Our Trips Antithesis

Paul Theroux once wrote, 'Travel is only glamorous in retrospect,' which all the traveling I've done has shown to be true. As swanky as it sounds for us to say we're going to 'summer in Central and South America' the reality is going to be a lot grittier. We'll be rootless, frugal, focused on sampling what life is like whereever we visit and generally living well outside of our comfort zone. If, at any point, we feel it is getting glamourous we'll need to stop, take breath, and make sure we haven't morphed into tourists.



Which is why I was terribly amused when the internet showed me 'the World,' a way of experiencing the exact opposite of everything we're looking for. In Dubai they are making a manmade 'world' of 300 Islands, in the rough shape of the countrys on the earth. Each Island will be it's own luxurious beach resort, with hotels, luxury homes, and manufactured terrain. The idea is to populate an entire 'world' with extremely wealthy people who want to experience absolutely nothing but their manufactured culture. With any luck, the next generation of kids on this Island won't really even understand that there is a world outside of, well, 'the world.'