Traveling Light

Several years ago, while riding my bicycle down Burma's Irrawaddy valley, I somehow managed to destroy my khaki trousers. These were the only pair of pants I had with me at the time, so I stopped off in a town called Pakkoku and — faced with no other realistic clothing options — purchased a long, cotton lungi to cover my legs for the rest of the trip.

In the event that you aren't familiar with fashions in this part of Asia, a lungi is a tube of silk or cotton cloth that Burmese men wear around their waists. Essentially, it looks like an elegant, ankle-length skirt. And, unless you count the kilt, there is no fashion equivalent for men in the West.

Thus, having no instincts for wearing a skirt, I encountered all kinds of functional challenges while wearing my new lungi. For starters, I invariably tripped over the hem when walking on any surface that wasn't completely level. Somehow, Burmese men could stride up staircases in their lungis while still looking perfectly masculine, while I was forced to lift the cloth and mince up slight inclines like some kind of "Gone With the Wind" debutante. Even more difficult was riding my bicycle.

The more the Burmese giggled, however, the better I got at wearing the lungi. By the time I arrived in Rangoon nearly two weeks later, I was able to walk and bike gracefully on all variety of surfaces. Impressed locals gave me the thumbs-up at the sight of my dapper Burmese threads, playfully asking me if I was from Burma.

I had, it seemed, successfully "gone native" with my travel wardrobe. And it felt good.

When I flew on from Rangoon to Bangkok, however, I quickly learned that — by backpacker fashion standards — going native is far more complicated than simply buying local clothing and learning how to wear it.

As I strolled in my new lungi through the Khao San Road backpacker ghetto (where I'd hoped to buy a new pair of khaki pants), I noticed that many of my fellow travelers were giving me funny looks. Since Khao San is a place where Westerners with, say, chicken bones through their noses and dreadlocked armpit hair hardly garner a second glance, I wondered what the problem was.

That afternoon at my guesthouse, a sun-browned Australian traveler clued me in. "Look at ya, mate," he said. "You've got it all mixed up."

I looked down at my outfit. In addition to my lungi, I sported a nylon fanny pack (which made up for my lack of pockets) and a North Face dry-wick shirt (which had kept the sun off while biking). This ensemble didn't strike me as particularly strange, but — according to the Aussie — wearing a fanny pack (stereotypically favored by middle-aged tourists) and a boutique safari shirt (which, while functional, is the modern fashion equivalent of a pith helmet) effectively canceled the lungi out.

The problem, it seemed, wasn't that I had "gone native," but that I had gone native in an incomplete and bourgeois manner. "From the looks of it," he said, "you don't know if you just walked out of a jungle or a shopping mall."

Going native to one degree or another, of course, has always been a part of the travel experience.  Until the last couple centuries, in fact, going native wasn't a travel option so much as a travel necessity.  From Herodotus to Marco Polo to Lewis and Clark, eating local cuisines, learning local languages and wearing local clothing was simply how the traveler survived in foreign lands.  "Going native" was not even considered fully separate from "going traveling" until the 19^th century, when improvements in rail and sea transportation diminished the raw isolation of travel — and the British Empire expanded and standardized its influence around the globe. 

Previously, Westerners living abroad had balanced their administrative duties by decking themselves out in silks, amassing harems, and composing volumes of poetry in local languages.  One of the appeals of living and traveling abroad, after all, was the opportunity to quietly enjoy a lifestyle not possible back home.  This all changed, however, as British travelers and expats alike were increasingly expected to maintain the same decorum overseas as applied back home.  Fraternizing with locals was discouraged, safari parties trotted off into foreign jungles sporting woolen military raiment, and (as late as the 1930s) officials of the Empire could be fired for wearing native clothing. 

What this colonial protocol overlooked, of course, was that going at least partially native has always been an important step in experiencing other cultures. After all, it's difficult to truly explore your host country if you don't eat the local food, brave the local hostelries, and take a stab at the local language.  Wearing native clothing isn't necessarily a prerequisite, but abiding by local dress codes (particularly in regard to modesty) is essential if you want to be accepted within the cultures you visit.

But it's often difficult to determine where the propriety of "going native" begins and ends. Travel is not the same as emigration, after all, and no combination of culinary and fashion savvy can truly make you a part of your host culture. At some point, then, many attempts to "go native" cease to be an inquiry into other cultures and begin to be a token of status within travel culture itself.

In The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin observes that nomadic animal species tend to be less dependent upon hierarchies and shows of dominance, since the hardships of the journey naturally weed out the weak.  Now that nomadic life rarely involves natural selection, however, travel culture seems to have utilized fashion (among other things) as a subtle kind of litmus test.  Ostensibly, a Shan jacket worn with a Mao hat and cotton pyjama bottoms implies that you had the Darwinian oomph to survive northern Burma, communist China, and the Punjab.  (Wearing a fanny pack over a lungi, on the other hand, implies that you have yet to prove your evolutionary jam.)

As with all fashions, however, the accepted vogue for going native tends to be fickle.  In Jordan, for example, scores of Westerners trade baseball caps for Arab khaffiyeh scarves to better keep the sun off — but few of those same travelers would don conical peasant hats for the same purpose in Vietnam. Similarly, male travelers might splurge on tribal tattoos in an effort to empathize with Polynesian manhood rites in the Marquesas, but few would choose to empathize with Niger's Bororo tribe, where masculinity rites involve wearing women's clothing for four years.   

In the end, then, "going native" is a mixed endeavor — part attempt to understand your host culture, and part extension of how you want to selectively showcase your travels to others. Properly balancing these urges is part of the challenge and fun of travel.

Just for the record, I now own three Burmese lungis — two cotton and one silk. I find them comfortable, functional, and stylish. And chicks dig the look.

But until they make them with pockets, I will — fashion be damned — continue to wear them with a fanny pack.

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Tip sheet

"How to 'go native' (in the fashion sense, at least) and still keep your dignity"

1) Spend some time in the country first

Guatemalan villagers may look sharp in their colorful threads, but this doesn't mean you should blow half your quetzals on Chichicastenango peasant smocks 36 hours off the plane from Oakland.  Get to know the culture — and the significance of its fashions — before you try to emulate it.

2) Seek function before fashion

A colorful Bolivian alpaca sweater and a Korean silk hanbok might both seem equally appealing hanging in the market stalls of their respective countries, but remember how local people use them.  Hanbok are used for family and ceremonial functions, whereas alpaca sweaters are used to keep warm.  Since weather fluctuations more likely to be a factor than unexpected wedding ceremonies (and since most cultures won't expect you to wear traditional garb to their festivities anyway), the sweater is a more sensible buy than a hanbok. 

Thus, if a given item of local clothing is going help keep you cool, warm, dry, shaded or modest, it's probably a worthwhile purchase.  If you're just buying it because you think it looks cool, you might consider if it's really worth the space it takes up in your bag (and whether or not you'll really wear it when you get home).

3) Beware of going native with your souvenirs

Indian women might look graceful in their brightly colored saris, but that doesn't mean that a souvenir sari is going to look good on your Aunt Mabel.  Similarly, a gown-like galabiyya might look adorable when worn by second-grade boys in Cairo, but buying one for your eight-year-old nephew is likely to cause him emotional trauma on the playground.  Remember that your friends and family are less likely to understand the cultural context that inspired your souvenir purchases — and thus less likely to actually wear the exotic fashions you bring them. 

Next: Exploring in and around Cape Town

Previous: Where's a first-time wanderer to go?

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