More Wander Wars

In response to the letters from readers about the Wander Year on fast food (“Chasing Down Big Macs in Bangkok,” May 21), I must admit I’ve made similar derogatory comments about fellow American travelers and their desire to have U.S. “culture” wherever they travel in the world.

I must also admit that there have been times, particularly as the daily adventure of foreign exploring has sapped my energy, that I have longed for something familiar to offset the demands of continually facing the unknown. For me, “Chasing Down Big Macs in Bangkok” offered a reality check for the frequently glorified dream of extended travel.

I say hurrah to Mike McIntyre and Andrea Boyles for sharing their “real world” experiences rather than just writing glossy travel descriptions.

JAYNE SCHROCK

Santa Ana

Please send those idiots a ticket back to San Diego immediately! We have been reading (or should I say subjecting ourselves to) your pathetic series about a couple of inept, unworldly, whining “travelers” making their way through “Third World” countries (please tell them these countries have been called “developing nations” for two decades). It is ironic that the Travel section would print a series that is both uninformative and discouraging of travel.

We have learned virtually nothing about the many places they visited unless it was an American franchise. The only thing they have succeeded in communicating is that travel outside the U.S. is scary, weird, uncomfortable and terribly traumatic.

Why didn’t they go to England or Hawaii, where it’s safe and there is a McDonald’s on every corner?

Please spare your readers the horror of another installment! Luckily, we are off on our own eight-month trip (not inspired by your column) to countries unlike our own, and we won’t have to read this series any longer.

Without even stepping a foot outside the U.S., we know it will be tough and bothersome but rewarding. After all, the real joy of travel is to revel in the differences and realize how lucky we are to see our planet.

KEN JOHNSTON

ISABEL BALBOA

El Segundo

It sounds as if Mike McIntyre is tired of traveling. I’ve been to Vietnam eight times, hiring cyclos for city travel several times, and I know that either the hotel clerk or I negotiate the fare before I ever begin the trip. Drivers then tend not to “get lost.” Yes, travel in Third World countries is not always easy or comfortable (especially when one has to deal with pesky communists), but a person can choose not to go to these places.

Mike should have gone from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to the border of Vietnam by minivan, as I did. Discomfort? You bet, with ruts so deep our van could have been lost in them had our driver not been skilled. That trip now makes for wonderful travel one-upmanship conversation, although at the time I thought my internal organs would never settle back into their proper places.

MARY KAY CROUCH

Fountain Valley

It has been many years since my last long-distance trip overseas. In five years I traveled all the inhabited continents overland, almost entirely outside of Western countries. I now mostly travel vicariously through the stories provided by traveling friends and reading, which also serves to update me on places I have been.

I therefore looked forward to the first “Wander Year” articles to be printed. But I am saddened and appalled at the choice of writers and the content of the articles by Mike McIntyre. I chose to dismiss, in his first reports, his ethnocentric, narrow-minded, harsh attitudes toward the extraordinary areas he was visiting as part of his learning process, in the hope that he would soon relax into the rhythm of travel, reveling in its pluses and accepting its minuses.

I see that is not the case. This poor fool is hopelessly lost in his own judgments of areas he will never understand and is too blind to truly see, much less enjoy.

It is his loss, your readers’ loss, and I am sorry the great folks he will encounter along the way will have met yet another ugly American.

DENICE BARTELS

Los Angeles

Ron Ranson of Leucadia and Russell Bowens of Santa Monica (Letters, May 28) need to take a year off and travel the world. They can’t see the joy of finding something familiar after weeks of new sights, new flavors and new experiences.

So the United States has given the world fast food and shopping malls. Get over it.

I love the “Wander Year” column; it’s the first thing I read in the Sunday paper.

JANE NUNN

Long Beach

I love the Wander Year. I used to love to read the ugly American’s column and the livid responses from readers, but the June 25 column (“In Search of a Guide Never to Be Met”) was an epiphany.

Mike McIntyre wrote a beautiful, moving, sensitive, illuminating memorial about the death of tour guide Jenny Xu. Thanks.

CRAIG WRIGHT

Newport Beach