Sometime last week, I was strolling down Bùi Viện, one of the backpacker thoroughfares in town, with a few long-term Western expats. Passing by the Crazy Buffalo Bar, countless restaurants serving banana pancakes and pho, and an equally large number of open air bars — all of which were filled to the brim with groups of young, scruffy white kids around my age, I asked my new friend what she thought of this unique demographic. “At first it’s cool to meet fellow westerners,” she explained, “until you realize they all have the same story.” It generally starts with something about being disenchanted with high paying salaries and material comfort or wanting to see what it’s like to live on survival instinct alone. Then one day, the epiphany strikes. Why don’t we set out to discover a savage hinterland in order to feel truly alive? The next thing you know, two girls are getting on a plane at JFK, CDG, SYD, LHR with just the packs on their back to leave Western civilization behind and one-up Columbus by actually discovering Asia.
People travel (or don’t travel) for a variety of reasons, and, generally speaking, there’s no real right or wrong reason. Maybe except sex tourism, but that’s just my normative opinion. Authentic travel, as I learned in my freshman year PWR class, is a meaningless term because, as one blogger puts it, “to do something authentic is in some respects a catch-22 because if the tourist is doing it, then by definition it is not authentic.” I love to travel, and I claim not to indulge in this yuppie pastime to see how many countries I can check off my bucket list or to one-up my friend in exoticness and worldliness, but rather because I have a long-term goal of improving cross-cultural understanding. I want to find solutions to market failures, if you will.
Yesterday, I met two French business school students traveling through Ho Chi Minh City while attempting to get some work done at a café. Something I was reading caught their attention, so we started talking, and I quickly became interested in hearing about their adventures around Vietnam and their plans to trek through Cambodia and Thailand. I was initially impressed by their curiosity about the local culture and disdain for other backpackers who trash the country with litter, get high and wreak havoc, seek out cheap sex, and show no interest in understanding the locals. Over dinner, for which they got two US$0.70 pints of Saigon Beer (while I felt like a pig eating beef jungle curry), they went into great detail about the most exhilarating moments of the trip: experiencing a strong connection to extremely kind locals who helped them locate the night bus stop in the pouring rain using nothing but hand gestures because they didn’t speak English, exploring a virgin forest far off the beaten path with no other Westerners and shabby cots crawling with critters for accommodation, and feeling a great sense of accomplishment for being able to live on less than US$30 a day. There was something unnerving about seeing two future bankers (with prestigious internships lined up when they return) get extremely worked up over having had to pay US$3 for what Lonely Planet claimed to be a US$1 cab ride. They were the real travelers willing to brave rough nights on sleeper buses to be amongst a sea of exclusively Asian faces. It seemed like the whole adventure — including the strict US$30/day budget (which, by the way, is already double the salary of a college grad in this country), the requisite disdain for fellow backpackers, and the attainment of enlightenment through living with no makeup and unwashed clothing — was a rite-of-passage checklist item that, unbeknownst to them, has long been shared by countless Western youth.
“They’re just like all the others,” I said to myself, “taking open tour buses, bargaining in taxis, and skipping meals to get a taste of real adventure.” Paradoxically, at that moment, sitting on a plastic stool on Bùi Viện, I reached my own epiphany: I, too, was a backpacker. I recognized my own hubris in believing that I had a superior sensibility to understand the Vietnamese, that I wasn’t following a predetermined path, and that I was actually unique in my endeavor because, you know, I was going to stay in this city for a few more weeks than they were.
Living in Vietnam, I am constantly reminded of the divide between the haves and the have nots. It pains me to see the lengths that some people will go to earn a dollar, to feed the family, and just to survive. I am disgusted by the condescending attitude exhibited by many foreigners who believe that their position of relative wealth makes them deserving of respect and admiration. In theory, I hate any sort of hegemonic domination of a people group by another people group. In a sense, I appreciate backpackers because they don’t demand to be pampered by the locals in the same way that luxury resort visitors do. While luxury travel is huge in boosting a region’s economy, there is something unsettling about the sense of entitlement that comes with it. At the same time, the extreme penny-pinching that backpackers engage in just to make some kind of statement that they can live on very little is hardly better. I realize that at the end of the day, everything is a zero-sum game. Just try to do no evil.
People travel (or don’t travel) for a variety of reasons, and, generally speaking, there’s no real right or wrong reason. Maybe except sex tourism, but that’s just my normative opinion. Authentic travel, as I learned in my freshman year PWR class, is a meaningless term because, as one blogger puts it, “to do something authentic is in some respects a catch-22 because if the tourist is doing it, then by definition it is not authentic.” I love to travel, and I claim not to indulge in this yuppie pastime to see how many countries I can check off my bucket list or to one-up my friend in exoticness and worldliness, but rather because I have a long-term goal of improving cross-cultural understanding. I want to find solutions to market failures, if you will.
Yesterday, I met two French business school students traveling through Ho Chi Minh City while attempting to get some work done at a café. Something I was reading caught their attention, so we started talking, and I quickly became interested in hearing about their adventures around Vietnam and their plans to trek through Cambodia and Thailand. I was initially impressed by their curiosity about the local culture and disdain for other backpackers who trash the country with litter, get high and wreak havoc, seek out cheap sex, and show no interest in understanding the locals. Over dinner, for which they got two US$0.70 pints of Saigon Beer (while I felt like a pig eating beef jungle curry), they went into great detail about the most exhilarating moments of the trip: experiencing a strong connection to extremely kind locals who helped them locate the night bus stop in the pouring rain using nothing but hand gestures because they didn’t speak English, exploring a virgin forest far off the beaten path with no other Westerners and shabby cots crawling with critters for accommodation, and feeling a great sense of accomplishment for being able to live on less than US$30 a day. There was something unnerving about seeing two future bankers (with prestigious internships lined up when they return) get extremely worked up over having had to pay US$3 for what Lonely Planet claimed to be a US$1 cab ride. They were the real travelers willing to brave rough nights on sleeper buses to be amongst a sea of exclusively Asian faces. It seemed like the whole adventure — including the strict US$30/day budget (which, by the way, is already double the salary of a college grad in this country), the requisite disdain for fellow backpackers, and the attainment of enlightenment through living with no makeup and unwashed clothing — was a rite-of-passage checklist item that, unbeknownst to them, has long been shared by countless Western youth.
“They’re just like all the others,” I said to myself, “taking open tour buses, bargaining in taxis, and skipping meals to get a taste of real adventure.” Paradoxically, at that moment, sitting on a plastic stool on Bùi Viện, I reached my own epiphany: I, too, was a backpacker. I recognized my own hubris in believing that I had a superior sensibility to understand the Vietnamese, that I wasn’t following a predetermined path, and that I was actually unique in my endeavor because, you know, I was going to stay in this city for a few more weeks than they were.
Living in Vietnam, I am constantly reminded of the divide between the haves and the have nots. It pains me to see the lengths that some people will go to earn a dollar, to feed the family, and just to survive. I am disgusted by the condescending attitude exhibited by many foreigners who believe that their position of relative wealth makes them deserving of respect and admiration. In theory, I hate any sort of hegemonic domination of a people group by another people group. In a sense, I appreciate backpackers because they don’t demand to be pampered by the locals in the same way that luxury resort visitors do. While luxury travel is huge in boosting a region’s economy, there is something unsettling about the sense of entitlement that comes with it. At the same time, the extreme penny-pinching that backpackers engage in just to make some kind of statement that they can live on very little is hardly better. I realize that at the end of the day, everything is a zero-sum game. Just try to do no evil.
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