The Resting Spot in Adventure and Travel Writing

Adventure and travel writing covers many elements of travel, most often the act of going somewhere. However, along one's journey there must always be a place to rest; a place to stop, catch one's breath, and start again. Susan Orlean discusses a place like this in a short story entitled A Place to Disappear. At Khao San people gather to make plans, young and old come together to take the next step on their journey. Graham Greene told his tale of a place between places when he wrote Across the Bridge. Paul Theroux, travel writer extraordinaire, wrote several short stories dealing with the resting place and the elements that go along with it. Unlike Orlean and Graham who tie all of the elements of the nonexistent place into one story, Theroux speaks within three different stories. Whenever a resting place is discussed in short stories, the author always discusses the characters that occupy the town and the mood that town provokes in its travelers. 

Susan Orlean's A Place to Disappear observes a place in Thailand where people go in lieu of someplace else. Khao San Road is a place where travelers can rest, check their internet and change their identity. Orlean mentions a fantasy of hers about a nameless man who does just that. "In it, a middle-aged middlebrow middle manager from Phoenix is deposited at the western end of the road, near the Chanasongkhran police booth…He then gets a leather thong bracelet for one wrist and a silver cuff for the other, stops at Golden Lotus Tattoo for a few Chinese characters on his shoulder, gets his eyebrows pierced at Herbal House Healthy Center, has blond extensions braided into his hair, trades his briefcase for a Stussy backpack and a Hmong fabric waist pack, watches twenty-minutes of The Phantom Menace or The Blair Witch Project at Buddy Beer, goes into Hello Internet Café and registers as ‘zenmasterbob' on hotmail.com, falls in love with a Norwegian aromatherapist he meets in the communal shower at Joe Guest House, takes off with her on a trek through East Timor, and is never seen again" (195).