When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time To Go Home (7 page)

It's hard to break into the major shopping league. I remember how Raisa Gorbachev caused a flap when she dropped a few bucks on jewelry during a trip to London a few years ago. Critics in the Soviet Union had a cow claiming she was caught up in the decadence of western ways.

The truth is Russian shoppers are a good two hundred years behind the rest of the world. While they were sitting over there stockpiling missiles and connecting dots all over those floral print dresses, the rest of the world was turning its technology toward malls and major shopping emporiums.

London launched Harrods, Japan positioned Issey Miyake, Hong Kong perfected a fabulous silk factory called Kaiser Estates Phase I, and frankly, if I saw Bergdorf-Goodman catalogs aimed toward my country from the United States, I'd panic.

Have you ever seen a Russian woman make the National Shopping League? No, and you won't. I knew Raisa was an amateur when she never thought to ask herself, “Why isn't Nancy Reagan going to Reykjavik?” The answer should have been obvious. Why would anyone go to a barren countryside that had never heard of Adolfo?

My husband says he thinks I'm ready for the NSL, but he just says that to make me feel good. The only time I am challenged is when I go on vacation. I live by a couple of standard rules.

1. Never buy anything that fits under an airline seat.

2. Buy in haste. Repent in leisure. Face it, you'll never get this way again.

3. Most people back home will believe anything is tasteful just so long as it comes from a foreign country. It doesn't hurt to leave foreign price tags on. (12 million lire sounds impressive. They don't know the exchange is $3.39 in U.S. dollars.)

4. Never buy clothes in a country where the women wear overcoats and cover their heads with babushkas.

5. Never ask, “Do I need this?” The answer is always no.

Shopping for souvenirs is one of the few joys of traveling for me. I will buy anything. Nothing is too tacky for me to lug home. I have purchased key chains made out of boar's hair, tasteless T-shirts that read I WENT TO NEW GUINEA AND NO ONE ATE ME, paperweights with the Loch Ness monster in them, and, from Mexico, a band of dipped-in-wax frogs with unbelievable fear on their faces, playing musical instruments.

I have purchased coconuts with Indian faces, inflated blowfish, rugs with camel dung on them, little outhouses with doors that fly open and reveal a mountaineer sitting on a one-holer reading a newspaper.

Also, Eskimos with candle wicks coming out of their heads, tape measures in metric, and pillow tops with the Kennedy brothers that glow in the dark.

I have seen travelers anguish over a $2 hermetically sealed four-leaf clover like they're buying a condo in Florida. I look at it this way. This is a one-shot opportunity, and if one day I can run across a bottle opener with a picture of Mount Vesuvius on it in the stove drawer, and it sparks a memory, it's worth it.

In Istanbul, there is a giant spice market lined with tubs of spices all bearing their identification—in Turkish. I bought two pounds of a mound of green stuff, thinking it was mint. It was henna.

Shopping is basically a game of wits. Especially in Turkey, where every male citizen over the age of twelve is a carpet salesman. They are like a film of dust that settles over the country. In fact, there are so many of them that when tourists see them coming, their only defense is to hold a crucifix in front of them like they are being confronted by Barnabas Collins and yell, “Back! Back!” That is why they have some of the most creative approaches I have ever seen.

The “911 to the rescue ” approach

As you are standing on a street corner surrounded by six carpet salesmen, a man will wave them all away in Turkish and turn to you and say in perfect English, “Aren't they pests? I'm from America too. What state are you from?” It doesn't matter what state you give. He has been there.

He will tell you he and his wife came to Turkey a couple of years ago to live and will offer to buy you a cup of coffee in friendship. The coffee will be served in a (get outta here) carpet shop a few blocks from where you are standing. He will tell you he is buying carpets for a large firm in New York. If there's anything you like he can get you a good price. They ship.

The “trust me, I'm not selling carpets” approach

You are snapping a picture in the park when a young man says, “That is a great camera. How much you pay for it?” You shrug and give him some figure and he opens up his billfold and says, “I'd like to buy it.” You smile (big mistake) and say, “No, thank you.” He follows you around for the next two days talking about it until you finally say, “I really don't want to sell my camera. Goodbye.” Then he says, “Would you like to look at my carpets? They're better and cheaper than anyone else's.” They take American Express.

The “blind date” approach

This is a popular one. The salesman will walk close to you and say, “Parlez vous Francais?” You shake your head. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” You answer no. After he hits every country in Rand McNally, he makes a stab at English. Once you have a language in common, he will stick to you like pantyhose in Phoenix in July ... telling you how great his carpets are. He offers to lie on the customs declaration.

The “thirst for knowledge” approach

By the side of the road will be a large Bedouin tent. At the gate you will be met by a young man who speaks English and is anxious to explain the customs of the nomad tribes and the way they lived. It is no coincidence that the floor is solid with wall-to-wall Turkish carpets. From there, he will proceed to where the artisans are dyeing wool using natural fibers. Next to them are women in front of looms who are tying knots faster than he can say “Come, look at the finished product in our showroom.”

I bought a carpet. He said I had exquisite taste.

At one time I amassed so much junk that when I went through customs the officer asked, “How long have you been gone?”

“Three weeks,” I said.

“It's impossible to buy all this stuff in three weeks. Did you see any of the country?”

“What country?” I asked.

He waved me on.

There are few certainties when you travel. One of them is that the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.

We have never traveled anywhere where the American dollar was strong . . . with the exception of Mexico. Maybe it was firm when we left New York, but by the time we got to our destination, $20 wouldn't buy us a newspaper.

We have paid $10 for a soft drink in Sweden and $12 for a hamburger in Russia. For two bowls of soup and two soft drinks in Japan, we forked over $42.

My husband reacts to all of this with the grimness of Louis Rukeyser. I, on the other hand, am struck with an unreal approach to it. Foreign currency seems like Monopoly play money to me. I think nothing of dropping a suitcase full of Italian lire for a cup of coffee.

Every country we have visited acts like its dollar is king . . . until you go to turn it back in. Then the country doesn't want it. No one wants its own money back with the exception of Russia, who doesn't want it back so much as it doesn't want the rubles out of its sight for fear someone will find out how much they are really worth.

My husband is never without one of those little currency decoders. You just punch into it the current rate of exchange, push a few buttons, and it lights up the answer.

I have my own system. I just drop the last three zeros, divide by two, add my age (not the real one, but the one that appears on my bio), and drop a decimal point third from the right. It's close enough.

When that fails, you just grab all the money you own in your hands, hold it out, and let them take what they want.

One should never let the fate of the U.S. dollar get in the way of shopping. I don't understand people who can go abroad and come back with nothing to declare but diarrhea. Bartering is an art form. In San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, I saw a six-foot wooden statue of Don Quixote that I figured would look great in our courtyard.

“Cuanto?” I asked.

The salesman wrote down $150.

I laughed and headed toward the door. He called me back and wrote down $100. I began to hum and pick lint off my dress. He kept writing until he got to $77.

“Sold,” I said.

I paid a man down the street from the shop $42 to crate it. I paid $120 to have it put on a train for Laredo, Texas, and another $320 to have a truck bring it to my doorstep. When people ask me how much I paid for it, I only give the base price.

Shopping is probably the most underrated contact sport in the world. It's especially challenging when you're in countries where the stores close for siestas, like Spain, Mexico, or Greece. Most of these stores are open only from ten until one. They reopen again from three to five-thirty. You must shop quickly. I survive in this frantic atmosphere only because I have no taste.

When shoppers fantasize, the streets of Hong Kong is the place that comes to mind. The city is one giant mall. We spent four days there dragging through miles of stalls and acres of shops. I didn't take time to eat or sleep. At one time there was serious talk of a catheter as biological functions were slowing me down. When I returned home I had credit card burns on the palms of both hands. Shopping in Hong Kong, purported to be the Shopping Olympics, was fun, but where was the challenge? Inquiring “Did you buy anything in Hong Kong?” is like asking “Does the Pope work Sundays?”

At some point in my travels, I knew my shopping skills would be tested. I felt I was ready.

South America

After flying twenty-three hundred miles across the Pacific from Chile, it was a relief to see the small outline of Rapa Nui—Easter Island—beneath us.

I had so looked forward to the trip to South America. Everything I had read about it had only heightened my enthusiasm: those heavenly wool ponchos in the marketplace that you could pick up for $6 ... stunning silver necklaces and earrings for a song . . . not to mention the exquisite hand-embroidered blouses and sweaters that I could give as Christmas gifts.

As we claimed our luggage on the tarmac, a chill went through my body. I shrugged it off. I would feel better when we got into town ... in the center of things. But the feeling didn't go away. As we rode by small clusters of houses and an occasional grocery store, I whispered to my husband, ''There's something strange about this place."

“I know.” He smiled. “I feel it too. No lush forests, no tropical birds, no white beaches or dramatic waterfalls, no buildings of any stature, only the hollow winds that whistle over this barren countryside and those giant, mysterious stone men with vacant eyes rising majestically out of the ground.”

“Why are you talking like Jacques Cousteau? Look around you! Do you realize we have not seen one single gift shop in this place? I ana supposed to spend four days on an island that has no gift shops?”

“How can you possibly be bored surrounded by all of this symbolism and mystery?”

“Look at me,” I commanded. “Do you know what you're dealing with? You are looking at a shallow woman who left while the Pope was saying Mass at St. Peter's in Rome to buy a splinter from the cross on which Christ purportedly died, from a man in the square wearing fifteen watches on his forearm.”

“Knowing you,” he said, “you'll rise to the challenge.”

I joined our tour group and rode around in the little buses. I had no choice. We poked around caves, volcanoes, and excavation sites where they were restoring these monoliths, and I had to admit I was intrigued by it all. Some of the statues had been toppled and rested facedown in the open areas. Some were still in caves where work on them had been abandoned. Sometimes there would be groupings of them. A few had cinder hats, others had larger ears. But they all had several things in common. They were huge, had no eyes, and were a mystery to anthropologists who for years had come to Easter Island in an attempt to piece together a culture that had left few clues.

“You see,” said my husband, “I knew you'd be fascinated by this place. I'll bet you've even forgotten about shopping.”

“I love this place,” I said, “but if I don't find something to buy within the next twenty-four hours, I am going to become physically ill.”

Down from our hotel (which had no gift shop) was a large platform on which seven of these statues—about sixty feet tall—faced away from the sea. They looked like giant targets on the gun range of a police academy. Since South Americans dine after ten o'clock at night, it created a problem for me. I am asleep by nine-thirty at night. So each evening at dusk I took a candy bar and bag of potato chips and joined the Stone Seven.

As I dangled my feet from the stone pedestal, I looked up at them, studied their expressionless faces, and figured they alone held the secret of why Easter Island had no gift shops. It probably had something to do with a woman who gave them bad shells.

The next morning, I hung around the hotel and asked one of the Easter Islanders where you could buy souvenirs.

He reported there were many statues and much jewelry made by the natives, but they would rather not exchange their wares for money. He had my attention.

It seems Easter Island holds the distinction of being the most remote spot on the face of the earth. Its closest neighbor is Pitcairn Island, twelve hundred miles to the west. Therefore, it is often cut off from basic supplies needed to exist. Tourists fly in regularly from Chile, but the cost of sending supplies by air is prohibitive. A ship is scheduled to come twice a year, but they are at the whim of rough seas, and supplies must often be transferred to smaller boats. The carvings could be had for a box of aspirin, a pair of scissors, shampoo, or shoes.

I could handle that. I just had to know the rules. That afternoon, I visited a man carving statues and dropped to my knees as if I had just found the only crap game in town.

Before we departed Easter Island, I had a suitcase of beautiful wood carvings of the statues, some wonderful jewelry, and several watercolors.

My husband left without his running shoes, shaving cream, Swiss army knife, a pair of jeans, a cotton pullover, and his warm-ups.

If his astigmatism had been right, I could have traded his prescription sunglasses for a beach towel with a monolith stamped on it.

He asked, “Why didn't you trade your own clothes?” That was the weird part. They're cut off from the rest of the world . . . but they still have taste.

If I thought Easter Island was a shopper's challenge, I was about to face the second biggest test of my buying career. Our next stop was the Galapagos, off the coast of Ecuador.

The plane landed on a bare strip with nothing but a lean-to nearby to protect arriving passengers from the sun. From there, we were herded onto a small boat to cruise the archipelago that had played a major role in our understanding of the process of evolution.

When I heard that most of the islands were void of people, my heart sank. Any day now my husband would get a sympathy card from American Express on the death of his wife. I had not charged anything in two weeks.

I wouldn't have minded sloshing ashore with the sea lion swimming around me if there had been a Stuckey's on the beach. Even sliding down a mountain of volcanic ash would have been bearable if I knew at the bottom there would be a little boutique with note cards and scented soaps. But there was nothing.

I was being held captive on a no-frills ship of geologists, zoologists, and botanists who cared about the preservation of the world but nothing about toilet tissue. I hate to make generalizations, but there is a definite correlation between smart people and little regard for creature comforts.

The little ship bobbed along for days from island to island studying the blue-footed booby and marine iguanas. We had our pictures taken astride a giant tortoise. We crawled over sharp, jagged rocks, splashed through water, and hid out in tall grass to watch frigate birds display themselves. (I felt dirty doing that.)

On one island, scientists were overseeing the reproduction of turtles. There were literally thousands of baby turtles crawling around in a large pit. As I turned to my husband, my eyes brightened and I opened my mouth to speak.

“Forget it!” he said. “They are not going to paint Galapagos on their backs and sell them.”

At nights, I joined the group in the ship's small lounge to listen to lectures, watch slides, and make notes on what we were to see the next day. No one suspected that in college in response to the question, “What is a chinook?” I wrote in, “The name of the guy I just broke up with.”

This was not a crowd that was interested in souvenirs. They were purists who came on this vacation to learn something about our planet. If they had known where I was coming from, they would have studied me.

After five days in the Galapagos, I took my credit cards out of my bra and returned them to my billfold. I had suffered my first defeat.

There are few places in the world where you really have to fight to leave your money. You show me a religious shrine and I'll show you a T-shirt that reads I got A PEEK AT THE POPE or LIVING IT UP AT LOURDES.

One place I was prepared to go home empty-handed was the North Cape. It is a barren district on the Arctic Sea made accessible only by a road that winds through an area that can best be described as desolate. There are a few small lakes, sparse vegetation, and herds of reindeer brought to forage during the summer.

We traveled by bus for about an hour out of Honningsvag, Norway, before we reached the tents of a village of Laplanders. They were as curious about us as we were about them. As the souvenir queen, I quickly admitted defeat.

Our driver started the motor of the bus as a warning to a passenger who had not yet boarded. It was my husband. Finally, he emerged from the tent of a Laplander holding a long roll under his arm. The moment he entered the bus, we knew what it was ... a reindeer skin. Despite the bitter cold, people gasped as they threw open their windows and covered their faces from the smell. In the name of compassion, we sat in the back of the bus.

Back on the ship the reindeer skin continued to smell. I sprayed it with deodorant and perfume. We rolled it in paper and stored it under the bed. We stuffed it in the closet and zipped it in the luggage. It didn't work. The odor permeated our hair and our wardrobe. Whenever we entered the dining room, someone would sniff and say, “Don't be surprised if a herd of male reindeer swim out to the ship and ask you to dance.”

When we arrived home, my husband said, “Where are we going to put this?”

“You mean after it dies?”

“C'mon,” he said, “I hardly notice it anymore.” He put it in the garage over his workbench. We haven't parked the car in the garage since.

Flying for Peanuts

In my mind, I always imagined the little Wright Brothers sitting on a curb in Dayton, Ohio, talking about their future.

Wilbur says, “You know, Orville, it's getting crowded down here. We ought to invent something that gets people off the ground and into the air so they can fly from one place to another with wings.”

“How do we do that, Wilbur?”

“First, we have to get something we can stuff people into . . . like a CAT scanner.”

“CAT scanners haven't been invented yet, Wilbur. Besides, it sounds claustrophobic.”

“OK then, something like a silo. We'd put in a couple of windows.”

“What would you do about breathing?” asks Orville.

“We'd pressurize the cabin,” says his brother. “Of course, if something malfunctioned, we'd have little bags of oxygen that would drop automatically in front of their faces. People love gimmicks.”

“I don't know,” muses Orville. “What if passengers got sick?”

“No problem-o,” says Wilbur. “For a couple of bucks, we could put little paper barf bags in the seat pocket with instructions on how to throw up in two languages. This would be a first-class operation.”

“Could you land these silos in the cities?” asks Orville.

“Are you crazy? We'd set the passengers down in a cornfield miles from town and let them get in any way they could. In fact, I visualize putting the Cincinnati airport in Kentucky.”

“What about food?”

“We'd give 'em food they can't identify. That way they won't know if it's good or bad.”

“You're a genius, Wilbur.”

“I see it as a country club of the clouds,” offers his brother. “A place where you can unwind and not have a care in the world. People will get their flight insurance in the lobby, go through security and have all their belongings X-rayed for guns and knives before they board the plane. After the attendants have given them the evacuation procedures in the event of loss of air pressure and demonstrated how to use the life jackets in the event they ditch over water, they're free to relax.”

“Sounds great, Wilbur. How much do you suppose we would have to pay each person to fly it?”

“Orville, Orville, you just don't get it, do you? We don't pay them to fly. They pay us.”

At this point, I picture Orville backing slowly away from his brother until he is out of range, and then he runs breathlessly to his father and shouts, “Daddy! Come quick! Wilbur's bicycle just slipped its chain.”

Most of us have had a love/hate relationship with airlines. We love them when they're on time; we hate them the rest of the time. But the fact that we climb on and off of them by the millions in a cavalier fashion proves that we have not lost our adventurous spirit. We are somehow willing to forgive them for just about anything.

A passenger was sucked through a plane window on a flight from Portland to Seattle. “It was an incredibly strong force,” he was quoted as saying. “I tried twice to get back.”

Passengers finally succeeded in getting him back through the twelve-by-eighteen-inch window. After he was treated in Seattle for his injuries, he climbed back on the same plane for the return trip to Portland.

I have been on a plane where the doors were secured, announcements had been made, and we all settled back to leave the gate when there was a knock on the door and the pilot and co-pilot were standing outside trying to board.

In another incident, the plane could not take off because we were hopelessly stuck to the jetport and an hour later, it looked like we would have to be surgically removed from one another.

There have been moments when flying is sometimes like pledge week on PBS. I wasn't aboard this particular flight, but on a London run to the Madeira Islands, the pilot's voice came over the intercom, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a flight problem. Would you please contribute as much cash as possible so we can buy fuel to continue our journey?”