travel writers and banned countries

Should travel writers go to, and write about, countries which whom their own country has travel warnings or sanctions against?

For instance, think about – CUBA: FIJI: ZIMBABWE: MYANMAR/BURMA and other such places.

What do you think? Do you go to such places? Why? Why not?

Comments and discussion please

The Kiwitravelwriter to tutor on a Pacific Island – FIJI

Learn travel writing on a Pacific island

They pay you to do what? Like travelling? Like writing?

This course is run by the redoubtable kiwitravelwriter, well-known in New Zealand and expanding her readership rapidly. Her suggestion is compelling:

“Take a vacation-with-a-purpose, learn travel-writing, and then get paid to travel! Combine your writing and travel passions so you can earn money for even more travels by learning to write terrific stories at this travel writing workshop – and wonderfully, where all the topics we need will be right on our doorstep for us to experience – I believe authentic, ethical travel writers never write about things they haven’t done or seen.”

And of course you can also use the same skills for creating a setting in a novel, or short story, and to greatly improve your blogs, letters, and emails.

Topics will include (but not only):

• How to write specifically for various publications
• Know your market
• What works – what doesn’t?
• Where to sell your stories – locally and internationally
• Finding your own style and the secrets of style
• Use your senses; quotes; fact files
• Query letters and the taxman
• Considering other markets
• Photography and travel writing: along with exercises, daily expeditions, and lots of talking in-between.

By your last day you should have a perfectly formed (critiqued) article ready to pitch to an editor and start earning.

Course requirements: enthusiasm and curiosity are essential.

Add notebooks and pencils; a camera; perhaps your laptop or an audio cassette – and, as we are on a Pacific island – sunscreen and swimming costumes are highly recommended!

Check out this link for more info re course and of  course the fabulous resort – I hope to see you there!

hippos, crocs, and a canoe

‘Why do you want to go to Zimbabwe?’

Even I thought it seemed a little silly, when I replied ‘Because I like the name.’ Zimbabwe sounded exotic and I just wanted to go.

Now I’ve arrived in Africa and I’m ready for my big adventure: a canoe safari down the Zambesi River.

Standing on the banks of the calm looking river, I am beginning to get scared. Watching us is the biggest, meanest looking crocodile I have ever seen.  Lying in the sun, he seems to be inspecting us.  I watch him and he watches me as I listen to our guide’s safety instructions.

“Keep looking for hippos, usually you will just see their little ears sticking out of the water, and every few minutes I want to you give a little knock on the canoe so they can hear us coming. If you don’t and we frighten them they are likely to charge our canoes as they try to get into deeper water to hide.” he said.

I’m really getting scared now – last night I’d read that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal – but it’s too late to change my mind.

Our canoes are laden with tents, food and water: enough for four days. We paddle away from the security of the Mana Pools National Park – our destination, a wee village just before the Mozambique border.

We paddle down-stream and, once the crocodile is out of sight, the safari is as wonderful as I had imagined. The sun is warm and all around me I can see the sacred white ibis balancing on the back of cape buffalo, iridescent dragonflies hover about, I can hear noisy baboons, and the sky has many fish eagles, Goliath herons and beautiful white-fronted bee-eaters. Magic. Just like a storybook.

“Hippo!” The guide and I paddle as fast as we can. It is coming directly towards us. We just miss colliding with each other!

“Close your mouth.  Danger’s over,” I tell myself. I have a swig of water to get some moisture back into my dry mouth.

“Whew that was close!’  Adrenaline is surging through my body.  I try to breathe evenly and calm my heart. “That was a lessor spotted hippo” laughs Chobe our guide.

True, we had spotted it at the last possible moment and I’m not sure who was the most scared: hippo, guide or me!  In seconds Chobe had changed from a laid back, softly spoken Zimbabwean, to a fast paddling man who was sure both he and I were about to be killed by a hippo. The front of the canoe almost rose in the air as we both paddled deeply and strongly.

Perhaps it is true the hippo was just scared but I’d like to know why a vegetarian has such big teeth and powerful jaws if it only eats grass.

Read more of my round the world adventures in my book – Naked in Budapest: travels with a  passionate nomad. Only $NZ25   http://www.kiwitravelwriter.com

do you suffer from wanderlust?

Do you have a wanderlust? I have and consider it rather like a friendly disease or benign addiction – or are they oxymoron’s?

Maud Parrish 1878-1976 said “Wanderlust can be the most glorious thing in the world. Imagination is a grand stimulating thing, like a cocktail, but to find reality is the full course with champagne” Nine Pounds of Luggage.

As she travelled around the world sixteen times (with very little luggage and a banjo) I imagine she knows all about both wanderlust and reality.

When I read the above quote I wondered, what do those words REALLY mean? Imagination, wanderlust, reality – they trip off the tongue so lightly and yet maybe when I say I have wanderlust you may not know what I mean. or, when you agree yes I too have it, the attributes I give it on your behalf are way off beam.

Time for some market, or rather word, research.

The Oxford Paperback Dictionary & Thesaurus (Oxford.1997) dictionary tells me that wanderlust is an ‘eagerness to travel or wander. Restlessness.’ Yep. Got that.

My eagerness takes the form of an obsession with travel programmes on television or radio, travel pages in magazines and press, in fact I even buy magazines with names such as Wanderlust, Sojourney and NZ Wilderness. Why? So I can find new and exciting places to visit – places to add to my list.( High on my current list are diverse places such as a village in Canada that has polar bears visit, a river in  India and some springs in a Kenyan National Park, places I would not have know about but for my obsession.) Eager to get to places not well known. Restless when I feel trapped.

Goal planning, and goal achieving can be very different things. So often the people who tell me ‘You’re so lucky’ have dreams of travelling too. But are they eager enough to do the necessary saving and budgeting at home in order to reap the benefits of being ‘lucky’ enough to travel? Usually not.

However I digress, back to the book of words: imagination. This evidently means having a ‘mental faculty of forming images of objects not present to senses.’ Guess that’s me thinking of lazing on an Indian river, or viewing polar bears. Being able to see the dollar or two saved this week as a coffee on the West Bank in Paris. Yes I have imagination too. Imagination that my back will always be able to carry a pack on it!

I also checked wander and lust as separate words and I certainly qualify there. To wander is to ‘go from place to place aimlessly, diverge from the path.’ Well I have done that all my life, and travelling has not changed it at all. I LOVE to get off the beaten track, in fact to be lost is ideal, that’s when the wonderful, the unexpected, the amazing, the different happens. As long as I am found one more time than I am lost I know all is well.

Lust. Another word close to my heart. My trusty Oxford tells me it’s ‘passionate desire’. Well, been there, done that, still got it, intend to keep it – what else can I say. Passionate for travel, new places, food, people and experiences.

And finally, last on my list of words to check reality.  This seems to be the boring one, the one that people often accuse travellers of trying to escape from. Not so. This is what can separate the traveller (with time) from the tourist (on a schedule) as the dictionary says it is ‘what’s real or exists or underlies the appearances’.

How often I have made some assumptions about people, places, and things, about actions, beliefs, and religions by believing the appearances – what I think my eyes are telling me rather that waiting a little longer and seeing what is real.  We humans love to have order in our lives so make up stories to make sense of things. However that does not make them real. Knowing the ‘truth’ is like having a secret shared and I value the people who I meet along the way who share their truths, or realities, with me.

Nevertheless, ask three people to describe an accident they witnessed and each will be different. We experience things from within our own reality or context.

So do you have the wanderlust? Is your description of  it the same as mine? There will be commonalties, and I suspect, for people with the overwhelming desire to wander aimlessly, most will not be seeking a cure.

I agree with you Maud, wanderlust is glorious, stimulating, and sure provides the meal of life with champagne-like bubbles for me.

A down side to travel? Rich but cash poor

There is a down side to travel.

You may be destined to be rich in many ways but cash poor. You could be infected with a disease to which there is no known antidote; the travel bug. Friends and family will be unsure if you are crazy or courageous.

Travel also gives you, a new way of thinking. Long held “truths” no longer seem true when viewed from a different culture, a different perspective.

A simple example is eating. Most New Zealanders are taught to eat with a knife and a fork.  Knife, in the right hand, for cutting and the fork, in the left, for placing food in our mouth – in other words  the “right” way.

However in other countries this is not the accepted ‘right’ way. In the USA the fork is in the left hand; in Thailand food is cut to bite-sized pieces in the preparation process and a spoon is used to eat, other Asian cultures use chop sticks, another country their right hand.

To each culture their way of eating is the ‘truth’. But what about other ‘truths’.

For instance, how women, children, the poor or old are treated in the country you plan to visit? It’s often strange or difficult to accept or understand why certain practises happen.

Why, for example, are women second class citizens or paid less than men? And what of the practise of genital mutilation; of children being deformed so they are more effective beggars; of women needing to be covered from head to toe? What too of the long-neck women of northern Thailand with their deformed bodies- will you go there?

When in foreign places I’ve learnt to silently accept the cultural, political or religious attitudes of that place. If I can’t do that, for my own peace of mind, I prefer not to go to that part of the world.

Travel is intensified living, nothing can be taken for granted. It’s like having a new pair of glasses, we see often things, and ourselves, more clearly.

Nothing is familiar, we are constantly aware of, or curious about, what is happening around us. We watch the interaction between people and try to decipher it. Body language is different from place to place and our previous knowledge of the rules of interaction no longer apply. And that’s one of the reasons why we travellers travel.

So, do broad-minded people travel or does travel make one broad-minded? I suspect one has to have a degree of broad-mindedness to step outside our comfort-zone to travel, then the process of travelling does the rest. Unfortunately it’s not like that for all travellers.

I’ve met people who do want things to be just the same as at home. They remain close-minded and ignore local beliefs and behaviours. Insensitive women bathing topless on Malaysian beaches say it doesn’t matter, ‘because this is a tourist place’ despite signs asking them to respect local customs and not remove their tops.

Attitudes and behaviours we indulge in at home are not always appropriate in another country no matter what I, or you, think about the local norms.

I was really amused at the hypocrisy of these same women being upset, horrified and angry, about a tour being run in a tourist region of India.  Local men are offered trips to Goa to see topless western women – with a money-back guarantee if none seen.

A wonderful twist on us travellers who sometimes appear to use the world as a human zoo.

So the question “why travel” needs to be accompanied by asking what do you want from travel and what can you accept or ignore.

Choosing where to travel is just as important. There are as many places where topless bathing is fine or where its OK to photograph people as there are places not to do those things.

If you choose to go to different cultures, be prepared to change your behaviour and dress. That will help ensure you don’t come home with tales of being abused by offended people who believe your dress and behaviour is confirmation that ‘all western people’ are insensitive or sexually available.

So, having decided to let go of the safe and familiar, what is to be gained from travel?

Travel is alluring, it allows you to be exactly who you are at that time. As if a nom de voyage is given us and we respond to the circumstances instead of being circumscribed by our past or the expectations of people who know you.

Shedding our past as a snake sheds its skin: the same but different, our boundaries pushed. Inventing ourselves, not defined by others or our past – emotionally baggage-free – as if the centre of personal gravity changes. Thoughts and images of home change, diminish as memories are overlaid with new experiences.

Why travel? Why not! Traveller or tourist, armchair or plane, life will be richer rather than poorer, enriched not impoverished, colourful  not dull.

However, the last word on travel must go to Rolf Waldo Emerson. who said, ‘Although we travel the world to find the beautiful, we must find it in ourselves or we find it not at all.’

check out my book about travel ( NOTE I am rich but cash poor)

great review for my book

Unsolicited email from an unknown reader

I purchased your book yesterday (Friday 14th August 09) after the Probus meeting and have just finished it.

It can only be described as an absolute gem. It is a fabulous travel book; it is an even greater person story. I read several books a week and for me this is The book of the year. Your comments on your success in the battle with alcohol for me made this book even greater. Well done Heather. You have the great skill and achievement of knowing what is important in life and of knowing what is trivial.

Also, places I have been to and know reasonably well especially S.E.Asia I could suddenly see in a whole new light, I guess that is the skill of the very observant traveller and the skilled travel writer

Cheers, Harry (NOTE – last name not added here in respect for this person’s privacy, Heather)

Another male wrote -

‘Suffering serious withdrawals after finishing Naked in Budapest, and being deprived of my daily fix of travel in far-away places. I have not enjoyed a book so much for yonks.’

Hugh Adams (author of ‘A bakers dozen’)

Read more reader comments here

Buy Naked in Budapest: travels with a passionate nomad (ISBN 978-0-473-11675-0) for Fathers Day: Details here http://kiwitravelwriter.com

kiwi travel writer confesses it’s difficult sometimes

Every traveller I meet is going to write travel stories: well every second traveller. They know they are good writers- everyone loves their letters and emails – and now they will give up their day job to become a famous writer.

According to my unofficial, and unscientific, gestimated research, 99.5% will never write. Why? Writing is difficult. It’s solitary; requires self-discipline and concentration. (if you want to be a travel writer see here for how to become one)

I know one hundred and one ways to avoid writing. When I sit at a blank screen, with a deadline looming, it’s amazing how creative I can be. I have developed the skills of evasion or procrastination to a fine art.

Confronted by a pristine sheet of paper – or my well-worn notebook – I suddenly need a coffee. The urge is imperious and no matter what I tell myself – write a hundred words and then you will really enjoy it I say – I don’t believe it, nor do I listen to myself.

Next comes the need, well not a need, but a desire, a craving, for a cigarette, or at least the nicotine in a cigarette. I would have thought after all this time that would have disappeared but no: every time I have to write- as opposed to wanting to write- the old addiction dragon rears up. It tries to tell me I could write if and when I have a white tube of dried plant in my hand.

To date I have been able to remember that I smoked to relieve the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal: not for pleasure as I had always imagined.

So, to quell that imperious urge and the thought that I can’t write at all without a nicotine fix I decide to dice vegetables for minestrone or some other time-intensive soup. Other writing-avoidance-ploys including sorting photos for some possible future story, having a bath, another coffee (at the Arts Centre) pruning my bonsai trees or responding to answer-phone messages.

However once all those have been attended to – or pushed down – I finally sit, pen in hand and start to combine my letters and postcards home with my on-the-road notebooks and record my experiences. Translate the hours, days, weeks, or months in a place into a story that will give you some of the flavours of a place.

I’m happy I am not a travel writer -in the usual way. It is so much more fun to be a traveller who writes about my experiences – rather than travelling so I can write about places. There is a world of difference. I don’t have to record where I stay, what restaurants I ate at, what activities I indulged in or visit any of the iconic must-see places that so many travel articles comprise of. I just travel; record highlights, then later decide on which to write about.

Travel writers who are bought to New Zealand hit the must-go-to places such as Rotorua, Milford Sound and Queenstown, while trampers hike the big name walks, Milford, Routeburn, Tongariro.  Unless they do some deeper research many do not realise that much of the real New Zealand lies in places that are off the well-worn trail. That’s why I like to write of experiences, people I meet and public transport, rather than tours of a country.

One of the saddest T-shirts I ever saw was on a young woman in Athens. 32 countries in 30 days it proudly proclaimed. Not the type of trip I want, but one that could produce a travel article on the highlights for the next persons race though the continent in a bus with others. If you just want the highlights and want others to do the planning that’s fine and I understand it too.

One of the difficulties of living down-under is it takes so long, and costs so much, to get ‘upover’ that we are tempted to cram in as many places as possible. I recently spent a few days with a group of Americans who had two weeks to explore and hike in New Zealand and they too had a tight schedule for the same reasons. New Zealand is a long way from anywhere- geographically speaking.

However if you want to be tempted to try somewhere different, (or be one of my many armchair travellers) and I  hope my stories encourage you to do some research and explore this wonderful world.

See what happens when I finally just start writing – eventually the page is full.

bad travel writing includes all these words

As travel writer I can endorse this article: l teach travel writing in Christchurch, New Zealand and these are all on my longer list of ‘dont’s’ – however my list of ‘do’ are even longer

10 Words and Phrases We Never Want to See in Travel Writing Again

Written by Teresa Ponikvar

The first time some travel writer tossed off each of these words and phrases, they might have sounded fresh and clever. But we’ve seen them too many times, and now they sound tired, strained, and cheesy—and at Matador, that’s definitely not what we’re about.

1. Best-kept secret
Really? Are you sure The Purple Dinosaur Bar is Denver’s best-kept secret? You found it, after all, and now you’re publishing its location, so it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a secret, much less a well-kept one.

2. Et cetera
Whether it’s “et cetera” (fancy! Latin!) or plain old “etc.”, you’re really saying this: “There’s more, but I’m too lazy to tell you about it.”

3. sun-dappled/sun-speckled/sun-splashed
We get it. It’s sunny. Tell us about it in a way that doesn’t involve the word “dappled.” Please.

4. don’t-miss/ must-see
A bit of a bully, are you? What are you going to do to us if we miss it, huh?

Just give us your experience. Let us decide for ourselves if South Dakota’s Corn Palace is a must-see or a see-maybe-if-I-happen-to-be-driving-through-South-Dakota-someday-and-need-to-use-the-bathroom.

5. exotic
“Exotic” is relative—it just means “different” or “foreign”, and depending who your reader is, that could mean ao dai, guayaberas, or blue jeans—so focus on describing your experience, and let your readers murmur, “oooh—how exotic!” if they so choose.

6. gem/jewel
A beach is not a gem, and a restaurant is not a jewel, and yes, we know what a metaphor is, but you can come up with a better one than that, can’t you?

7. oasis/paradise
If you’ve traveled to an actual oasis, as in “a small fertile or green area in a desert region, usually having a spring or well,” feel free to tell it like it is. But describing anything but an actual oasis as an oasis is another case of a threadbare metaphor.

And throwing “paradise” around just makes you sound clueless. Have you seriously found a place with zero problems, conflicts, threats, dangers? Or are you just, you know, on vacation?

8. treasure trove
If you’ve stumbled upon a previously undiscovered royal Egyptian burial chamber, or a forgotten cache of pirate’s booty, fine. Otherwise, leave “treasure trove” alone.

9. breathtaking
Was your breath literally taken away by the beauty of that sunset? Probably not, so this word is overkill. Unless you’re blue in the face and suffering from awe-induced oxygen deprivation, look for another word.

10. boast
Why must places “boast” fine dining, colonial architecture, unspoiled beaches, or symphony orchestras? Can’t they just have them? “Have” is a perfectly good word. The citizens may well boast about their city’s marvelous offerings, but that’s another story.

Sign up for Matador’s new Travel Writing School and get the skills you need.

One-Day Short Story Competition in Christchurch, New Zealand

One Day Short Story Competition winners

Following the very succcessful One Day Short Story Competion and Literary Evening at the Christchurch Art Gallery. The Cultural Precinct is pleased to present the winning entires plus several very highly commended stories.

Follow this link to the stories

library150.com/Competitions/OneDayShortStory/

One-Day Short Story Competition in Christchurch New Zealand

(NOTE  you must be in Christchurch on 2nd August 2009 to enter)

As part of our 75th anniversary celebrations, and in association with the Cultural Precinct, Christchurch Art Gallery, and the Christchurch Libraries, the Canterbury branch of the NZ Society of Authors is holding a one-day short story competition.

The competition is free to enter, but we want to make sure writers have the opportunity to pre-register* and can therefore save time and start planning and writing their stories as soon as they pick up their registration packs and official numbers on the day of the competition from the Christchurch Art Gallery.

The date of the competition is 2nd August, 2009.  Registration at the Christchurch Art Gallery opens at 9:30am and entries must be returned to the Registration Desk by 4:30pm the same day.

Categories:

Youth 13 – 17 years, 1500 words max.

First prize $250 and publication of the short story in The Press.

Adults 18+, 1500 words max.

First Prize $750, publication of winning short story in The Press, one night at the Classic Villa, dinner for two at the Curator’s House and tickets for the Court Theatre.

Registration pack [distributed only on 2nd August at the Art Gallery] contains:

Registration form

Blank CD on which to burn your entry

A list of twelve story triggers from within the Cultural Precinct, of which at least four must appear in the story

A unique registration number

NOTE: All entries submitted remain the property of the entrant.  However, The Press reserves the right to publish the winning entries without fee within one month of the competition.

Winning entries will be announced at the Christchurch Art Gallery Wednesday 19th August 2009 at the following event:

Literary Shorts with Kate De Goldi, Gavin Bishop and Sally Blundell

The judges read their favourite short stories from the past 150 years, plus the One-Day Short Story Competition winners are announced.

6pm / Philip Carter Family Auditorium / free

*To pre-register, please email canterburynzsa AT gmail.com remembering to include your name and the category you wish to enter (youth or adult). This will ensure you don’t have to wait in line at the Gallery except to pick up your registration pack.

Akaroa – the french community in New Zealand

Despite not one French beret or baguette maker in my ancestry I love attending the annual (October) French Festival in Akaroa, the oldest colonial town in the South Island, and famed as New Zealand’s sole French Settlement just over the hill from Christchurch.

Akaroa,  sited on a peninsula on the east coast of the South Island,  is usually advertised as a place to unwind, to wander and soak up times past among the  historic buildings.

Banks Peninsula, and its two large harbours, was formed by volcanic eruptions. The sea then breached both cones with the craters forming the Lyttelton and Akaroa Harbours – Maori tell great legends of those times.

Whalers played an important role in the early European history of Banks Peninsula and used Akaroa as a safe harbour.

A French whaling ship commander purchased land from some of the local Maori, Kai Tahu chiefs, thinking the Peninsula was a suitable place to begin French colonisation. The French Government backed the Nanto-Bordelaise Company which was set up to found the proposed settlement. But the British already had stronger trading interests in New Zealand.

In 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi, which paved the way for British sovereignty, was signed only days after the French colonists left the port of La Rochelle. When they arrived at Akaroa, the French found the Union Jack flying. However the 57 French (and a few German) settlers set up camp at Akaroa. Evidence of the walnuts, willows, grapevines and roses that they brought with them still remain and French street names are further evidence of the unique origins of the town.

It’s against this background, and over the past 11 years, that the French Festival Akaroa has blossomed into a real celebration of their French heritage. (Dates for 2009 2nd, 3rd, 4th October)

So, join Akaroa people as they paint the town red, white and blue for a town-wide market day with French food and wine stalls, market stalls, entertainment, fun and frivolous competitions and a re-enactment of the first French landing in Akaroa. Special features includes roving French entertainment, food and wine stalls with a French flavour and a French cooking master-class

La Grande Soirée and special flag raising ceremony will be on the Friday  before the full festivities kick off onthe Saturday  See the website:  www.frenchfest.co.nz

©Heather Hapeta