Are American travelers chickenshits or do they simply lack curiosity? Planet Backpacker offers some answers
The Missing Why Americans need to rediscover the world
By Robert Downes From the book - Planet Backpacker
You hear American music everywhere you go in Asia, and you see American
films and TV. There’s a “Texas Hold ‘Em” pinball machine in the
restaurant at my hotel, and a McDonald’s downstairs. But one thing you
rarely find in the backpacking world are any living, breathing citizens
of the United States. Over the course of three months of
backpacking through Asia, I could count the number of Americans I met
on one hand -- and it was a hand with four fingers at that. As my
trip unfolded, I found that my quest was hunting down those whimsical
critters known as my countrymen -- or rather, the lack of them.
A proud Bedouin woman makes a deal with a passing American...
I don’t mean the kind of tourists with luggage on wheels who stay at the Radisson and buy packaged bus tours on the order of “Ten Days in Thailand.” I mean Americans who are missing from the ranks of the estimated 100,000 or so backpackers of all ages and nationalities who are kicking around the planet at any given moment. In general, Americans seemed as scarce as frog feathers in the developing world last year.
CRAVING CONFIRMATION Mostly when you travel overseas, you could care less if you meet another traveler from the States, but in the Third World, you crave confirmation that you’re not alone. Where are all of the friggin’ Americans? I wondered on my way through Egypt, India and southeast Asia on a five-month trip around the world. Over and over, I found the Middle East and Asia brimming with backpackers from Australia, France, Germany, Scandinavia, New Zealand, Brazil, Holland, Russia, Britain... but amazingly few Americans. I’d scan the registries of guest houses and hostels, finding pages filled with visitors from other countries, but few signatures from the U.S.A. The same was true of gatherings of backpackers in bars, cafčs, tour sites and other hot spots -- lots of Westerners from other lands, but few from the United States. Nor is my evidence entirely anecdotal. Intrepid Travel, an international tour company which guides the backpacking set to exotic locales such as Vietnam, India and China, reported in 2006 that just 17 percent of its customers were from the U.S. and Canada. As months passed by, it made me wonder if Americans are simply afraid to travel in the Third World, imagining terrorists hiding behind every espresso machine outside our borders. I’m hardly the first to notice that Americans tend to avoid scruffy places overseas. You find them gravitating to all-inclusive resorts in Cancun or wearing matching hats on guided bus tours of Europe. There were mobs of us yanks in Prague, back in the Czech Republic, but after Central Europe, it was as if the people from Tennessee, Alabama and Ohio literally dropped off the map. I saw a tour bus of Americans in Egypt, with my countrymen hidden behind black windows and sheltered in a fortified Hilton on the Nile behind armed guards -- they might as well have been traveling in a Thermos. And there was another monster tour bus at a jungle reserve in southern India, but otherwise, zip. So, who cares? I did, because it bugged me that my countrymen weren’t part of the action out in the great beyond. When you’re lost on the streets of a Third World city, nothing is sweeter than hearing an American accent; it’s as friendly as a glass of ice tea. I yearned to hear those voices on the beaches of southern India and the streets of Cairo and Bombay.
THE DANGER OF IGNORANCE I’m sure there are travel statistics which show that there are plenty of Americans visiting places such as Southeast Asia each year. But their style of travel -- in guided bus tours or gated, all-inclusive resorts -- tends to keep them at a distance from the people who live there. They’re missing all the fun, not to mention the enlightening experience that can only come from traveling with a backpack among the people of the lands you’re traveling through. Compared to their backpacking cousins from Europe or Australia, Americans are groping in the dark when it comes to understanding what the world is really like. We lack the kind of personal travel experience that no amount of reading, web-surfing or trolling the Discovery Channel can replace. Millions of couch spuds in America have seduced themselves into believing that the stagey episodes of Survivor -- which don’t involve an ounce of risk -- are actual adventures. So when the average American knows no more about our planet than what can be learned at Disney’s EPCOT Center or from the scaremeisters of FOX News, then the world truly becomes a more dangerous place, if only because uninformed people are easily manipulated. Every Arab and Islamic person becomes a scary target, even those with hands extended in friendship. Even the idea of traveling overseas seems over the top to some: “When I told people back home that I was going to visit Vietnam, most of them said: ‘What do you want to go there for?’ -- like I was crazy or something. They just assumed that Vietnam was a dangerous place,” said Katie Snow, a potter from Oregon, who I met while backpacking between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Yet, the stay-at-home American is dangerously ill-informed. Our perceptions are shaped mostly by what we see on television. Our vision of the world is invariably that of Africans hacking at each other with machetes on TV, or crowds of Muslims burning cars over the latest slight to Muhammad. And it’s always raining suicide bombers on the airwaves in America. Perhaps it’s no surprise that we’re afraid: as Michael Moore pointed out in Bowling for Colombine, our media is obsessed with spreading fear of everything from killer bees to Chinese teddy bears. Our rap and heavy metal music oozes warnings of a dangerous world, essentially telling young people to stay inside and travel no farther than the screen of their video games. Teen films such as the Hostel series are frantic in their warnings of foreign travel. Our newspapers are filled with hair-raising abductions and bombings. And on television, foreigners invariably have evil motives -- our fears roil like an episode of 24, with Snidely Whiplash villains in the guise of Arab terrorists and the Russian mafia lurking inside the friendly neighborhood ice cream truck. Given all that, who wouldn’t be afraid to travel? Indeed, it’s entirely possible that you could travel overseas and be kidnapped by a terror organization such as FARC, or by a criminal who’s hijacked your cab in Mexico City, Lima or Jakarta. On the other hand, you could stay home and be one of the more than 42,000 Americans who are killed in vehicular accidents each year, or one of more than 15,000 who are murdered within the borders of the U.S.A. It’s a wonder we’re not a nation of agoraphobics.
REALITY BITES Europeans, Australians and other Western travelers operate from a different assumption -- that the world is their playground and there’s nothing to fear. They don’t seem to give the hazards of traveling in the developing world a second thought. But many Americans assume that the opposite is true, and with few acquaintances who’ve “made the trip,” they have nothing to fall back on but the frightening images of our media and their own anxieties. And those Americans who do travel often meet only the most unpleasant people in other countries: the cynical, aggrieved, pesky merchants who harangue tourists at the souvenir markets lining the docks of cruise ships, or in the bazaars of Cancun or Jamaica. So imagine enduring many American travelers’ biggest fear: you’re rushed by two dark-skinned men in a lonely place in a Muslim country with no chance of escape. But this is no mugging -- these guys just want to shake your hand and say how thrilled they are that an American is visiting their country. They practically have tears of joy in their eyes. This happened to me several times in Egypt and also in the Kingdom of Bahrain, where an innkeeper assured me that Americans are the “best of the best” among foreign travelers, and wished there were more of us stopping by. A Thai cab driver said much the same as we endured the long crawl through a Bangkok traffic jam. Why? Because people are curious about Americans and hope to make a connection. Are we really like the characters they see in our movies and TV? Are we all rich? Could a possible contact lead to a new life in America? Then too, in the Muslim lands, millions fear they’re being left behind by the world. They reject terrorism; they want peace and trade, like anyone living anywhere. Many would love to have more Western visitors, and of course, our dollars. Who wouldn’t hope that more Western tourists might bring changes and a better life?
“Why are you afraid to say you are from America?” the shopkeeper asked...
WHERE ARE YOU FROM? One of the things you get asked everywhere in foreign lands is, “Where are you from? Australia? England? Germany?” I always answered “America” on my way around the world, and loved to catch the reaction, since our country isn’t exactly leading the popularity parade these days. I didn’t mind hearing people vent if they had a problem with my country. I was there to listen. But some Americans are fearful to admit where they’re from. And who can blame them, considering the wave of anti-Americanism sweeping the world? It’s not unusual to meet Americans who claim to be natives of Canada, England or Australia when traveling overseas. There is the occasional American who actually brags about pretending to be a Canadian as a cover. Perhaps they’re afraid that someone will say something mean in the marketplace, or assault them for the crime of being from Minnesota or Delaware. This is an overblown fear because the dirt-poor citizens of the Third World are so used to living under incompetent, corrupt governments that Western politicians look like amateurs by comparison. They must contend with corrupt, autocratic leaders like Hosni Mubarek (“the last pharoah”) in Egypt, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or Pervez “Mush” Musharef in Pakistan. And you have to wonder if the Spice Girls couldn’t run India better than its fanatical Hindu politicians. Most of the poor people I met overseas could care less about American politics -- they’re too busy worrying about the struggle to survive. It’s tourist dollars that matter to them, along with the visitor’s desire to spread them lavishly. In fact, I met many Third World citizens who love Americans, because we are inclined to be big-hearted and don’t pinch every nickel like travelers from many other nations. Some Western tourists bargain so hard in the markets that it verges on being cruel, considering that the tourist stuff for sale is a matter of pennies to us, but means a great deal to poor merchants. At a shop in Egypt on the Red Sea, my roommate paused for a moment when asked where he was from. It was just long enough to prompt the Muslim shopkeeper to give us a friendly lecture. “Why are you afraid to say you are from America?” the shopkeeper asked. “We know you have bad leaders, just like us. But that’s just politics. Your people are good, just like our people are good. Even the Israelis come here and we know they are good people. You must always say with pride: ‘I am from the United States of America.’”
THE TIME CRUNCH A big part of the reason you don’t find many Americans bumming around the world is because we simply don’t have the time off. A citizen of western Europe gets four-to-six weeks off to go “on holiday” each year. The French get as much as eight weeks off, including the entire month of August. In Australia, it’s practically a national imperative to take six months or a year off sometime during your life to go on a walkabout through the Third World. In Denmark, you get extra time off if you agree to have more children to bolster the declining birth rate. By contrast, the average American feels that taking a two-week vacation is really pushing it. In my own case, it took years of planning and saving to arrange a five-month sabbatical from my job as the editor of an alternative newspaper. Thus, Americans who do travel tend to take expensive week-long vacations close to home or to Europe, Mexico or Hawaii, spending lavishly to cram as much fun as possible into seven days before heading back to work. The American travel industry even pushes the wacky idea of the three-day weekend in the tropics, where you bring home a half-tan and ugly memories of your time in the airport and on the plane. This time crunch also tends to make Americans more destination-oriented, or intent on achieving a goal, rather than wandering at will around the world. For instance, even back home in rural northern Michigan I’ve met a fair number of people who’ve visited an Indian ashram to study yoga. Then too, 75 million Americans are homeowners and have mortgages to pay, unlike the European apartment-dwellers I met. Many Western backpackers have a cavalier attitude about ditching their jobs or apartments; some are even searching for new homes in foreign lands. By contast, Americans are homebodies at heart. I’ve also known many Americans (including myself) who had the wherewithal to purchase a home while still in our 20s. That is virtually unheard of in Europe, where backpacking the world is almost a rite of passage in your 20s. Perhaps that’s why our cousins overseas are the travelers while we prefer to sit on our nests.
A MATTER OF PRIDE The far side of the world could use more Americans spreading goodwill to repair our country’s reputation. To win the ‘War on Terror’ we could use more American travelers touring the mosques of the Mideast, and fewer soldiers with automatic weapons kicking down doors. As an example, I enjoyed buying souvenirs from craftpersons along the road, usually paying full price instead of haggling, or bargaining just for fun and then giving the peddlers what they asked for originally. Sometimes you buy things not because you want or need them, but just to support the cause of the locals, sitting in the heat and dust of a benighted land. It’s a game a middle-class American can easily afford to play. I was buying some trinket jewelry from a wizened old Bedouin woman at a windblown oasis deep in the Sinai desert. It was just junk, but I wanted to make a connection. Perhaps she was younger than me, but her skin was as parched, brown and wrinkled as a camel’s nose and her dark eyes peered out of deep folds, brutalized by the sun. One of the other backpackers in our party from London said, “You shouldn’t buy from them -- it just encourages them to sell to the tourists. You should give your money to charity instead.” “Hey, give them a break,” I shot back. “You are a millionaire or a multi-millionaire by comparison, and these people have nothing.” I’m not sure that anyone on the bus agreed with me, but I think that charity would have crushed the dignity of this Bedouin nomad, who was proud of her work. Instead, she made a clever necklace with her own hands and sold it at full price to a passing tourist. Now, she can tell all her friends about her big sale and impress her husband as well. And the whole family will eat better because someone bothered to reward her industry. In return, I have an exotic hatband and a memory to last a lifetime. My only regret after making those small purchases is that I didn’t look into that desert woman’s eyes and say, “Thank you for selling your jewelry to an American.” But that, of course, would have been silly. Adapted from Planet Backpacker: Across Europe on a Mountain Bike & Backpacking On Through Egypt, India & Southeast Asia -- Around the World by Robert Downes -- Buy the book at www.planetbackpacker.net, amazon.com, or at your local bookstore.
Click on the following logos to buy Planet Backpacker
Click to go to amazon.com...
Click to go to B&N...
Go to the 'Welcome' page to order your signed copy from Robert Downes via PayPal
Copyright 2011 - Robert Downes - The Wandering Press - write me: bob@planetbackpacker.net
