Tramp Royale

by Robert A. Heinlein

  But I could go on endlessly. Their name is legion and these steeplechase hazards to travel have in common in their endless variety only that they are all obnoxious and they are all useless. Pardon the irritation-I have been keeping my temper and smiling for the past forty thousand miles and my face is tired.

  But after all it's their country, not mine, and if I don't like it, why didn't I stay home? True . . . but not the whole story. All of these countries are advertising in the States, ads paid for by the governments, urging you to come to beautiful Boskonia and spend those Yankee dollars; see any copy of Holiday. Many of them maintain government tourist bureaus in the States. Why, if they are so confounded anxious to improve their dollar balance with the "invisible export" of tourism, can't they refrain from treating a visitor like a juvenile delinquent being processed into reform school?

  In order to apply for your passport it is necessary to appear in person at a court having jurisdiction and bring with you a witness who has known you for two years. You don't see the judge; you simply make out another one of those usual forms covering everything but your blood type, you pay the clerk a fee, and leave. Ticky and I found it no real trouble, since we live only a few miles from such a court and could ask a neighbor to go down with us. But in the open spaces of this country many people live more than a hundred miles from such a court (one empowered to naturalize foreigners). If you want the passport, you'll make the trip-but it is a far piece to drag a neighbor just to say, "Sure, I know him. And here's my driver's license to show who I am." Who feeds the pigs while he's gone?

  Since the so-called appearance before a court is simply to fill out a printed form, swear to it, leave some photos and your birth certificate, plus personal identification by some other person who in turn need be identified only by papers, in what way would this weak procedure be further weakened if it were carried out by a local notary public who actually does know you?

  I would not question the wisdom of the personal-appearance-cum-witness if the procedure were tight enough to discourage foreign agents from attempting to get American passports. An American passport is a valuable document; the black market price on them in some Asiatic ports is reputed to be from two to three thousand dollars and no doubt they bring more when they are then resold behind the Iron Curtain. But the present method for "identifying" an applicant is laughable as a security measure and is uselessly inconvenient to the honest applicant-and to his neighbor's pigs.

  In due course Ticky's passport and mine arrived by registered mail from Washington. She examined hers smugly . . . all but the picture. "It says here," she announced, "that the Secretary of State of the United States of America sends greetings and urges everyone to permit Ticky to pass freely. That's pretty nice of him."

  I agreed that it was. "But we can't go anywhere with it yet. Now we have to get visas."

  "What use," she wanted to know, "is a visa?"

  Visas are of no use, none whatsoever. They are the epitome of functionless red tape, as meaningless as stepping on every crack while walking down a sidewalk. Many countries have abolished them entirely for all or almost all visits; other countries cling to them and make the obtaining of one as complicated and as annoying as removing an impacted wisdom tooth-South Africa and Indonesia, to cite two horrid cases. The endless questionnaires serve no purpose, since the desired answers are obvious and the international crook need only resort to cheerful mendacity. The fees are almost always too small to constitute worthwhile revenue in view of the overhead-often there is no fee; it is red tape for the sweet sake of red tape itself.

  Saudi Arabia alone has a sensible visa system-eighty dollars for the visa, which is limited to Mohammedans, a head tax on pilgrims to Mecca, for revenue unashamed. My hat is off to Saudi Arabia, the straight bite and no nonsense about it. All the other countries are merely inconveniencing themselves and annoying the tourists they seek.

  We started to get visas, then did a sudden about-face; our deposit had been returned by American President Lines. They thanked us for our interest and informed us that their round-the-world tours were booked solid for two years in the future.

  I was ready to sit down on the curbstone and bawl. Ticky was not much more cheerful; she had been shopping for evening dresses to wear in the ballroom of the S.S. President Monroe and was all over her earlier lack of enthusiasm. She had carelessly and with assumed modesty informed all our friends that we were about to make a world tour. The idea of announcing publicly that it was all a mistake was unendurable.

  She suggested that we go to Pueblo under an assumed name and spend three months reading National Geographics, then return home from the other direction. I was halfway sold on it.

  But Mrs. Feyock took us in hand. Hertha Feyock is a cheerful little person who is the "World" part of the World-Wide Travel Agency in Colorado Springs. She speaks several languages, knows exactly how much to tip a Paris concierge, and has been to many of the places she deals in. "Don't you vorry," she said. "I'll find you a ship. There are some lovely Dutch ships running from South America."

  I pointed out that we were in North America.

  But she already had her head buried in folders, with a thumb tucked in a loose-leaf book six inches thick consisting entirely of ship schedules. "I'll put together a tour," she said absently.

  Which she did. It took a month to do it, a wastebasketful of letters, many toll calls and cables, and recasting of the overall plan as drastic as deciding to go around the world eastward rather than west when it appeared that the tentative schedule could not be made to jibe in Singapore. But she did it. Planning a world tour by various means of transportation (rather than by a single tourist ship) is a project as complicated and unlikely as organizing a political campaign or trying to get six children off to Sunday School, all clean and neat and all on time. It calls for patience, expert knowledge, and optimism.

  To attempt it yourself unassisted in the belief-entirely mistaken-that your costs will be less is as foolish as taking out your own appendix. But not as thrifty, for the travel agent collects not from you but from the transportation and hotel companies with no increase in price to you. But if you take masochistic pleasure in doing everything for yourself, go right ahead with either enterprise; the results should be interesting to others.

  I can hear that plaint from the lady in the back of the hall: she wouldn't think of going to a tourist bureau; she doesn't want to find herself in a crowd of dreadful tourists; she wants to go to the out-of-the-way places.

  "Tourist-(n.)-a person traveling for pleasure."-The Thorndike-Barnhart Desk Dictionary.

  You may disclaim the horrid title, lady, but you are a tourist, once you leave your home town for any reason other than removal of domicile or business. That terrible couple over there with the impossible child (and he is a nasty little brat, isn't he?) resents your presence, your table manners, and your personality quite as much as you detest and despise them. You are all tourists together, so why not relax and enjoy it?

  Nevertheless the yearning to go to out-of-the-way places where you will not be annoyed by other tourists and where you yourself will annoy only the natives is a legitimate one-in which case Thomas Cook and American Express and Mrs. Feyock and the other travel experts know much more about such places than you are likely to be able to learn unassisted. There are such places and many of them are lovely. Regrettably all of them are woefully short on inside plumbing, comfortable beds, and drycleaning service. Such amenities are directly linked to dollars, pesos, and pounds; they are provided only when there are enough tourists to make it pay.

  Sometimes the lack of mass-production comforts is offset by native servants willing to work fourteen hours a day for small change in American money to provide you by hand with the machine comforts you are used to. You may be lucky enough to hear of such a place and go to it before the natives are "spoiled" (i.e., before they realize that they are being exploited). If you hear about such and want that sort of thing, go at once; if you read about it, buy your
ticket the day the magazine appears. Otherwise you will arrive at the painful transition period when the place is already bursting with tourists, the prices have gone up, and the plumbing, et cetera, has not yet been installed.

  Carry with you your own mosquito netting, soap, penicillin, toilet tissue, and a stomach rugged enough for any sort of cooking; out-of-the-way places have an infuriating habit of being out of the way. The unspoiled paradise, unknown to tourists and unlisted with the travel bureaus, exists in vast numbers throughout the globe. Africa, South America, Mexico, and Canada abound with them; even my home state of Colorado has dozens of them. But don't write to me asking for directions; get hold of Hertha Feyock instead. She will tell you how to get there and where you can hire pack mules for the trip. Or next time try Mars.

  Mrs. Feyock finally put together the following itinerary. (See the map in the end papers, unless they have tucked it in somewhere else.)

  Colorado Springs to New Orleans, train or plane

  New Orleans to Valparaiso, Chile, by American freighter, via the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, through the Panama Canal to the Pacific, and with numerous coastal stops on the west coast of South America

  Valparaiso to Santiago, Chile, by train

  Santiago to Buenos Aires, Argentina, by plane

  Buenos Aires to Capetown, Union of South Africa, by Dutch cargo liner, with stops up the east coast of South America

  Across Africa by local transportation, plane, train, et cetera; rejoin ship at a west African port

  Across the Indian Ocean to Singapore, with island and west African stops

  Singapore to Australia, via Indonesia (ah, Bali, beautiful Bali-more about that later)

  Australia to New Zealand by passenger liner

  The itinerary came to a sudden stop at New Zealand. Mrs. Feyock was still trying to book us by ship from New Zealand to our west coast at the time we left. No passenger ship was to be had, but it seemed to be just a matter of patience to book us on a freighter-a long, slow idyllic voyage, calling at mystic islands of the South Seas, all with names ending in vowels and sounding like endearments in an exotic tongue. I could see myself sitting on the fantail of such a ship, strumming on an old beachcomber and idly sipping a planter's punch, while the sun sank in the west and the colorful exotic natives gathered on the shore in their colorful exotic native costumes and bade the ship Aloha with their colorful exotic native songs.

  I would feel her screw churning under me and the water, warm as new milk and clear as champagne, chuckling against the plates of the old rust bucket. After supper, served by boys who spoke only Pidgin but knew telepathically what you wanted before you knew yourself, the Captain and I would smoke a pipe on the bridge and swap yarns-then bed, for a night's deep, unworried sleep.

  I began to feel like a Somerset Maugham character.

  The only nibble we got was from the Matson Lines; all the others were "sorry" for one reason or another. The Matson Lines offered us "dormitory accommodations"-Ticky in a women's dormitory, me in one for men.

  Ticky gasped. "What are those Matson Line people? Missionaries?"

  We will omit my answer.

  "Maybe we should explain to them that we are married. They may have me mixed up with Sadie Thompson." She scowled and then smiled. "Tell 'em 'yes' but that you'll take the bunk in the ladies' dorm and I'll take the one with the men."

  "Okay, it's a deal."

  "You're entirely too agreeable about it. Anyhow, they wouldn't let us. Missionaries! Well, I'm not going to do it and that's flat. Six weeks cooped up with a bunch of old biddies, watching them get in and out of their corsets and listening to their snores at night, is not my idea of a pleasure cruise. It reminds me of those old slave ships, where the mate would stick his head down into the hold the middle of every watch and tell them all to turn over at once. No!"

  We both thought the dormitory plan was obscene and indecent, as well as having a flavor of Botany Bay about it that did not belong with paid passage. But our decision forced us to leave open the matter of passage back to the States. We told ourselves cheerfully that it would be easy to arrange in New Zealand, right on the spot. After all, ships left from New Zealand every day; we would make the rounds of the home offices and pick one that suited us. Our trouble was that we were trying to book passage from ten thousand miles away for a date six months off whereas no ocean freighter has a firm schedule that far ahead.

  "Besides," I added, "New Zealand is supposed to be one of the nicest spots on earth. We might decide to stay there quite a while. We might take a room or a flat and hang around while I write a novel, in between admiring glaciers and kiwi birds and geysers and things. I might do a story with a New Zealand background, while I'm there and can check on the correctness of detail. Both of my readers must be pretty tired of the backgrounds I know now. I'm sure I'm sick of them."

  "What you need, honey chile, is not a new background; it's a new plot."

  I thanked her. Every writer needs honest criticism in his own home. We left it at that and turned our attention to visas and baggage.

  The theory with a visa is that you get hold of the consul of the country in question, obtain from him a set of questionnaires, fill them out, mail or take the completed forms with your passport and fee back to the consul, whereupon he looks over the questionnaire, determines from it that you are a safe and proper visitor, then takes a rubber stamp and stamps your passport: "SEEN." That is all that "visa" means, just "seen."

  This piece of tap dancing need not take more than a week or ten days if you wish to visit, let us say, Spain and nowhere but Spain. If you wish to visit several countries, it is still possible though tedious to accomplish in a short time provided you live in New York or Washington, D.C., and can take a few days off to walk your passport through from one consulate to another.

  In our case we wished permission to visit nineteen sovereign countries, possessions, or colonies. Allowing a none-too-safe ten days for each transaction by mail and multiplying by nineteen gave an answer in excess of six months.

  We had started our preparations to travel in mid June; it took until September to get passports and straighten out an itinerary; our first ship sailed in November. We had six weeks left in which to get visas. It began to look like one of those unsolvable mazes used by psychologists to induce frustration paralysis in laboratory animals.

  Our State Department puts out a document listing the visa requirements of (almost) all other countries. We discovered that many countries had abolished this kindergarten procedure for the ordinary tourist. Most of these enlightened areas were in western Europe, not on our schedule, but several of them were in South America. The list that remained would still require two to three months if done by mail from Colorado-but the fine print came to our rescue: British consuls could grant visas for other British Commonwealth countries where said countries were not represented by consuls of their own. About two-thirds of our remaining list was British Commonwealth area-good! We would send our passports to the British consul in Denver and clear up most of it in a few days. As for places like French Tahiti, and Dutch New Guinea, and Portuguese East Africa, if we ran out of time before sailing, we would pick them up in person at any of several national capitals-Santiago, or Buenos Aires, or Rio, or even Pretoria. We would not be daunted by red tape, no, sir!

  So we sent our passports to the British consul in Denver.

  We waited for a week and nothing happened. Finally we decided to drive to Denver and inquire. Perhaps I should have done so in the first place, but I was fighting a deadline on a novel which had to be finished before we left. In my own case, at least, a loss of one calendar day in a writing schedule equals a loss of three writing days.

  We arrived about one o'clock and found the consulate closed for lunch but a small sign informed us that it reopened at one-thirty. I spent the time trying to read "Come to Britain" posters through the glass door. At one-thirty-five a nice young lady with an English accent arrived in an apologetic rush, unlocked,
and offered us chairs. We asked about our passports.

  She dug them out of a file; nothing had been done to them. Nor could she help us; we would have to wait until the consul returned from lunch. Any minute, now? Oh no, he was attending a luncheon-three o'clock, perhaps.

  We studied several pamphlets displayed on a rack: Agriculture in the British Isles, Sports in Britain, Come to the Coronation, Historic Abbeys. That is, I did so; Ticky spent her time making noises like a kettle about to boil. About three-thirty the consul returned.

  He was a tall young man with a beautiful blond beard and he had the perfect, somewhat distant good manners of a top-drawer Britisher. "Awfully sorry to have kept you waiting, my dear chap. What can I do for you?"

  We explained again. "Oh, yes, those-I had been wondering what to do with them. I'm afraid there isn't much I can do for you. According to your letter you aren't going to England."

  I had come armed with the State Department publication about visas and I showed him the various notes in fine print. "We would like to have you issue visas for the Union of South Africa, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand."