Be Open

"Be open to experience.  Be willing to try new things.  Don't have a rigid plan.  Accept random acts of hospitality without judgement or fear.  Don't be afraid to wander.  Don't be afraid to eat a bad meal, you know, if you don't risk the bad meal you'll never get the magical one.  But I think most important, be humble, be grateful.  Be aware of the fact that you're probably the stupidest person in the room, as far as, you are the least prepared, the least equipped person to know who's really in charge and what's really going on.

I think I may have, maybe before I started traveling, I thought that the human race as a whole could and would turn on itself at any moment, you know, venal, petty, cruel, arbitrary.  It's true that all of those things exist in the world, but I meet mostly pretty nice people, doing the best they can, often under very, very difficult conditions.  Then, a lot of very nice people who've done very, very bad things that conflict with my deeply held conceptions of justice, sexual equality, acceptable practice, or religious views.  There are a lot of gray areas in travel.  But I think that on balance, the world is filled with people doing the best they can, you know, who love their kids, would like to put on a clean shirt every morning and live their lives with a little dignity, and have access to food and water, and hope.  Just like everybody else."

Anthony Bourdain

Rest In Peace

Photo Credit: David Scott Holloway, CNN