A Meta-Travel Writing Piece
As a generalization, people who travel are interesting. Not interesting in the sense that they are unique or intriguing (sometimes that is the case), but that they often tell good stories because they have fresh experiences to draw from. And within the broader fraternity of travelers, the people who detach themselves from the grid and opt for the most self-indulgent of all pursuits – living on a boat, for example – are really the ones who are out there doing it. Lately, some fortunate journalists from the New York Times have managed to convince their editors to allow them to do just that, and still get paid for their troubles. And, in the spirit of the meritocratic nature of the Internet, I am going to give a lesson on travel writing.
These two articles – “Out at Sea, Relaxing in the Philippines” and “Cambodia’s Sweet Spot” – are basically cubicle fantasies, subtly acknowledging that the whole purpose of the piece is to make you wish that you were there and not where you happen to be at the moment. In the first, the author takes a five-day sailing trip from El Nido to Coron. Faithful readers of this blog will remember that Coron is the place where I cut my diving teeth, descending to 42 meters (12 beyond the legal limit for someone of my experience and designation) and into the propeller shaft of the Okikawa Maru, World War II relic of the naval battles in the Pacific Rim. In a true case of trial by fire, I followed a Filipino dive master who had forgotten to put batteries in his torch inside the ship and was trailed by a Frenchman who almost got lost taking a wrong turn down a staircase in a 168-meter long Japanese tanker sitting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately, we caught the Frenchman heading to a different floor before it was too late, though his spirit of adventure would have hopefully guided him out of whichever room in the ship he happened to find himself.
The second article is about Kep, a sleepy town in Cambodia that has recently seen a surge of interest from travelers seeking an authentic and laid-back beach experience. As a young backpacker in 2009, I considered myself what people in the business world call a “first-mover,” descending on the place with a small group of American microfinance volunteers and a Belgian epidemiologist who had nothing but bad things to say about two-term president who directly preceded Barack Obama. Ironically, the Belgians, led by King Leopold, made the Americans look like Mother Theresa during the 19th century in Africa. Unfortunately, this blog was only three posts long at the time, and the fourth – classified in my “travel and culture” section” – read as follows:
I am heading to Vietnam until December 23rd, and Cambodia until January 4th. I am going to try to update the blog as much as I can during the break. See you in 2010.
Clearly I was not as knowledgeable about geopolitics as I am today. Had I met this Belgian the 260th post (this one), he would have received an earful. Fortunately, another Kiva Fellow and frequent travel buddy, Gemma, did know a thing or two about a thing or two, and let him have it.
These articles in the Times follow a classic pattern of travel writing. Each one opens with an anecdote describing a mundane situation which generally would not happen to in your daily life. Levin comes out swinging in his piece, opening with a brief paragraph setting the scene:
WE were floating gingerly over a forest of antler-shaped coral when I heard a Swede who was snorkeling with me shout. I popped my head above water and caught only a fragment of his declaration in the slosh of waves: “Monster in a hole.”
When he wrote that line, he surely knew what he was doing, which is to effectively reach out from the pages of the newspaper and grab the poor guy who just wanted to take his mind off the pile of work his boss just put on his desk by the collar and say “See what you could be doing?”. Now, on top of all that, the man has to deal with the knowledge that someone somewhere is being paid to snorkel with Swedes. But that is the key to being a good travel writer. No one wants to read about the guy who stayed on the boat because he was afraid of getting sunburned. They want to hear about the crazy Swedish guy who is hunting for moray eels.
Once you have set the scene, you really need to drive the point home. Again, Levin pulls no punches in letting you know just how much better his life is than yours. After finishing the story about the snorkeling Swede, he breaks it down in much simpler terms:
Fortunately, relaxation was never in short supply aboard the Buhay. We were in the middle of nowhere, paradise-style: a sea of high-definition azure stretching to the horizon, dotted only by distant uninhabited islands. After a few days of sailing, life had become a hazy routine: eat, snorkel, chill out. Repeat
I know from experience that this is exactly what happens in the waters between El Nido and Coron. After getting my open water and advanced certification in the span of a week, I flew to Coron to explore some wrecks. Normally, you would need a special certification and at least 50 dives before exploring a sunken ship 40 meters below the surface of the ocean. Of course, I had neither a certification nor anything close to 50 dives.
Fortunately, this is not the case in the Philippines, where the same laid-back vibe that Levin describes pervades every aspect of life, including the risk tolerance of the Filipino beach bum in charge of keeping you alive underwater. When he asked how many dives I had, I lied and said 15 (it was only 10). Clearly, I should have gone higher, since his next question was, “How good are you?” But as a two-year captain of my swim team in high school, very little about the water scares me, so down we went.
The other day I talked about the need to really draw your reader in with a short anecdote about something that could never happen in their lives right now, but could if they did what you are doing. Another key to enhancing the reader experience is to include language that makes your movements seem just a little bit crazy. Look at what Levin does in this paragraph:
So I hitched a van ride from Puerta Princesa to El Nido, a tiny, dense warren of dive shops that clings to Bacuit Bay in Palawan. What I found, after six hours swerving around goats along a dirt road, was a bangka launching pad to the region’s spectacular islands.
This is genius. Hitching a van ride could be one of several things. It could be sitting in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of Filipino cockfighters on the way to a bloody death match, or it could be the driver from the hotel holding a sign outside the airport that says “DEVELOP ECONOMIES.” The fact is that it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the van was hitched and the road was filled with goats apparently unphased by the vans streaming past.
Later in the article, Levin describes his interactions with the ragtag group of international wanderlusts. Check this technique out:
All this nautical freedom was affecting my shipmates. Before starting the trip, Marly Pols, 43, a Dutch flight attendant, said she had only thought of the beaches in store. But by the second day we were sharing tales and bottles of rum like a band of leisurely pirates. “This is our home now,” she said as we lounged on the top deck the next morning. “We’re in this together.”
This is a classic move. I know because I use it in all my pieces of about travel. It is critical to highlight the fact that these people who you have never met before have become your friends much more quickly had you not met on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no electricity. In one of my dad’s favorites – titled “Dispatch from a Shrinking Planet” – I described the days and nights with my own band of pirates as I moved from beach to beach around the Philippines:
I mostly traveled alone, and met some cool people along the way. I dove with a woman representing Slovenia at the World Expo in Shanghai, a professor of comparative religion in Germany, an Italian banker, and some Filipino rastas who happened to be Rotarians. Diving is a great way to meet people, since you’re out on a boat in the middle of the ocean for eight hours a day, three days in a row, with nothing to do but eat, drink, share stories and play cards. In fact, some of my best memories are from either from the deck of a boat in the Pacific Ocean, or the bungalows and beachfront bars where I spent most of my nights.
The key is to highlight the sheer randomness of it all. Most people wake up every morning and, on average, their day progresses in a similar way as the day before. But when you are thrown on a boat in the middle of paradise with six strangers from around the world with nothing to do but look at coral reefs, eat fresh seafood, and drink cold beers, you tend to be able to spin a few good yarns. The fact that you are asking yourself questions like “How did I get here?” and “Is this real?” needs to come through in your writing. Otherwise, it seems too perfect.
The last element to a good travel piece is the element of introspection. Traveling is about meeting people and seeing new things. But it is also about you and the fact that you are doing something sweet. Here is how Levin closes out the article:
Taking a breather, I crept barefoot off to the beach, empty save for the ghost crabs who hovered by their burrows, watching me with googly-eyes. The tide was a sigh, the sky aglow with constellations, and I was, thrillingly, the only witness.
A notion of independence is essential to good travel writing. Ultimately, these are not articles about snorkeling with Swedish people in a tropical paradise. They are testaments to the sense of liberation that comes with doing whatever you want. It is less about travel and more about freedom.
A few months ago, I wrote a four-part post titled “How to Travel Alone.” In part two, I describe an impulsive decision that was momentous in my own realization that you can do whatever you want:
After an amazing four days of scuba diving in Coron, an island in Palawan that was the inspiration for the novel The Beach, I flew to Manila. I was planning on taking a bus up north to La Union, a town northern Luzon, to do some surfing. I bid farewell to a friend I’d met on the boat, and walked to the exit to hail a taxi at around 7 PM. The main terminal in Ninoy Aquino International Airport has huge glass walls with a view of the city.
I took a moment to reflect on my plans. Looking out at the city skyline, I thought about the traffic, the pollution, and the seedy red light district where my favorite guesthouse happened to be located. After a few contemplative minutes, I turned around, walked up to the Cebu Pacific ticket counter and bought a flight to Cebu that night for $30. I got on the next flight and arrived in Cebu City at 11, called a friend to get a recommendation for a place to stay, took a taxi there and booked a room.
The next morning, I got up early and took a bus to Moalboal, a town two hours south that someone recommended in Coron. Twenty meters below the surface of the ocean, surrounded by millions of sardines off the coast of Pescadero Island, the decision to re-write the plan was validated.
To this day, I think about staring out at Manila and turning around to buy that ticket. That, I thought at the time, is liberating.
So my hat is off to Dan Levin, who successfully made the rest of the world jealous. Your humble correspondent certainly enjoys writing and thinking about geopolitics, international development, poverty alleviation, and other deep matters. But he is happiest when writing about life on the road, and the impulsive decisions that make it interesting. So I hope you learned something. Because this is a great way to make your friends jealous.