My mother used to say that countries should pay me not to go there. In fact, it’s true that national catastrophes and disasters often followed my arrival.
I had the thought to go to Israel as an immigrant, but I had never been there, so I went in the summer of 1982 as a volunteer on a kibbutz to see if the idea of moving permanently to Israel was as appealing in reality. I was comfortably settled in the two month life of a volunteer surrounded by other international volunteers when, quite literally overnight, all the men on the kibbutz disappeared. Israeli men remain in the reserves until the age of 53, and they had been suddenly called away for war with Lebanon.
In September of 1983, I made the leap into becoming an immigrant in Israel. Very shortly thereafter, Israel fell into an economic crisis. In early 1988, while still living in Israel, my car was bombed in the very beginnings of what came to be known as the Intifada of that era - an escalation in the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.
Late 1988 found me in China. Few people were talking about China at that time. The demonstrations began in the spring of 1989 and led to the Tiananmen tragedies of June 4, 1989. All the world was talking about China then.
Taiwan seemed to escape national disasters when I lived there in the early 1990’s, except that everyone there could feel the shifting political winds between the pro-China and the Taiwanese political factions.
My years in Macau from 1992 to 1995 were transitional years for that tiny Portuguese enclave as it tried to prepare for the historic handover to China in 1999. Huge residential buildings blotted out the sky, but remained basically empty and black at night. I never actually lived in Hong Kong, but I stayed there frequently and personally saw the fear and apprehension leading up to their handover to China in 1997. “One county, two policies” sounded quite threatening after the memories of June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
In 1997, I started a job with the promise of the best pay I’d ever had at Taejon University, Korea. I was paid in Korean currency and felt very well paid — until the economic collapse in Asia in 1997. My good salary simply disappeared. When changing the Korean currency to U.S. dollars, I lost half off the top. To keep some of the value, I used the Korean currency to buy a camera, binoculars, and an Around the World ticket in the hope I’d use it before the expiration date.
I used the ticket in 1998 to go to Russia to visit a Russian professor I had met while teaching in Korea. The Russian ruble crashed just about the time my plane landed. There was no way to cash traveler’s checks because no bank could determine what the exchange rate should be.
As the days of the visit to my friend passed, lines of worried Russians formed outside banks to try to get their money out before it evaporated. Banks closed and grocery items began to disappear from the shelves. “The customers are hoarding goods,” the shopkeepers proclaimed. “You shopkeepers are hiding the food so you can sell it later at a higher price,” the customers complained.
Fortunately, not every country I visited faced a disaster when I was there. But I’ve been thinking of going to Israel for a month this spring. The “wheres and whats” of the trip were my main concern — until a short time ago when the new year also brought a war in Gaza. Israel is too small a country not to have it affect the entire country. Some years ago I also planned to go to visit Israel, but the rash of suicide bombings closed down most tourism. Finding a good, peaceful time to go to Israel is elusive.
I once read a travel book in which the author hypothesized that an influx of low-budget, mostly backpacker travelers to previously rarely visited places heralds an impending disaster. Somehow travelers are drawn there. Given my personal experiences, it didn’t sound all that strange a hypothesis to me.
