Showing posts with label Jamaica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jamaica. Show all posts
03 March 2010
What is 'Real Travel' Revisited
> In the context of this discussion, i.e. about famils/press trips, I consider 'real' travel to be travel that is going to as close to the experience of the average independent traveler who organizes everything themselves and has to face the hiccups that come with that, from bookings that haven't been held to missed connections for example.
This improved definition doesn't completely address the points made in the earlier post on which it comments.
In order to provide quality research for the independent traveller one has to behave actually quite differently from an independent traveller: staying in several different hotels rather than one; visiting many other hotels; visiting and assessing every sight; spending time asking many questions so that no independent traveller will have to ask them; eating at many different kinds of restaurants and trying many different kinds of transport. This, at least, is the minimum for any serious guidebook work, and it doesn't resemble holiday travel, or 'real' travel under this definition, in any way.
Travel features these days rarely come with as much comprehensive practical information as they should, although editors quite reasonably presume they need to offer a good read rather than fill their pages with technicalities that can also be garnered from web sites and guide books. Nor is it clear that taking a journey once, and finding that a connection is missed (in the example given) is of itself going to tell us very much about the normal experience. Perhaps on the other 364 days of the year the connection is made. Perhaps, in order to give useful advice, it's going to be necessary to enquire further as to whether the connection is usually made. Once that is admitted the case for having to do it exactly the way an independent traveller would do is rather weakened, at least for feature writing. If the trip is part of the story of course it has to be taken, but often the destination is the story, not the method of getting there, and picking up a rental car organised by someone else, or even being driven, will make no significant difference to the quality of the experience to be described, and may indeed provide opportunities for richer writing.
There's no particular merit in spending three days trying to find someone willing to be interviewed for background (and in many cultures simply being unable to do so because you do not have the requisite introduction) when there's an agency that can make the arrangements for you. At their best, these agencies fill out the agenda you set, and there seems no good reason, when you've asked for access to be provided to a certain castle for instance, to turn down the opportunity to interview the eighth-generation owner who now resides in a small part of it, and who can tell you stories about repairs, about quirky ancestors, about her plans for the future, and other information of interest to readers, even though they will never themselves encounter the individual in question (and so, by the definition offered, the visit isn't 'real').
But travel writing isn't after all a scientific experiment, nor typically objective, and while the results need to be similar when the travel-experiment is repeated, they do not need, and indeed can never be, exactly the same. Travel writing is frequently full of fortuitous one-off events that make it more interesting to read, and none the worse for the fact that no one else can repeat those events.
The argument also seems to want to ask me to put down the tools I have at my disposal and which I would usually use to help me winkle out the facts needed by the independent traveller. These would include far more experience of independent travel than the average traveller has, often repeated experience of a particular destination and knowledge of its particular quirks, and, to take China as one example, a knowledge of the local language which 99% of other independent 'real' travellers won't have. Yet this enables me to read bus station signboards, to make detailed enquiries of departure times, ticket regulations, directions to platforms, and a great deal of background information. which the 'real' traveller would be unable to get for himself. The point of the research is provide precisely the tools the independent traveller needs, and there's no merit in simply going up to the ticket window as any other traveller would, using my native language and sign language only, and struggling to achieve my aims, when I could instead find out precisely what the 'real' traveller needs to know in a few moments using the local language in a way the 'real' traveller almost certainly cannot. Then I can give him the characters for what he needs, so he can show them at the ticket window and have a good chance of getting what he wants fairly quickly.
To argue otherwise amounts to supporting the position sometimes taken in defence of the Lonely Planet method of sending people off to write guide books about countries they haven't previously experienced: "That's good, because they travel just like us." But I don't want a book that through pure ignorance leads me into pitfalls that the authors have been unable to detect, with information that is false, as is the case in many a shoddy LP guide. I want a book written by someone with long experience of the destination, familiar with the local culture, and with command of a local language, who will actually be able to find out what it going on.
Ignorance is never bliss, and avoiding the high prices that may be paid as a result of inexperience is precisely the reason people buy guide books.
> I see the experience of being chauffered everywhere by a driver with a PR person at the elbow as being sanitized, artificial and therefore 'unreal' because this isn't how the vast majority of people I'm writing for travel. It would be different of course if I was writing for people who primarily take organized tours, as the experiences are very similar.
The first point has been dealt with previously and above, and while there's every reason to be cautious of PR people, the agenda of many is no more than to enable writers to get the stories they want, which gives a richer and more informative account to those who will travel independently afterwards, not a less informative one.
I engineer and tweak itinerary contents to suit my own agenda, and turn down trips where it's clear that's not going to be possible. The lady who drove me from place to place around Jamaica was perfectly frank about the country's problems, while providing a lot of background into Jamaican culture simply through conversation about both our lives and about what we saw as we drove around. I didn't want her to start with, because this can sometimes turn out really badly, but if I return to Jamaica (as I hope to do) I'd be very happy to travel with her again. She enabled me to get a lot of good material, as the best guides with the best tourism bureaux, often do.
I'm not long back from possibly my 40th trip to Hong Kong and another excellent experience with a guide who took me round tiny back street areas for a story on lesser-known Hong Kong districts, constantly revising the itinerary as she grew to better understand my needs.
There's no dichotomy here: not all PR efforts are evil or deceptive, and very little travel undertaken to assemble travel stories directly resembles the experience of individual leisure travellers. Usually it cannot; and it certainly need not do.
The second point concerning organised tours is, I think, incorrect. Groups press trips, as already pointed out, bear no resemblance to organised tours as usually experienced as, once again, they are designed to make it possible for a group of journalists to get material usable for stories. They also take routes to combinations of destinations no organised tour would ever take, and often offer special access that make the stories richer. I usually avoid these, not least because there's often one idiot journalist (or 'journalist') who makes things difficult, everyone ends up taking home the same stories, and these stories are often rather obvious and predictable. But occasionally they are designed flexibly enough that individual writers can get different angles from each other, and provide access otherwise hard to get if travelling individually.
But I can't in general think of a good argument for turning down the offer of making arrangements for access to sumo training stables if those are the focus of a story; nor the provision of an interpreter who quickly scribbles down for me translations of what the stable master or trainer is saying to the trainees; nor the opportunity provided to talk directly to the trainees and staff (nor the provision of a taxi to get there). It's hopeless to think that in two weeks in Japan I'm going to be able to say very much that's meaningful (despite multiple visits I speak only a few phrases of Japanese) about a culture that's so complex and different, and I'd look pretty foolish if I tried. Concentrating on the detail of the stables' history and traditions, the experience of watching the training sessions at two of them, I'd still be foolish to turn down the assistance provided. (Thanks, Tokyo Convention and Visitors Bureau for making the arrangements, and apologies that appearance of the piece has been delayed.)
Finally, it needn't be (and in fact isn't) the purpose of all travel writing to provide instructions to others as to how they can follow the same route. Some travel writing intends merely to inspire readers to do their own research and make their own arrangements, and other travel writing, as was originally the case of most of it before the whole population of the developed world took to the skies, intends merely to describe, in an entertaining and vivid way, experiences that readers will probably not be having for themselves. In these cases whether the castle is reached by public transport, by self-drive in a rental car paid for by someone else, or by chauffeured limousine is neither here nor there, as long as the castle is reached.
06 June 2009
'Don't like Jamaica...'
'...I love her.'
Partway through my Jamaican visit this 1970s 10cc tune came back to me, but my Jamaica Tourism Board minder had never heard of it, and even suggested (teasingly) that she thought I was making it up. But this is the 21st century, the small but comfortable hotel I was in (Sunset Resort, on Treasure Beach) had broadband, and by the next morning I'd downloaded a copy of the song, transferred it to my iPod, and gave it to her to listen to over breakfast.
She wasn't impressed, and indeed I hadn't remembered that the whole thing is slightly mocking.
I'm not particularly keen on these trips that introduce me to a country I've never visited before (and in this case a region previously unknown to me). It doesn't seem reasonable that after a week I'm going to come back with something intelligent to say. But of course this is wrongly conceived, since intelligence is about the last thing most (thankfully not all) editors and readers (ditto) want from their travel sections. But there are times when such trips become necessary either to assist the bank account or because editorial interest is turning in a particular direction and stories on a particular region is all that they want.
The whole thing was very poorly handled by Jamaica's New York-based agency, with long lacunae between email replies, a complete failure either to produce story ideas or promote Jamaica in any way despite being invited several times to do so, and final agreement on a trip only reached a week before it was taken, and long after one deadline had gone by.
I saw a draft itinerary only five days before departure, and was given merely 1.5 hours to comment (!) before the USA shut down for the long holiday weekend. It was only then that I discovered that my piece on driving round lesser-known corners of Jamaica was going to amount to no more than being driven around Jamaica with the permanent company of a minder. Had I been aware of this earlier I might well not have taken the trip.
But it's just as well I did, because no sooner had I arrived then things actually clicked into action. My guide, the amiable Claudia, was not of the 'minder' kind, was not in denial about Jamaica's reputation, and indeed would have been hard put to deny some of its problems since only a few minutes after leaving the airport when we stopped so I could use a bank machine, someone immediately offered me some dope. She was justifiably horrified, not that I was in the slightest bit bothered about it, and drove the man away. This was, however, the only time anything of this kind happened to me in a week.
It's always tricky when you have to have someone with an agenda at your elbow for a week, although some countries' tourism boards, and apparently Jamaica's is one, will only operate in this way. But Claudia's agenda was principally to make sure I got the stories I wanted, and it rapidly became clear that very little of my requests had been transmitted to Jamaica at all. As a result within two days we'd abandoned the existing skeletal itinerary and Claudia was spending large parts of the day on the phone to various people rearranging and reconfirming in general thoroughly sorting things out. If, en route from A to B, I spotted a turn-off to something that looked interesting, there would follow a rapid discussion about it, and an immediate change of plan if that's what I wanted. I very quickly forgot to be peeved that I wasn't driving myself and musing privately into my dictaphone. In terms of flexibility I might just as well have been driving, and while loneliness can sometimes be a problem on these trips, Claudia was very good company.
As I saw in the second half of the trip, the way most visitors treat Jamaica it might as well be the Costa del Sol, or parts of the Mexican coastline. They fly in, are collected from the airport and taken to an all-inclusive resort where they frolic on a palm-fringed beach, eat three largely foreign meals a day and drink all they want. The only Jamaicans they speak to are those working in the resort. Some take brief tours to what are inevitably the most self-consciously made-for-tourists sights on the island (although some of these are well-done). This is my idea of hell, and I simply cannot see the point (whether in Spain, Mexico, Jamaica, or anywhere else), but of course some people just want a one- or two-week break with reliable sun, sand, sea and sometimes something else beginning with 's'.
Fine, and in terms of travel writing there's nothing easier than spending three nights in each of, say, three resorts, do little more than lying around on the same all-inclusive package for a story that practically writes itself. But it's not for me.
Instead I used the excellent Sunset Resort on the south coast's Treasure Beach as a base from which to visit assorted better- and lesser-known sites in the surrounding hills, whose originally Idaho now gone-native owner volunteered to take me off in various directions, and when I came back one day feeling slack, bullied me into taking a half-hour boat ride out to a small bar on stilts. I was very glad he did, as both the trip out on a high-speed fishing boat, and the early evening spent looking down to rays and up to the sunset was a highlight.
Other high points included various roadside food stops, for jerk chicken, jerk fish, and goat curry; a day spent watching a local limited-overs cricket match (with a lively crowd of about forty), and Greenwood Great House, which I'm hoping may trigger a return to Jamaica for further work. Having seen two of the surviving great houses I'd certainly like to do something on them.
Due to someone's inability to notice that May has 31 days, it was discovered (including by me) partway through the trip, that there was a day with nothing scheduled. I was at the Hilton-run Rose Hall Resort and Spa and so ended up with a day of doing precisely what most other visitors to Jamaica do: absolutely nothing.
I rediscovered that I am now absolutely incapable of this. I put my trunks on, went and got towel, headed down to a less popular end of the beach, went for a three-minute swim, sat under a palm, and in under 15-minutes all-in was back in my room, sorting out some of my notes, doing admin email, etc. The hotel room was large, well-furnished, solid and pleasant, and lacked the self-consciously tropical motifs of others I saw (Jakes, Negril Escape). The tropics were easily visible from the balcony: white sand, turquoise water, and all
It seems to me that you can't lose with Jamaica. If it's beach time you want, there are plenty of beaches to choose from. If you want culture and history there's plenty of that, too. Possibly the ideal combination is a beach resort used as a base from which to reach the rum factories (e.g. Appleton), river trips, waterfalls, great houses, local seafood restaurants (esp. Little Ochie), small non-touristy towns with no pestering vendors, and local nightlife.
One of the most likable aspects of the country was being able, despite having a dramatically contrasting skin tone, simply to blend into the crowd, something that despite the relative lack of contrast in China, is practically impossible to achieve there. A more easygoing people more interested in simply exchanging views and making you feel comfortable you couldn't hope to meet.
Ah well. Enough rambling. I've a deadline, as usual.
To return to the title of this entry, although I did like Jamaica it really wouldn't matter if I didn't. That's not the point of this kind of travel, which is to come home with the material needed for the stories in question. Fortunately, I did that, too.
27 May 2009
Better to arrive than to travel
Sleep? Watch VOD? Catch up with some reading?
I worked for most of the first flight and for a further two hours after landing, frantically revising a piece delayed by domestic difficulties and now overdue. Having filed it from the business lounge in Toronto, and then having found myself upgraded to business class, I thought on the flight south to Montego Bay (Jamaica for the geographically unlettered) I'd be able to sleep the sleep of if not the just, at least of the man who met his modified deadline by the skin of his teeth.
So, needless to say, no sooner had I nodded off than the Air Canada flight attendant woke me up to find out what I wanted for breakfast.
I'm hoping a rum punch with dinner and the sound of the surf outside the window will allow me my first extended sleep for more than a week, thus enabling me to be coherent when I interview an organic farmer early tomorrow morning.
Two weeks on the couch with no deadlines. That's what, ten years on, I still want.
22 May 2009
What is 'real travel'?
> I'm glad your press trip went well, but I'm still not persuaded to venture on one myself, I'm afraid. I just can't see how they come close to anything like real travel.
This rather begs the question, 'What is "real travel"?' It also assumes that whatever 'real travel' may be, that's the kind of travel I'm trying to have, which might turn out to be precisely the kind of confusion between work and play this blog (such as it is) is partly dedicated to dispelling.
The phrase 'real travel' is mostly heard in the dormitories of backpackerdom, meant to differentiate between travellers ('real') and tourists (in some sense 'fake'). The idea is never thought through, but is intended to indicate that uncritically following the routes and recommendations of your Lonely Planet guide is somehow superior to being spoon-fed your information on an organised tour. In fact there's little to differentiate the two.
Here a press trip (or 'fam trip' as it's often called) is being contrasted with other travel (whether independent or fully escorted isn't clear, but it's a fairly safe bet that independent travel is going to be regarded here as the only 'real' travel).
But all travel is 'real' (or none of it is), and no one who prefers to be carted from A to B need feel obliged to work out how to do it by themselves and by public bus. No one who simply wants to be on a beach need feel obliged to steep themselves in local culture and no one who thinks that following guide book recommendations for a few days amounts to meaningful cultural immersion is to be taken seriously anyway. Indeed, it's almost impossible for something to appear in any popular guide book and still be authentic. That's one of those principles of tourism that might have been constructed by Heisenberg: the more widely something is known about the less likely it is to be original and authentic. This is Neville-Hadley's Quantum Theory of Travel.
But of course, my travel is anyway business travel, undertaken for the purpose of obtaining stories agreeable to editors, and has nothing whatsoever to do with my own travel preferences. A successful trip is one in which I come back with the material I need: observations, notes on experiences, interview recordings. I may not have seen globally famous 'must-sees' despite being within five minutes of them (and I speak as one who has twice been to Alice Springs without visiting Australia's most iconic Rock--it wasn't part of the story in either case). My itinerary is agreed in advance, and even when it involves driving myself, rarely has any flexibility. But it's shaped to the needs of the stories. It's not a holiday.
In general I restrict myself to travel that can be undertaken by anyone else, and write in order to describe the experience and explain how it can be done by those who follow. This sometimes means doing more rather then less than other visitors would do, in order to be able to make a selection of experiences to recommend. One benefit of press trips with groups of journalists, although I mostly avoid these, is that there's often access provided that the average traveller wouldn't get, but which when recounted is helpful to the reader. On the excellent trip to Scottsdale that spurred the original comment, for instance, I had the opportunity to talk directly to some of the architects and their followers in a way not available to the average visitor. The point was, of course, to get information, anecdotes, and quotable material that would enliven the story and explain the experience in the words of those best qualified to comment. If this was 'unreality' then more of it is needed.
There is almost no genuinely critical travel writing for newspapers or magazines or television. This is not what the editorial and production powers feel the readers/viewers want, and the material created for these publications and broadcasts is almost universally artificial in one way or another. But the general public idea of travel is of something so imbued with glamour, whether it's the 'heroism' of hard-seat train travel in China, or the wannabe-James Bond-ness of luxury Caribbean resorts, that even someone as weary of travel as I am (and so far I've managed to avoid a trip further than Fife in Scotland this year) would have a hard time breaking the spell even if permitted by editors to do so. Indeed, it's often noticeable on website travel discussions that the unsatisfactory nature of an experience is the very last thing that either those who haven't yet travelled want to hear about, or that those who may already have travelled want to admit to. They slave and save, look forward all year to what may be the 'trip of a lifetime', and nothing is going to make them admit afterwards, that in swallowing all the clichés about a destination they were involved in duping themselves.
The best thing I can do is to avoid contributing to the overall propaganda, and if there's any distinction to be made between 'real' and 'unreal' in this context then it's to do with writing about, for instance, the insect markets in Beijing, rather than the usual goo about 'ooh-ahh Forbidden City 5000 years of culture Confucius he say'. This, however, requires a considerable amount of study and effort when venturing out of English-language territory, and is best based at least on repeated visits to the same destination. It's a lot easier just to rattle off a brainless piece on first impressions of the top sites, and it's a lot easier to publish such a piece, too.
I'm off to Jamaica next week on a trip that so far has been very poorly handled, insofar as it's taken about two months to set up with final agreement achieved, after long lacunae and one missed deadline, less than a week before departure, and with an absolutely skeletal draft itinerary which appears to have me chauffered everywhere rather than driving myself. However, the trip does seem designed to help me get the three stories I finally proposed (the intermediate PR people in New York having contributed absolutely nothing--sometimes you really do wonder what these people do to earn their money) and I'm promised that everything will stop and start at my pleasure.
The excuse (from the New York PR people) that I can't drive myself because I might get lost seems particularly absurd, not least since the tourism authorities themselves are promoting self-drive to less-visited places, which is one of the topics I'm supposed to be covering. Seeing whether this is in fact practical, and actually getting lost, is potentially part of the story.
But some tourism authorities insist on having someone at your elbow for the whole visit (and there are certainly journalists who can't survive without this, too), but it can be claustrophobic, especially to someone who prefers to use a dictaphone for notes. With the right chauffeur/guide it can be very helpful (as I remember with one in Melbourne and the Yarra Valley, one in Tokyo, and another in Asti), and in others the opposite (one in Fiji, one in Vilnius). If the timing of all this, leaving me with little option but to go to Jamaica, had been different there would have been further discussion on all this.
Regardless, the purpose of the itinerary is to get the stories. Is this artificial, in the sense that no casual traveller would adopt the same itinerary? Yes. Is it 'real'? Certainly. Getting the stories is the only thing that counts. This is work, not play.
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