Cover Road:Cover - Teen Ink

Travel&Culture
38
A Summer of Excess by Taylor Wear, Kearneysville, WV
The Explorer of the Seas is a name that brings to
mind not string quartets and velvet-backed
chairs, but rather bearded, yellow-slicker-wearing
Ishmaels in last-resort lifeboats, sailing right to the
edges of maps (eyes to telescopes) into the uncertain
parts that fearful cartographers used to label “here be
dragons.” It’s an unusual moniker for a cruise ship.
She is swanky and upscale, with the prepackaged
elegance of painted Egyptian gold and Las Vegas
pink. At times she is so ludicrously extravagant that
she is almost comical, with midnight buffets adorned
with ridiculous swans carved out of ice and mountains
of food for passengers who really weren’t that
hungry anyway. Every attraction is
aimed at our desire to keep up with
the Joneses. Twenty-four hours a day
passengers can sample fluted glasses
of the world’s finest champagne while
admiring a handful of diamonds on
her royal promenade. In the dining
room, floor-to-ceiling windows display
an absolutely breathtaking view
of the sapphire waters steadily lapping at the rudders
– ignored by most for the flashing lights and chiming
bells of the casino below. Who cares about the view
when you’re on a floating shopping mall?
On the fifth day, she docks at St. Martin, the Dutch
half of a small tropical island in the northwest
Caribbean. Mountainous and arid, the secluded
beaches and picturesque scenery bring about a new
kind of luxury, one that is innocent and undisturbed.
The ocean here is a different shade of blue. It is not the
dark foreboding navy that swallows up naive ships and
sailors, but a brilliant azure that makes the sea almost
indistinguishable from the sky. The water is clear
enough for us to see the white sand trenches getting
steeper and steeper beneath, like steps in a swimming
Bad Gamble by Kate Huh, Fullerton, CA
As everyone knows, ours is a fast-paced society.
In a world of instant messaging and
lightning-quick jets, busy vacationers looking
to make the most of their time flock to the one
place where they can experience Rome, Paris, New
York, and Luxor in a single night:
notorious Las Vegas, Nevada. With
dizzying lights and hilarious faux
architecture, the city is mind-numbing
and superficially entertaining.
When imagining the heart of the
city, most picture “the strip,” a
grandiose four-mile section of Las
Vegas Boulevard South that features
dozens of themed hotels like the Venetian, the
Imperial Palace, and the Sahara. Tourists with
cameras are often seen shooting from car windows
Photo by Mike Bailey-Gates, Harrisville, RI
Teen Ink • APRIL ’09
Las Vegas is
mind-numbing
and superficially
entertaining
The sky and
sea and air are
your own private
kingdom
pool. The overpowering briny odor associated with
most North American beaches isn’t found here. Rather
there is simply the fresh, clean scent of unadulterated
air, and something else you can’t quite put your finger
on, perhaps cotton or the damp flowery smell of an
oncoming downpour. The vegetation is a shade of
emerald so bright it’s almost painful to look at. There
are smiling women with warm, welcoming belly
laughs and faint Eastern European accents sitting on
woven blankets in the sand, braiding their daughters’
jet-black hair into thick ropes. You get the feeling that
you are floating in a fishbowl; the sky and sea and air
are your own private kingdom, foreign and exhilarating,
but familiar and therefore safe.
* * *
The detour is an accident. Like
forgetting to carry the one when adding
or washing a red sock with a load of
white shirts, it seems small and inconsequential
at first but nevertheless causes
change. The fishbowl is turned over and
everything perfect disappears, leaving
you gasping for air and fumbling for the map. You
find yourself in the outskirts of town, the sky now an
ominous gray. The white sandy beaches and cerulean
waves are replaced by gravel roads, dusty sidewalks,
and crumbling stucco buildings with broken windows.
You aren’t sure where you are; all you know is
that it feels vacant and hollow, much like the shattered
glass bottles scattered about or the empty shells
of businesses in this ghost town in paradise.
Then, a girl about your age steps out of a laundromat
carrying a baby. Her coarse dark hair is twisted
behind her head, there are dark bags circling her eyes
like bruises, and her sandals are too big. For a terrifying
second, you think she is looking at you, and you
jerk your head away.
as drivers pass the lights and neon signs, eyes wide
and mouths gaping.
To Las Vegas newcomers, the city is the ultimate
get-more-for-your-buck experience. Where else,
they ask, can one see Elvis Presley, the Eiffel
Tower, Roman statues, and Egyptian
pyramids in the span of 15 minutes?
But to the discerning eye and seasoned
Las Vegas frequenter – like me
– Elvis is just a redhead with a beer
belly, the tower is a pitiful replica, the
statues are obviously painted plastic,
and the pyramid is a big glass hoax.
The themed hotels make no attempt
to capture the true essence of the locations
they represent. The Luxor, for example, features
mummies and pyramids, but where is the authentic
Egyptian cuisine and indigenous music? Egyptian
culture does not end at King Tut.
Though the City that Never Sleeps is, true to its
nickname, wildly entertaining – each hotel offers
decadent buffets and endless slot machines and
arcade games – the cigarette haze eventually becomes
stifling, the clinking of coins rings annoyingly
in the ear, and the artificiality becomes
mind-numbing.
To visitors looking to sip margaritas and play
blackjack until dawn, Las Vegas is paradise. But to
vacationers looking to experience cultural depth
and history, Las Vegas – for all its hilarious
grandeur and cultured airs – is a hopelessly bad
gamble. ✎
Five Senses
by Zainab Vasi, Plainview, NY
Ismell India before I see it: the mingled odors of street vendors
selling chapati and puri and coconut water, along with delicious
cooking aromas wafting from houses. The bazaar smells
of ripe, freshly picked fruits and vegetables, some grown only in
India. Coastal cities like Mumbai have the scent of the ocean and
just-caught fish.
Next comes sight. There is so much to see, I could not glimpse
it all even if I lived my entire life in India. Vendors are selling all
sorts of food. The poor are begging and smiling and selling trinkets.
I see big railroad stations and taxis and cars in the large
cities. In the small towns, rickshaws speed along the narrow roads,
full to overflowing with schoolchildren or
I smell
India before
I see it
You have seen poverty before. When you were
seven, your parents took you to visit your grandparents
in Nogales, a small border town in Mexico. You were
standing near a vibrant rainbow of a mural when a boy
your age scurried up. His face was dirty and his heaving
chest bare, and hand-beaded necklaces were strung
on his thin right arm like Christmas tree garlands. He
offered you one, catching you off-guard. The necklaces
were pretty, but you didn’t have any money, and
you reached for your cousin’s hand – why, you’re not
sure. You remembered the four words your father had
taught you, “Lo siento, no gracias,” and you smiled
awkwardly, ashamed and uncertain. But before you
were even on the second syllable, the boy turned and
ran off to find his next customer. You were shaken.
Now, at 15, you see a difference between Mexico
and what you find here. The living conditions are
just as bleak; it is the people who are different. In
Nogales, they were impoverished yet determined,
survival of the fittest. They did what they had to to
get by. Here, though, it feels more desperate, hopeless.
There is a sense of having given up and letting
nature run its course. At 15, you know what irony is.
You look up and see rows of million-dollar summer
villas owned by white people who are rarely here,
carved into the rock cliffs above these slums.
Evening is falling; it is time to get back on board
the Sunset-Strip-with-rudders and take your place in
the dining room. Your friendly Trinidadian waitress,
who works 11 months each year to pay her son’s
education back home, serves you. Suddenly the lobster
bisque and strawberry napoleon seem less appetizing.
You look out the window – you’re the only
one doing so – and watch the island, the beaches, the
young mother and her too-big shoes, grow smaller
and smaller until they’re a tiny speck on the horizon.
And you think, Never again. ✎
elderly parents. Small shops are spread out
all over town, mostly within walking distance.
The ocean sparkles and glimmers
invitingly. In some areas, the Himalayan
mountains make a beautiful backdrop.
And then there is the sense of touch. The
fruits and vegetables are crisp and cool. The air is almost tangible.
The taste of India is the taste of the air and chapatis, puris, and
samosas right off the stove. Sweet candies and marzipans fresh
out of the oven. Hand-picked vegetables and fruits are crisp and
sweet. The naan is amazingly soft and fluffy.
Noise is a word for sounds that are loud, uncoordinated, and
unharmonious. However, this does not describe India. The sound
of India is more like music made up of common sounds. People
chattering on the street, vendors hawking their wares: these things
are the melody, the high notes. The bass is the rickshaws’ engines
roaring and animals roaming the streets, their hooves thudding
against gravel, adding their voices. This is a melody that everyone
enjoys, a melody that completes the five senses of India. ✎
COMMENT ON ANY ARTICLE AT TEENINK.COM USING THE ADVANCED SEARCH