There's never quite enough room in the traveler's bags for personal
histories, emotional commitments or even normal codes of behavior. The
traveler can be whomever he or she pretends to be, and that often means
wild and crazy, young and free. This gets people attending interstate
business meetings and academic conferences into enough trouble. When
the traveler crosses the border into foreign cultures that trouble is
doubled: In the calculus of travel, exoticism equals eroticism. Then,
when the time for coming has gone and the time for going has come, the
traveler packs his or her memories along with other souvenirs and slips
away.
-- Linda Jaivin. Los Angeles Times Book Review. 6/25/2000 p.6