Travel Tips #17 Avoid Locals

According to the 2009 CIA fact book there are as many as 6 Billion locals on earth, many of whom have not taken the time to read travel guides about their locality, and so are best avoided if you are traveling near them.

Of the many trips to New Orleans I’ve made over the years there is a place much written about in travel guides called Pat O’briens that seems to elude me every time I go down there. It is near another well-known place called Preservation Hall – you can’t go to New Orleans without going there, everybody says, and yet I haven’t over and over again. It is the same in other places too. Just south of Orlando – another city I visited more times than I can count – there is a place called The Magic Kingdom that I never seem to go to no matter how many times I have had the opportunity. And then there is Thailand – I’ve been there years it seems and yet reading the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand or the Rough Guide or any guide is like reading about a different place. Where are these Go Go bars? And the seedy places of Alex Garland’s “The Beach” and Khao San Road – what is that about?

I know now it is not the fault of the guides, it is my fault. Do not make the same mistake I make when traveling and fall in with the wrong crowd, the Locals. The Locals do not read the guides – often the guides are not written in their language. The Locals are very busy working and taking care of children or fixing cars and don’t have time for sightseeing. Often it seems the Locals like to mock the guides, going off in another direction or not going anywhere at all – they just hang out and watch TV all day when there is so much to see and do. Whatever plans you have made – all your research – will be wasted on the Locals. You might as well throw away your guides the moment you befriend one of them.

Not that they are unfriendly. Unless you are being kidnapped by them, they are usually always friendly and find time to show you around. Where will they take you? In New Orleans, I spent a whole weekend with some Locals helping them with fixing the house and never left the house except to go to the dog park along the River road and watch the dogs – It seems I’ve walked dogs all over the world, not because I want to, but because the Locals have dogs and the Local dogs need to go out and do their business.

In Orlando, instead of the Magic Kingdom, the Locals take me to the Magic Tree, which is a beautiful live oak older than the United States and sits, mocking time and development, near a wonderful museum of folk art that has no waterslides but is interesting nevertheless. In Thailand, the Locals are always taking me to the open market – I know now that Thailand has the best oranges and fresh vegetables and mangos and sticky rice. The Locals never seem to have read Zagats – the Locals cook their own food in their own houses, although they do know the best place to order pizza.

There is so much you will not see and do if you meet the Locals, but if you learn some of their language and culture they will take you into their hearts. You will see what they see and it will be satisfying in ways too unique to be written into a guide. It is unrepeatable. It is priceless. You will spend the trip watching a baby say its first words. You will go to weddings unlike any you have been to, where they will feed you until you are stuffed. You will see the sacred places, getting up very early to feed the Monks. You will laugh with them and mourn with them, You will fall in love with them. You may never come back.

(this was originally published in The Wrong Guide)