Food Feature: Culture club

I often wonder if alien visitors come equipped with guidebooks to direct their earthly travels. Are the little green men immediately directed to the trailer parks where they are most likely to find participants for their own human genome projects? Do their guidebooks give detailed instructions suggesting night landings on highways or the kidnapping of individuals with less than average intelligence? Do these guidebooks teach common phrases like, “Take me to your leader,” or “Sorry about your cow”? Travel guidebooks are many people’s introduction to a culture. They provide a pre-experience detailing what is important for others to consume in another culture by referencing how to experience the culture through food, language and arts. These first impressions often confine the trip, informing the visitor of what to expect, how to react and how to function in a foreign environment. Some tourists choose to go beyond that introduction, investigating on their own terms, while others dogmatically stick to the ideology of the travelogue.
The popularity of the Lonely Planet guidebooks have taken off today. Travel has become more accessible to large amounts of mobile young people wanting to appear in the next Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” adventure. The LP guide appeals to the traveler who is comfortable without schedules, eagerly embraces the nuances of other cultures and who believes “it’s all good.”
There is a certain cult aspect of these Lonely Planet travelers, many of whom spend several months to a year on their worldwide adventures. LP travelers tend to be nomads seeking uncharted territory and exotic extremes for cultural immersion. They circle the globe hunting for new customs and gathering strange artifacts.
I became acutely aware of “The Cult of the Lonely Planet” during my travels to Thailand. After arriving in Bangkok, I realized that I was not alone in my decision to experience Southeast Asia “on a shoestring.” The airport was inundated with Western travelers sporting bulging backpacks and Teva sandals, all wanderers like myself trekking to the nether regions with only two changes of underwear and a budget of $15 per day. As we stood waiting for our bus, out came the Good Book, our Lonely Planet guides, with each dog-eared page labeled with directions to the Banglamphu district, favorite guesthouses and the cheapest authentic Thai food.
As pilgrims of this lonely planet, we trek from exotic country to country en masse in small fishing boats and school buses. Eating strange fruits from roadside vendors, we cohabitate in guesthouses with pit toilets and pressboard walls. Trading adventures, we amend our LP guides with current travel information and knowledge of secret beaches, meditation centers and massage parlors. Here we form our own culture of vagabonds; an informal United Nations disconnected from work and our countries of origin.
I first realized the difficulty of traveling out of bounds of the Lonely Planet guide on the longest day of my bicycle tour. Before then, my travels had been carefully mapped, preplanned with where I would be staying and eating the following night. Now I was headed to Phayao, a mid-sized dot on the map of Thailand not included in the guide. I knew from the size that there had to be accommodations but had no idea what to expect. And after 75 miles on a bicycle carrying panniers of at least 50 pounds, I wanted to know what to expect. By that point in the journey I was ranting to my fellow traveler that I be taken to the Four Seasons Phayao (pronto!) where I could find all of the accoutrements of Western living, like bath tubs and real coffee. But with the experience of travelling often comes the unknown; we take in stride the events complicated by language barriers and cultural differences.
Once we reached Phayao we circled downtown looking for a place to stay, but the gods seemed to be against us. We were the aliens that had landed in downtown Phayao, a bustling agricultural trade center with no tourists and, consequently, no English speakers. After what seemed like an eternity, a gracious shop owner stepped out of her shop, pointed to the horizon and to the largest pink stucco building in the Phayao skyline. I stared in disbelief as I realized I actually was being directed to the Four Seasons Phayao.
Before travelling to Thailand, I admit to looking through the archives of my parents’ National Geographic collection, seeing pictures of women with necks elongated by solid gold neck rings and peaceful thatched villages along the Mekong River. I went there with the intention of expanding my worldview and to experience another culture, but learning how to approach that experience was entirely novel. Now my LP guide to Thailand resembles my grandmother’s Bible. Each well-worn page documents detailed events and contains artifacts of my adventures, from pressed flowers to international e-mail addresses. What was once a reference book has now become a familiar favorite filled with anecdotal advice, and seasoned for the next novice traveler.