Honeymoon Period

My fiancé and I are currently in the process of planning a trip of a lifetime- our honeymoon. We have considered every single destination imaginable and are now narrowing our decision by places we have not been and/ or somewhere tropical. Growing up, my family never had money to travel outside the US, so our trips were primarily to Southern California and Oregon. We once visited Hawaii, but it was planned after learning the news that my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor and my parents were uncertain about his prognosis. That trip was more sad than fun. For my high school graduation I returned to Hawaii with friends and later that summer went on a cruise to Mexico with my folks. (We only left the ship for an hour once we arrived in Mexico because it wasn’t worth the risk- wink, wink.) It is our human nature to narrativize our travels corresponding to our own personal story, rather than to a larger national or global narrative. The outside world only becomes relative in our tale when it deviates from our own personal standards and expectations. Travel can only be defined in difference through exceptionality.

The Jamaica Kincaid piece is one of my favorite pieces as it critically examines travel through the familiarity of a travelogue or personal narrative. Can you imagine if an edition of Eat, Pray, Love came out that replaced the illusion and romance of travel with the reality? How would the book clubs meetings go if members could no longer use Eat, Pray, Love as a platform to boast about their own world travels, but instead looked at their vacations as a moment of exotification of the other? That is what we pay for though when we travel, right? On my honeymoon I don’t want to be face to face with poverty. I want to pretend for a week that the world is perfect. It is my right as an American to experience the world isn’t it? Furthermore, it is my right as an American to experience the world while never sacrificing the luxuries of being an American. Otherwise why would so many budget travel websites have popped up the past couple years in the face of the recession? The world is our playground. We can feel guilty later on when we visit an independent theater to catch a documentary about impoverished children on an island nation who were afforded an identity by US filmmakers and grants. Let me travel to their poverty through the filtered lens and leave the theater as an aware citizen of the world. I promise to go home and “Like” a related charity on Facebook and I will maybe even send that charity a check, but please let me turn my back to it when I vacation in their home. And yes, I am being entirely cynical.