Since we’ve entered August and the mind naturally turns to travel, I thought I’d share my favorite vacation get-away spots. What qualifies as a vacation get-away, you might ask? First of all, in my mind, it has to be a spot that is mainly geared toward tourism or leisure rather than a major city that is also fun to visit and happens to have vacation-like features such as beaches or festivals. While a city like Rio has the beach and Carnivale and New Orleans has Bourbon Street and Jazz Fest, they’re not designed specifically for vacation in the way that the Seychelles or the Maldives might be or tourism like the Galapagos Islands or Machu Picchu are. Bear in mind that vacations are often as much (or more) about the people with whom you go than the actual places themselves so my memories are naturally tinged by the good times I’ve had in these spots with great friends or exceptionally-welcoming locals. So with that having been said, and your interest hopefully piqued in some new, off-the-beaten-track locales, here are my favorite places to unwind, explore, or get my hedonism on.
- Montañita, Ecuador
Montañita is a hidden jewel on the coast of Ecuador about three hours from the city of Guayaquil. My brother and I flew into Guayaquil one day later than originally planned, after missing our regularly-scheduled flight out of Peru on New Year’s morning. Granted, we should have known better than to plan on a morning flight the day after New Year’s Eve, but you live and learn. There are buses from Guayaquil to Montañita, but in the event that they’re all sold out (which they were), there are plenty of locals willing to cram you into the bed of a pickup truck with six of your new best Argentinian friends for the low-low price of $25.
Here is my brother enjoying our luxury travel accommodations:
(Photo by me)
Montañita boasts solid (if unspectacular) beaches but great little restaurants and beachside bars, cabanas, and clubs that stay open till the sun comes up. The locals are friendly and fun-loving (many Ecuadorians come from Quito or Guayaquil to party there on the weekends), and the prices are reasonable (at least they were in 2009). You can take surfing and Spanish lessons and even stay with locals, as my friend Crystal did—in fact, she liked it so much, she spent an entire month there. There are definitely more luxurious destinations nearby in the Caribbean and fancier all-inclusive resorts in the Bahamas, Punta Cana, or Turks and Caicos. If that’s what you’re looking for, fair play to you, but we probably don’t have the same idea of what constitutes a worthwhile vacation get-away. But if you’re looking for a local, under-the-radar spot that still welcomes gringos and you would prefer not to hide behind the walls of a hotel compound, you’ve found your destination.
- Dubrovnik, Croatia
(Photo by Quahadi Añtó 09:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC) (Own work) [GFDL CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)
Dubrovnik might just be the most beautiful manmade city in the world. There’s a reason that Game of Thrones picked it as the backdrop for King’s Landing and other iconic scenes. Its old, walled city jutting out into the ocean provides an incomparable backdrop for its gorgeous, eclectic mixture of gothic, renaissance, and baroque architecture. Dubrovnik is a city out of time, and the “Pearl of the Adriatic” is a testament to the beauty that can be wrought when man and nature combine their considerable talents. And again, in what will be a recurring theme with my favorite spots, the locals were particularly friendly. On the bus from Split to Dubrovnik, I met a (not unattractive) half-Croatian/half-English girl who invited me to a local festival about five or so miles out of town. In what turned out to be a memorable night, I got to experience an authentic slice of Croatian culture. But the full story is in the book, and you’ll just have to wait to hear it. In the meantime, if you haven’t done so already, check out Dubrovnik and the rest of the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia—it’s fast becoming the world’s worst-kept secret and is just about the most scenic place in Europe, if not the world.
- Ko Phangan, Thailand
Despite Ko Phangan’s incredible natural beauty and charm, there’s really one main reason why international travelers seek it out: the Full Moon Party. Legendary for the size, scope, and extent of its debauchery, if this is what you want, you will not be disappointed. I’ve been twice, in 2004 with my brother and in 2010 with two of my best friends from Shanghai when the Full Moon Party serendipitously coincided with New Year’s Eve (for the first time in 19 years). Both times we were treated to buckets of Red Bull and whiskey, flaming jump ropes, and thousands of European revelers on a single stretch of Thai beach.
Here is the Full Moon Party in full swing:
(Photo by some random, friendly party-goer)
Here is the aftermath:
(Photo by me—how I didn’t lose my camera, I’ll never know)
It’s definitely a time and a place kind of phenomenon. You have to be in the right frame of mind, and you have to be with certain kinds of friends or traveling buddies (read: people who are up for anything). I lost my brother the first time. He seemed very concerned when I reappeared the next day on the adjacent island on which we were staying when I interrupted his massage. The second time, my friend John and I saw a massive Australian guy get his ass kicked by a tiny Thai waiter who he was harassing (important vacation note: never pick a fight with people who have a style of boxing named after them). Though we didn’t attempt to hop the flaming jump rope, we did manage to find a foam party on the beach (pictured above). Which got very sandy, very quickly. Despite these misadventures, I always had a fantastic time. But it’s definitely a been-there-done-that kind of place. Well, twice. Bucket list: check and check.
- Galway, Ireland
Admittedly, Galway doesn’t neatly fit into the category of a vacation get-away as it’s very much a real city, but it feels enough like an out-of-the-way destination that I’m going to say that it qualifies. I’ve been there twice, once when I was studying in Ireland over 20 years ago and again a mere three years ago, and it retains the same magical charm. Galway sits in the middle of the west coast of Ireland in the province of Connaught. It’s not a large city, so it’s easily walkable, and is dominated by university students during the school year and peppered with tourists throughout the year. For authentic Irish pubs, you’d be hard pressed to find any better than Naughtons or The Quays, though there are plenty more places that offer a proper pint and traditional Irish music. But perhaps the best view of the city is with your back to it as the sun sets over the Atlantic: one of the most beautiful sights these half-Irish eyes have ever seen.
(Photo of me in the doorway of a Galway pub in 1995 by the uber-talented Navin Mahabir)
- Amalfi Coast, Italy
(Photo by © Jorge Royan/http://www.royan.com.ar/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Though I am more familiar with the north of Italy, having lived in southern Switzerland, my one foray down to the south of the country offered stunning landscapes and the trademark world-class cuisine. The Amalfi Coast, on Italy’s southwest coast, boasts many spectacular attractions including the Blue Grotto,[1] the island of Capri, and the nearby ruins of Pompeii. My brother and I took three days in the summer of 2003 to drive our rented Fiat all around the surrounding area and despite my love of Florence and Rome, the Amalfi Coast takes the cake as my favorite place on the boot. The sheer cliff sides falling into the near-transparent Mediterranean, the exquisitely maintained cottages and houses on Capri, and the inexpensive, consistently fantastic food make for a memorable experience. It’s definitely a solid couple’s destination, which is why it was so moving that I could share it with my brother. We did manage to pick up one lovely American hitchhiker for a day and soak in the rays on a local beach, but sadly there were no bellissimas in our divine comedy.
- Goa, India
(Photo by Ankur2002 via Wikimedia)
Goa was an unexpected, last-minute detour on my trip to India. I had planned to be in Delhi and Agra (to see the inimitable Taj Mahal—a must-see by the way) and was heading down to Mumbai (Bombay) to hang out with my friend Rory. I decided to carve a couple days out of both ends to check out Goa, and it was the best decision I made on the trip. Goa is located in the middle of the west coast of the Indian subcontinent on the Arabian Sea. For some reason, perhaps because it was originally colonized by the Portuguese, I always thought it was an island (it is not). But it does retain some of the old colonial Portuguese architecture (picture above) and has a lovely stretch of beachside resorts with a laid-back Bohemian vibe.
Upon arriving my hostel, I met my three roommates: all of them 20 years old and having just left Britain for the first time. Traveling alone as I was, they decided to adopt me and show me the city (they had, after all, been there for all of two days). The picture below is the result of this indoctrination.
(Photo by some poor member of the Red Door Hostel staff)
They insisted that I had to sport the local uniform, as they perceived it, which was a cheap tank top and baggy, flowing pants with garish designs. And I had to rent a scooter. And we had to drive these scooters at top speed all around the city while drinking as many Kingfishers as we could. None of this was advisable. All of this was fun. It was one of the best times I’ve ever had with random people and is as good an advertisement for traveling alone (and being open to the endless possibilities come with it) that I can think of.
- Port Salut, Haiti
(Photo by Michelle Walz Eriksson via Wikimedia)
Believe it or not, despite all the negative press it gets, Haiti is still in the Caribbean and thus has its share of hidden treasures. Port Salut, for my money, is the best of these diamonds in the rough. My roommate and frequent traveling companion Conor introduced me to the paradise that is Dan’s Creek Hotel. The hotel sits just above a small inlet of pristine private beach while the deck of the restaurant juts out into the sea, perched on a nearby cliff. You can finish eating your crevettes en sauce (prawns sautéed in delicious a tomato-based sauce), get up from your table, and jump off of a twenty-foot cliff into the warm waters of the Caribbean (though we recommend that you wait at least a half an hour after eating before swimming). There are miles of beach on either side of the hotel, and you can always find locals willing to swim out and catch you fresh fish or lobster and grill it for you on the spot. Everyone on the island has their own favorite weekend refuge, be it Ile à Vache, Cap Haitien, or Kokoye on the Haitian side or Cabarete, Samana, or Las Terrenas on the Dominican side, but for my money, Port Salut is where it’s at.
- Marbella, Spain
(Photo by Martin Morris via Wikimedia)
The Costa del Sol, in the south of Spain, is a prime vacation destination of the world’s rich and famous for good reason. And we’re not talking run-of-the-mill rich people from the Hamptons, we’re talking British and Saudi royalty, Sean Connery, Prince (when he was still alive), and Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant (same goes for them). Beaches, mountains, clubs, yachts, historic caves, famous museums. This small stretch of coast has it all. There are a number of small towns within an hour’s drive of Malaga, the biggest city on the coast, but Marbella is the best of the bunch. It has the timeless, traditional Spanish architecture and winding pedestrian streets that lead to plazas filled with orange trees (Plaza de Naranjos—pictured above) where you can sip fresh-squeezed orange juice or order chocolate con churros. And when the sun goes down, no one parties like the Spanish.[2] There’s just something exhilarating about sitting down to dinner at 10PM, going to the first bar at midnight, and the club at 3AM, knowing that your night will only end when the sun appears (and maybe not even then if you hit the after-hours clubs). Puerto Banus, a 10-minute bus ride along the coast from Marbella, has a street lined with packed dance bars that don’t close until 7AM. I learned this the hard way when I was in nearby Torremolinos, working at a Spanish summer program for American high school kids trying to learn español. Some of my former students from Switzerland (ah, TASIS) were vacationing there and suggested that we go out in Puerto Banus one night. Not surprisingly, I barely made it back to the hotel at 9AM to start work the next morning. After having fallen asleep on the keyboard at my desk by mid-morning, my mercifully-understanding boss told me to go take a nap. Thanks Marichu, Emilia, and Leti. Still, no regrets. Nor will you have any if you venture that way.
- Ios, Greece
The best vacation I have ever taken. Bar none. My brothers met me in Athens in June of 2002, and we ferry hopped around the Greek islands of Mykonos, Ios, and Santorini. While Mykonos was a blast in its own right (and very gay-friendly for those of you interested in that scene) and Santorini a picturesque island for honeymooners with its black sand beaches and thermal hot springs, it was Ios that captured our collective imaginations. I rented a motorcycle and drove all around the small island, watching the sunset from one of the volcanic peaks. The beaches are also immaculate and packed with countless Scandinavians in search of sunlight and the perfect Kenny Rogers Roasters tan.
But make no mistake about it, you go to Ios to party. It didn’t hurt that I was with my brothers when we were all in our 20s in the middle of the 2002 World Cup. We watched the games early in the day, lazed on the beaches in the mid-afternoon, and hit the town at night. Everyone else in Ios is there for exactly the same reason and the ouzo flows like, well, ouzo. Cocktails, beers, bars, Aussies, Swedes. It was a hell of a time. Or so I’m told. If you have the means and a couple of crazy friends/relatives in tow, I highly recommend it.
- Boracay, Philippines
(Photo from Magalhães via Wikimedia)
You will never meet a nicer people than the Filipinos. Yes, the Peruvians, Sri Lankans, and even, I’d now have to say, the Nigeriens, are all incredibly welcoming, friendly people. But the Filipinos take the cake. Not only are they gracious, kind hosts, but they LOVE Americans and America. I suppose that this is a residual effect of our having colonized them and left our lasting cultural footprint. They love malls and chain restaurants but especially basketball. Basketball is king, which is odd for such a relatively Lilliputian people. I even joined in a game of pickup basketball on Boracay after stumbling upon it, riding around on my rented motorcycle. And even though I towered over most of them (which is not something I can often say), those dudes could jump and had some skills.
Boracay is a small island in the middle of the Philippine archipelago. I have been to Boracay three times and can’t wait to go back again. My buddy Ben has a palatial house there at the top of the island at which I’ve stayed on two previous occasions. The white sand beaches are some of the finest in the world, and you can rent a motorcycle to hop from beach to beach, finding packed, touristy sections or out-of-the-way, isolated pockets where you can while away the hours by your lonesome. There are plenty of tasty restaurants, where you can scoff a scrumptious plate of garlic chicken and rice, or you can go to the world’s best shake shack (Jonah’s Fruit Shake & Snack Bar—literally, a shack that makes shakes) and have any combination of tropical fruits imaginable. I’m partial to the chocolate banana shake myself, but you can get a lot more adventurous. Naturally, there is plenty of nocturnal entertainment, and the Filipino love of all things American certainly extends to the female population. A word of warning, Boracay isn’t for everyone. It’s pretty overdeveloped and can be packed in high season, but if you don’t mind crowds (I prefer them to be honest) and like the mix of international people who find their way to these remote places, you’ll feel right at home. I know I did and will again.
Honorable Mentions: Buzios and Morro de Sao Paulo, Brazil; Roatan, Honduras; Cabarete, Dominican Republic; Crans-Montana, Switzerland
[1] Not to be confused, as we were by some local swindler, with its less-than-spectacular cousin, the Green Grotto.
[2] With the possible exception of the Argentines.
Too Many Thoughts, So Little Time 