Where In The World #4
My travel resolutions for the year, a peek at the travel media professionals I'll be profiling in 2023, and why I think you should buy a $1200 luggage tag
Twenty-twenty-three! Here we are. Or, at least we kind of are. This early on, I’d argue that we’re really still globbing around in the dregs of 2022. It’s like how the 1990s were still really the 1980s until late 1991 when Nevermind was released and then the 1990s started properly. It generally takes til the January 26 public holiday before we really get a sense of the character of a year. We should know what fresh or stale hell 2023 has in store for us in about a month.
Stick with me til then and beyond because while I don’t have a ton that’s very ‘industry’ to say this week (I certainly haven’t been travelling much beyond guiding my hands on regular journeys to my mouth, laden with food), there’s a lot on the way.
If you’re a new reader, every month I’m going to be profiling a travel media professional (if you missed the first one, my Q&A with Jo Hunkin from Gourmet Traveller, you can read it here).
Upcoming superstars include editors from Qantas magazine, Escape and Lonely Planet, PRs who look after Australian and international destinations and solo creators, writers and publishers from as far away as Paris and Singapore. Every single one shares such good stuff. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any of it.
If you’ve landed here via social media or from someone sharing this with you (and thank you to everyone who has - you sweet sharebunnies!) then you’ll want to subscribe to keep getting The Travel Communicator every week in your inbox. Just click that button. It’s free.
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Oh and also! Thanks to everyone who has emailed me or messaged me on Instagram or LinkedIn about this weird folly of mine. I’m thrilled and frankly slightly bemused at how many of you seem to like my gibberish. Feel free to leave your kind comments below too - a) it’ll make me look loved and b) algorithm something something.
Ok let’s get into it…
NEW THING: The TTC Playlist
Each week I’m going to drop you a travel-scented Spotify track, so in no time you’ll own the greatest travel-based playlist in existence. And if we ever hang out, it means there’s some chance I’ll let you man the Bluetooth speakers.
I’m well aware that I could call this ‘TRAVEL TRAX’ but then I’d have to curl up into a tiny ball and expire from shame.
So for now it’s the TTC Playlist.
This week, I give you the greatest song ever written about the USA’s most-maligned state (arguably the greatest song ever written full stop but I’ll reluctantly allow the qualifier): ‘FloriDada’ by Animal Collective. There are a ton of travel refs in there beyond Florida - Montana, Maryland, Sweden, Osaka and Tijuana - but more importantly it’s just the happiest song by a usually pretty weird band. Enjoy it. You will, I promise you:
My 2023 Travel Resolutions
This is what I hope my travel diet looks like this year:
Go to China, ASAP
In 2022, I was fortunate enough to go to a bunch of countries just as they were starting to open up post-Covid and it’s one of the wackiest, eeriest, coolest, most exhilarating things you can do (and something that will probably - touch wood - never happen ever again).
I got poked at by people in hazmat suits at entry airports in Thailand and saw empty streets all over Koh Samui in February, I got to see Fiji blossoming back to life like a frangipani in March, I had small Japanese towns almost entirely to myself in September. In each case, people were a bit shellshocked, a bit nervous but overall so pleased to be welcoming visitors back, and so thrilled to be out and thriving and getting back to normal themselves.
Once we get past our squabbles about inbound and outbound Covid tests (and we will - every emerging country has a few weird false starts) China will be the same and if you can do it, do it.Yes, there’ll be paperwork and tests and rules. Fill out the paperwork, take the tests, follow the rules. It will be otherworldly.
Stop overpacking
Ok, this one hurts me to say. I hate ‘I only take carry on!’ braggers. There’s something so unnecessarily competitive and virtue-signalling about it. Standing for 20 minutes at the baggage carousel doesn’t get you a cupcake, cupcake. Here’s a piece I wrote on this precise topic for Escape.
‘When it’s driven by an almost macho triumphalism; a ner-ner-ner-ner, clever clogs, “Why would I want to waste time at a baggage carousel like the plebs!” attitude, then it just seems childish,’ I thundered.
Sigh. I give in. Or at least my hopeless spine does. This year, I am travelling light. I got a superlight July backpack late last year so I can carry laptop around to my share office in a physio-friendly way (I am working on way to style a backpack so it’s not dorky - blank so far) and then for Christmas I got their shuddering exhale carry-on. And packing cubes. I’m going to be that ner ner ner clever clog.
This guy has a backpack and still looks cool. Then again, that one-shouldered situation is going to give him a hernia *tuts smugly*
If I also become someone one of those people who holds up the whole security scan line because I’ve accidentally packed cabin-banned items in my hand luggage then I’m going to have to start writing scathing Escape columns about my own bad travel behaviour.
Read more travel stuff
I know everyone’s resolution list has some version of ‘read more’ on it but when you write, you often forget - or don’t have time - to read nearly as much as you should. And that’s bad because as a travel writer it’s your job to be familiar with pretty much every single corner of the globe. If you can’t physically plant your feet on it you simply have to read about it.
At the end of last year, a bunch of Australian travel writers sent round an email asking each other to name their favorite 2022 read (shout out to Rob McFarland, Katrina Lobley, Michael Turtle, Kate Hennessy and a bunch of others…). To be honest I was all *tight awkward smile* at first because I hadn’t read much at all. (FYI I eventually settled on this snarky but hilarious take-down of Vanlifers from the New York Times in April). So I spent the last of my bedraggled December cash on subscribing to a bunch of my favourite travel magazines and I look forward to arranging myself picturesquely in settings like the above as I read them.
Three Things I Like
Can’t stop mooching over these not-cheap pants which are begging to join me on a Tahiti cruise I’m taking later in the year.
Happily for my bank balance, they’ve been out of my size for a while so for now we’ll stick with our online flirtation. If they restock I’ll see if I break and arrange an IRL meetup.
Sexy olive oil packaging. It’s a generalisation, but I feel like olive oil tends to have two types of labels: ‘fussy and nanna’, or ‘Microsoft Paint image library’. I’m writing a food piece about olive oils right now and love the look of this bouncy gold babe from Goulburn Valley in Victoria. Make things look nice. Never hurt no one:
3. In fact, why not make things look this nice. If I’m going to be one of those people who travels ‘light’ rather than stylish, the least I can do is cool up my lumpen backpack with a stand-out tag. Loving this Hermès calfskin and palladium tag that retails for $USD1200.
Oh psych, of course I don’t love it, that’s preposterous. A tag. A small blue tag. Twelve hundred dollars. It wouldn’t be worth that if it were six times the size and made of caviar. Appalling. I’m going to go listen to Animal Collective to calm down and stop myself snorting with horror.
That’s it. Next week I’ll be out of ‘holiday babbling mode’ and back to more industry-focused chats. Thanks for reading.
Alex