避开人群去旅行：寻找你的孤独星球

　　背景介绍：孤独星球出版社（Lonely Planet Publications，简称Lonely Planet，缩写：LP）是世界知名的的私人旅游指南出版社，由托尼·韦勒（Tony Wheeler）和莫琳·韦勒（Maureen Wheeler）夫妇于1972年在澳大利亚维多利亚州墨尔本西郊的富兹克雷区创立。其出版社出版的旅游书籍就称为《孤独星球》系列，是第一个针对背包客撰写的旅游系列丛书，受到背包客及其他低开销旅游者的广泛欢迎。截至2004年，一共出版了650个主题，涉及118个国家，年销售量达600万本。

　　In late 1972, my wife and I had spent six months traveling through Asia when we landed in Bangkok from Calcutta. We’d bought an old car in London, driven it all the way to Kabul, sold it for a small profit, and carried on east by whatever transport came our way. We didn’t realize it at the time, but a travel revolution was about to take place in the region. In the next 40 years, travel was going to be on a dramatic growth curve everywhere in the world, but nowhere would the change be as great as in Southeast Asia.

　　1972年末，我和妻子从印度加尔各答飞往泰国曼谷，这时我们已经花了六个月完成了穿越亚洲的旅行。我们在伦敦买了一辆旧车，一路开到阿富汗首都喀布尔，在那儿卖掉了车，再继续向东旅行，路上用上了所有我们能够找到的交通工具。当时我们并未意识到，这一地区正酝酿着一场旅游革命。在此后的四十年中，全球旅游业都以惊人的速度增长着，但在东南亚地区发生的变化无疑是最大的。

　　Four decades ago, Bangkok was still winding down from its role as a Vietnam R&R escape. The movies of The Beach and The Hangover, Part 2 were still many years away. My wife and I continued south: we hitchhiked from Bangkok to Singapore, took a ship to Jakarta, and thumbed a rideon a New Zealand yacht sailing from Bali down to Australia. Sure, there were other tourists around—we certainly weren’t first-time pioneers—but compared with today’s numbers, they were minuscule.

　　四十年前，曼谷还在忙着摆脱它作为越南战争中军队休整地的角色。电影《海滩》和《宿醉II》的拍摄还是许多年以后的事情。从曼谷开始，我和妻子继续向南旅行：搭车到新加坡，乘船到雅加达（印尼首都），然后搭上了一条从巴厘岛开往澳大利亚的新西兰游艇。当然一路上还有其他旅行者——我们显然不是第一批吃螃蟹的人——但规模跟今天比起来实在微不足道。

　　A host of factors came together around that time. The baby boomers—I was one of them—were stretching their travel wings and going farther afieldthan their parents had ever dreamed. Europe was just the jumping-off point, whether we were planning on riding the Marrakesh Express or following the Beatles all the way to India. The first 747s had taken passengers on board just two years earlier, and soon a host of new airlines would become familiar names, flying us to undiscovered places and doing it at delightfully low prices. Plus, the world was opening up. Over the next 10 years, Southeast Asia would make the transition from war zone to fun zone—and in the subsequent decade China, almost totally closed off since the communist takeover in the late ’40s, would open its doors.

　　有许多因素造成了那之后旅游业的快速增长。首先，在“婴儿潮”中出生的那一批人——我就是其中之一——正在四处旅行，远离家乡去到他们的父辈从未想过的地方。不管我们的旅行计划是搭乘马拉喀什快车还是跟随披头士的脚步前往印度，欧洲都不过是一个起点。最早的波音747飞机不过在两年前才开始运营，但很快一批新航线就将为人们熟知，并以低廉的价格带我们飞向尚不为人所知的地方。另外，这个世界也正变得更加开放。在接下来的十年中，东南亚将从战争地区变成游乐场——再之后的十年，自共产党在40年代末当权后几乎完全封闭的中国也将打开她的大门。

　　A generational shift, aviation developments, and dramatic political changes kicked off that travel revolution, but it was technology that really pushed it along. Suddenly we could book cheap flights, find comfortable hotels, research our sightseeing, and tell the folks back home about it, all more or less instantly.

　　新一代人的出现，航空工业的发展，连同出人意料的政治变革一起揭开了这场旅游革命的序幕，但真正推动了这场革命的是技术的发展。仿佛就在一夜之间，我们都可以订到便宜机票，找到舒适旅店，获取景点资料，并把旅行经历告诉留在家里的人了，而这一切几乎瞬间就可以完成。

　　So in many ways the world has become a much less lonely place in the four decades since the first Lonely Planet guidebook. Yet I never forget that if you want to get away from the crowds, the empty places are still out there.

　　自第一本《孤独星球》旅行指南出版以来的四十年间，这个世界在各种意义上都已经变得不那么“孤寂”了，但我一直不曾忘记——如果你想要远离人群，空无人烟的地方依然存在。

　　Earlier this year I was kicking around the Solomon Islands and ended up one day at a small resort just south of the port of Gizo. I took a resort kayak and paddled out into the bay to an island a mile offshore. I pulled the kayak onto the sand and there I was, on the same sandy beach where a young JFK had stumbled out of the water, his patrol torpedo boat sunk after a collision with a Japanese destroyer nearly 70 years ago. How many people get to do that? Tourist numbers to the Solomons are still tiny despite superb scuba diving, comfortable places to stay, and fine local beers.

　　今年早些时候，我曾在所罗门群岛呆过一阵子。有一天，我闲逛到了Gizo港南边的一个小景区。在那儿我找了一只小艇，划到了离岸一英里远的一座小岛上。我把小艇拖上沙滩，站在那儿，站在年轻的约翰·肯尼迪曾站过的同一片沙滩上——近70年前，他的鱼雷快艇在这一带撞上了一艘日本驱逐舰之后沉没了，而这座小岛的这片沙滩正是他从水里跌跌撞撞地爬起来的地方。还有多少人到过那儿呢？尽管在所罗门群岛能够享受到顶级的潜水设施、舒适的住所和优质的当地啤酒，去那儿的游客依然非常少。

　　I’m a lucky traveler. I get that thrill of experiencing something by myself, far from the crowds, on a regular basis. You don’t have to walk to the remote corners of Tibet or kayak the backblocks of the Pacific to find your own place. Surprisingly, in our jampacked world, it’s still remarkably easy to escape the congestion. Could you find a more crowded European destination than Venice in the summer? Well, go there, walk a few blocks away from the swarms in St. Mark’s Square, choose any one of a dozen beautiful old churches, sit down in a pew, and look around. Chances are you’ll be by yourself.

　　我是个幸运的旅行者，时不时就能体会到远离人群独自旅行的快感。但是要找一个只属于你的地方，不一定非得去到西藏偏远的角落或是太平洋人烟稀少的腹地。即便我们的世界已经拥堵不堪，要想逃离拥塞还是非常容易。欧洲没有哪个旅游景点比夏天的威尼斯更加拥挤，但即便在那儿，你只要从人潮汹涌的圣马可广场出发，走上几个街区，在众多优美的老教堂中随便挑一个，走进去坐在长椅上——看看四周吧，很有可能你是独自一人。

　　The world is a more crowded place, the check-in lines are longer, the planes are bigger, the tourist numbers larger, but if you want a lonely place you can still find it.

　　这个世界正变得比以前更拥挤，检票口排的队更长，飞机更大，游客更多，但如果你真想找一个没有人的地方，你还是找得到的。