The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel

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Sometimes it seems that wherever I go in the world, I’m always too early or too late to the party. One week ago today I was hanging out in Beirut, Lebanon, walking all over what I found to be a beautiful city, stopping for cappuccino along the waterfront and then having 40-cent falafel for lunch.

Today in the news, Beirut is under siege and the airport is closed. I’m usually disappointed when I find out I’ve missed a party somewhere, but this situation is serious enough that I’m glad to have missed it, and I’m concerned about the people I met there.

Compared to what’s happening now, my time in Beirut was extremely uneventful. My biggest challenge was finding a place to do my laundry. I also got in trouble for taking these photos (click to enlarge), but I wasn’t told to delete them.

For those who are interested, this guy is writing an hour-by-hour account of what’s going on over there this week.

Syria

A couple of days later, I headed out to Damascus, Syria by minibus. For only $7, the three-hour trip is a bargain. I had heard rumors of an incongruous Dunkin Donuts on the Lebanese / Syrian border, and I can now confirm that the rumors are true. It is perhaps the most oddly located Dunkin Donuts in the world (I’ll keep looking elsewhere in case I’m wrong), but unfortunately our driver wasn’t interested in stopping, so I was unable to sample the local Bavarian cremes.

Along the journey, I met up with two travelers from Toronto, Jessica and Ildar. The three of us ended up hanging out in Damascus for the rest of the day and on into the evening over late-night drinks near our hostel.

Simply put, Syria is amazing. After just a few hours on my first day, I knew it was definitely going on my “Top 10 Countries” list whenever I get around to writing it. I felt completely safe at all times, was never hassled or pressured for anything, and genuinely felt welcomed by many of the people we talked to.

In the evening we visited the Umayyad Mosque, one of the oldest and most historical mosques in the world. We went at sunset and enjoyed learning about the building’s history from a local guide.

I don’t always feel this way about places I visit, but I wished I had stayed longer in Syria. It exceeded expectations that were already high, and I would love to go back sometime.

Tunisia

My last stop on the trip was Tunisia, where I stayed with the family of a Tunisian friend I know from Seattle. It was great to experience Tunisian life up close and personal. Over the course of a weekend, I saw most of the city and surrounding areas including the historical city of Carthage. I also attended the semi-finals and finals of the Tunis Open, a challenger event on the world tennis tour.

On Saturday, my new friends had arranged a Tunisian blogger meet-up at a local café. We talked about the role that Tunisian bloggers are trying to fill in the country and blogging in general.

Tunisia was the last real stop on this trip, but on the way back I traveled through Amman (again) and Rome. In Amman I went out to dinner with another friend from Seattle, and in Rome I had to sleep in the airport for a night before catching a 6:40 a.m. connecting flight.

I don’t really enjoy sleeping in airports, and in fact I try to avoid it whenever possible. But with the tremendous expense of the euro and the fact that I would have to get up at 4:00 a.m. anyway to get to the airport, it didn’t make sense to stay in a hotel. I picked a relatively quiet spot by gate B-9 and made a sleeping area with some blankets I had saved from the last flight.

I didn’t sleep much, but thankfully I wasn’t kicked out, so the next morning I was able to stumble on to the 6:40 connection to Frankfurt. By the time we got there, I was more awake and didn’t mind the 11-hour flight back to Seattle.

***

This trip involved a lot of flying and overland travel at a faster pace than I usually prefer, but it was also a lot of fun. I’m now back in Seattle for several weeks before the next trip in late June.

While I’m here I’ll be finishing up the final draft of the upcoming manifesto, “A Brief Guide to World Domination.” The manifesto will be free, 100% non-commercial, and available for everyone in mid-June.

We were mentioned in a New York Times blog last week, and the interest for the site is really picking up. More than 4,000 people have been coming by every day this week, and I’ve appreciated hearing from many of the new readers.

Thanks for following the journey!

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Trip Update: I haven’t had a lot of time to post reports from my trip to South America and the Middle East, so while I’m hanging out in transit today, I thought I’d post this report instead of the usual Wednesday work essay. We’ll go back to regularly scheduled programming next week.

If you are a Twitter user, you can also follow my real-time updates here.

***

Photo credit: Chris

Before the plane takes off for the 10 ½ hour flight to Santiago, the LAN Chile flight attendant wants to take my entire food and drink order while we’re still waiting to take off at JFK. I tell her I’ll have the pasta, but I can tell she’s waiting for something else.“Do you want bread with that?” she finally asks. Sure, OK. “Brown or white?”

“Uh, brown is fine.” Dinner is three hours away, but I need to place my order now in great detail.

This conversation goes on for a while in a mixture of Spanish and English. She asks if I’ll want breakfast in the morning, which is nine hours from now. “What kind of cereal? Café con leche or tea?”

I find it amusing that I have to order everything I want over the next 10 ½ hours before we even leave the ground. What if I want a Diet Coke in the middle of the flight—should I page the attendant again to let her know now?

***

It takes a while to get to Easter Island. Five hours from Seattle to JFK, 10 ½ to Santiago, and five more to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Thankfully, under the terms of the OneWorld Round-the-World tickets I travel with, each of these long flights counts as just one segment each, the same way that a San Francisco-L.A. flight would be one segment each.

The trick is to maximize value by taking long flights to remote places that would ordinarily be prohibitively expensive to fly to on a single ticket. Later on in this trip I’ll fly from Buenos Aires to Chicago, and then Chicago to Amman, Jordan—once again just one segment each for 10+ hours of flying each time.

So anyway, on to Easter Island.

It’s hard to write about a place like this without using the tired clichés of travel writing. Phrases like “in the middle of nowhere” and “undiscovered” and “the ends of the earth” are overused to the point of becoming trite. People who live on Easter Island don’t think of it as the middle of nowhere, and few if any places in the world remain undiscovered.

But while acknowledging all of that, I may lose the war against clichéd writing when trying to explain Easter Island. It really is a long way from anywhere else. It takes five hours to get to Chile in one direction, and six hours to Tahiti in the other. Those are the sole connections, on just one airline that has four flights a week.

The LAN Chile 767 looks enormous on the tarmac of the tiny airport. The other passengers and I descend the staircase to the ground and walk straight off onto the road. There’s no shuttle bus, and only a tiny terminal for those who have checked bags. We’ve already cleared immigration in Chile, and since I have no bags, I take a few steps from the airplane to the small parking lot.

As I walk away from the tarmac, I realize that if I were to suddenly change my mind tonight or tomorrow and want to leave, there’s no way off the island until the plane comes back from Tahiti in three days. This isn’t like my normal stopovers in places like Frankfurt or Hong Kong, with dozens of flights taking off every hour to countless world capitals.

I’m staying in a guesthouse about two miles out of the only town on the island. Each day of my trip, I walk back and forth at least twice, and the slow shuffle along half-paved roads reminds me another two-mile trek I took recently. A few weeks ago I was in L.A. for a downtown conference, and to save money I stayed at a small motel two miles away. Just as I’m doing here, I walked back and forth each morning and afternoon.

The paradox is unmistakable. Except for the Spanish language, downtown L.A. and downtown Hanga Roa don’t have much in common. There are no buildings taller than a couple of stories here on the island, and you can walk the entire town in fifteen minutes. There is one bank, which I hurry to get to for money changing since they close at 1:00 p.m. every day.

Opting out of the $30 prix fixe menu offered by my guesthouse later that evening, I head out to town in search of food on my first evening. After I ask for the menu (la carta) at a few restaurants, I realize that the guesthouse meal was not overpriced. Virtually everything on every menu starts at $20, and the restaurants don’t look that nice. At first I think I must be calculating the exchange rate wrong, but no—the local beers really are $8 and small cheese pizzas are $24. What is this, Monaco?

I end up getting a tomato and avocado sandwich for $13. I don’t like tomatoes or avocados, but it’s the cheapest thing on the menu. I decide I won’t do much eating until I get to Argentina a few days from now.

***

My tour around the island the next morning is nice. I learn more about the history of the island, better recounted by Wikipedia than by me here. I visit the mysterious row of 15 moal and stand in front of them for a while. I go to the quarry where the moai were carved. My guide tells me about another moai nicknamed “the traveler” because he was sent to Japan on a publicity tour a few years ago.

The traveler, what a great name. I decide I should have a photo in front of him, and my guide offers to help. While he is taking the picture, I’m wondering if he knows what he’s doing, since he’s pointing the camera away from the traveler moai. He smiles and gives back the camera, which contains all of me and only the very edge of the moai I wanted to be seen with.

Oh well. It’s kind of funny.

I ask if there’s a prison on the island, and my guide laughs. “We have a jail,” he says, “but we call it ‘the university.’” The few prisoners are allowed out to go fishing during the day, and the one guard leaves at night without locking up. There isn’t much crime here to begin with, and when someone is sent to jail, there’s no where to escape to.

***

Back to the undiscovered part. Here is the thing I’ve realized about hanging out in far away places: they may not be undiscovered in the broad sense, but to any single traveler, they are in fact undiscovered until you see it for yourself.

I realize further on one of my walks to town that even among people who have traveled a fair amount, the overwhelming majority of them almost never come to places like Easter Island. This, for me, is one of the things about long trips to these far away places sometimes known as the ends of the earth—I can walk on this island that most people never give a moment’s thought to, and I can look up at the stars that I have never seen from this part of the planet. I can observe how people live their lives, and here on Easter Island, they live their lives in a hybrid Latin American / Polynesian culture.

Another thing I realize as I write these notes after coming back from town my second evening:

I will never come here again.

OK, it is technically possible that one day I could return. But it’s very unlikely; in fact, the idea seems implausible. This is the kind of place you visit just once. Even though I don’t love it here, the realization that I will likely never return makes me a little sad.

I remind myself that I have one life to live. This is my sole chance to visit this remote island, and I’d better appreciate it while I have it.

***

Over the next few days, I go back to Chile, then to Buenos Aires for a couple of nights, and then another couple of nights across the water in Montevideo, Uruguay. At the end of the time, I take a bus back to Colonia (two and a half hours), a ferry to Buenos Aires (one hour), and a taxi to Ezeiza International Airport. I’ve cut it fairly close due to misreading my flight time when I booked the ticket a week ago, but in the end I make it with twenty minutes to spare by the time I check in.

I fly out to Chicago overnight, and after hanging out in the Belmont neighborhood for my transit day, I take another overnight flight to Amman, Jordan, and then a quick late-night connection to Beirut, Lebanon. After all the flying, I’m back in the Middle East for the first time in a year, and the second half of the trip begins.

PART TWO – Lebanon, Syria, and Tunisia

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Photo credit: BloOwlTt

Even on the path to your ideal world, things don’t always go the way you would like them to. All of us learn of bad news from time to time. The stock market will crash, or an expected job opportunity will disappear. Something that has always been easy suddenly becomes hard.

It happens all the time, and it helps to be prepared to deal with challenges before they arrive. Asking yourself the following questions will help you refocus and know how to move forward when something isn’t going the way you wish it was.

Where is my security?

This is a good time to realize that your security should not be in tangible things. If your security is money, you will always be threatened by the possibility of losing it. You will likely not be satisfied with the amount of money you have, and your emotions may be affected by the fluctuations of your bank account.

A better security lies in knowing who you are and what you want to do in life. Therefore, the next important question gets at those answers.

Where is my identity?

Who are you? What are you here for? What do you want to do, ultimately? Your identity should shape everything about you—how you spend your time, your work, your priorities, and everything else. Check out the books Finding Your Own North Star and Wishcraft for some good life planning ideas.

If you already have a good idea of who you are, now is a good time to remind yourself of that image. If you can center in on what’s important to you in the midst of bad news, and that image brings you comfort, you know you’re doing something right. Hard times will pass, but your “north star” will still be there.

Can I change the terms of this situation?

There are two kinds of challenges: those where you can take action to remedy the situation, and those where you are relatively powerless. It’s always good to know which kind of challenge you are facing. If you can influence the situation for the better, you can then make a plan for change. If you can’t, then you can move to a plan for acceptance of the bad news.

If the stock market crashes, you probably can’t fix that yourself. But you can change your investment strategy, get out of the stock market altogether, decide to be a true long-term investor and not worry about it, or do any number of other things to change the terms of the situation.

Who else is affected by this situation?

You are usually not the only one affected when something in your life goes off track. Make a mental list of who else is dealing with the effects of bad news. If you really can’t change the terms of the situation, maybe you can at least help someone else. This is especially important when the event that caused you hardship is completely out of your hands. The bad news may be out of your hands, but if other people are also affected, you can probably do something to help them.

***

Every morning I ask myself two questions:

1) How am I feeling?
2) What do I want?

I sometimes use these as journal prompts, and sometimes I just think about them briefly while writing out my projects and tasks for the day. I find that by asking myself the questions, it causes me to realize things that were not actively on my mind before I started.

I often want productivity. I want to get things done, and move ahead on projects. In those cases, the answer to my “What do I want?” question involves making a list of what I want to accomplish. I base this list on the two or three most important projects on my mind that day, and I find that if I am able to complete them or at least make good progress during the day, I’ll feel better later.

Sometimes I want something completely different, and by thinking about these questions, I may realize that I don’t feel very productive. I may need to rest, or exercise, or go to the coffee shop. I may need to spend more time reading and journaling.

When the world isn’t going your way, recognize that it’s usually a temporary state. Getting through it and back on track to your ideal world may not be easy, but if you’ve set big goals for yourself (along with goals that involve helping others), you can usually make it happen. Others are counting on you.

And you owe it to yourself, too.

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When you first head off to places in the world that are a lot different from where you live, a number of things change. You have to learn to adapt.

I still make a lot of mistakes everywhere I go, but I try to learn from each of them. Here’s a short list of things I wish I knew before I started my routine of extensive overseas travel, especially in countries in Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America that are not part of the tourist circuit.

Healthcare

1. You can legally buy safe medicine, including prescription drugs, for very little money overseas. When in Africa or Asia, I stock up on anti-malarials that cost $5 a day in Seattle. On location, it’s more like $1 for a 10-day supply.

2. The best healthcare is not in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. The best healthcare is in places like Thailand and Costa Rica; that’s why the practice of medical tourism will continue to surge as both travel and overseas healthcare become more accessible.

Money

3. Take a lot of cash with you, and make sure the bills are new and have no writing on them. If you go to a place that accepts credit cards, then you can just redeposit the cash when you get home. It is far worse to end up short of cash with no credit card option.

4. If you do use your credit card, check the online statement at least once a week while traveling to make sure there are no fraudulent charges. Keep all your receipts, especially for large purchases such as hotel stays, and compare the amounts charged when you get back.

5. When you exchange money, hang on to the receipt you get until you’ve left the country. Once in a great while, someone at the airport will want to see proof of all your foreign exchanges.

6. The U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s currency. (In fact, some currency exchange shops will no longer accept dollars!) Travel with a stock of Euros to complement your dollars. The exceptions to this rule include some countries in Africa and Latin America that still use the dollar as their primary currency, and any country that has had a recent war.

Taxis

7. Hire a taxi outside the airport, not from the guys who approach you inside as you’re walking out. Even better, walk further outside the airport to where the taxis pull in, and you’ll get a better deal because the driver won’t have to pay the entrance fee.

8. Never assume that your taxi driver knows where your destination is. Double-check and get him to ask someone before you go if there’s any doubt.

9. The universal rule of taxi haggling, for both driver and passenger, is that once both sides agree on a fare before setting off, neither side can reopen negotiations once you’re en route. You should not try to get a better deal nor should you accept any increase in the fare from the driver after the journey has started.

10. If you have a dispute with a taxi driver and you think you are being taken advantage of, offer to call the police and have them settle it. Many taxi drivers are scared of the police, and often for good reason (see below). If they are being dishonest and you mention the police, they will quickly back down. On the other hand, if they continue to press their claim, they may be right and you’ll need to pay more.

Safety

11. The police are not always your friends. Sad but true—in a lot of places in the world, the services of the police are sold to the highest bidder. Therefore, if you can pay them, they may turn out to be your friends… but in other cases, they may actually be the least trustworthy people in the country. Don’t be afraid, just be aware.

12. When you feel pressured beyond your comfort level by someone who tries to follow you, be polite but increasingly firm. Don’t string anyone along out of guilt—tell them you don’t want their help, and move on. If they keep following you, tell them to stop.

13. When it comes to visas (and all immigration issues), your experience will vary from place to place. The rules are flexible in most places, and sometimes they will work in your favor and sometimes they will work against you.

Planes, Trains, and Buses

14. All plane tickets are changeable no matter what is written on them, and any fees for changing can be waived with the right airline agent. You have a few options for making this happen: a) Hang up and call back to try with someone else, b) Call the Premium Traveler line or ask at an airline lounge, or c) Offer a “tip” at the airline counter (do this at your own risk).

15. Round-the-World tickets are the best bargains for extensive international travel. I use and recommend both the Star Alliance and the OneWorld products. Each have their advantages. SkyTeam also has a Round-the-World product, but it’s not nearly as good as the other two.

16. Most people flying Business Class are not paying full-fare. A high percentage of them on most flights are using awards tickets, special tickets, or have upgraded from Economy. Flying in premium cabins can help you in more ways than just being comfortable on long flights, because the tickets can almost always be changed or refunded without penalty. You’ll also get to hang out in airline lounges and get priority treatment, which may become very useful when you need to get in or out of somewhere fast. First Class is nice too, but the difference between First and Business is rarely as great as the difference between Business and Economy.

17. In some places, buses are better than trains for overland travel… in other places, trains are better than buses. Check out the options before you go to make the best decision for each place.

Culture

18. The concept of personal space means very different things in different countries. You kind of have to get used to that.

19. Like it or not, you have to be somewhat tolerant of smoking. There are lots of places in the world that haven’t picked up on the Western anti-smoking crusade. If this is hard for you to accept, you’ll likely be frustrated.

20. Unless you can be very discreet, never take photos of people without asking. Don’t be surprised if they say no, because many cultures are not comfortable with strangers taking photos of them all the time. If they do say yes, you may find yourselves indebted to them for a gift or other favor.

21. Never touch members of the opposite sex. This includes sitting next to them on buses and trains—you’ll often be shuffled around to ensure that you only sit next to people of the same sex, although you’ll also usually be given the best seat.

22. Don’t point your feet at people or touch anyone on the head. In several cultures, this is disrespectful or otherwise inappropriate.

23. Be careful with all hand gestures, including the “thumbs-up” sign and the “a-OK” sign. Both of these are highly provocative in some places.

24. Never make promises you don’t intend to keep. Don’t tell vendors you’ll buy from them tomorrow, don’t offer to help anyone visit your country, don’t say you’ll write to someone later if you won’t really do it, and so on.

25. Most important: don’t be a colonialist. Be careful about calling people “locals.” Don’t assume that your culture is superior. People are not stupid just because they don’t speak English or think like you do.

Politics

26. Be prepared to represent your country, whether you care about politics or not. For better or worse, many people will expect you to know a lot about politics in your home country and how governmental decisions in one country affect the lives of people thousands of miles away. Don’t say you’re from Canada unless you really are.

27. Always point out that a government’s actions and the beliefs of an individual (e.g., yourself) are not always the same. Most people understand this and some will even say the same thing without prompting, but it’s usually a good reminder to put forward.

28. No matter who you are talking to, never say anything negative about the government of the country you are in. Many rogue states, from Zimbabwe to Iran to North Korea, employ English-speaking spies who will deliberately try to incite foreign visitors into saying something incriminating. (I’m not making this up. In Guinea I was followed by the Secret Service everywhere I went. A friend of mine went to North Korea and found an extensive tape recording system in his hotel room.)

***

Lastly, remember that there are not many “undiscovered” places left in the world. Focus on the places that are undiscovered to you and you won’t go wrong.

Obviously, each place you go to will offer unique challenges, but following this list will get you off to a good start. Above all, don’t forget the cardinal rule of traveling—pack light. You really don’t need all the extra stuff.

Feel free to add your own advice or tips in the comments section.

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Live from Syria

This month’s Site Update takes place from Damascus, Syria, where I’ve just arrived after traveling overland from Lebanon. Yes, I think that sentence is pretty cool. All is well over here, and I’ll write about the trip soon.

Each month I look back at what’s happened with ChrisGuillebeau.com in the previous month. If you’ve missed some articles, you can catch up in this update.

Writing

LIFE – I wrote about How To Respond to Critics, The Plan of Attack, Nothing Beside Remains, and How To Fall Down and Get Back Up Again.

WORK – I wrote about the question, Will Financial Success Follow You If Do What You Love? and then asked a few great writers to share their responses in a blogger roundup. I also wrote about The Flip Side to Entrepreneurship and Freedom and Social Networking with Twitter.

TRAVEL – I wrote about How and Why I Travel (Parts I and II), Observations from the World’s Ultimate Airport Lounge, and 35 Minutes of Homelessness in Central London.

PROFILES – The new “Profiles in Nonconformity” series debuted this month with an interview with Tony Hsieh, CEO of the unconventional retailer Zappos.com. More profiles will be coming each month.

Gratefulness

I went to Easter Island a couple of weeks ago and now I’m in the Middle East. My OneWorld Round-the-World trip is halfway done, and I’ve really appreciated the chance to travel so much.

I did an interview with TravelBlogs and enjoyed the thoughtful questions they asked.

It was encouraging to see so many blogging friends and mentors participate in the first roundup response. Thanks again, guys.

Lastly, many readers wrote in to say that they are enjoying the site. Your comments mean the world to me—please keep reading and writing.

What’s Coming Next

I’ll be back in Seattle on May 7th, and I’m staying for a while this time. While I’m home I’ll be finishing the writing for my upcoming manifesto, “A Brief Guide to World Domination.” If all goes as planned, we should be ready to distribute this free PDF report to a broader audience by mid-June.

When I get closer to completing the manifesto, I’ll need your help. Stay tuned for details.

Essays

The thrice-weekly essays will continue to be posted each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This month I’ll write about the following topics, among others:

• 28 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Traveling
• Questions to Ask when the World Isn’t Going Your Way
• How To Retire the Day after Tomorrow
• Trip Reports from Costa Rica and Benin

I hope you enjoy my writing, and I always welcome your feedback.

Audience Participation

You can participate in the development of this project in several ways:

Join my newsletter announcement list or add me to your RSS reader.

Follow my real-time updates on Twitter.

Leave a comment at the bottom of any essay. I haven’t actively promoted the “comments” section in the posts yet, but it will be upgraded in the near future and all previous comments will be retained. Feel free to share your comments and include a link back to your own site if you have one.

Send other feedback through my contact form.

Tell your friends, or tell the world by voting for my writing at Digg, StumbleUpon, or other social networking sites.

I appreciate the time you spend here. Don’t forget to change the world the way you think it needs to be changed.

-CG

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