Randy's Travel Tips: The People You Meet, p. 2

Local "Guides" and "Helpers"

In countries where European languages are not commonly spoken, travelers often find themselves depending on the company of locals who have made it their business to speak English and to befriend and deal with foreign travelers. In some countries, you will see them all over the beaches where travelers stay. In other countries they are notably absent, so far. They may have no particular job other than hanging around with travelers, helping them arrange their activities, and collecting commissions. While many of these people can be quite friendly or helpful, they are not necessarily typical of the general population. For some of them it is just an easy way to make money off of tourism. Sometimes they get into dealing drugs, hustling travelers for money, or setting people up to be robbed by their friends.

On the other hand, many of them are genuinely friendly and honest, perhaps well-educated people who cannot find a good job. Sometimes their job is running your hotel or local restaurant, or just driving a taxi or pedicab. These are small business people who take advantage of their English ability to do business with foreigners. They can be a great source of information about the country and the local community, and good people just to talk with.

I have mixed feeling about the "helpers" or "guides", especially those who have no visible means of support. Sometimes, as I said, they have questionable motives or are sleazy characters that the local people do not trust or approve of; this definitely puts me off. I feel vulnerable when I am forced to deal with them because I cannot speak the local language. In some ways I prefer stumbling around in phrasebook language and dealing with the 'ordinary' people.

In Latin America, where I can speak Spanish, I avoid them because I can deal directly with anyone I want to. That is a tremendous freedom and gives you quite a different perspective on the travelers who deal only with the "helpers" or "touts". Often you can see that some of these "helpers" are looked down on (or even distrusted) by local business people, and are tolerated only because they have made friends with the travelers they are dealing with.

If I am in a rural tourist area (usually a beach), I try to find out if they come from the local community. If they do, they are much more likely to be genuine and honest than someone who just drops in from the city for a few months. That doesn't mean they won't be asking you for a "loan", but they may be the relatives of your local shop owners. (It doesn't hurt to check it out.) If you find a local business person who speaks some English, ask their opinion about these people; they usually have a good feeling for what is really going on, but they will never tell you if you don't ask. Maybe I'm just too stuffy to have some good fun with the young bucks that the locals disapprove of; or maybe I'm just cautious about who my friends are, and who I trust.

I have lingered on this subject because I do see many travelers who spend their time exclusively in the company of English-speaking "helpers" and "friends". Some of them are good people, and can be fine friends, but their business is hanging out with foreigners and they are not representative of the common people. You are missing out on much of the real culture if you do not step outside this circle of "friends" and get to know the rest of the people. As tourism grows, it becomes easier in some areas of the world to spend months just traveling from one traveler's resort to another. Yet it only takes a little effort and initiative to get out and meet more of the traditional people. Sometimes you only have to go down the street and drop into a shop, or walk to the next village.

Touts

Properly speaking, a "tout" goes out on the street to bring customers into a business, for a commission. I tend to use the word "tout" for all street hustlers, and quite often they have no business of their own. They will act as an intermediary for any transaction you want to make because they know of, or can find someone who sells what you want. If you say you want an air ticket or to change money, of course their "brother" is in that business. They will take you to a shop and later try to collect a commission from the real businessman. There is no use trying to haggle with the touts, they are just go-betweens. The prices they quote may or may not be accurate; they may not know. If you can find the business on your own, you will avoid paying extra. If you cannot, the tout is doing you a service.

The most common are the hotel touts who meet you at bus stations in some, but certainly not all countries. They will tell you that they work in a hotel; sometimes they do, often they do not. They can be helpful in finding a hotel if you don't already know one, but you may pay a higher price. Look for people with business cards for hotels which have the prices printed on the card. If you are a good traveler, you will have already gotten the name and price of a good hotel from other travelers, and you only need to find it. If you meet a tout who offers to take you there, the choice is yours whether you go with him or find it yourself.

Touts will sometimes follow you to your hotel of choice, run in ahead of you and pretend that they brought you to the place. In this case, just make it quite clear to the manager that you came there on your own. Tell him not to pay the tout anything because he did not bring in your business, you came because of the fine reputation of the hotel. In other situations, the owner of a small guest house may be down at the station herself, looking for business when the train arrives.

Aside from finding a hotel, there are not many other negotiations where you really need the services of a tout (and you should probably have gotten the name of a 'good' hotel before you arrived anyway), but if they offer you something you want, feel free to talk to them about it. In some countries you will face a constant barrage of touts coming up to you on the street, trying to interest you in some deal. Sometimes they have to stand in line to get to you!

Check out Tout Realities under Glimpses of the Road, back on Randy's Travel Page.

Unfortunately, some of the people who come up to you on the street in some cities or tourist areas are con artists or thieves. This is one reason to be very careful when dealing with street "touts". I speak quite a bit about dealing with people who come up to you on the street in my section on Safety and Security. If people approach you while you are walking, keep walking as you hear what they have to say. If you don't want what they are 'selling', just keep on walking. In some countries and rural environments, a polite "no thank you" is all that is needed to discourage them. Try it out a few times, but in other places, street touts consider "no" or "get lost" a perfectly good opening to a conversation.

One of the rudest things you can do in my country is to completely ignore someone who is speaking to you. Yet I have learned to master the technique quite effectively. (I have found those awful mirrored sunglasses to be a boon to ignoring people.) I much prefer it to entering into a shouting match where I may only become livid with rage and spoil the rest of my day. I turn and walk away. If they follow after me, I ignore them.

Yes, this is rude. Many travelers prefer to be pleasant to everyone who approaches them, all day long. In any new environment, you should definitely start off being pleasant and friendly; you can have many interesting conversations this way. But, if you find street encounters becoming more and more of a drain on your time and nerves, consider learning to be aloof. It's how the locals usually treat such encounters.

Check out A Street Exchange in Delhi under Glimpses of the Road, back on Randy's Travel Page.

Yourself

One of the most important people you will come face to face with on your travels is yourself. Most of us are accustomed to a relatively secure, predictable, and non-threatening environment at home. We have learned to carve out our own comfortable little place in society, and we are not often confronted with problems we have not handled before.

Traveling in foreign countries upsets this apple-cart of security. You are not only in new places, meeting different kinds of people with new social rules, but you can no longer be secure in your own identity. You may feel like a novice who is suddenly insecure in his or her abilities to get through a travel day. People can't even understand you when you talk; they treat you like an ignorant child. At various times you may feel like an idiot, a side-show freak, a pawn, a target, or an object of curiosity and unexplained laughter. At such times, it's easy to lose your natural self-confidence, become surly and irritable, or succumb to selfishness.

Don't worry, it's not that difficult to pick up the knack of traveling, and within limits, you can travel in the ways that are the most comfortable for you. After a couple of weeks and a few good adventures, you will feel like a veteran. Rest assured that you will also have opportunities to witness surprising amounts of your own strength and courage.

Other Travelers

Searching for ourselves, We find each other.
And what we find in each other,
For better or for worse,
Is the refection of ourselves.
--Ned

There is nothing that will make you want to keep on traveling quite so much as talking with other travelers. You meticulously work out your careful, straight-forward travel plans at home, but once you get out there around the traveler's "campfire", listening to tales of adventure in unknown places, you begin to add new items to your itinerary, and start to think seriously about how you can put off going home!

At home, it is a different world. Some people just look at you funny when you talk about taking off a few months to go traveling. "Why would you want to do that?" "Are you nuts? You're going to get killed. What about your career?" Many will be envious and supportive, but others just can't relate at all. "You're not one of us, are you?" they seem to be thinking. Looking at the people around you, you can get serious doubts about your own judgment. "Do I really want to do this?" you ask yourself. But you take the plunge, anyway.

Out on the Road, the situation is the opposite! "You actually worked in a company for how many years? With only three weeks holiday?" "What's wrong with this guy?" they seem to be saying. You meet people whose entire lives seem to revolve around traveling. "Nah, you don't want to go home, yet. You just got started, mate. C'mon, give it a chance!" On the Road, your peers have an entirely different outlook on life. Yes, you will meet plenty of travelers out for five week excursions (Europeans do get reasonable holidays) -- but the people who really draw your attention are the dedicated travelers, on their fourth trip to India, or gone for several years already.

If you are not careful, your attitudes about your own life could be affected. "What have I been doing with my life, while these people have been out here having a ball?" Well, this is your own personal identity crisis to grapple with, but travelers -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- are a fascinating society of people! Not only are they interesting, they are a gold mine of useful travel information, travel habits to emulate, and endless stories. You are really missing a good part of the travel experience if you do not get to know many of your fellow travelers. You can't beat 'em!

Good travelers hardly need a guide book on the Road, except for the maps. They get all the information they need from other travelers. I give top priority to hotel information I get from travelers who just stayed there, and I feel uncomfortable entering a new town if I don't already have personal recommendations for hotels and cafes. Situations change fast, from the condition and safety of a hotel to the conditions and safety of a town or country. Travelers who have just been there know better than any guidebook, travel agent, or government agency.

Bulletin boards in travelers' hostels are a good source of information as well as entertainment. A few hostels have huge notice boards where you can read and write about countries all over the world; others have traveler's log books full of information about surrounding countries. If you need some particular information, put an ad in the "traveler's newspaper" by hanging a sign up on a hostel notice board. "How can you get from Here to There by bus? And what's a good place to stay There?" Several people who know will come along and write you more information than you ever needed! Bulletin boards are also convenient places to leave notes for friends, advertise items for sale, books for trade, or any services you may have to offer. Some people like to keep in practice at giving massages, teaching Tai Chi, sharpening knives, or making macramé while on the Road; it's a good way to meet more folks.

When you travel slowly and in a continuous overland path, you will always meet travelers who have just come from where you are going. (You will also meet a number of the same people over again!) They are your best sources of information about conditions in the places you are about to explore. Use them! If you arrive in a strange town, stop travelers on the street or at the station to ask about hotels, cafes, and transport; they will be glad to recommend something. Don't be shy and don't be too self-reliant -- yes, some of these people are strange (and not always reliable), but travelers are still your best resources!

One day I walked out to the bus station outside of Khajaraho, India. I was checking bus schedules when six travelers arrived on a bus. They were immediately beset by a few hotel touts and tonga-wallahs (horse-cart drivers) who were about to overcharge them. I hung around for awhile as they argued with the local touts; I even went up to some of them and asked the usual questions about where they had come from. But they weren't very talkative and no one had the sense to ask me for information about the price of a ride into town or where to stay, although I knew about all of the six or seven hotels in town. I was not going to join the throng trying to force information on them, if they were not sensible enough to ask!

Since I am now over forty years old and quite gray on top, I sometimes wonder if the younger travelers look at me and wonder how this old tourist got lost in their travel scene! Although there are plenty of "more mature" people out there, I don't meet young travelers as easily as I used to. When they discover that my trip is already five times longer than theirs will ever be, I sometimes get the opposite reaction -- they just can't relate to my way of traveling. (Or maybe I really am just an old fart.)

Perhaps this is an example of travelers holding onto their social chauvinism. At home, all of their friends are not only their own age, but they share very much the same values and experiences -- not to mention hair and dress styles. They don't mix with people who are "different". On the Road, travelers come in many strange varieties, and a lot of them seem like the type of people you wouldn't even bother talking to (or might flee from) at home. But you aren't in Kansas any more; this is a big new world, and these "different" people -- for better or for worse -- are your extended travel family. The better you get to know them, the richer your trip -- and your life -- will become! And they know where the best hotels and cafes are.

Go International!

The culture of travelers is largely populated by Europeans, North Americans, Australians and New Zealanders. You may also meet a few travelers from South Africa, Israel, Japan, Hong Kong, and a smattering of other countries. What a great opportunity to get to know the real people from these cultures! This is especially true for non-Europeans, who may be isolated from other countries in their everyday lives at home.

Unlike many of the local people of the Third World, these travelers share your level of "modern" First World culture, economics, and life-style. And yet they are each different in their own ways. If you make the effort to get to know them, you will learn a great deal about their cultures, their values, and about your own. You will be able to look at the world, and your own society, through many different eyes. You will really become an international person, and the world will forever be a much bigger and a much grander place for you.

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