I’m occasionally asked when I started travel writing – and it began all the way back in high school.
My first piece of travel writing was published by Lonely Planet when I was about 15 years old. It was essentially a short story regarding an Incident (note the capital I) which took place during a school trip to Indonesia. I’m not sure how Lonely Planet decided that it was worthy of publication, but I think their scoring system definitely takes personal embarrassment into account.
I will soon tell that story, in all of its humiliating glory. But first, a bit of background:
We were all baffled when our teachers announced that destination for our Grade Nine trip would be Indonesia. This wouldn’t be a big deal if I lived in, say, Australia, but we lived in Canada, which is pretty much as far from Indonesia as you can possibly get. I’m not sure how I would manage a 30 hour long flight today, let alone when I was 14 years old and had trouble staying focused during an entire episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
To this day, I still don’t know why the teachers chose Indonesia. Were they developing ulcers after 18 years of Mexican food? Did one of the teachers have a secret Indonesian boyfriend that she planned to smuggle back to Canada in her suitcase? Did they lose a high-stakes game of late-night Truth-or-Dare in the teacher’s lounge? I can still see no reason for it. Personally, I wouldn’t take a class of Grade 9 students to the grocery store, let alone the heart of Southeast Asia.
The flight out from Calgary was largely uneventful. We flew to Los Angeles, and then on to Hawaii. I had the pleasure of enjoying my first smoking flight during the 18 hour leg from Hawaii to Indonesia, where the air was thick enough to chew within an hour after take-off. For in-flight entertainment, some surfers in their mid-twenties tried to pick up one of my classmates for reasons that we suspect were unrelated to her sparkling personality and love of horses.
I don’t remember much about landing in Indonesia. This may have had something to do with the 3 hours of sleep I’d gotten over the past two days, compounded by my first case of smoker’s cough and the vast temperature difference between the sub-arctic Canadian prairie and the hot, muggy Indonesian tropics.
I do remember that our clearly imbalanced teachers had decided to allow small groups of teenaged boys to stay in our very own hotel rooms in Bali, seemingly oblivious of the 99.89% chance that at least one of us would overdose on diazepam or contract Hepatitis before the end of the week. Better still, we were actually allowed to venture into the world, provided that we stayed with our ‘travel buddy’.
My travel buddy was named Steve and was, if possible, the only one on the trip less worldly than I was. I’m not sure Steve had ever left his basement, let alone the continent.
It was while taking part in said venturing through the mean streets of Bali that I experienced both my first and second travel incidents (note the lack of capital letters), both of which were very minor but still a major shock to my Grade 9 self.
They say that when God closes a door, He opens a window. Well, God saw fit to gift me with the complete inability to learn foreign languages but a remarkable ability to imitate foreign accents. Hence, I have no idea what I’m saying but I sound like a native speaker whilst saying it. As a result, locals often attempt to engage me in lengthy conversations that I am completely unable to understand on any level whatsoever after I say something as simple as, “Hello!” or “Bathroom?”.
Of course, I had no idea of any of this back then, because this was just about to happen for the very first time.
My poor, unsuspecting Grade 9 self proceeded to walk up to a street vendor and ask, in what I can only imagine was flawless Indonesian, “How much would you like for this particular handicraft?” I was very proud of myself at having learned that phrase from the travel guide, but was completely unprepared for the poor woman’s reply which was, to my horror, also in Indonesian.
My eyes grew wide and I froze in panic. What was I going to do? I couldn’t just leave. She would think I was being rude. Think. Remember your Indonesian! “I would like to purchase some vanilla beans.” Definitely not. “Where is your bathroom?” Wrong again! Why do these guide books never teach you to say, “I am extremely embarrassed by my uncultured ways, please excuse me while I drown myself in a water trough.”
Thankfully, the very kind vendor soon realized what had happened and asked, “English?” after what seemed like an eternity. I’m still not sure what I would have done had she not said something. I probably would have starved to death.
Emerging from this experience a little bit wiser, I began to relax and was soon chatting up Indonesians, purchasing bottles of water and haggling. Despite myself, I was starting to feel as though I might actually be able to emerge from this trip without getting stabbed or accidentally selling myself into prostitution.
This, of course, was when the second travel incident occurred. Steve turned to me and said, in a hushed voice, “Ryan, we need to get out of here. They’re selling opium!”
I was, of course, panic-stricken. Only a few minutes ago, I had been admiring tastefully decorated wooden Balinese dancers, and now I had wandered into some sort of drug-crazed opium den. I was convinced that they would murder me and lay my corpse out on a beach chair as a warning to others.
Of course, I was also gripped by a sense of morbid curiosity. Why were they selling opium? How much did it cost? Was it being sold in a dank cave filled with Pai Gow-playing Chinamen and eccentric British authors commiserating over a hookah? I was terrified, but I just had to know.
As it turned out, there were selling opium. Not just opium, but Opium. The fragrance by Yves St Laurent. My confidence restored, I suggested to Steve that, while opium might indeed be sold in open air markets in Indonesia, it was typically not featured in small, coloured boxes with ‘Opium’ embossed on the side in gold letters.
Image courtesy of YSL. Comical misunderstanding courtesy of Steve.
This matter settled, we returned to our hotel room triumphant, bottled water in hand.
The rest of our time in Bali would pass uneventfully. I would become sunburned, as I am wont to do when I so much as think about the sun. The boys on the trip would spend much of their trip walking up and down the beach, pretending not to stare at topless Australians. We would visit Kentucky Fried Chicken to see how it differed in Indonesia, only to learn that ‘skin fries’ are not nearly as delicious as they sound.
My other roommate would purchase an eight-foot-long blow dart gun which would later be destroyed by Customs after he checked the box marked “Yes” next to the question “Are you bringing weapons into the country?” before thinking better of it, scratching out the box marked “Yes” and checking the box marked “No”. (Amazingly enough, Canada Customs was able to see through this brilliant stratagem.)
But, throughout our time on Bali, no one would be sold into slavery and only one of us would be mugged at knifepoint.
It wasn’t until we reached Jakarta that the Incident occurred.