The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel

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Sometimes it seems that wherever I go in the world, I’m always too early or too late to the party. One week ago today I was hanging out in Beirut, Lebanon, walking all over what I found to be a beautiful city, stopping for cappuccino along the waterfront and then having 40-cent falafel for lunch.

Today in the news, Beirut is under siege and the airport is closed. I’m usually disappointed when I find out I’ve missed a party somewhere, but this situation is serious enough that I’m glad to have missed it, and I’m concerned about the people I met there.

Compared to what’s happening now, my time in Beirut was extremely uneventful. My biggest challenge was finding a place to do my laundry. I also got in trouble for taking these photos (click to enlarge), but I wasn’t told to delete them.

For those who are interested, this guy is writing an hour-by-hour account of what’s going on over there this week.

Syria

A couple of days later, I headed out to Damascus, Syria by minibus. For only $7, the three-hour trip is a bargain. I had heard rumors of an incongruous Dunkin Donuts on the Lebanese / Syrian border, and I can now confirm that the rumors are true. It is perhaps the most oddly located Dunkin Donuts in the world (I’ll keep looking elsewhere in case I’m wrong), but unfortunately our driver wasn’t interested in stopping, so I was unable to sample the local Bavarian cremes.

Along the journey, I met up with two travelers from Toronto, Jessica and Ildar. The three of us ended up hanging out in Damascus for the rest of the day and on into the evening over late-night drinks near our hostel.

Simply put, Syria is amazing. After just a few hours on my first day, I knew it was definitely going on my “Top 10 Countries” list whenever I get around to writing it. I felt completely safe at all times, was never hassled or pressured for anything, and genuinely felt welcomed by many of the people we talked to.

In the evening we visited the Umayyad Mosque, one of the oldest and most historical mosques in the world. We went at sunset and enjoyed learning about the building’s history from a local guide.

I don’t always feel this way about places I visit, but I wished I had stayed longer in Syria. It exceeded expectations that were already high, and I would love to go back sometime.

Tunisia

My last stop on the trip was Tunisia, where I stayed with the family of a Tunisian friend I know from Seattle. It was great to experience Tunisian life up close and personal. Over the course of a weekend, I saw most of the city and surrounding areas including the historical city of Carthage. I also attended the semi-finals and finals of the Tunis Open, a challenger event on the world tennis tour.

On Saturday, my new friends had arranged a Tunisian blogger meet-up at a local café. We talked about the role that Tunisian bloggers are trying to fill in the country and blogging in general.

Tunisia was the last real stop on this trip, but on the way back I traveled through Amman (again) and Rome. In Amman I went out to dinner with another friend from Seattle, and in Rome I had to sleep in the airport for a night before catching a 6:40 a.m. connecting flight.

I don’t really enjoy sleeping in airports, and in fact I try to avoid it whenever possible. But with the tremendous expense of the euro and the fact that I would have to get up at 4:00 a.m. anyway to get to the airport, it didn’t make sense to stay in a hotel. I picked a relatively quiet spot by gate B-9 and made a sleeping area with some blankets I had saved from the last flight.

I didn’t sleep much, but thankfully I wasn’t kicked out, so the next morning I was able to stumble on to the 6:40 connection to Frankfurt. By the time we got there, I was more awake and didn’t mind the 11-hour flight back to Seattle.

***

This trip involved a lot of flying and overland travel at a faster pace than I usually prefer, but it was also a lot of fun. I’m now back in Seattle for several weeks before the next trip in late June.

While I’m here I’ll be finishing up the final draft of the upcoming manifesto, “A Brief Guide to World Domination.” The manifesto will be free, 100% non-commercial, and available for everyone in mid-June.

We were mentioned in a New York Times blog last week, and the interest for the site is really picking up. More than 4,000 people have been coming by every day this week, and I’ve appreciated hearing from many of the new readers.

Thanks for following the journey!

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Trip Update: I haven’t had a lot of time to post reports from my trip to South America and the Middle East, so while I’m hanging out in transit today, I thought I’d post this report instead of the usual Wednesday work essay. We’ll go back to regularly scheduled programming next week.

If you are a Twitter user, you can also follow my real-time updates here.

***

Photo credit: Chris

Before the plane takes off for the 10 ½ hour flight to Santiago, the LAN Chile flight attendant wants to take my entire food and drink order while we’re still waiting to take off at JFK. I tell her I’ll have the pasta, but I can tell she’s waiting for something else.“Do you want bread with that?” she finally asks. Sure, OK. “Brown or white?”

“Uh, brown is fine.” Dinner is three hours away, but I need to place my order now in great detail.

This conversation goes on for a while in a mixture of Spanish and English. She asks if I’ll want breakfast in the morning, which is nine hours from now. “What kind of cereal? Café con leche or tea?”

I find it amusing that I have to order everything I want over the next 10 ½ hours before we even leave the ground. What if I want a Diet Coke in the middle of the flight—should I page the attendant again to let her know now?

***

It takes a while to get to Easter Island. Five hours from Seattle to JFK, 10 ½ to Santiago, and five more to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Thankfully, under the terms of the OneWorld Round-the-World tickets I travel with, each of these long flights counts as just one segment each, the same way that a San Francisco-L.A. flight would be one segment each.

The trick is to maximize value by taking long flights to remote places that would ordinarily be prohibitively expensive to fly to on a single ticket. Later on in this trip I’ll fly from Buenos Aires to Chicago, and then Chicago to Amman, Jordan—once again just one segment each for 10+ hours of flying each time.

So anyway, on to Easter Island.

It’s hard to write about a place like this without using the tired clichés of travel writing. Phrases like “in the middle of nowhere” and “undiscovered” and “the ends of the earth” are overused to the point of becoming trite. People who live on Easter Island don’t think of it as the middle of nowhere, and few if any places in the world remain undiscovered.

But while acknowledging all of that, I may lose the war against clichéd writing when trying to explain Easter Island. It really is a long way from anywhere else. It takes five hours to get to Chile in one direction, and six hours to Tahiti in the other. Those are the sole connections, on just one airline that has four flights a week.

The LAN Chile 767 looks enormous on the tarmac of the tiny airport. The other passengers and I descend the staircase to the ground and walk straight off onto the road. There’s no shuttle bus, and only a tiny terminal for those who have checked bags. We’ve already cleared immigration in Chile, and since I have no bags, I take a few steps from the airplane to the small parking lot.

As I walk away from the tarmac, I realize that if I were to suddenly change my mind tonight or tomorrow and want to leave, there’s no way off the island until the plane comes back from Tahiti in three days. This isn’t like my normal stopovers in places like Frankfurt or Hong Kong, with dozens of flights taking off every hour to countless world capitals.

I’m staying in a guesthouse about two miles out of the only town on the island. Each day of my trip, I walk back and forth at least twice, and the slow shuffle along half-paved roads reminds me another two-mile trek I took recently. A few weeks ago I was in L.A. for a downtown conference, and to save money I stayed at a small motel two miles away. Just as I’m doing here, I walked back and forth each morning and afternoon.

The paradox is unmistakable. Except for the Spanish language, downtown L.A. and downtown Hanga Roa don’t have much in common. There are no buildings taller than a couple of stories here on the island, and you can walk the entire town in fifteen minutes. There is one bank, which I hurry to get to for money changing since they close at 1:00 p.m. every day.

Opting out of the $30 prix fixe menu offered by my guesthouse later that evening, I head out to town in search of food on my first evening. After I ask for the menu (la carta) at a few restaurants, I realize that the guesthouse meal was not overpriced. Virtually everything on every menu starts at $20, and the restaurants don’t look that nice. At first I think I must be calculating the exchange rate wrong, but no—the local beers really are $8 and small cheese pizzas are $24. What is this, Monaco?

I end up getting a tomato and avocado sandwich for $13. I don’t like tomatoes or avocados, but it’s the cheapest thing on the menu. I decide I won’t do much eating until I get to Argentina a few days from now.

***

My tour around the island the next morning is nice. I learn more about the history of the island, better recounted by Wikipedia than by me here. I visit the mysterious row of 15 moal and stand in front of them for a while. I go to the quarry where the moai were carved. My guide tells me about another moai nicknamed “the traveler” because he was sent to Japan on a publicity tour a few years ago.

The traveler, what a great name. I decide I should have a photo in front of him, and my guide offers to help. While he is taking the picture, I’m wondering if he knows what he’s doing, since he’s pointing the camera away from the traveler moai. He smiles and gives back the camera, which contains all of me and only the very edge of the moai I wanted to be seen with.

Oh well. It’s kind of funny.

I ask if there’s a prison on the island, and my guide laughs. “We have a jail,” he says, “but we call it ‘the university.’” The few prisoners are allowed out to go fishing during the day, and the one guard leaves at night without locking up. There isn’t much crime here to begin with, and when someone is sent to jail, there’s no where to escape to.

***

Back to the undiscovered part. Here is the thing I’ve realized about hanging out in far away places: they may not be undiscovered in the broad sense, but to any single traveler, they are in fact undiscovered until you see it for yourself.

I realize further on one of my walks to town that even among people who have traveled a fair amount, the overwhelming majority of them almost never come to places like Easter Island. This, for me, is one of the things about long trips to these far away places sometimes known as the ends of the earth—I can walk on this island that most people never give a moment’s thought to, and I can look up at the stars that I have never seen from this part of the planet. I can observe how people live their lives, and here on Easter Island, they live their lives in a hybrid Latin American / Polynesian culture.

Another thing I realize as I write these notes after coming back from town my second evening:

I will never come here again.

OK, it is technically possible that one day I could return. But it’s very unlikely; in fact, the idea seems implausible. This is the kind of place you visit just once. Even though I don’t love it here, the realization that I will likely never return makes me a little sad.

I remind myself that I have one life to live. This is my sole chance to visit this remote island, and I’d better appreciate it while I have it.

***

Over the next few days, I go back to Chile, then to Buenos Aires for a couple of nights, and then another couple of nights across the water in Montevideo, Uruguay. At the end of the time, I take a bus back to Colonia (two and a half hours), a ferry to Buenos Aires (one hour), and a taxi to Ezeiza International Airport. I’ve cut it fairly close due to misreading my flight time when I booked the ticket a week ago, but in the end I make it with twenty minutes to spare by the time I check in.

I fly out to Chicago overnight, and after hanging out in the Belmont neighborhood for my transit day, I take another overnight flight to Amman, Jordan, and then a quick late-night connection to Beirut, Lebanon. After all the flying, I’m back in the Middle East for the first time in a year, and the second half of the trip begins.

PART TWO – Lebanon, Syria, and Tunisia

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When you first head off to places in the world that are a lot different from where you live, a number of things change. You have to learn to adapt.

I still make a lot of mistakes everywhere I go, but I try to learn from each of them. Here’s a short list of things I wish I knew before I started my routine of extensive overseas travel, especially in countries in Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America that are not part of the tourist circuit.

Healthcare

1. You can legally buy safe medicine, including prescription drugs, for very little money overseas. When in Africa or Asia, I stock up on anti-malarials that cost $5 a day in Seattle. On location, it’s more like $1 for a 10-day supply.

2. The best healthcare is not in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. The best healthcare is in places like Thailand and Costa Rica; that’s why the practice of medical tourism will continue to surge as both travel and overseas healthcare become more accessible.

Money

3. Take a lot of cash with you, and make sure the bills are new and have no writing on them. If you go to a place that accepts credit cards, then you can just redeposit the cash when you get home. It is far worse to end up short of cash with no credit card option.

4. If you do use your credit card, check the online statement at least once a week while traveling to make sure there are no fraudulent charges. Keep all your receipts, especially for large purchases such as hotel stays, and compare the amounts charged when you get back.

5. When you exchange money, hang on to the receipt you get until you’ve left the country. Once in a great while, someone at the airport will want to see proof of all your foreign exchanges.

6. The U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s currency. (In fact, some currency exchange shops will no longer accept dollars!) Travel with a stock of Euros to complement your dollars. The exceptions to this rule include some countries in Africa and Latin America that still use the dollar as their primary currency, and any country that has had a recent war.

Taxis

7. Hire a taxi outside the airport, not from the guys who approach you inside as you’re walking out. Even better, walk further outside the airport to where the taxis pull in, and you’ll get a better deal because the driver won’t have to pay the entrance fee.

8. Never assume that your taxi driver knows where your destination is. Double-check and get him to ask someone before you go if there’s any doubt.

9. The universal rule of taxi haggling, for both driver and passenger, is that once both sides agree on a fare before setting off, neither side can reopen negotiations once you’re en route. You should not try to get a better deal nor should you accept any increase in the fare from the driver after the journey has started.

10. If you have a dispute with a taxi driver and you think you are being taken advantage of, offer to call the police and have them settle it. Many taxi drivers are scared of the police, and often for good reason (see below). If they are being dishonest and you mention the police, they will quickly back down. On the other hand, if they continue to press their claim, they may be right and you’ll need to pay more.

Safety

11. The police are not always your friends. Sad but true—in a lot of places in the world, the services of the police are sold to the highest bidder. Therefore, if you can pay them, they may turn out to be your friends… but in other cases, they may actually be the least trustworthy people in the country. Don’t be afraid, just be aware.

12. When you feel pressured beyond your comfort level by someone who tries to follow you, be polite but increasingly firm. Don’t string anyone along out of guilt—tell them you don’t want their help, and move on. If they keep following you, tell them to stop.

13. When it comes to visas (and all immigration issues), your experience will vary from place to place. The rules are flexible in most places, and sometimes they will work in your favor and sometimes they will work against you.

Planes, Trains, and Buses

14. All plane tickets are changeable no matter what is written on them, and any fees for changing can be waived with the right airline agent. You have a few options for making this happen: a) Hang up and call back to try with someone else, b) Call the Premium Traveler line or ask at an airline lounge, or c) Offer a “tip” at the airline counter (do this at your own risk).

15. Round-the-World tickets are the best bargains for extensive international travel. I use and recommend both the Star Alliance and the OneWorld products. Each have their advantages. SkyTeam also has a Round-the-World product, but it’s not nearly as good as the other two.

16. Most people flying Business Class are not paying full-fare. A high percentage of them on most flights are using awards tickets, special tickets, or have upgraded from Economy. Flying in premium cabins can help you in more ways than just being comfortable on long flights, because the tickets can almost always be changed or refunded without penalty. You’ll also get to hang out in airline lounges and get priority treatment, which may become very useful when you need to get in or out of somewhere fast. First Class is nice too, but the difference between First and Business is rarely as great as the difference between Business and Economy.

17. In some places, buses are better than trains for overland travel… in other places, trains are better than buses. Check out the options before you go to make the best decision for each place.

Culture

18. The concept of personal space means very different things in different countries. You kind of have to get used to that.

19. Like it or not, you have to be somewhat tolerant of smoking. There are lots of places in the world that haven’t picked up on the Western anti-smoking crusade. If this is hard for you to accept, you’ll likely be frustrated.

20. Unless you can be very discreet, never take photos of people without asking. Don’t be surprised if they say no, because many cultures are not comfortable with strangers taking photos of them all the time. If they do say yes, you may find yourselves indebted to them for a gift or other favor.

21. Never touch members of the opposite sex. This includes sitting next to them on buses and trains—you’ll often be shuffled around to ensure that you only sit next to people of the same sex, although you’ll also usually be given the best seat.

22. Don’t point your feet at people or touch anyone on the head. In several cultures, this is disrespectful or otherwise inappropriate.

23. Be careful with all hand gestures, including the “thumbs-up” sign and the “a-OK” sign. Both of these are highly provocative in some places.

24. Never make promises you don’t intend to keep. Don’t tell vendors you’ll buy from them tomorrow, don’t offer to help anyone visit your country, don’t say you’ll write to someone later if you won’t really do it, and so on.

25. Most important: don’t be a colonialist. Be careful about calling people “locals.” Don’t assume that your culture is superior. People are not stupid just because they don’t speak English or think like you do.

Politics

26. Be prepared to represent your country, whether you care about politics or not. For better or worse, many people will expect you to know a lot about politics in your home country and how governmental decisions in one country affect the lives of people thousands of miles away. Don’t say you’re from Canada unless you really are.

27. Always point out that a government’s actions and the beliefs of an individual (e.g., yourself) are not always the same. Most people understand this and some will even say the same thing without prompting, but it’s usually a good reminder to put forward.

28. No matter who you are talking to, never say anything negative about the government of the country you are in. Many rogue states, from Zimbabwe to Iran to North Korea, employ English-speaking spies who will deliberately try to incite foreign visitors into saying something incriminating. (I’m not making this up. In Guinea I was followed by the Secret Service everywhere I went. A friend of mine went to North Korea and found an extensive tape recording system in his hotel room.)

***

Lastly, remember that there are not many “undiscovered” places left in the world. Focus on the places that are undiscovered to you and you won’t go wrong.

Obviously, each place you go to will offer unique challenges, but following this list will get you off to a good start. Above all, don’t forget the cardinal rule of traveling—pack light. You really don’t need all the extra stuff.

Feel free to add your own advice or tips in the comments section.

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A couple of years ago, I was in London on a three-day layover after flying in from Africa. I had been in Sierra Leone for several months and was looking forward to walking the streets, hanging out in coffee shops, and seeing friends before heading on.

On my first night in the city, I had nothing important to do, so I took the underground down to Trafalgar Square. I bought a takeaway curry meal for dinner and ate about half of it on a park bench. Then I went walking down Oxford Street for about 15 blocks in search of the nearest Borders bookstore where I hoped to spend the rest of the evening reading books and drinking coffee. I kept the rest of my dinner box with me, because I thought I might run into a homeless person who would appreciate some food. After walking 10 blocks, I hadn’t met anyone and began to feel silly about carrying around half a box of vegetable curry, so I finally threw it away.

Sure enough, two blocks later, I came by a panhandler who was sitting beside an ATM (a convenient location, I thought) asking people for spare change as they walked by. I felt bad about throwing away the rest of my dinner, so I decided to see if I could do something else to help.

I asked his permission to sit down and chat. “John” welcomed me and told me his story. Years ago, he had been a successful tradesman but had fallen on hard times, went through a divorce, and so on. If you talk with homeless people in most major cities throughout the world, you’ll often hear similar stories. Sometimes they’re true and often they’re not, but I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter that much. For whatever reason, most people hanging out on the streets all day really don’t have a regular place to live.

How To Give $17 and Lose $17 More

I talked with John for ten minutes, and his story was growing crazier by the minute. The climax came when he told me that six months ago, he was at this same ATM station when a woman was being robbed. John tried to defend her, but was hurt in the process. The police came and arrested him because the mystery attacker had fled the scene.

At this point I interrupted him. “Look,” I said. “I’ll give you some money for dinner, but you don’t have to lie to me. Do you really expect me to believe you?”

John kept insisting that the story was true, and I may have even started to believe him. “What has he got to lose?” I thought. Perhaps I was feeling especially generous after coming out of Africa for the first time in months, but I gave him £10, which was about $17 at the time. John was very thankful.

I let my guard down a few minutes later when John’s face brightened and he said, “Hey, I get a lot of coins from people and they’re heavy to carry around all the time. Would you mind exchanging these coins for a ten-pound note?”

I looked at a paper cup in his hand, which was indeed filled with heavy English coins. I gave him the note. John put it in his pocket and stood up. “I’m just going to the washroom down the street,” he told me. “Can you watch my stuff for me?”

He took his backpack with him but left his coat, a box of crackers, and another bag with me. As he walked off I realized that he had taken the cup of coins with him too. I was alarmed for a moment, but then I remembered the stuff that he had left in my care.

“That’s a clever trick,” I thought. “I bet he’s thinking that I’ll forget to ask him for the coins when he comes back. He is coming back, right?” I looked at his things beside me and felt relieved again. What kind of guy would leave his stuff behind and never return?

Well, I waited for John for ten minutes. Then I waited another five minutes. The whole time, people kept walking by, trying not to make eye contact with me as I sat beside the ATM with a homeless guy’s stuff. I felt incredibly uncomfortable. One guy actually said, “Good evening” to me, and I rushed to explain myself.

“Oh, hi. I’m not really sitting here. I mean, I’m just waiting for my friend John. You know John? He, uh, works here sometimes.” The man walked on and I grew even more anxious. Around that time, I decided to go through John’s things to see what I was faithfully looking after.

Upon Realizing I Would Never See My $17 Again

To my surprise, I found that the bag he left behind was full of trash. The cracker box was empty. The coat, which I had earlier assumed would never be discarded, was old, tattered, and dirty. That morning I had browsed through a charity shop where I saw dozens of old coats for five pounds or less.

And I realized what I should have known from the beginning—John was gone, and he had taken almost $17 from me, in addition to the $17 that I willingly gave him, and he wasn’t planning on coming back.

I felt incredibly angry and embarrassed. Wasn’t I a Very Experienced Traveler? Don’t I know how to talk to homeless people in a place like London? How can I go traveling all over Africa, deflecting bribe requests from corrupt officials and staying out of trouble, only to end up losing $17 the first day I get back to Europe?

I was determined to not let John get the better of me. After all, I reasoned, he has to come back sometime. He’s probably going to wait half an hour and then return, thinking that I’ve given up. I’ll show him, I thought.

“Nice try, John,” I imagined myself saying. “You put on a good effort, but I want my ten pounds back right now.”

I sat there for another twenty minutes, looking at the ground and getting more and more angry. I didn’t want to admit the truth to myself—John wasn’t coming back. Whether I admitted it or not, though, it was true.

Anger and Resentment

I finally left the ATM in disgust. I couldn’t figure out who I was the most upset at—John or myself. There must be some good reason for this, I kept thinking. Maybe I’ll run into John at the Borders tonight and I can confront him then.

“Who bought you that hot chocolate? Who paid the extra thirty pence for the whipped cream on top?”

After walking around the London streets for another half-hour, I made it to the Borders I had set out to find a long time ago. John wasn’t at the café inside. I didn’t see him later that night as I rode the underground back to my guesthouse, and I didn’t see him two mornings later as I left London for another city.

Life requires you to take risks. When you take risks, sometimes you lose. Is it worth it to you?

Was it worth it to me that night?

Resolution

I thought about calling this essay, “How To Lose $34 in London,” but I realized that losing the $34 was easy. The hard part was learning to let go of the money long after it had left my pocket.

Whether by his own fault or through the fault of others, John was homeless. While I went around sleeping in hotel rooms or on the couches of friends, John went from shelter to shelter. Given the choice, would I trade places with John for even one day? The idea is laughable—I could hardly manage to sit on the sidewalk by the London ATM for 30 minutes, knowing that the people passing by thought I was homeless. Yet, some part of me that night was resentful of John and wished that I could be in his place with the $34.

***

I have a friend, Marie, who works with the homeless in Seattle. One night she came over to talk to us about her recommendations for how we should respond to the many transient people in our city. One thing that Marie said made a big impression on me.

“You can give money if you want,” she told us. “But once you give it, let it go. Don’t expect a miracle, because many people on the streets are not ready to change their situations. But at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with helping someone get dinner or a place to stay.”

I liked that approach. Do what you can do to help, and then let it go. Live your life, help others, and don’t stress out when something doesn’t work the way you expected it would. You can still go to Borders and read books at the café.

John, if you’re out there, I can’t really say “thanks” for taking my money. I’m still a little mad about it. But I appreciate the lessons I learned through my mistake and your chicanery. I’ve probably been thinking about this long after you’ve forgotten it, so it’s time for me to let it go too.

I hope you got another coat from the charity shop.

I hope you won’t be falsely arrested for fending off robbers at the ATM again.

I hope you enjoyed the hot chocolate that I imagined my money being spent on.

Take care, John, and everyone else out there in London and beyond.

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I’m headed out on my next adventure early Monday morning. This is the continuation of the OneWorld Round-the-World trip that I began in Japan last month.

I use Round-the-World tickets to travel to far away places that are otherwise difficult to get to. On this trip, my first stop is…

Photo: Sonia Carolina

This is Rapa Nui, also known as Isle de Pascua, also known as Easter Island. After a lot of flying (it’s not the easiest place to get to), I’ll finally arrive there on Tuesday afternoon.

Easter Island is not really a country—it technically “belongs” to Chile on the South American mainland, and I’ll travel through Santiago to get there. But it’s such a distant, mythological place that I knew I had to find a way to go there ever since watching a documentary on a flight a couple years ago. I’m really looking forward to it!

After Easter Island, the trip continues. I’ll fly from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Amman, Jordan for a few days in the Mid-East, then over to Tunisia before coming back home.

As usual, my essays on Life, Work, and Travel will continue to be posted three times a week, and I hope to provide at least two detailed trip reports along the way. If you’re interested, you can follow more real-time updates over at Twitter.

Thanks for reading! See you on the island… let’s say next to the fourth statue on the left?

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