Killing Batteries

I had to decline an offer this week to predict 2010 travel trends. Besides being prohibitively busy writing the seminal works detailing how smart I am and how dumb everyone else is, but with grace and charm, I didn’t feel that I was qualified to publicly muse about future travel trends. The main reason for this being that, though I am endowed with many superhuman attributes, one of them is not the ability to see into the future.

I’ve never understood how anyone can predict a trend with a straight face. This is pure guesswork. And why would anyone waste their time writing or reading someone’s casually hatched guesswork? I consider myself to be a fairly wise person, but on the average day I can’t predict my own bowel movement trends, much less the random meanderings of a bunch of notoriously non-trend-following travelers.

But after further reflection it hit me that there are in fact a few 2010 events that I’m not afraid to predict. And since, in my continuing mind-expansion program through trial-and-error, I discovered last week that writing stupid lists is relatively quick work that people are 34 times more likely to read and share (please share this, thank you), I have compiled a list of Top 11 Air-Tight, Totally Gonna Happen Predictions for 2010.

1.    Many people will incorrectly predict trends.

2.    The time-space continuum will go on unchanged, hopefully.

3.    During the third inning of the first game played at the Minnesota Twins brand new, outdoor baseball stadium ($353 million of which came from Hennepin County taxpayers) in an unseasonably cold, heavy rain shower, Twins owners, fans and players will realize that they’ve made a very terrible mistake.

4.    Nearly everyone will age approximately one year.

5.    The guy from Man Versus Food will be hospitalized for obvious reasons.

6.    Drawing on copious iron-clad data from high profile, non-partisan studies, experts will continue to voice concern over global warming, to which deniers will look out the window and retort “But it’s snowing in New York, stupid!”

7.    I will get roughly 12% better looking.

8.    Republicans will sabotage any hint of political productivity, blame it all on the Democrats and the Democrats will sit around looking dazed.

9.    When Sarah Palin’s book tour goes to the United Kingdom, as they board the airplane, she’ll be overheard demanding for a status report on recent dragon attacks.

10.    Reality shows make a comeback, with ratings toppers “Biggest Skanks in Miami” and “Getting to Know Tyrone” the first of 10 seasons (seven with good behavior) about Glenn Beck’s time in a two-bunk cell in Sing Sing prison.

11.    OK fine, the fastest growing travel destinations in 2010 will include Cuba, Columbia, China and Romania. Especially Romania. Ideally with travelers planning their visits using my unequaled Romania and Moldova Travel Guide.

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

On a theoretical list of Thompson’s top fans, I’m just below his agent, editor and mom, jockeying for position with his wife and oldest friend. I read Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer three times. Partly because of his excellent storytelling, humor and how strongly I identified with his views on the travel writing industry and partly because it was one of only two books I had with me for five weeks of slo-mo travel in Thailand and Burma last year. My only real gripe was that he didn’t write it in 2003, so I would’ve had more realistic expectations as I was quitting my career, selling my home, car and all possessions and setting out on what turned out to be 4 and 1/2 years of nomadic, global meandering and paying my travel writing dues, but that’s hardly his fault. Hardly.

To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism (Holt) starts as many travel memoirs do: the back-story of the journey peppered with doubt, fear, curiosity, resolve and, finally, execution. Thompson decides, for apparent want of self-inflicted misery, to visit four destinations that he has spent his career actively avoiding: Africa, India, Mexico City and Disney World. This part of travel memoirs is always tricky, surpassed only by the epilogue for highest Boredom Potential Quotient. The somewhat dry details of his trip planning for his first objective, the Congo, unfortunately fall victim to this phenomenon, with a few overachieving jokes falling flat. But Thompson is soon on the ground in Kinshasa where he hits his stride, slam dunking glorious turns of phrase as I had so eagerly anticipated. Kinshasa turns out to be a real dud of a destination, but Thompson nevertheless manages to seed nearly every page with vivid and hilarious metaphors that would take 20 Tucker Maxs 20 pages to match.

The India and Mexico City narratives are equally fun. Parts of the text are so brilliant that I feel a bit like a poseur by claiming the same job title as Thompson. I was especially sucked into the arc of the book, as I have a similar no-go list, though mine also includes Russia, Egypt, the Caribbean, and the entire southern half of the US. Moreover, I never get tired of the priceless freedom and bluntness with which he fires off lectures and insults on deserving people/places/things. This is the kind of editorial autonomy that most travel writers can only dream about. Sure, I get to sneak in the occasion dig in guidebooks and blog posts, but to go on for three unapologetically brutal pages on the maddening tactics of Indian merchants is the sort of long-form, literary spanking that I and my brethren/sisteren rarely get to dish out.

Unfortunately the entertainment dips as Chuck enters the mysterious and unsettling world of Floridian theme parks. The section that I had assumed would incite the most scathing, thousand word, series of hilarious diatribes is only ho-hum as Thompson, probably to everyone’s surprise, doesn’t completely hate the place. The epilogue also feels phoned-in at times, though this seems to be the section where even people like Bill Bryson can get bogged down in babbling resolution and perhaps I just need to change my expectations.

I think what makes Thompson so fun to read is his strong, unwavering opinions on virtually every subject, occasionally bordering on, albeit charming, crackpotdom. He ain’t afraid to offend people, as is plainly demonstrated when he merrily alienates approximately two billion soccer fans during a ruthless two-page condemnation of the sport and later frankly lectures an employee at the biblical theme park the Holy Land Experience about his utter lack of understanding of basic Christian values. Thompson makes these polarizing convictions work largely because he’s able to deftly balance these extremes with an overriding self-effacing humbleness and wit that you don’t see in most crackpots, mostly because they’re patently insane or intolerably stupid, and Chuck is neither of these things. Mark my words, 25 years from now one of Chuck’s offspring is going to launch the 2035 equivalent of “Shit My Dad Says”, zapping Chuck’s hilarious, self-esteem crushing quotes to a global audience in all their vitriolic glory (and winning the world’s fastest and easiest, non-slutty celebrity book deal a week later – not that I’m bitter, kudos Justin).

Unfortunately, though it pains me to admit, it seems the curse of the Second Travel Memoir has struck again. While Hellholes is undeniably replete with the kind of wit and spit-take metaphors written by a different Thompson that first inspired me to be a writer, I don’t think I’ll be reading it three times and keeping it in an easy-to-reach place like I did with Smile When you’re Lying. Truly, you’ll be courting a nostril-flushing disaster if you attempt to enjoy a beverage while reading parts of this book, but when travel writing students in the Class of 2030 are reflecting on the canon of Thompson travel memoir classics, I don’t believe Hellholes will be among them.

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

This list was created in honor of my LP colleague Mark Baker, who has gotten the silly notion into his head that the trend of making lists for every conceivable mundane subject is somehow reducing writing/publishing/blogging to single-celled entertainment on par with monster truck rallies or anything currently appearing on MTV.

1.    Top 10 cities where you’re most likely to step in dog shit (my suggestion: Paris)

2.    Top 10 reasons travel writers are still hanging in there, despite crap pay, sociopathic editors and the death of publishing (my suggestion: batshit crazy)

3.    Top 10 times I was horribly wrong when I said “another glass of wine won’t hurt”

4.    Top 10 sex tapes of very important people in Levi Johnston’s possession that explain his baffling fame (I included the wiki link because I strongly suspect that Mark will have no idea who this is – so, in a way, his life is perfect)

5.    Top 10 farts I ripped that were more thought provoking and constructive than US Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s entire time in office (my suggestion: bean and eggplant burrito)

6.    Top 10 countries where the number of potential gastrointestinal emergencies outnumber unique, genuine tourist attractions (my suggestion: Switzerland)

7.    Top 10 buildings that look like failed designs for sex toys (my suggestion Taipei 101)

8.    Top 10 god-forsaken Pacific Islands that Glenn Beck might be exiled to when he’s finally convicted for treason and gross douchebaggery (my suggestion: Majuro Atoll)

9.    Top 10 chain restaurants that people living in the suburbs consider ‘fine dining’ (my suggestion: The Olive Garden)

10.    Top 10 ways that people who voted against legalizing same-sex marriage suffered brain damage during their formative years (my suggestion: church)

11.    Top 10 nefarious blog topics that will increase your visitor stats by 50 fold the week after you finally give up on ‘travel’ (Humbling Fun Fact: most weeks, the majority of my new visitors find my blog because of Google Images search results pointing to a picture of Michelle Hunziker’s bare ass in this post)

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

Before I arrived, I knew that the five-star Hotel Mirador de Dalt Vila had just recently opened its doors for business, but I didn’t realize how recently.

“You’re our first guest!” I was enthusiastically informed after the complimentary hotel van delivered me from the ferry. It came to pass that the timing of my arrival and the hotel’s original opening date (the following day), combined with their desire for some primo exposure to a well-strapped American reading audience had prompted the hotel to open a day early just for ol’ me.

Housed in a 1905 mansion high above the commotion in Ibiza Town, in the fortified, World Heritage Dalt Vila quarter, the hotel was formerly home to (and still owned by) one of Ibiza’s richest families. With the property abutting 16th century fortifications, space was very limited and inadaptable. While the exterior couldn’t be touched, the interior was overhauled down to the light switches. New walls, floors, marble and onyx-festooned bathrooms and art pulled from the family’s private collection. Public spaces featured medieval artifacts from nearby shipwrecks.

The glow of this travel writer rock star arrival faded when I learned that my suite, one of only 13 rooms in the whole hotel, was specially prepped for the grand opening party tour that night (I had to extract a decorative rose floating in my toilet), as such I wouldn’t be able to check in until after the tour. In the meantime, I was invited to join friends, politicians and VIPs at said party to socialize, listen to live classical music, flirt with the servers and fill up on complimentary food and drink.

With no opportunity to unpack, shower or change, I had little choice but to present myself at the party that evening as is – looking and smelling exactly as you’d imagine after five hours of Ibiza exploration on foot in July. Security was understandably loathe to let me in the door, but the hotel’s marketing director rescued me and I proceeded to make a meal of the artistically executed and savory hors d’oeuvres while imprudently mixing champagne and wine until 10pm when I was given the all-clear to move into my room.

Being that I spend most of the year enduring accommodations in the sub-two star category, on the rare occasion when I’m thrust into a five star room I feel compelled to wallow in the experience Home Simpson-style, making lavish use of every towel, both robes and slippers, complimentary food and entertainment options. Despite these powerful feelings of entitlement, I felt a small pang of guilt as the marketing director and front desk manager accompanied me up to my unspeakably gorgeous suite. As they set down my bags and bid me good night, I sensed a melancholy wretched envy oozing off them. It must have been cruel from their point of view. Here they had been killing themselves for three months preparing the hotel for its grand opening and now some unwashed, drunken journalist was going to snack on the fruits of their labor while they returned to their crappy efficiency apartments, with fold-out beds and no A/C, located next to the city’s garbage incinerator. Or so I imagined it.

Once they’d despondently closed the door behind them, I knocked back the glass of white wine I was holding and devoured the entire bowl of fancy, complimentary chocolates before getting down to the grave business of sampling every toiletry, putting the hydro-massage bathtub through its paces (twice) and testing the bounce-back factor of the couch and chairs, before retiring to my never-slept-in bed.

Being the only guest in a brand new boutique hotel (that first night, there was a staff-to-guest ratio of something like 17 to one), with the added weight of composing a half-page, high-profile review, temporarily awarded me with sheik caliber service. The bizarre circumstances notwithstanding, it must be said that the spirit of service at the Mirador was noticeably strong. Ibizans are known for their strict belief that everyone should enjoy themselves as much as possible, stopping just short of when it becomes life-threatening. Anything less is ostensibly an affront to the Baby Jesus. So when I made an off-handed comment about not having set foot on a beach in almost two years and then presented my hideous Travel Writer Tan Line as proof, it sparked a blur of action that still awes me. You could almost hear the Moby re-mix of the “Mission Impossible” theme song playing as people started racing around while I was pushed to my room to change into my swimsuit. Five minutes later, I was sitting in a black, tinted window hotel van careening toward Ibiza’s most popular beach. I was dropped off under the cover of high bushes at the far end of the beach, handed a pair of Dirty Old Man brand name ogling binoculars and left alone for two hours of “research”.

Though I had to share the hotel with three other guests the second night, I hardly noticed the difference. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I don’t remember the difference. The hotel held a larger, more public opening party that night, with local socialites, tourism officials and a better dressed, more fragrant me. The hotel’s surprisingly young food and drink director escorted me to the bar and spent the evening showing off his cocktail making prowess, an art he claimed to have been practicing “since childhood”.

Details of the evening are still hazy. A multiplicity of cocktails in primary colors rotated in front of me. At some stage, I lost sight of my goal to eat at least one appetizer with each drink. The hotel’s marketing director deftly removed an amorous and very unsubtle tour agent from my personal space bubble. I closed down the bar with a fellow guest, a decidedly well-off Brit who turned out to be an excellent conversationalist. I finally excused myself before I could seriously contemplate invading the marketing director’s personal space bubble and retreated to my room under my own power, the veneer of my professionalism barely intact.

The next morning I was back in the black van, hurtling to the port where a ferry waited to return me to Mallorca. With the single step out of the van, I plunged from five star doting back down to one star anonymity. Joining a line of partiers that had obviously not slept and, judging by the lack of luggage, probably never even had a room on Ibiza, I steeled myself for the dark, cramped hostel room awaiting me in the dodgy part of Palma. Despite the frequency that I make this jarring transition, in both directions, it never fails to sting. Though this time, I was bolstered by the singular experience of having broken in a five star hotel – and the knowledge of being absolutely, positively the first person to poop in that toilet.