I hate the word “undiscovered”. As in “(insert location here) is the next undiscovered paradise!”
It makes me feel like I’m not part of the “in” crowd. The travel elite. (Cue awkward flashback to high school with my bulky JC Penney sweaters and no-name sneakers.)
I mean, how does one go about “discovering” a place anyway? Is there even such a thing? All I know is that by the time I get somewhere, it’s gone through all its phases of (1) undiscovered and only known about by locals, and even then only to the wizened village elders, to (2) a few intrepid backpackers who have swam under caves and braved death battles with komodo dragons to get there, to (3) oops, someone talked about it in an obscure travel forum but was shushed into silence for fear the tourist hordes would come, to (4) a few rustic beach huts with nary a flush toilet to be seen to, finally, (5) full blown tourist mayhem with a 7-11 immediately across the street from another 7-11…
Sigh.
It seems like I’ve been chasing that illusive “perfect” beach since forever. I remember watching the movie Cast Away and all the struggles Tom Hanks experienced trying to get off the island, and thinking to myself that I’d do almost anything to get on that island. Beautifully blissful. Seductively secluded. That was prime real estate, baby (the fact that it was filmed on an uninhabited Fijian island made it all the more drool-worthy…). So while I daydream and read frivolous blogs about Bora Bora and Seychelles and the Maldives, I can only dream about getting to those (supremely expensive) tried-and-true island paradises, dying a little bit inside with each photo.
