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12 Things I’ve Learned From Traveling Around the World for Three Years

游客2024-05-21  10
问题         12 Things I’ve Learned From Traveling Around the World for Three Years
    On March 13, 2007, I handed over the keys to my house, put my possessions in storage and headed out to travel around the world with nothing but a backpack, my laptop and a camera.
    Three and a half years and 70 countries later, I’ve gotten the equivalent of a Ph.D in general knowledge about the people and places of Planet Earth.
    Here are some of the things I’ve learned:
1) People are generally good.
    Many people are afraid of the world beyond their door, yet the vast majority of humans are not thieves, murderers or rapists. They are people just like you and me who are trying to get by, to help their families and go about living their lives. There is no race, religion or nationality that is exempt from this rule. How they go about living their lives might be different, but their general goals are the same.
2) The media lies.
    If you only learned about other countries from the news, you’d think the world was a horrible place. The media will always sensationalize and simplify a story. I was in East Timor when the assassination attempts on President Jose Ramos-Horta, and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao in 2008. The stories in the news the next day were filed from Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur, not Dili. It was all secondhand news. I was in Bangkok during the political protests this year, but you’d never have any idea they were taking places if you were not in the immediate area where the protests were taking place. The media makes us scared of the rest of the world, and we shouldn’t be.
3) The world is boring.
    If there isn’t a natural disaster or an armed conflict, most places will never even be mentioned in the news. When is the last time you’ve heard Laos or Oman mentioned in a news story? What makes for good news are exceptional events, not ordinary events. Most of the world, just like your neighborhood, is pretty boring. It can be amazingly interesting, but to the locals, they just go about living their lives.
4) Americans don’t travel.
    This stereotype is true. Americans don’t travel overseas as much as Brits, Dutch, Germans, Canadians or Scandinavians. There are some good reasons for this (big country, short vacation time) and bad ones (fear and ignorance). We don’t have a gap year culture like they have in the UK and we don’t tend to take vacations longer than a week. I can’t think of a single place I visited where I met Americans in numbers anywhere close to our relative population.
5) The rest of the world isn’t full of germs.
    Many people travel with their own supply of water and an industrial vat of hand sanitizer (消 毒剂). I can say in full honestly that I have never used hand sanitizer or gone out of my way to avoid contact with germs during my travels. It is true that in many places you can get nasty illnesses from drinking untreated water, but I don’t think this means you have be a traveling Howard Hughes. Unless you have a particularly weak immune system or other illness, I wouldn’t worry too much about local bugs.
6) You don’t need a lot stuff.
    Condensing my life down from a 3,000 sq/ft house to a backpack was a lesson in knowing what really matters. I found I could get by just fine without 97% of the things I had sitting around my home. Now, if I purchase something, I think long and hard about it because anything I buy I will have to physically carry around. Because I have fewer possessions, I am more likely to buy things of higher quality and durability.
7) Traveling doesn’t have to be expensive.
    Yes, if you insist on staying in five-star hotels and luxury resorts, travel can be very expensive. However, it is possible to visit many parts of the world and only spend $10-30 per day. In addition to traveling cheap, you can also earn money on the road teaching English or working on an organic farm. I’ve met many people who have been able to travel on a little more than $l,000/month. I met one man from the Ukraine who spent a month in Egypt on $300.
8) Culture changes.
    Many people go overseas expecting to have an "authentic" experience, which really means they want to confirm some stereotype they have in their mind of happy people living in huts and villages. They are often disappointed to find urban people with technology. Visiting a different place doesn’t mean visiting a different time. It is the 21st Century, and most people live in it. They are as likely to wear traditional clothes as Americans are to wear stove top hats like Abraham Lincoln. Cultures have always changed as new ideas, religions, technologies sprang up and different cultures mingled and traded with each other. Today is no different.
9) Everyone is proud of where they are from.
    When you meet someone local in another country, most people will be quick to tell you something about their city/province/country that they are proud of. Pride and patriotism seem to be universal values. I remember trying to cross the street once in Palau, one of the smallest countries in the world, and a high school kid came up to me and said, "This is how we cross the street in PALAU!" Even crossing the street became an act to tell me about his pride in his country. People involved in making foreign policy should be very aware of this.
10) Most people have a deep desire to travel around the world.
    Not shocking, but every day I meet people who are fascinated by what I do and how I live. The desire to travel is there, but fears and excuses usually prevent people from doing it. I understand that few people can drop what they are doing and travel around the world for three years, but traveling overseas for even a few months is within the realm of possible for many people at some point in their lives. Even on an island in the middle of the Pacific, people who would probably never leave their home island talked to me of one day wishing they could see New York or London for themselves. I think the desire to explore and see new things is fundamental to the human experience.
11) You can find the internet almost everywhere.
    I have been surprised at where I’ve found internet access. I’ve seen remote villages in the Solomon Islands with a packet radio link to another island for their internet access. I’ve been at an internet cafe in the Marshall Islands that accessed the web via a geosynchronous satellite (同步卫 星). I’ve seen lodges in the rainforest of Borneo hooked up to the web. I once counted 27 open wifi signals in Taipei on a rooftop. We truly live in a wired world.
12) Everyone should travel.
    At some point in your life, whether it is after college or when you retire, everyone should take some extended trip outside of their own country. The only way to really have a sense of how the world works is to see it yourself. [br] Why Americans travel overseas less than their western counterparts?
选项 A、Their vacations tend to be shorter.
B、They can’t afford international tours.
C、They are more interested in making money.
D、They prefer staying where Americans are in the majority.
答案 A
解析 第二句提到，美国人在海外旅游方面不如英国人、荷兰人、德国人、加拿大人或者斯堪的纳维亚人(注：即北欧人)那么频繁，第三句给出原因：good reasons(big country, short vacation time)以及bad ones(fear and ignorance)，第四句提到的we don’t tend to take vacations longer than a week是对short vacation time的进一步说明。题干中的their western counterparts与文中提到的Brits…Scandinavians对应，Americans travel overseas less than与Americans don’t travel overseas as much as对应，[A] Their vacations tend to be shorter．与原因中的short vacation time对应，故答案为[A]。
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