Lonely Planet Guide action

Stefan Tiron reports for monochrom... about change.

Buy a cheap Lonely Planet Guide copy off the markets in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, India or any where else. Even a used and trashed copy or a rip-off pirate copy will do fine. Then, go to work modifying the covers and content of this Lonely Planet guide you bought using the same fonts and general style of the original. Your cover should illustrate a reality The Lonely Planet Guide never managed to convey.

Introduce new chapters, new twists of fate, new hooks for the jaded connoisseur or the fascinated tropical newbee, relating enticing new customs and new recipes. Create new place-names, fictional archeological sites, quiet villages that do not exist but should exist and will soon exist. Give the appropriate details and try to mimic insider knowledge cues. Then go back to the market or bookshop and resell it.

Do that with as many copies of the Guide as you can.

The Lonely Planet Guide has become the favored route to immediate touristic gratification. It is practically liturgical material for tourists who follow its advice like holy commandments. Never has the power of the word been so eagerly followed by so many neo-colonial travelers and pilgrims of the exotic.

Copies of the first reconverted and modified Lonely Planet Guides have already been found on the Asian markets, meanwhile others are joining in on this action. Below are some guidelines written by the anonymous initiator of this action and some images of the first LPG modified copies he made and reintroduced:

"There are no more lions here. The maps are clean and you can go wherever you want. Just get a special deal plane ticket and off you go into your holiday adventure.

Except there's no adventure. Your path has been beaten by the nice people at lonely planet. Thanks to them, you know where you're going, what you're eating where you're sleeping and how you’ll entertain yourself. They are your best imaginary friends and you trust them with your life.

Of course they assure you that you remain an independent traveler, aware of her surroundings and of course you want to get local and blend in. Good friends know how to flatter you. They’ll create an imaginary world that celebrates you as its navel. Welcome to yet another country of contrasts. Let your senses be taken over by the warmth of the local people and by the exotic spices in their sophisticated cuisine. Enjoy exotic drinks brought to you by little hospitable brown people that fit your projections. You can study their habits and should you feel overwhelmed by their poverty, do order another drink and hug them as a sign of understanding. You are taken over by the melody of their clichés, and your soul is dancing to their wild, exotic tunes. Welcome to your lonely planet holiday."

In rough countries businesses are made and unmade by a single word in that guide. Places become interesting or not worth visiting by a single line in Lonely Planet. And the adventures, well, they never really happen. The flock instinct takes over and adventure seekers are all herded to the same tourist spots where they get to experience the impact that a great demand for exoticism has on a weak infrastructure. Nasty stuff.

But what if there was a special edition of lonely planet? One that would include detailed information on wonderful mysterious must-see places that don’t exist in reality? What would happen if people would follow the maps and land in the middle of a beautiful nowhere? Would that open their eyes?

Would it put a mirror in front of them showing them how gullible they are? It would certainly provide an opportunity for the rarest and most desired of experiences: adventure, and a story to tell later.

Could it be that after tourists repeatedly ask locals about a place that doesn't exist, market forces take over and somebody will start offering trips to that place? Could it be that tourists will ask for invented souvenirs and people will start making them, beginning a handicraft tradition to go centuries from now? Could our imagined places start existing in their own right?

Either way, it's worth trying. Even more so if you live in a country where books in demand are photocopied and sold for a steal. Such is a place where you could easily infiltrate a special edition of any book into the market and then watch it take a life of its on. The special Lonely Planet Cambodia edition already goes for anything between 4 and 10 USD in markets and bookstores in Cambodia, depending on the buyer’s bargaining skills. The modified covers are a further statement because, as they say, as a picture is worth a thousand words.

Click to enlarge

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