The Day I Melodramatically Walked Off My Country In Search Of The Exotic ... and what i found... :-) (Asia)

Member Name: chris105

Product:	Asia
Date:	26/11/01 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: beautiful continent, totally different to the European way of life

Disadvantages: communication is a problem unless you speak their languages, some areas are not tourist-friendly

The last you folks heard of me, I was (rather melodramatically, I now realise in retrospect - but then I've always had a dramatic flair) despairing as my fully paid-for cruise vacation had been ruined by the company ever-so-timely bankrupting itself on me three weeks before I was due to leave. Only then VISA came to my rescue (not without a bit of prodding and arguing and threatening legal action, but that's another episode...) with a refund.

*** Moral so far: always pay for expensive goods by credit card - you're more likely to get a refund if things go wrong ***

Of course I don't often write in the travel category (at least not as often as I write in the books category), so you might never have read anything of mine before and this could all be sounding gibberish (which it might be, too - remember that I haven't written anything in over a month, so please bear with me).

So, refund in hand (in the bank, rather... but you get my gist, don't get all pedantic with me right now, I'm like a reborn-newbie, right?), my wife and I looked around for an alternative destination. Given the prevailing international situation, it wasn't such a gargantuan task finding vacancies at such short notice - and previously unaffordable options suddenly became viable as a result of unheard-of discounts.

This landed us with an unbelievable 16-day cruise of Asia, e scusate se e' poco, as our Fellinian counterparts would say. So this is how I got my first taste of this incredible continent, Asia. Cruising is of course not ideal to get an in-depth view of any country, especially locations as exotic and vast as Asian ones. However it does give the unparalleled luxury of "sampling" a large number of countries in one go, thus compiling a wish-list for future travels.

My once-in-a-lifetime experience commenced in Beijing, China (having travelled via Frankfurt for a whopping total of 13 hours), where we were
overwhelmed by the infamous culture-shock syndrome. The cliche "landing on a different planet" comes to mind, and it is indeed an apt one here. The landscape is different, the people are different (aesthetically and in attitude), the culture is different, the customs and notions of propriety are utterly different too. For a Westerner who has travelled mostly within the confines of Europe, this was akin to a shot of whisky for a newborn. Or something like that, anyway...

For example, I couldn't believe that spitting in public is perfectly acceptable in Asia. Everywhere I saw smartly-clad gentlemen, AND WOMEN, nonchalantly bringing up gurgles of phlegm and depositing it with a clean spit onto the nearest pavement. Imagine that being done here... ... ...

Then there's staring: Asians find it totally normal, I've been told, to stare at others (or merely at Westerners, I'm not too clear on that) directly and for prolonged periods. So my walks through the impressive Tiananmen Square (as well as the tourist-mecca Great Wall) were followed by constant and lingering stares by locals. Unnerving at first, I assure you!

Not even getting from one place to another was the same: the driving techniques of the Chinese (at least of the ones I met) are physics-defying, not to put too fine a point on it. Last-second braking is given a new meaning, as is the unheard-of concept of "right of way". There is of course a proliferation of bicycles in Beijing, towards which the car drivers show not an ounce of sympathy or consideration. On they rush into oncoming traffic, oblivious of the lady with shopping bag cycling across the zebra crossing. In my two days' stay in Beijing, I had my fair share of collisions, near-collisions, scraped knees and strewn shopping! Quite an experience, I tell ya.

So that's Beijing for me. Onboard the ship - heavenly (but I'll tell you more about that in another op... hopefully).
Next port of call was Pusan, South Korea, perhaps the least impressive of the cities visited, although I did get to have a look at a remarkably peaceful Buddhist temple there. Again, this was my first encounter with a Buddhist place of worship, and I was suitably impressed - the difference to the Catholic churches is absolute. There is an imposing sense of peacefulness and quiet in a Buddhist shrine, and the devoutness (?) and concentration shown by the worshippers should serve as a rebuke to us Westerners who mostly treat religion as a boring sideline to our lives.

As I said at the onset of this op, my intention here is not to give a detailed description of the places I've been to (I haven't seen enough of them to attempt that, and this wouldn't be the right category anyway), but merely to give an overview of my first impressions of Asia from the places I visited on the cruise.

From Pusan we travelled to Nagasaki, Japan. Now THIS is a stupendous city. The locals refer to it as a small city (pop. 450,000), which I suppose it is... but for a guy harking from a country whose total population is 350,000 where the largest "city" has around 6,000 inhabitants, the perspective is entirely different. Nagasaki has been described as the "San Francisco of the Orient" - now I've never myself been to San Francisco, so my comparative analysis will be very restricted. But if SF is anything like what the movies make it out to be, then yes, Nagasaki is similar, albiet quieter and more "oriental" (haha, speak of stating the obvious). A bridge leading straight into a pedestrian zone, sidewalks, gardens... the works. A glimpse of Japan, therefore - definitely a country I'll be wanting to return to, someday.

If you're following my route, geographically speaking, it'll make sense that from Nagasaki we proceeded to drift back towards China, this time to the industrial and economic stronghold of Shanghai.
From what I'd read of the economic restructuring and rebirth of China originating, in the 80s, from Shanghai, I expected a city of factories, coal chimneys and traffic grids. I was right on the traffic grids, but completely off-centre on the rest. Shanghai was easily the most beautiful of the cities I visited on this Asian tour. This huge city effortlessly blends Martial-landscape-surreal skyscrapers boasting the weirdest architectural designs I've ever seen with authentic "old town" Chinese buildings and shacks. The new part of Shanghai is a meshing of skyscrapers, multinational corporations' headquarters (think HSBC) and mega-glitzy shopping malls. Think New York. Think anything but communist, in reality. The communist way of life was not in the least apparent, at least to us tourists, and I suspect its presence is felt "only" on a political level, not on an economic level.

From the old town of Shanghai, I found some genuinely "oriental" stuff - not the souvenir-stall kind of thing, but the smaller, weirder kind of stuff. Anyway, you'll have to have a look at our house to see what I mean...

One word to the wise: if you happen to be in Shanghai, whatever you do, I repeat: WHATEVER YOU DO... use the underpass to cross the river. It's an undescribable experience, straight out of some theme park or Pink Floyd album... only it's not a theme park, it's a real underground passageway. I shan't say more... my lips are sealed.

So that was Shanghai. Oh baby! The skyline by night is awesome - of course when we visited the APEC Summit had just ended, so the city was all perked up and in its Sunday best. But still - I can't imagine it deteriorating much in the near future... unless the Brussels bureaucracy takes over, that is (not that I can imagine that happening in the near future either!).

Oops! I'm off course again...

...Unlike the ship, which was perfectly on
course to get us to our next leg of the trip... Hong Kong, previously British colony and now officially named Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region), alias completely autonomous region forming part of China. I must say, although it's still early days since the handover in 1997, that the Chinese influence isn't too manifest (influence in running the country, I mean, not influence of Chinese culture, which is pervasive as elsewhere in the region). There still remains that exotic timeless feel of an ex-British colony - and as a resident of an ex-British colony I can attest that this feel does not fade even in a quarter-century-plus of independence.

Imagery of Hong Kong as the chaotic and vibrant enclave is as camp as imagery gets (not the tents kind, alk!), but alas it's real. Wherever I went, be it the tourist traps (of which there are many in Hong Kong for the unwary traveller), be it the shopping districts or the fishing villages on Kowloon Peninsula, life is lived with a finger firmly held against the fast-forward button. You have been warned. But perhaps that's why I loved it. It exudes life... and car exhaust! I must admit, I did succumb to the ultimate tourist temptation of buying electronics from Hong Kong - and I'm now the proud owner of a digital camera.

Now comes the exotic part of the trip (relatively speaking, of course, since all the trip was exotic to me).

Viet Nam

Oh! Ohhh! Beautiful beautiful country. But so shockingly poor. We called at two ports: Nha Trang - a tourist resort replete with postcard-quality palm beaches; and Ho Chi Minh City, alias Saigon. Two different but equally charming cities. Nha Trang is as poor as they get. Run-down is the name of the game. Cost of living is, as one may imagine, incredibly low, so US$1.00 can get you anywhere, anything, anyhow. Amidst the luxury of a cruise vacation, it was definitely sobering to see how lucky we all are. Children begging in appallin
g states of hunger. The look of poverty and desperation on the faces of many of the inhabitants. It put everyone in a very sombre mood, even while taking in as much of the beautiful landscape as we possibly could in one day.

Saigon is different. More relatively affluent. But more congested. Pollution everywhere. The city is vibrant, still in some ways living in the sixties. The effect of the war seems to be waning, from the little I saw, although the war is of course primarily responsible for the poverty of the country. Viet Nam is a Thailand in the making. Give it ten years. [I, for one, prefer it now, relatively unspoiled by us greedy tourists.]

We ended our cruise by a short visit to Singapore (the contrast with Viet Nam couldn't have been starker - everything is picture-perfect in Singapore, where the government maintains order by imposing stiff fines on every trivial violation. Don't even think of picking up a flower, throwing a piece of paper away, walking off the pavement - you'll get fined on the spot.). The British influence, as in Hong Kong, is still there, permeating the tiny republic, starting from the sumptuous Raffles Hotel through to the work ethos of the people.

And that concluded our blitz through Asia, final port of call being Bangkok, where we disembarked for a last two days of roaming around prior to getting our flights back home (18 hours flying, thank you very much). We obviously did as much of the worn tourist track as we humanly could in the limited time available, but unfortunately we didn't have any spare time to roam off the beaten track. Our experience of Bangkok was thus limited to the postcard images of the Grand Palace, the riverside, and so on and so forth.

I must say, though, that there was one major factor in Asia that threatened to sully the trip. I have to thread carefully here, lest I be read as being racist or anti-Asian or anything. Far from it. I fell in love with the contine
nt, and what I'm about to say would apply to most countries in the world. However, given that westerners are easily identifiable as tourist non-Asians by our physionomy, these scams are perhaps easier to implement there than, say, in Switzerland.

What I'm referring to is the endemic trend to fleece tourists mercilessly. The amount of scams, ranging from "mere" overpricing to the legally criminal, that we encountered made our trip seem like a game of space invaders, with us constantly dodging waves of marauders. Whichever purchase we attempted, it seemed we were charged tenfold what a local would be charged. Now I appreciate that haggling is a way of life in most of the countries (and it was fun too - truth be told - to refine our haggling skills and compete as to how much we could bring a given price down!), but still the tourists' unfamiliarity with the cost of living in any given country gives ample scope to unscrupulous sellers to get away with murder.

And then there are the notorious Bangkok jewellery-scams. We were targeted by one such band - I suppose due to our practically advertising our "touristdom" by snapping away with a camera - wherein an English-speaking (VERY unusual for Asia), well-dressed gentleman purportedly working for a government office and being on lunch break, advised us to make the most of our day in Bangkok and visit a few cultural sites by tuk-tuk (the motorbike cabs). He offered to help with the language, writing the locations we would visit in Thai on a piece of paper and telling the driver not to overcharge us, and in fact we were driven for one hour for a mere 50 pence! At the first site, a charming (if not outstanding) Buddhist shrine, we "casually" met another well-dressed, English-speaking gentleman who got us talking about our experience in Thailand so far. When we "casually" showed him the slip of paper with the locations to visit, he exclaimed that the next loc
ation we were to visit was a jewellery-store selling, for a 7-day period only, at incredibly low factory prices. He proceeded to show us a receipt which he fortuitously had in his wallet, for a collier that he had bought for his wife only the day before at an unbelievable price.

At this point, the undersigned being the suspecting, difficult-to-trust-anyone-at-first bloke that he is (ahime!), alarm-bells went off in my head. We did go to the store in question, where said alarm sounds became deafening. We walked out, not without desperate attempts by the "salesmen" to get us to buy something "special" - and upon checking at the first internet cafe, we confirmed that the jewellery store in question was the site of a renowned jewellery-scam operating in Thailand.

So if anyone reading this intends to visit Bangkok, beware of anyone speaking English who casually approaches you offering guidance through the city.

Dire warnings aside, though, this sampling of Asia was an incredible adventure for my wife and me, bringing us into close contact with a civilisation we had never encountered before. As eye-openers go, this was hard to beat - showing us that what for us is the accepted way of life, is merely one of the many cultures abounding around the world.

Oh dear, what a pathetic ending to this piece. Of course I cannot do the region justice with any conclusion, short of pictures (but dooyoo won't let me do that...). But if you ever do visit anywhere in Asia, be prepared for the experience of a lifetime. Just leave your western-ness behind!

Summary: