Notice the Silence over 'Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?'

The big hub-bub over Thomas Kohnstamm's Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? is finally dying down. Much of the coverage jumped on false claims that Thomas 'plagiarized' text while updating portions of Brazil for Lonely Planet (not true), or his use of a LP business card to get free drinks, meals and hotels (true). It's led to a backlash over the 'ethics' behind all of LP's guidebooks.

Some authors, not including myself, are furious over the link to how everyone works. What I find funny is the silence of a cowering group of publishers -- be it Frommer's, Fodor's, Footprint, Rough Guides -- who haven't spoken out on the subject, and let all the fall-out stay on LP's shoulders. Many of us who write for LP, as I still do, do so because it remains a better deal than writing for even 'more high-end' publishers like Fodor's, who pay far less. Some publishers actively encourage freebies.

I reviewed the book for World Hum a week ago.

Travel Poems? Yes, Travel Poems!

Stumbled on this on YouTube and, maybe I'm a cynic, but it kinda cracks me up. Poems collected from a one-time stoner's trip across north Africa, the Middle East and into Southeast Asia in 1971. It's from poet Richard Krech's 1972 book "Poems from Free World," named for his observation of pool players in sarongs in Mandalay. It's not altogether uninteresting.

Of travel

"The acquisition of a ticket enables you to travel more than geographically."


Of Libya

"I am a stranger among strangers.
Here there are no women, no drugs, no beer, no wine, no amusement
I have found companionship in the Tunisians
Who come here to work because the pay is better...
Habib and his illiterate brother
Who shares a bong with me because we both have tattoos."

Of bus ride into Afghanistan

"Drink chai, smoke, take showers.
Several hours later Linda and I asleep on the rooftop
The stars brilliant in the windy sky
The horse cart in the galloping street
The opium dreams going on forever
So real I can reach out and touch them"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I actually tried to make an EP a few years ago called "I Like to Travel," which was largely dumb and unmelodic, and completely unfinished. My favorite song, probably, was "Fistfight at the Union of '90s Expats" which imagined expats sharing tales from the road a decade later. In Pennsylvania.

It goes:

"At the union
Of '90s expats
Held at
A swank
Philadelphia lodge
Hunter's speech
Called The Beach
As the very Dylan
Of our broken
Wayward generation
Some Keralan res
Threw off his fez
And said 'spit on this son'
That's revisionist raj'
We spray and spread in the sun
Till darkness comes
With a punch"

[enter synthesizer solo]


OK, maybe travel's best left outside verse.

It's Shwebo!

VIDEO: MY FAVORITE TOWN IN BURMA




I have a documenting problem, in that I document too much. I know it's wrong, but pretty much any where I go I end up trying to 'capture' by my digital camera, then my video camera, then my journal -- and THEN maybe I'll take a note for whatever project I'm actually being paid to go there for. So I put together this little video to make it worthwhile...

I visited Burma a couple months after the protests last September, and found things -- in touristy destinations or back-waters -- more or less back to the normal day-to-day routine. One of the things I think is important to do on any trip, but particularly to a place like Burma, is get off-the-beaten-track and try to engage with people.

One of my favorite places in Burma is Shwebo, about three hours' north of Mandalay by local bus -- and rarely seen by anyone. It once was a proud Burmese capital; Alaungpaya revived a sinking Burmese empire in the mid 18th century -- and nearly conquered all of Siam (Thailand) in his brief lifetime. Now it's more known for the thanakha (powdered bark), that women and children apply in smears, dollops and stripes to their faces for sunscreen and skin moisturizer.

At a little teastand on the main street, a father and son sat down with me to chat a bit (in English) about Shwebo, Burma and the US presidential race. When I asked the inevitable question -- 'do you like Iron Cross?' (Burma's own Rolling Stones -- their long-time biggest rock band) -- both dad and son's eyes popped open wide. Son was off to grab a CD, which he gave to me. 'I hope you enjoy it.'

That's Shwebo.

(I went with harpist Hlaing Win Maung for the soundtrack though. Apologies to Iron Cross.)