Ten Years a Nomad

by Matthew Kepnes

  Our days were spent playing backgammon, reading, and swimming. We rotated beaches, though we mostly hung out at the beach by John and Sophia’s. Within swimming distance was a rock outcrop with a sheer drop that provided excellent snorkeling. We’d occasionally leave Ko Lipe to fish, dive, and explore the deserted islands in the nearby national park. At night, we’d eat and drink at Monkey Bar with Alice, Pat, a German couple, Bill, the British bartender who was there all season, a few locals, and whoever else joined our motley crew, until the power went out.

  There wasn’t much to do, but in simplicity we found joy.

  The days passed by endlessly.

  “I’ll leave tomorrow” became my mantra.

  It was great to get the chance to hang out with Alice, but it was John, Sophia, and I who formed a mini-group within the group.

  “What are you guys going to do when you get to New Zealand?” I asked them one night over drinks and under the fading incandescent lights of the Monkey Bar.

  “We’re going to work for a few years and build a life there. We have nothing that’s pulling us back to England,” said John.

  “I’m going there on this trip so I’ll visit. It’s my last stop on the way home,” I replied.

  “You can stay with us. Wherever we are,” said Sophia as she passed a joint to me. (Another thing we did to pass the time.)

  It was only when Christmas decorations appeared on storefronts and families flooded the beach—like magic they all appeared in a single day—that we became aware of time again.

  Christmas meant I would have to leave soon. My visa was only valid until just before New Year’s. I’d have to head to the nearby Malaysian border to renew it so I could have more time in the country and keep traveling. There was no way to extend it from where I was.

  John, Sophia, and I decided to have our own Christmas together. We wore our best clean shirts and wandered over to Coco’s for its luxury Western Christmas dinner.

  “I got you guys a gift,” I said as I handed Sophia a necklace I saw her eyeing a few days before and John a ring he had admired.

  They were deeply touched, and is so often the case with great, new friends out on the road, they had the same idea.

  “We got you something, too,” John said.

  It was a hand-carved necklace with a Maori fishhook on it, the symbol of the traveler.

  I loved it.

  After I left, I ran into John and Sophia a few weeks later walking down Bangkok’s Khao San Road. Shocked at such a random event, we hugged, talked about where we had been and what we had seen, and spent the next few days picking up like we had never left Lipe.

  Years later, when I finally went to New Zealand, I spent Christmas and New Year’s at their home in Auckland. I had never made it on my original trip around the world but when I made it, they were the first people I wanted to see. They were working jobs—and I was still a traveler. Life had moved on for both of us. We had new friends and lives but we still laughed at the same jokes, had the same sense of humor, and got on like we had known each other for several lifetimes. Everything else that had happened in between melted away and we were back on that beach talking about things only travelers discuss when there are no other cares in the world.

  * * *

  IN THE TINY TOWN of Buñol, Spain, tens of thousands of people gather every year for the famous La Tomatina festival, the largest tomato fight in the world.

  La Tomatina has its roots in the carnivals and harvest festivals that have enlivened European towns for centuries, but this particular festival started in 1945. A parade was scheduled in Buñol that day, and one of the participants got so angry when his giant costume head fell off that he trashed a tomato stand and sparked a huge food fight. The next year, on the same day, kids came back with a stash of tomatoes and reenacted the food fight, and it’s been a Spanish tradition ever since. It hasn’t always been observed, though: For several years, it was banned, and would-be food fighters were even arrested for tomato possession. In 1957, they held a satirical protest of the ban, putting a giant tomato in a coffin and burying it to the sound of funeral marches. Ultimately, the government relented, and La Tomatina has been a tradition ever since.

  When I think of all that history, so rooted in the experiences, stories, and food of one particular place, it’s hard not to feel like an outsider when you go. In 1945, I imagine, the thrill of a wild, spontaneous food fight must have been tied up with the joy of World War II having ended that very summer. In the 1950s, protesting the tomato ban must have been a covert way of protesting Spain’s Fascist government. You don’t have to know any of that history to show up in Buñol, buy your ticket, and pick up a tomato, of course. The town welcomes the tourist money, but seeing a local tradition turned into a global fixture must be the source of some complicated emotions. It certainly was for me. Would I be turning a special tradition into kitsch by partaking? Was I not taking La Tomatina seriously enough? How does one even take a tomato food fight seriously in the first place?

  The year I went to La Tomatina, I stayed in a six-bed dorm room with a Alex, a Malaysian man from Paris, Jessie and Joel, twins from Portland, and Claire and Nick, two Australians backpacking around Europe.

  The day of the event we took a train into Buñol and jostled through the crowds until we made our way to the town square. The crowds got thicker as the streets grew narrower. Eventually, we found a plaza to stand in and took position in the back. People climbed up ledges, trees, and positioned themselves from roofs. Everyone searched for the high ground.

  The bell rang and the mayhem started. Big garbage trucks overflowing with tomatoes rolled through the town. Soon everyone was covered in red, tomatoes smacked off your head, and the rivers ran deep with tomato juice. Being in the back is not a prime tomato-picking position, but I did my best to pick up half smooshed tomatoes slick with juice and let fly at anyone nearby. I was having so much fun, laughing and shouting through it all, that I often got tomatoes in my mouth. Above us, a Japanese tourist had climbed a doorway for a better vantage point only to get pegged with dozens of incoming red missiles that knocked him off the edge into the crowd below.

  And then, as quick it started, it was over. The one-hour festival felt like it went by in thirty seconds. As the last of the tomatoes splatted to the ground, we all lined up to be hosed down by fire trucks. I’ve heard that Buñol’s main square is especially shiny, because the acid from the tomatoes has polished it over the years.

  Over the next few days, our group explored Valencia. We were bonded by our shared experience and spent all waking hours together. In them, I found compatriots. It was as if we had known each other our whole lives and the universe conspired to bring us together for this festival so we could realize we had been friends forever—we just didn’t know it yet.

  Two weeks after La Tomatina, Claire, Nick, and I were in Barcelona together. Alex had returned to Paris and the twins, after spending a day with us, had to continue on to Venice. As the remnants of our group walked down Barcelona’s Barri Gòtic, joking around and busting each other’s chops, our new friend Michelle could sense our closeness.

  “Did you guys go to school together? I think it’s pretty cool that three people from different places have been friends for so long.”

  “Actually, we’ve only known each other for two weeks,” Nick said.

  “Wow! Really?” a shocked Michelle said. “You have so many inside jokes and act like you’ve been friends forever.”

  To be fair, two weeks together is a lifetime in backpacker time. But even so, we acted like we had known each other since childhood because in many ways we had. We didn’t have the adult world to get in the way of our friendships. We just had playtime. And, like kids at playtime, we found the childlike sense of friendship that knows only joy, not judgment.

  Because the other thing travel helps you do is confront your judgments and perception of people.

  People like Dave and Matt.

  * * *

  DAVE, ALO
NG WITH his close friend Matt, were two Canadian oil workers I met in Thailand during the Full Moon Party.

  Now, months later, they were hosting me in Perth for a few days. As travelers, we are always saying good-bye and promising to let someone crash on our couch when they are in our city. Sometimes these promises become a reality.

  When I posted on Facebook that I was heading to Australia, Dave offered up his couch and I accepted. But, as I looked at these two surfer dude oil workers sitting up front in the car on the way to their place from the airport, I wondered if we’d still get along. When you live in the travel bubble, getting along is easy. There’s just the fun you are having right now. You can be whoever you want to be and if some people don’t like it, you know they are probably leaving soon anyways.

  The real world is different. You have bills to pay. Responsibilities. Jobs. Commutes. Things to worry about. You aren’t on the move anymore, rather you are now firmly planted in one place, building a life.

  What were these guys like back home? Were they clean? Messy? Drinkers? OCD? Early risers? Politically opposite? Do they read books? Does the day to day of being at home make them irritated? Actually, why did they move to Perth? As I began to wonder about these questions, I realized I didn’t really know anything about them. When you travel, you don’t ask these kinds of questions. For all I knew, they could be members of a cult.

  Fortunately, my fears of personality clashes were unfounded. Dave and Matt proved to be gracious hosts, taking me to the beaches, local bars, restaurants, showing me Australian movies so I’d be able to know pop culture as I traveled the country. It was as if we had never left that beach in Thailand. I actually think it was that Thailand beach mentality that never left them. They brought it home with them in their carry-on, from the duty free shop that is the nomadic experience.

  At home, we judge people right away. By their dress, their phone, their style, their posture. We see the Goth going down the street and think “weirdo.” We see kids skating in parks and think “punk.” We see white guys in dreads and think “hippy.” We gravitate to people like us and rarely venture outside our homogenous social circle.

  But, when you are on the road, you hang with all types of people. Your desire to make friends trumps everything. You don’t know people’s history or past. You don’t know what “group” people fall into. You don’t care because it doesn’t matter. A friend is a friend.

  That forces you to expand your mind, tear down your barriers, and toss out your judgments, which is how I ended up bonding with two tatted surfers so much that I ended up at their weddings.

  Because I didn’t judge them when I met them. I didn’t bring my prejudices with me to Thailand. I accepted them for the nice people they are. The real world clutters our mind with prejudices and stereotypes so much that it keeps you from enjoying the rich relationships that a variety of people can bring.

  Travel is an antidote to that.

  Travel friendships are snapshots in time. When you meet up again, it’s as if you are being transported back to those moments. You’re again carefree children exploring the world. Life hasn’t got in the way for you.

  Time has stood still. You lived two separate lives—and none of the drama or problems from those lives bleeds into your friendship. You reminisce, drink some beers, and laugh at the same dumb jokes. It’s never awkward.

  That’s why I put people into two groups. Those who have spent their days in hostels, forced to turn strangers into friends, and confront their prejudices tend to be more open minded, relaxed, and friendly. We’re used to being alone. To not have a support system. To have to take a deep breath and ask that group of ten if that seat is free.

  We’re ok with a wide range of people. We learned that people are people and to never judge a book by the cover. We’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what “group” you fall into. All that matters is how you act.

  Travel creates opportunities to meet people you wouldn’t give a second thought to walking down the street. It strips away the artifice and lets you walk away with some of the best friends you’ll ever have—friends who will be there your whole life, ready to pick up right where you left off whenever you happen to meet up again.

  7

  Life as an Expat

  Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.

  —FREYA STARK

  SO THERE I WAS, late at night, with my backpack next to me, sipping ouzo in a little taverna near the Acropolis in Athens, when the bartender—a kind older gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick mustache—stopped polishing the bar, put his towel over his arm, and approached my table.

  “My friend,” he said, “it looks as if you are new in town and haven’t found a place to stay. I am just closing up, and my family is celebrating the christening of my brother’s newborn son. It would be an honor to invite you to join us.”

  How could I say no? I hopped on the back of his motorcycle, and in a short while I was in his brother’s garden courtyard, watching the family roast a whole goat and sing and dance into the night. I was a new member of the family. They were kind enough to offer me a guestroom. A night turned into three and they became my hosts, showing me around the city, and teaching me some useful Greek phrases. In the morning, his brother’s wife always had breakfast prepared for me. At night, we drank ouzo while I learned (poorly) how to make Greek food.

  When I left a few days later, I promised to keep in touch and send postcards from my future travels.

  It was one of those serendipitous travel experiences you always hope for. It was right out of a book—and there I was living it.

  Except I wasn’t. Life isn’t really like that.

  That story never happened.

  There are lots of magical moments when you’re on the road, but ones like this—where you fit seamlessly into local life, where you get invited to parties and home-cooked meals and quirky adventures, where you eat pray love—are as rare as winning the lottery.

  That is not to say that lightning does not strike every once in a while. These serendipitous moments have happened to me. The random students in Munich who invited me to a rock show; the couple at the restaurant in Galway who took my friend and me out for after-dinner drinks; the bartender in Cambodia who invited us to her home in the countryside; the Danish family who took me to their Sunday dinner.

  These things do happen, but they are rare, because real-life travel is not that romantic, or that easy.

  On the road, there are countless little casual encounters with locals and travelers. But it’s one thing to meet people at bars, in restaurants, or on some local bus. To chat about where you’re from and what brought you here, to share a few laughs, to sightsee, or talk while on a tour.

  And it’s something else entirely to get invited into someone’s home and into their daily life. To get off the bus and have someone go “Wait. Why don’t you join my family for dinner tonight?” To have the waitress say, “Stay after closing and have some drinks with us.” To go from the bar to someone’s backyard BBQ, friend’s house party, third cousin’s wedding, or be the plus-one in someone’s road trip. To feel as if you’ve gone from a stranger to a guest—to someone who actually belongs.

  Most people don’t want to make friends with folks who are about to leave, and travelers are really good at leaving. Locals don’t want their daily lives interrupted so casually. Heck, you probably wouldn’t either. We have things to do. We want to make friends with people who will put down roots. People we can count on. So, to really enter someone’s private world, to have those deeps moments become common place and to really get to know a place, you have to flip the script and do that one thing that traveler’s aren’t good at: staying put.

  * * *

  STEPPING OUT OF THE LARGE ninet
eenth-century redbrick train station after my overnight train ride from Vienna into a melee of trams, bikes, and old brick buildings, I gazed out over a patchwork of canals and tiny cobblestone streets. To my left was the Basilica of St. Nicholas, a beautiful baroque church that would become my favorite. In front of me, a mass of people were trying to get to and from work. Making my way through the chaos, I followed the directions on my map toward my hostel, located in Amsterdam’s sex-and-beer-filled red light district.

  I spent my first days in the city like most backpackers: high as a kite. Coming from the United States, the openness to smoking everywhere was a novelty I couldn’t get enough of. Neither could any of the other backpackers. The city had a reputation with travelers for vice. Amsterdam was the city you partied in as you traveled across the Continent on your backpacking trip. It was the place where, at least for many of the Americans I met on the road, you first started to feel yourself shedding some of that puritanical American-ness.

  Still, after a few days, I became bored. It was 2006 and I was five months into my trip around the world. Was this what travel was all about? In other cities, you partied and visited the sights. Here, you just seemed to party until you couldn’t see straight. I liked to smoke but that wasn’t the only thing I had come here to do. It was a sharp contrast to Vienna, where I got to see the city from a local’s point of view. That was the kind of travel I wanted. I didn’t want to just sit around and smoke weed all the time. There was a huge city out there. A beautiful, historic city filled with people and sights and art and history that I wanted to get to know. After all, Amsterdam didn’t become famous, so many centuries ago, as the number one place in Europe to blaze up and lose your mind. It became famous as the trading and financial hub of a continent, as a place of free thought and free religion, at a time when other European nations were still executing heretics. It was the home of the stately canal-side mansions of great merchant princes, the inspiration for Rembrandt and all the other great Dutch master painters. Weed is such a late, and minor, addition to all that makes Amsterdam special. Yet people to this day—despite open access to recreational marijuana around the country—still cross the Atlantic to get it in the Netherlands and miss what actually matters.