How to Travel the World for Free

by Michael Wigge

  Shot put: in this technique, one jabs the pillow directly into the face of the adversary; no swinging, no wrestling, and no rotating, simply straight in. This technique is simple but very effective, as I come to know every time I get struck and fall to the ground.

  Deceive: this one is frequently used in Dolores Park. The opponent tricks you by starting with one technique, but changes fight strategy at the very last second. The attack is then mostly made with a horizontal rotational movement (known as the Propeller).

  Strangling: as the name already implies, the person using the Strangling technique waits for the opportunity to gag the adversary properly with the pillow after making him fall to the ground through the Deceive technique. Women like to use this technique.

  After nearly 250 fights, I have finally collected $300. I start looking for cheap one-way tickets to Costa Rica on the Internet. All the flights cost between $400 and $500, with one significant exception: I find a flight on the 11th of September for a little less than $300. The Americans are still recovering from the 2001 tragedy and many choose not to fly on this date, so the airline companies drop their prices in hopes of once again attracting passengers. I go ahead and book my flight for September 11. But what am I going to do for the next two weeks?

  By chance, I meet Bryan and Murph, two Americans in their midthirties, during a particularly intense round of pillow fighting. Both of them live one hour away from San Francisco in Vacaville (which translates to “one-cow town”), which probably explains their interest in my crazy stories. I tell them that I have two weeks to kill and ask for some suggestions. They offer to buy me a plane ticket to anywhere in the United States if I do something crazy for them.

  Anywhere? Hawaii! This may be my only chance to see it on this trip. We look at airfares, and the flights are between $400 and $450. This is quite expensive fun for the both of them, and so they would like to see something special. Bryan suggests that I run naked with pink angel wings across the Golden Gate Bridge while they film it. I would consider this trade-off fair if there were no YouTube, or Internet in general. We go over different ideas of what I can do for the ticket. The ideas that emerge become more and more ridiculous, and at some point I give up on the idea of going to Hawaii.

  The next day I meet up with Murph again, and he is ecstatic. He has spoken to his father, who was a pilot for United Airlines for twenty-five years, and as a benefit he can still get stand-by tickets. These are tickets with which you can fly for minimal cost, or even for free. The risk, however, is that you could wait for hours—or even days—at the airport for an available seat. In many cases, if you are lucky enough to be put into first class, the airline can demand a special dress code. But it seems I don’t have to wait: Murph tells me, beaming with joy, that he has gotten a ticket for me to Honolulu for tomorrow morning. I can hardly believe this news and my luck.

  How very often I have dreamed about going to Hawaii. Even if it is far from Antarctica, Hawaii it is for me.

  9

  NO TROUBLE IN PARADISE

  At first glance, Hawaii looks exactly how the travel brochures promise. At the famous Waikiki Beach, tourists can literally walk from their hotel rooms straight to the beach in minutes. The warm sand and the crystal blue water, together with the mountainous backdrop covered in tropical greenery, truly make Hawaii a paradise. This group of islands is named the Sandwich Islands in honor of John Montagu IV, the Earl of Sandwich, who financed James Cook’s expedition here.

  Again, I’m couch surfing, spending the first two nights at Martin’s. Martin lives with his girlfriend in a very small and overpriced apartment. The housing prices are very expensive in Hawaii for one simple reason: everyone wants to live here, on an island where land is limited. During the day, I wander around the center of Honolulu and conclude that the Hawaiian state of mind seems really relaxed. This makes the popular shaka hand gesture, which means “hang loose,” a more fitting greeting than the typical wave. Wherever I ask, everyone seems to have an extra apple or banana they can spare to a hungry tourist. With this experience in mind, I decide to check out one of the most happening restaurants on Waikiki Beach.

  I approach the manager of the restaurant and, in a very polite and respectful tone, ask if he has anything he could offer me to eat since I don’t have any money and I’m trying to travel to the end of the world. He takes some time to think before he responds that he’s sure they must have something. He likes my travel story and invites me to take a seat and order what I like. I am ecstatic and in awe at how easy that was. I sit down at one of the nicest tables and order the steak with a side of vegetables, since it’s been several weeks since I have had any vegetables. As I am waiting for my meal, I take a look around and notice that all of the customers are smartly dressed, while I am in a pair of dirty shorts and flip-flops.

  Later on, the manager, Sam, takes a seat at my table and explains why he had said yes to my request: “I like people who go travel and see the world. It’s important to open our minds to other cultures so that we can be more tolerant and stop the prejudice against other races.” Realizing that I couldn’t have put it any better myself, I sink my teeth into my big, juicy steak. I can hardly believe that I am getting this delicious forty-eight-dollar meal for free.

  Later I head to the North Shore, where Victor, a twenty-eigh-tyear-old couch surfer, has agreed to take me in. For most of the year, the waves here are perfect. This reason alone is why Victor has moved to Hawaii. Surfing, also known as the “sport of the kings,” is the most popular sport in Hawaii, though it was once reserved only for the royals. Gracing the water was considered a form of mystical meditation by the monarchs who were worshipped as gods back then. Today, of course, surfing is much more liberated: the North Shore is a surfer’s paradise and it holds the famous Triple Crown of Surfing competition every year. Besides being a passionate surfer, Victor also works at a camp for the disabled, which is operated by the Salvation Army. I join him and the other staff for lunch that day. At the table, the topic of conversation seems to be a naked man that was spotted on the beach earlier. Instead of giggles and giddy comments, everyone (even the surfers) seems to be disturbed by it. I make a mental note to myself: Remember to wear swimming trunks when going to the beach.

  Feeling inspired, I tell Victor that I would like to give surfing a try—or at least have him take some cool photos of me on a surfboard. He gives me a hesitant look but then agrees, and early the next morning we head to the beach with a couple of surfboards. With a lot of patience, Victor shows and explains how one should stand on a surfboard. I practice again and again on the sand until I get it. Now, into the water! My routine seems to be slip, flip, and fall; I haven’t managed to pull myself up on the board yet. Victor just laughs and encourages me to keep at it. A little while later, he discreetly leaves me alone with my board and goes out further into the waves with the other surfers.

  I continue to try on my own but this process doesn’t yield any improvements, other than adding gasping, crawling, and hanging on to my routine. Finally, I manage to catch a wave and ride it standing rather than in all of the other positions I was doing. What a feeling! Although I quickly fall down again, I paddle back out and start all over with a satisfied grin. The other surfers watch me as I make my best attempt at their sport. They probably have never seen such an embarrassment before. One of them actually comes up to me and asks whether I am shooting a comedy and if that is the reason why I am surfing the way I am. I politely reply no and explain that I simply cannot surf. Natalie, a friend of Victor’s who is also there surfing, observes my unique surfing style and comes over to say, only half-jokingly, “That is the weirdest thing I have ever seen!” With that, my future surfing career comes to a premature end.

  Anyways, I have other things to do: my clothes have become quite dirty during this trip. With the ocean right here, it’s a good time to give my trousers, T-shirt, underpants, and socks a good scrub. I can see Victor shaking his head from a distance as he tries to take the next
wave. A surfer passes by me as I am scrubbing and sarcastically remarks, “I didn’t know that the North Shore was a part of India!”

  After the washing, I notice that one of my socks is pretty ruined. Since I have only the one pair on me, I’ll have to manage without it. Washing clothes has been a constant challenge throughout this entire trip: after the nice Amish couple had washed my clothes, the next opportunity was the bathtub in my hotel room in Las Vegas a month ago. When I had reached San Francisco, I had hoped to wash my clothes at Kathrin and Thomas’s place, but—just my luck—their washing machine wasn’t working. So this washing is long, long overdue.

  Now that my clothes are clean, I have another task. A few days ago, I lost my toothbrush. I was staying with Martin at his overpriced apartment in Honolulu at the time, and I was so desperate that I secretly used his toothbrush. Not wanting to do anything like that again, I spend the rest of the day wandering through the district of Waialua asking for a free new toothbrush. Most of the people I approach don’t even know how to take my story and just walk away from me. After three hours of random encounters, I spot the only supermarket in the city. I go in and give the cashier my spiel, and she directs me to the department head, who in turn sends me to the marketing manager. Understanding my money situation, he tries to sell me the most economical toothbrush the store carries.

  During my earlier encounters on the street, prior to coming into the supermarket, one lone person had shown pity on me and had given me a dollar toward a toothbrush. The cheapest one that the manager can offer me is $1.79, but, even after he generously gives me the employee discount, my dollar is still not enough. We stand there for a while; he then remembers something and goes into his office. Rummaging through his bag, he pulls out a brand new toothbrush. He tells me that he was at the dentist earlier in the week and that he was given a new toothbrush, which I’m told is a normal procedure for dentists in the United States. I happily leave the supermarket with my new gift.

  All the different districts on the island can easily be covered by bus. One can see the entire island for just $2.25. Of course, I don’t have this fare, so I discreetly slip onto the bus without the driver noticing. I travel to meet Cassandra and her eleven-year-old daughter Odessa, who live on the East Coast and have offered to put me up for a couple of nights. They live in a small house on the beach, and to me, the whole scene looks like something out of a movie: tall palm trees shading parts of the white sandy beach, the sound of water splashing against the rocks, and even the view behind the house is a huge hill covered with trees. Adding to this scene, Cassandra is sitting in her garden playing the ukulele. It’s all very . . . Hawaii!

  That evening, despite my best efforts to wash my clothes, Odessa asks her mother, “Why is he so smelly?” Cassandra is completely embarrassed and quickly explains that Odessa says this about everyone. However, I fear that Odessa is right; the smell can no longer be ignored. After washing my clothes in Las Vegas and at the North Shore, I didn’t have enough time to let them dry out completely—so now they reek.

  When I go back to Martin’s place to spend my last day on Oahu, he asks me to help him move into a new apartment, for which he will repay me with a plane ticket to the largest of the Hawaiian Islands, Big Island. Compared to the tiny place he was in before, the new place is literally a huge improvement and all for the same amount of rent. While we are carrying his sofa to the new place, he tells me that he moved here from Boston fifteen years ago in order to fulfill his fantasy of living under the palm trees. He is happy to have done it, but it was a big trade-off: his job is not challenging enough, doesn’t pay well, and he only has ten vacation days each year. This is normal here in Hawaii; with the high cost of living and the competition, you really can’t be too picky. However, he concludes that if this is what it takes to live in paradise, then it’s still worth it.

  With the move, Martin is up to his ears in work, so I have to find another place to spend the night. Another couch surfer named Noora has agreed to take me in, and we arrange to meet at a garden party between the street canyons of Honolulu. The garden belongs to a thirty-story apartment complex near the beach. When I arrive, there are forty people grilling, drinking, and dancing. Unfortunately, Noora doesn’t turn up. Feeling a little unnerved, I start to ask some of the party guests if they have a place for me. Many of them are thrilled to hear my story, but none of them have a couch available. With no other options, I set up camp at Waikiki Beach. Along with the Copacabana in Rio, it’s one of the most famous beaches in the world, so it’s really not so bad.

  Many tourists are enjoying the starry night with a walk along the beach as I pitch my tent and call it a day. At midnight, I am awoken by a group of drunken people in their midtwenties. While yelling, laughing, and doing silly stunts off the wall directly behind me, a guy’s foot lands on my tent. I unzip the entrance to see what’s going on. The guy, who is about three feet away from me, looks back at me and we give each other the shaka hand signal before he staggers off. I go back to sleep, only to be awoken again at two in the morning by a deafening noise. Startled, I jump out of my tent and wave my arms to draw attention to myself but am blinded by three huge headlights. This enormous, noisy thing stops and veers to the left about six feet in front of me. I gradually make out that this monster is a huge tractor, pulling behind it cleaning mats from the beach. In the driver’s seat I can see a man laughing. I’m so glad that, at the very least, someone found it amusing that I nearly crapped my pants. I make it to the morning with no other interruptions, but discover that my MP3 player and earphones were stolen while I was asleep.

  Flying in a propeller-driven plane over the island of Maui to the eastern coast of Big Island helps me take my mind off the morning’s events. Big Island is the largest, highest, and youngest of all the Hawaiian Islands—its tallest mountain, Mauna Kea, stands over 14,000 feet high. Even during winter, when it’s covered with snow, the volcanoes still spit out lava every day; it flows into the sea and makes the island expand continuously.

  The public transportation system on the Big Island, the Hele-On Bus, connects all of the main areas like Hilo, Kona, the volcanoes, beaches, and other areas—and it’s free. I am curious to know why this is so and am given various reasons by my fellow passengers: the residents of the island rely on it because they are poor and have no money to own a car; there have been too many problems with hitchhiking—with a few hitchhikers having disappeared—and the free bus discourages hitchhiking; the system is so convenient and connects all of the tourist sites so that it will attract even more tourists to this island. They all sound like good reasons to me, but I’m just happy to know I don’t have to pay a thing to use it.

  We land in the city of Hilo (population of 40,000) on the eastern part of the island. Since the clouds come in from the east, the rain falls in front of Hilo’s mountain slopes. It rains 277 days out of the year here, making it the city with the highest precipitation rate in the United States.

  I had been warned before coming here that I should be careful; that there are frequent conflicts between the natives and the white people who migrated here. It dates back, as all things do, to simple history: the natives here are called Kanaka Maoli and they are now a minority in their own country. The Kanaka Maoli believe that the decline of the Hawaiian culture started when the British discovered this group of islands in 1778; these intruders quickly started exploiting the islands and their resources in the name of the British Crown.

  In the nineteenth century, the Americans arrived and used Hawaii as their chief base for all of their trading business in the Pacific. In 1893, Queen Liliuokalani set out to give her country a new constitution that gave more power to the royal court. The American traders saw this as a threat to their business and decided to overthrow the queen with the help of the US Navy. Since then, the US military has been present here (as one knows from Pearl Harbor). Ultimately, in 1959, Hawaii became an official American state, becoming the only one in the country that had a real royal palace. Th
e Kanaka Maoli, meanwhile, live—sadly—at the lowermost level of society: their life expectancy is low, infant mortality and high school dropout rates are high, and many members of the community are drug addicts. Living in paradise is, unfortunately, not paradise at all for them.

  Jason, who I am meeting, moved here years ago from the east coast of the mainland. He built his own house in the rainforest and has been living without money for a long time. As I am waiting for him on a street corner just outside of Hilo, a car stops and the two locals inside eye me grimly. Feeling uneasy, I look away until they drive off. Jason finally comes with his truck and together we travel through the rainforest.

  At this point, I begin to wonder if it is a smart idea to make this kind of trip with this guy since I just briefly met him on the Internet, but it’s too late now. We travel deeper and deeper into the wilderness until we come to an area that has been cleared for Jason’s house. His property and lifestyle are phenomenal: he has built a wooden house on stilts four yards high, gets his electricity from solar panels, purifies river water in a self-made cleaning device, showers in an unimaginably beautiful waterfall near his house, and feeds himself from the fruits and vegetables in his garden. Jason has lived here for two years without any expenses and still has a mobile phone and a pickup truck. He tells me that he gets his things through bartering and trade, even gas for his truck. In exchange for gas, he lets his dogs hunt for wild pigs in the forest and gives the kill to his friend at the gas station. He does the same with his prepaid mobile phone, which his friends pay for in exchange for the vegetables he grows.

  We sit over a cup of coffee exchanging our stories. He tells me that he was nervous about our meeting because he fears that the local government could have him expelled from this property for building a house without permission. All it takes is one nosy journalist searching for a story to trigger a bad chain reaction.