The Seeds We Sow:
Responsible Travel

by John G. Learned

“We are like tourists on a holiday. If we create a disturbance and play havoc, our visit is meaningless. If we live peacefully, help others, and at the very least refrain from harming or upsetting them, our visit is worthwhile.”
- The Dalai Lama

Just 50 years ago, travel was usually born of trade, trouble or religious pilgrimage; touring was the province of the wealthy. Today, at the drop of a credit card, millions of people worldwide have the opportunity to travel simply for gratification. It's easier to fly to Bangkok than to drive cross-town New York at rush hour. In a matter of hours you can be just about anywhere in the world. Few travelers these days give much thought to the essence of journey or the responsibility of the traveler as an individual, especially when in less developed parts of the world. Unfortunately, most tourists travel with little thought other than being accommodated and served; that having mobility and money and being a foreigner is enough to earn them respect.

I came to the East in 1970. My first indelible impression of Asia was from a 16-seater plane out of Darwin. Approaching the hilltops of Portuguese Timor (East Timor), I saw below me wild horses grazing golden-brown grass on rocky ridge-top meadows, small clusters of round-roofed, thatched houses in red-dirt jungle clearings, dense, triple-canopied forest and a grass airstrip. I felt as if flying into a novel, a movie, into another world. From the tin immigration shack, my traveling companion Harry Furey and I decided to hike the 5 miles through the jungle on the cobbled, 16th century Portuguese road to the hill-town of Bacau, rather than ride in the back of a WW 2 jeep, the local limousine. Within 10 minutes I had traded a mouth-harp and my shirt to a man clad only in a sarong for his parang, a hand-forged machete with a handle artfully crafted from buffalo horn. I had something made by hand with a thousand uses: he got some factory made stuff of limited use. I had a vague, uneasy feeling that I got the better deal. Thus began my first misgivings as a traveler.

I tried my best to bridge cultural divides, to live as much like the people around me, to learn a bit of every language in the places I traveled through. But I began to feel that perhaps I was planting an element of discontent within their subconscious: the desire for things from afar, for the freedom to leave their homes and daily responsibilities. Whatever positive aspects of their lives and culture I hungrily absorbed, I only could wonder at what I was leaving behind. There is always an exchange.

I discovered how my very presence could affect a delicate balance - a social ecology, one might say - in these wonderful far-away places, free from concepts of western society and ‘progress'. I made the discovery that I had a responsibility to the people of the places in which I traveled.

The Peregrine Farang

A close friend with a deep-seated peregrine urge would at times find himself completely out of pocket in his travels and travails (both words incidentally deriving from the French travail, meaning work or toil or hardship - which is what one must do when the money runs out).

In New Zealand, camping and trout fishing, when supplies ran low, he milked cows, weeded raspberries and pinned hops. Panned for gold too, but it didn't ‘pan out' as they say. Broke bedrock with a 100-pound jackhammer in Australia in 45C heat. He even once hauled water on a bamboo shoulder pole for an Asian brothel at a few cents a trip. Water is heavy – it gave him some respect for the daily tasks of women and children. And earned him some respect for meeting locals at their own level. He made a little crack in their preconceived notion of ‘Farang' and became more of a person in their eyes. He made contact.

“There was only one thing which could lead to an answer And that was to let the sense of journey, expressed for so long In traveling the world without, become a journey within the spirit of man.” Laurens Van Der Post

Life is most strange. I had never been on a tour in my life – never crossed my mind – and now I find myself working for a tour company. Outside of museums, I have always shied away from ‘attractions'. Never been up the Tour D'Eiffel or the Tower of London, gave the Lincoln Memorial, the Statue of Liberty and the Little Mermaid a wide berth, and after 17 or 18 years in Thailand, have never been to the Grand Palace or the floating market. Though I have been to Patpong – twice or thrice. It takes a while to distinguish between attractions and distractions.

After a life much lived on the road, I found myself not particularly well adapted for straight jobs and sanitized, mechanized societies. My experience with Southeast Asian languages, cultures and customs didn't really qualify me for much other than living in SE Asia. Now, I am fortunate to find myself legally employed, living a stone's throw from the Mekong River, working with talented, creative people, putting my experience and several partially developed talents to work. Life could certainly be worse.

I work as a ‘scout' finding & creating eco-tours, finding destinations far off the well-worn track, still far from the ever-nearing power lines; places where you can see the stars at night with clarity.

North by North East Tours is an extraordinary outfit. We do operate some more-or-less standard tours, but even with those, the accent is on creating contact and understanding between cultures – not just trying to run as many paying bodies as possible over the same routes – rutted by overuse. What makes this job worthwhile is not just showing nature in an untrammeled state, but having the opportunity to being a bridge between people and cultures, to try to open traveler's and native's minds alike to the essential sameness we all share.

We seldom lead more than one group through the same eco-routing in a month, as we do not wish to culturally overload the villages we visit. It is a challenge to maintain the balance between clients and nature, and clients and local culture. It is a great responsibility to bring people into unspoiled areas and to leave as few footprints and ripples behind as possible. There is an equally large responsibility involved in being a tourist or traveler, to try and learn something from what we experience and see, to leave behind our precious preconceptions and to open our minds not only to what surrounds us, but more importantly, to what is in us.

We are farang. We are peregrine. We are guests, no matter how many years we live in a country. We are guests on this earth and as guests we should be sensitive to environment and respect conventions of culture, even if our understanding of them is often imperfect.

We should become aware of the exchange being made as soon as we step into a foreign environment. We owe it not only to locals but also to ourselves to travel with awareness and integrity. It is an essential individual responsibility.

“ A voyage to a destination is also a voyage inside oneself; even as a cyclone carries along with it the center in which it must ultimately come to rest…

I think not only of the places I have been to but also of the distances I have traveled within myself, without friend or ship; and of the long way to go yet before I come home within myself and within the journey.”

Laurens Van Der Post

It is my belief that North by North East Tours can make some small positive difference in this world. As well as running tours we also have voluntourism programs where we put volunteer teachers and doctors into remote villages in Thailand and Laos. If you would like to help make a difference by giving of yourself, please contact us. We hope to hear from you.

Dr. Mike Cackovic Making Contact -Making a Difference