Blinding Flash of Reality

I was riding my bike on the west coast of Don Det, one of many islands in Southern Laos' Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands). I stopped my bike to admire my view over the dried rice fields. Old dried coconut husks lie in the square indentations left by the fields. The gulden light cast by the setting sun behind the trees threw jagged slashed of shadow over the hulking grey masses of buffalo. I was soon interrupted by a young boy, who seeing me stopped on my bike, wandered over and asked me for a pen. Ive realized that after several months, the things I take from travels are not always pleasant. I tend to spare people back home about the ugly sides of seeing the world' the public masturbation, sexual gropings, beggars with massively deformed arms and legs, the child prostitution. But I shouldn't try to hide these inconveniences. I want people to believe that travelling is not a utopia. The countries Ive seen are cheap, a euphemism we use to describe poor, and my presence as a white American travelling the world for a year as a luxury is not to be overshadowed by the poverty. Yes, I could give the boy my pen, though naivety has no place in this setting. Then pen to me is small, but our hopes for them to become an instrument of knowledge and learning is frankly, pathetic. The boy will sell the pen and, with the memory of the philanthropic falang fresh in his mind, will return to the streets, perhaps at his parents demands. What these people need is not a piece of candy or a few coins. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. A traveller should recognize the remarkable gift of travelling, but should try to avoid becoming jaded to the ways of our ever-growing world. I have met every kind of traveller; the dewy-eyed bleeding heart that never negotiates prices and hands nutritionless sweets to starving children; the stubborn bargain-hunter that will not walk away without saving those extra thirty cents; The party seeker that turns a blind eye to the culture they have come to "see"; The non-conformist that ironically wouldn't dare being caught in a "tourist" town.This is not to say that I have not indulged in any of these qualities, but its the power of balance that I have come to seek and respect. See that kid trying to sell bracelets at eleven thirty at night? He should be in bed resting for school tomorrow. I once read that a beggar in Pakistan makes more money every year than a college graduate. I also heard that the hydropower damns set up in rural Nepal meant to aid struggling minorities a provides electricity, which means staying up late watching television, which means snot waking up at dawn to tend the crops, which means cutting down trees to heat a house when they should be warm in bed, which means deforestation and depletion of nature by the erosion caused by the damn. Tread lightly in other countries- our prescience is more of ten that not detrimental to those who we have come to see which we at times, unknowingly equate with a Sunday trip to the zoo. The elephant dressed up and can can ow be fed a banana by you for just a few pennies actually requires pounds and pounds of food to survive. This is a not a particularly pleasant entry,but you and I need to know the realities of the world.