Separating fiction from reality…

I found it quite interesting that we accept things so easily without ever being too critical about where we get our information. We shouldn’t be too nit-picky about everything we hear or see (although I have to admit that I’m just a tad more critical than the average person which does get me in a pickle once in a while). But, then again, it’s good to know the “truth” whereever that may be. Just today, I came across a couple of stories that make us realize how much the “truth” can be manipulated.

First, there’s the recent “expose” on the popular travel guide Lonely Planet. The LP travel guides are considered the bible for travelers with a wealth of information about countries around the world with well-trodden to little known travel destinations. However, the popular travel guides have recently been gaining increasingly negative press. Some issues that come up include tourism exploitation due to LP’s popularity with independent travelers and those seeking “unspoilt” locations, and its publication of travel guides in countries who’s governments have questionable human rights records. And now there is even more controversy with a former travel writer for LP writing about his experience working with LP that included supplementing his low salary with selling drugs and falsifying information. Here’s a quote from this article by the Guardian:

Thomas Kohnstamm, co-author of a dozen Lonely Planet guides to Latin America and the Caribbean, has written his own book. In it he tells how the life of a travel writer is one of poor pay, dealing drugs to make ends meet, cribbing information from other sources and, in one case, failing to visit the country he was writing about.

I’m guilty of using the LP guides for basic travel information and orientation for my travel plans because they’re quite comprehensive little books and have lots of information about where you want to go and what you want to do in one place. That being said, I haven’t bought a LP guide in a few years and have turned to the Internet for getting background info when I’m planning my travels. Although publishing a guidebook on traveling to Myanmar is questionable in terms of supporting the government regime and exploiting a country in which its people do not have the basic rights that we enjoy, the fact that a writer has come out to expose the reality of working for LP makes me a bit more hesitant to use the guides. My main issue is with people who use LP as bibles when they travel… instead these “independent travelers” should rely less on LP and get out and start talking to people and be a part of the culture they are visiting… after all, LP is only a “guide”.

Have you been following the Olympic torch relay? Every 4 years the torch is lit in Greece, travels the globe to a select number of countries and then ends its tour in the city where the Olympics will take place. But, did you know that the origins of the torch doesn’t come from the Greeks? According to an article by the New York Times, the birth of the Olympic torch route was not by the Greeks a thousand years ago, but in fact a Nazi tribute. While the Olympic organizers and governments (with vested interests perhaps) claim that politics should not interfere with the Olympics, this article and others in fact point to the fact that politics and the Olympics do have their links. Something that comes to mind is how does the IOC determine which city/country is awarded the Olympics? If the awarding of the Olympics comes down to the basic infrastructure of supporting the games, then every city would have a chance in getting the Olympics, as long as they can afford it. But then how does a country like China, with its poor human rights record, get the Olympics? The IOC pushes the line that Olympics and politics don’t go together, but isn’t the history of the Olympics full of corruption and politics? Maybe the IOC shouldn’t be sitting on such a high horse, otherwise they might risk falling, and falling hard.