Women's dilemma: Is Solo Travel Worth the Risk?
By Dawn MacKeen
Part 2
(Continued from our December 1999 issue of World Travel Health.
Click here to see Part 1.)
Two hundred thirty-eight million women traveled alone or with other women in 1995, according to an NBC report, and that's not just women between college and their first job. More women from all age groups are traveling -- and often alone, says Nanette Cowardin-Lee, editor of "Maiden Voyages," a travel magazine exclusively for women. Some have just finished college, some are just ending marriages, some are widowed.
"Our readers are women who aren't waiting for their honeymoon to go travel," says Cowardin-Lee. "They don't wait for a boyfriend to come along to go to the Caribbean; they go by themselves."
I took my first trip alone -- to Greece -- only seven days after graduating from college. After traveling for about 24 hours straight (I had far too many layovers), I arrived in Mykonos, a small island about six hours by ferry from Athens. A Cycladic island, Mykonos resembles all those advertisements you've seen for Greece, where cubelike white buildings cover whole mountainsides and the backdrop is always the blue, blue Aegean.
It was 11 o'clock at night and after hiking up the winding streets, I found a pension that was built into the hillside, its entrance on the street and the rooms following the hill down. I got settled, took a shower and sat out on my balcony overlooking the sea, which was partially lit from the businesses around the port. As night quieted the town, I slowed down too. I leaned back in my chair and stared down at the sea and the barely visible silhouette of a cross atop a small church. A faint rhythm from a discotheque sounded sporadically; otherwise, the night was silent. For two hours I sat on that balcony, alone, my thoughts uninterrupted by anyone else's words or gestures. I didn't have to placate anyone by looking to the left or to the right, to see what someone else thought was important for me to see. I stared only in my own blank direction.
That moment and all the moments that followed during my three-month trip were completely mine. I sunbathed topless when I felt like it. I smoked as many cigarettes as I wanted. I engaged in random conversations for the hell of it. They were vignettes strung together only by me, for me; they define me in a way that can never be conveyed when someone back home asks the predictable, "How was your trip?" Traveling alone is like having a diary filled with scribbled-on pages that you never want anyone else to see.
And, like a painful entry in that diary, on that same trip to Greece, in Rethymnon, Crete, an end-of-dinner kiss turned into a near-date rape when the local man I had gone out with pinned me against a wall, all to the peaceful rhythm of the Aegean lapping against the shore. And a few days later, a couple of hours down the coast in Hania, a pharmacist gave a fake diagnosis for a skin rash I was having and dragged me into the back room of his shop so he could rub "special ointment" on my body. Since the bottle was written in Greek, I didn't find out till later, after running out of the shop broken in a million pieces, that the ointment was a generic drugstore moisturizing lotion.
It's so easy when traveling to think that you're in Vacationland, a version of Disneyland, where all the animated characters around you, with the smiling faces, have altruistic intentions behind their masks.
Even if you think your gut is the most instinct-laden organ on the planet -- as I thought mine was -- you could still end up in a horrible situation. I'm now wary of everyone, even those pruned-up fishermen sitting by the docks on a bench, the kind in the postcards, who look like the archetype of a harmless old man. One once offered me about $10 in drachma to sleep with him.
But still, nothing like what happened to Laurie Gough happened to me. And as Marybeth Bond says, for most solo women travelers, negative encounters with men will come in the form of cat calls, dirty looks, pinches and lewd remarks. If you're going to travel alone, you should be prepared to encounter these. And you should educate yourself before leaving on your trip, so that you know how local stereotypes and perceptions of women may affect you -- and how you can minimize the risks.
"A woman must assume in other countries that men have seen the worst of Western women, on soaps like "Dallas," in videos, sleazy movies and TV shows," says Bond. "They often have stereotypes that are very untrue, that Western women are available and hunting for men. The best way to counteract these stereotypes is to respond just the way you feel." As an example, Bond recalls the time a man propositioned her in the middle of a popular lunch place in India. She yelled almost everything close to the F-word as loud as she could, she says, and then she kicked him with her sandaled foot. Despite the resulting broken toe, Bond swears by verbal public embarrassment -- and, uh, toe casts -- as a way to thwart unwanted advances.
"I got into a foolish situation by going out to a dance club with another woman traveler," says Thalia Zepatos, author of "A Journey of One's Own: Uncommon Advice for the Independent Woman Traveler." "She fell instantly in love with this guy and offered this guy's friend to take me home. I wound up taking a ride home with this man I didn't know, and he stopped on a dark road and initiated sex with me. So I got out of the car and walked home on a beautifully moonlit night."
It's common sense, Zepatos says: Don't be alone with someone you don't know completely, and take precautions; minimize the risks. And even in the safety of your hotel room or pension, don't let down your guard. She uses the analogy of the repair person who knocks on your door back home. Before allowing him to enter, you make sure he has the proper credentials. The same should go for someone who knocks on your hotel door and says he works there. And just as you would not walk into a busy hotel in downtown Chicago with only your bathing suit on, don't do it abroad. Dressing conservatively, and in keeping with local traditions, is something all the women travelers I spoke with recommended.
While Zepatos was researching the way women should dress for her book, she spoke with one woman who traveled through remote parts of Turkey wearing a halter top and Daisy Duke shorts because she thought it was her duty to show the local women that in other countries, women had more -- or in this case, less -- clothing options. After interviewing many women, Zepatos says she believes there is a direct correlation between how modestly a woman dresses and how harassed she gets. Not surprisingly, the woman in the halter top was heavily harassed.
"It's incumbent on the woman traveler to dress in the right way so she doesn't invite unwanted attention, but also not to alienate the women of the local culture," Zepatos says. Camouflage yourself into the local culture as much as possible and respect the typical woman's role in that region, agrees Lynn Ferrin, a travel writer and editor who has been roaming the world for decades. Be hyper-observant when you first arrive in a country, Zepatos suggests. Look at how men and women interact on the street. When women meet a man, do they touch him on the hand or stay away?
"Every culture and religion are different, but basically there is something the same going on between genders everywhere," says Zepatos, who believes all women recognize another woman in distress. "I think that women of many cultures can feel sympathy for foreign women who are alone and may be the target of some kind of unwarranted attention. They understand immediately what is going on."
If uncomfortable on a bus or train, go sit next to a woman or a family, Zepatos advises. Carry and show pictures of your family or home, or make an insta-wedding ring by flipping over your stone ring and placing it on the proper finger.
Toward the end of my trip, I, too, bought a "wedding" ring and told people my husband was sick and in bed back at the hotel, and I made public embarrassment one of my weapons. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But attention from men seemed to decline in accordance with how stern a look I gave as I walked through town. And who knows, if Laurie Gough had read all the books on traveling safely, perhaps her hike would have ended differently. But 10 years later, Gough and all the other women I spoke with for this article still pack up their bags and travel alone, largely because of a simple belief: The benefits outweigh the risks. "I am more cautious and wary these days, more suspicious of men's motives and far less willing to put up with bullshit," Gough says. "But if you trust in yourself and the universe, things usually go OK. You come across these amazing situations and you meet these interesting local people -- and that makes all the hard times worth it."
This article first appeared in Salon.com at http://www.Salon.com. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission.
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