january 26, 2001
I wonder what will make me remember or forget these places. I wonder if I will remember the bright flavours of the bell papers I ate or the smell of fish and chips that I couldn't afford to buy at the shop behind me. Or will I remember it by the pale pinks and blues of the sky over the outlying islands?
posted by tina 1/26/2001 06:01:57 PM
When I stepped off the plane in Auckland, I knew almost immediately that I had arrived somewhere that I would really love. I've been in New Zealand for almost a week and have only seen the Northland on the North Island but I really like it here. I almost have had second thoughts about Australia and my working holiday visa there as it would be just as easy to get one for New Zealand. The people here are very friendly and the landscape is incredible. There are views here at which I feel I can stare for hours and hours. I'm definitely going to stay for the six weeks and, if the trip continues the way it has, then I may stay longer. I've been sailing, hiking, and relaxing at the House of Harmony in Opononi on the Hokianga Harbour. Tomorrow, I go swimming with dolphins.
New Zealand's Northland is an economically depressed region of the country. The trade is largely controlled by two major Maori gangs and, marijuana is the number one cash export from the region, the sale of which exceeds the entire agricultural export of all of New Zealand. It is jokingly said that the local currency is a twenty dollar bill because that is how much it costs to buy a bullet or a foil of marijuana (roughly three joints). Although overtures towards decriminalization have been taking place in Parliament, locals doubt that it will ever happen because there is so little else in the way of employment. If the black market of marijuana becomes legal, the government is worried that those involved in the trade will turn to even more unsavoury possibilities.
Last night in Opononi, I went to see a local high-school concert band play in the school gymnasim. That kind of thing just kills me, all the kids playing so earnestly with their parents eagerly looking on, glowing looks on their faces. I really like seeing that kind of thing when I am traveling because it reminds me that there are real people living here, people rooted in local communities. It's the kind of thing I'll think of when I go home, remembering that halfway around the world, there are these kids playing their instruments in a little nowhere community, looking forward to their recital as if it is the biggest thing in the world. The girls will always be dressed up and the boys will blush and the parents and grandparents will proudly snap photos, down into eternity.
I have to confess that when I first left for this trip, I was a bit nervous about traveling on my own. However, I am rapidly discovering that it is the best way of traveling. If I want to be social and meet people, hostels make it exceedingly easy. On the other hand, when I want to be solitary, I can pick up and leave for as long as I want, whenever I want. Althought it is very easy to meet people here, I have been thus far enjoying being independent and have not felt overly like being a social animal. I really don't feel capable of the necessary chatter. I have also encountered something unexpected - I don't know how to get rid of someone when I do want to be alone. When I first arrived in Auckland, I spent a day or so with an English guy who I met on the plane. While he was quite nice, he started making me feel rather uncomfortable when I realized that he was subtly making overtures. Although I do know that people's inhibitions are often lowered when traveling, I do not see that as being a central part of this trip and I had to almost be rude to avoid him. He has since sent me an e-mail that confirmed my intuition about him; I can only hope that I don't run into him again. A good friend of mine has always adamantly argued that men are always thinking of more when interacting with women; I am beginning to think that he is right. It is unfortunate.
I start heading South on Sunday. I plan on visiting Rotorua and then traveling onwards to Turangi to do the Tongariro Crossing.
posted by tina 1/26/2001 06:00:59 PM
january 19, 2001
You don't realize until you arrive somewhere new how some places didn't even seem real to you before. I don't know how many times I've seen the Sydney Opera House on television or seen photos of Bondi Beach. But they just seemed like imagined, symbolic places until I walked around the corner of Circular Quay and saw the opera house looming up in front of me. It seem strange to me that people live here all year round and see these things everyday.
Sydney has been nice so far but, like any big city, I'm already a bit tired of it. I find that you either need to live in a city to appreciate it or you need to come in for a couple of days, see the big sights, and then take off. I would have preferred the latter prior to leaving for New Zealand. The week here has been a bit too much, partly because it's also very expensive here. My diet has all gone to hell and I can't wait to get moving.
I know that this is a generalization, one that I arrived at primarily because I am staying two blocks from a major beach area (Coogee), but it seems that many of the people here are cancerous melanomas waiting to happen. Everybody is constantly wearing skimpy little things and tanned to a deep brown colour. A lot of the women, who look beautiful now, have an undertone of freckles all across their shoulders, chests, and backs. Yet, despite government sponsored campaigns tp "slip slap slop", the message does not seem to be entering the brains of the young people here.
Also, my triathlon hopes have been resurrected. I went to see two of the guys I know here do a biathlon yesterday and I almost wanted to join in myself. People here seem to make fitness practically a religion. I've never seen more people jogging or swimming all the time. And the muscles rippling everywhere have practically put my hormones into shock. It's insanity. It's also ironic, considering what I just wrote in the previous paragraph about the skin cancer thing. Also, in a rather strange contradiction, a lot of people smoke here as well. I saw an incredibly fit looking woman yesterday who was lighting up cigarette after cigarette. I don't really understand it.
I'm off for New Zealand tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.
posted by tina 1/19/2001 08:56:21 AM
january 16, 2001
It's funny the things that one finds familiar when traveling. Although I have friends here in Sydney, I have felt somewhat groundless since I arrived. This city feels vast, everything is built on such a large scale. I don't know if I think that because it has psychologically become a part of the experience of being far away from home or if this city is actually physically larger. But yesterday, after a long hot day wandering around the famous sites, I found myself in Chinatown with a big bowl of won ton mein (won ton noodles in soup). I never realized how much this was a comfort food for me. People around me talking in Chinese, the familiar chairs and tables, and the smells and tastes of a Chinese restaurant made me feel grounded for awhile. It seems strange because the thing that I reached for was not overtly Canadian but was familiar and reassuring in how it felt Chinese - reminding me of family and home.
Other than that, wherever I go, I seem to be particularly susceptible to all kinds of bug bites and other nasties. I currently have mosquito like welts all over my body and I can't figure out if they are from mosquitos, bed bugs from the hostel, or some kind of parasite that lives in the water. Needless to say, I am horrendously uncomfortable in this respect at least. I'm off to Manly today for some trekking around. On Saturday, I take off for New Zealand.
posted by tina 1/16/2001 08:13:24 AM
january 14, 2001
I've arrived in Sydney. For some reason, my fear of flying dissipated, probably due to the drug cocktail I took before taking off and before landing. Sydney is nice so although I've only seen the Eastern Suburbs - Coogee and Bondi - been in the water and already have a bit of a sunburn. I'll write more later, that australian boy is waiting.
posted by tina 1/14/2001 05:57:23 PM
january 12, 2001
I woke up this morning with a knot in the pit of my stomach. This has happened to me several times over the last couple of weeks. I'll suddenly realize that I'm leaving this warm, familiar, and comfortable place for a year. For the more seasoned travelers out there, this may not seem like a long time and even I know that the time will go by at an insanely rapid pace. However, this is a very important trip for me, taking place in a transition phase in my life and over the course of which I will be thinking long and hard about certain aspects of my life and considering some important decisions.
Although it may sound dramatic, I fully expect to be a different person when I get home. In fact, I may not even come home at the end of the year. If things go according to my current plan, I may end up in Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Beijing embarking hopefully on what some might call my "real life".
Recently, a friend questioned why people our age seem able to pick up and leave for a year and wondered what that said about our relationships with our friends and family at home. I come from the enviable position of having a large and sometimes overwhelmingly loving and supportive extended family. I also have many close friends who are being left behind. When I planned this trip over the course of the last two or three years, I always planned that I would go alone and the thought of leaving all these people behind, possibly for several years, has never scared me. I have no doubt that I will miss them but I have always suspected that I would not miss them as much as I feel that I should in this situation.
I have analyzed my motivations and I know that part of the reason for my leaving is the need to separate myself from these people. While I enjoy the support I receive through my networks of friends and family, it can sometimes be stifling or it makes everything too easy. I need to distance myself from that support for awhile to see how I do on my own. I think that's why a lot of people - expecially young twentysomething recent graduates - travel. Its a necessity at this point for me to leave my comfort zone (in the oh so hard to travel countries of New Zealand and Australia) and figure some things out about my capabilities on my own.
This all sounds cliché doesn't it? Well, it absolutely is. But it's also one of the truths for my leaving, possibly for much longer than a year.
My plane leaves in five and a half hours. The next time I write, I'll be in Australia.
posted by tina 1/12/2001 02:35:35 AM
january 10, 2001
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These are the images of Australia.
I envision blistering blue skies, framing red earth. Snorkeling around the Whitsunday Islands and following sunsets at Cable Beach. Hiking to Uluru at sunrise and shrinking into endless expanses of white desert in the Nullarbor.
I have to keep reminding myself – and this is something that I have even researched and studied – that the travel industry is based on the creation and promotion of these very complex fantasies of people and places. We are conditioned to expect paradise; we desire those vast and empty spaces.
If there are people, they are expected to fit similarly constructed iconography from the travel brochures. Travelers want to snap photographs of an aborigine playing the didgeridoo, an image locked in the past and deemed authentic. We (tourists) prefer ignorance of impoverished aborigines and dwindling land claims. To us, Australians are not the ethnic mixtures of Sydney or Melbourne, but the grizzled outback individual, existing in our shared myths of open spaces, red dirt, and hard sunshine.
It happens everywhere. Asia has its rice farmers, laughing children, and young monks swathed in orange, meditating serenely. I’m sure that the people of Cuba would not appreciate having their country reduced to “charming accents” and cigars in the radio advertisement I heard yesterday. Perversely, in India, crushing poverty juxtaposed with spirituality is what we expect and photograph.
Even here, Canada and its people are represented in shockingly naïve ways, which only become apparent to us when we come into contact with foreign travelers' perspectives. At a Vancouver travel clinic in August, I ran into a young man from Israel who was cycling around the world. He admitted to me that he had been disappointed by his experiences in Canada because he had not encountered enlightened, spiritual, and wise aboriginals but instead mostly “drunken Indians” (his words). At first I was shocked and repulsed by his incredible ignorance of some of Canada's harsher realities but then I realized that he was guilty of something to which all travelers, including myself, fall victim.
We buy the myths and images that are packaged and sold to us, even when we diligently research and learn all that we can about reality. Travel is that fantasy. Even when we learn differently about the people or places that we visit, these beliefs are so ingrained that our hope that they will be there still remains in the backs of our minds.
So I still subscribe to the beliefs in Australia’s eternal sunshine, beaches, kangaroos, and outback. I will probably sometimes be an asshole tourist. I will marvel at Angkor Wat and glare at the other travelers who dare to step on such sacred ground alongside with me, and then shake my head at my own hypocrisy. I will still swim with the dolphins and pay too much money to a tour operator for the opportunity.
More importantly, however, I will keep my ears and my eyes open for the things that I don’t expect, that I did not know existed. Will this be enough? I don't know but I think that self-awareness is at least a step up from choosing ignorance.
posted by tina 1/10/2001 05:15:05 PM