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We’re going to Turkey on Friday. It’s a “famtour” (familiarization tour) for travel agents and media (We’re blogging this) organized by Turkish Airlines (They don’t fly here, we catch a plane in Hong Kong) and a tour operator called Meteor Philippines, covering Istanbul-Kusadasi-Izmir-Pamukkale-Konya-Cappadocia. We expect it will be hectic (8 nights, 6 hotels).

As always we prepare for a trip by reading books about our destination. We asked Teddyboy for a reading list and he said John Julius Norwich’s Byzantium, some of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and a detective novel set in Istanbul to help us form a mental map of the city (Maybe Jason Goodwin’s detective novels featuring Yashim the eunuch). He was adamant that we read Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (which is about the Balkans, which were under Turkish rule).

Then we realized we have quite a few Turkey-related books in our library, including Orhan Pamuk novels and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, and our sister the Louis De Bernieres fan club has Birds Without Wings, which is set during the rise of Ataturk. Now we have to decide what to bring on the trip.

Probably P.G. Wodehouse.

On the Thames, 2010

Our trips to other countries generally fall into two categories.

First there are the DIY tours that we plan and book ourselves. We stay two weeks in the same city, get to know the neighborhood, and pretend we live there. The itinerary is very loose and based on books we have read—for instance in Trieste where we didn’t know a soul, our guide was Jan Morris’s Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere; in Florence it was A Room With A View, the E.M. Forster book and the Merchant Ivory movie (Julian Sands circa 1986 did not show up, but we were chatted up by someone who looked like Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas).

The advantage of this method is that you don’t have to follow anyone’s schedule—you can do whatever you feel like doing, or in our case, do nothing. We tend to alternate indolence with long walks that end only when our feet are in pain. It’s very random, and it produces a notebook’s worth of meandering entries about atmosphere and such. (You feel very clever while you’re writing them, and when you get home and read them you realize they’re all drivel.)

The disadvantage is that you end up not seeing a lot of the sights, you get lost constantly (Which we actually like), and if you’re not careful you wind up staying in a “centrally-located” hotel which is by the airport.

On the Grand Canal in Venice, 2006

Then there are the package tours or “fam(iliarization) tours” we’ve done on assignment. The objective of these fam tours is to cram as much sightseeing as possible into a few days. Every minute is accounted for, and you spend a lot of time riding a tour bus with the same group of people. So far we’ve had the good luck to travel with people we can stand—imagine if you were trapped on a bus with people who do karaoke all day, don’t shut up, and ask you impertinent questions. At some point you feel like sheep being herded on and off buses. When you’re with a large group you have to follow a tour guide holding up a flag (or a folding umbrella) and rattling off factoids about the thing you’re looking at. Worst case scenario: packed lunches. It’s all very hectic—”On your right is the Colosseum, look there’s a cat, and that’s the Forum and if you crane your head 60 degrees over there are the Baths of Caracalla…”—and at the end you’re exhausted.

We mentioned our travel categories at lunch with Nicholas Lim, regional director of Trafalgar Tours, the international tour operator. Trafalgar offers another option: the insider travel experience. Instead of a harassed tour guide, you get a travel director who has established relationships with local families, artisans, and experts (historians, geologists, etc). You don’t just stand outside a building and listen to a recitation of historical trivia, you get to feel how the locals live. You’re welcomed into private homes, working farms and wineries; you’re immersed in the native culture. Trafalgar tours are arranged so you spend half the day sightseeing and the other half at leisure.

“When your friends from abroad come to Manila, you take them to the places you yourself go to,” Nicholas said, “So they get an authentic insider experience.” Trafalgar tries to do the same for its clients wherever they go. “No herding or packed lunches,” he assured us.

Established 65 years ago, Trafalgar is the world’s leading guided holiday company. Two years ago it opened a regional office in Singapore. “Everybody’s looking East,” Nicholas noted. Trafalgar PR and social media specialist Choy Wan Teh added that last year their Philippine business grew 40 percent. Pinoys do love to travel; we even have a term for the overpowering urge to travel—makakating paa (itchy soles).

For more information on Trafalgar guided holidays, call Pan Pacific Travel at 5231990 or 5361265, or visit Trafalgar Asia’s Facebook page. Check out their booth at the Travel Expo, opening tomorrow at SMX Mall of Asia.

Photo of Istanbul from Turkey Travel Resource. Next year Philippine Airlines will fly to more destinations in Europe and North America. One possibility: Istanbul.

200 people will win the air miles for trips to 28 international and 32 domestic destinations including Los Angeles, Tokyo and Palawan in the “Dream Destinations. Free Flights.” promotion of Mastercard, Philippine Airlines and AirPhil Express.

How to join the raffle:
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The author Colson Whitehead has written novels about dueling elevator inspectors (The Intuitionist), an American folk hero who perished in a competition with a machine (John Henry Days), a nomenclature consultant (Apex Hides the Hurt), a prep school kid coming of age in the mid-80s (Sag Harbor), and a clean-up crew after the zombie apocalypse (Zone One). He’s written a book-length ode to New York City, an epic report on the World Series of Poker, and a memoir of growing up on horror movies. A few weeks ago he was at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali to talk about his work.

Though it is lunchtime and conditions are perfect for a nap, the hall is full of people clutching copies of his books. Whitehead is a tall African-American man in his 40s, with dreadlocks. According to his official bio he was born and lives in Manhattan, received a MacArthur “genius” grant, and worked for the Village Voice. His manner—halting, seeming to grope for the right words—suggests he would rather not be talking about himself, but he obviously knows how to get the crowd going. The moderator introduces him and asks him to read from his latest novel, Zone One. He reads the first line—“He always wanted to live in New York”—then goes off on a riff about the terrors of the writing process.

Read Colson Whitehead: Laureate of the Zombies, our column today next week in the Philippine Star.

Eugenides at UWRF. Photo by Stanny Angga.

Some months ago I received, via email, an invitation to appear at the 9th Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) in Bali, Indonesia. Naturally I thought it was a mistake—I hadn’t done anything literary in years, I would be spotted instantly as a fraud. Then I saw the list of writers who were coming to the festival. It included novelists I regard with awe and terror, such as Jeffrey Eugenides (author of The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex), Chang-Rae Lee (The Surrendered) and Colson Whitehead (Sag Harbor, Zone One—probably the best zombie novel every written). I accepted the invitation and hoped the mistake would not be discovered till it was too late.

The UWRF was organized to support the community in the aftermath of the Bali bombings; since then it’s grown into the largest, most acclaimed literary festival in the region. This year 140 writers from 30 countries converged on picturesque Ubud, recognizable to many as the setting of Eat, Pray, Love (and of the asinine Julia Roberts movie). There were panel discussions, readings, workshops, tours, movies, a concert by Nick Cave, and film screenings. I participated in two panel sessions and managed not to get anything hurled at me (Given the large population of ducks roaming around the open-air venues it would’ve been easy to grab random fowl and throw them in anger).

The best part of the festival was sitting in the presence of some of the most gifted novelists of our time and hearing them talk about writing—not as some mystical experience/divinely-inspired ritual, but as a job they toil at, flesh, blood and brains. I tried to get an interview with Jeffrey Eugenides, whose first book The Virgin Suicides is my definition of “incandescent”, but he managed to evade my requests. I had to be content with attending his talk, which turned out to be better than my planned interview. The author was in good form, the moderator asked the right questions, and the audience was knowledgeable and appreciative.

“I’m always working on a book,” began Eugenides (Eu-GEN-ee-dees), 52. He took us back to the start of his career, when he was trying to get short stories published in magazines. Like most writers he amassed a collection of form rejection slips—sometimes there would be a scrawled “Try us again” at the bottom, and this would be enough encouragement for two years.

Read our column today in the Philippine Star.

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Eugenides said his all-time favorite book, the one he reads over and over again, is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

His other favorites are Herzog by Saul Bellow and the novels of Henry James (marriage plots!).

In middle age he’s come to revere Alice Munro.

Recently he enjoyed the Patrick Melrose novels of Edward St. Aubyn, which he pronounced delightful, funny and wicked.

Click on pages to enlarge.