's shop where they will have the equipment and thread to handle the job.
Laundry
Do make an effort to keep your clothes clean. It will prevent sores and boils, make you more presentable to everyone around you, and keep you feeling good about yourself. If you are used to leaving this chore to someone else at home, accept it as one of your few new responsibilities.
Whenever I take along my little laundry brush, I find laundry service available almost everywhere for practically no money. When I leave it at home, I end up doing most of my own wash and have to buy a new one. In many parts of Asia there will be a cheap laundry service in your hotel, or just down the street. You can really get used to this luxury, especially when it costs no more than a cheap meal (a couple of dollars) to get a week's washing done. In Latin America, most hotels have a laundry basin ("pila") where you can wash your own. You may find someone to do it for you, but maybe not. In other parts of the world, you may have laundry service in your hotel, or the only alternative may be a relatively expensive dry-cleaners. Don't expect to find a coin laundry, they are rare indeed. The few places that have washing machines operate like a laundry, charging you for doing all the work themselves.
Consider washability when choosing your clothing. If you brought mostly light-weight, wash and wear, permanent- press clothing, laundry will be pretty easy. You can wash out your underwear and light shirts in the sink, if you can find a sink. Trousers take more effort. Jeans are the hardest thing to wash and to dry; they seem to require several hours in direct sunlight to dry; no sun, no dry. Lighter fabrics will usually dry indoors, given enough time. I sometimes wear my trousers into the shower or river, lather them up and scrub them with my laundry brush, against my body; it gives your legs a good scrubbing, too. Taking a shower is the best (and sometimes the only) opportunity to do a quick wash of underwear and socks; wear them in, wash them out. Lightweight cotton/polyester shirts and blouses will dry in less than half an hour indoors in hot climates (faster than plain cotton) so you can just rinse the dust and sweat out of them as often as you like. If you do frequent impromptu washings like this, you can often get by just sending your trousers out to be washed every week or two. After a week or two on safari, I pay the $3 to have my filthy trousers professionally laundered.
Laundry soap is available absolutely everywhere, in very small quantities. You can usually get solid bars or packets of soap powder. Keep it in a plastic bag and just buy enough for a few washings. It can be difficult to buy a laundry brush smaller than a breadbox overseas. I usually carry a 'fingernail brush' from home; if it isn't comfortable in your hand, you will soon get blisters. If you are at the beach and short on fresh water, you can wash your clothes in salt water and rinse them out in fresh.
Carry plenty of laundry line; it has plenty of other uses. It need not be bulky and you can buy it anywhere for almost nothing. Five meters is a minimum. I use thin, braided nylon line, because it makes clothes pins (pegs) obsolete. Just open up the braid, stick a corner of the article into it, and let the tautness of the line hold it tight. It holds up as well as pegs, even in the wind. If you value your clothing, keep an eye on it while it dries. In hot climates, or if you have a fan, hanging it in your room overnight should suffice to dry most clothes.
Be aware that many local washerpeople -- even the laundry service in your hotel -- will use the traditional 'rock-breaking' technique of washing your clothes down at the river. Once you've seen a few of these people in action, you will think twice about giving them anything moderately delicate or with nice buttons that will break long before the rocks do. This is another reason that seams tend to give out quickly on the Road; they take more of a beating in the laundry than on your back. In general, laundry services seem to be fairly honest and reliable. Missing laundry is usually the result of disorganization rather than theft. Many clothes you buy at home are not intended to be scrubbed with a brush, let alone pounded into rocks. I have found a number of garments, especially trousers, that will quickly give up their dye wherever you, or the laundry, brushes them. They can end up looking tacky quite soon, but the only way to avoid it is to scrub them by hand instead of brushing.
The 'laundry' may or not iron your clothes. Don't count on it. It is not unheard of to have things scorched by ironing, especially lighter synthetic fabrics that the locals aren't use to. I used to stay at a wonderful little guest house in San Jose, Costa Rica. The staff would wonder through the dorm rooms, pick up any clothing that was laying around, and wash it. Your clothes would disappear one day, only to reappear the next, freshly laundered and pressed. One day they pressed my nylon swim shorts, leaving them with a stylish crease down the legs that endured for years until they died.
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