The Art of Buying and Selling
Getting robbed is a fact of traveling. It is inevitable, that amongst travels in far-flung lands, you will get taken. As naïve travelers, no matter how many guidebooks one may read, we are simply there for the taking. Sometimes it’s a result of our own stupidity. Other times it’s simply because we don’t know any better.
I long ago resigned myself to this fact. While one can live cheaply in much of the world, it will never be as cheap as the ‘natives’. Even for one who knows the language knows the customs and knows the place, a traveler is and always will be a foreigner in a foreign land.
My Road Trip Out of Camelot
I grew up a Navy brat. That is, my father was a career man in the U.S. Navy. Air Traffic Controlman, to be specific. His tours of duty were 18 months at a time, and except for a couple of impractical overseas assignments (Vietnam, Iceland), the entire family went along for the ride. This resulted in a lot of road trips and even a handful of trans-ocean boat trips and cross-country airline flights.
It was the road trips that I enjoyed the most. We often got 2 weeks to travel, and my dad enjoyed spending as much of that time exploring the side roads. The best trip – in my opinion – was the road trip from NY to CA in the early 1960’s. Dad didn’t even grumble about the high cost of gas (30 cents a gallon), since the Navy paid. The bonus for us kids: we got off from school for 2 weeks.
