Why We Don’t Like Some Places We Travel
Monday, May 24th, 2010On couchsurfing.com there is a thread on a forum with people talking about places they didn’t like and why. After reading a few posts, a very funny couchsurfing friend who I shall call the “Green Lady of England” finally let loose with this rant.
O gawd lets all moan. I’ll join in. Trouble with the world is that it’s so damn cluttered with all these bloody poor people. Some of them steal. Some of them stare. Some of them just don’t know how to behave around tourists. And they seem to hang around and clutter up the most beautiful places, ie precisely the places we want to visit and where we like to spend our money how we want (mine, typically, on copious amounts of ice cream, chips and rugs). Damn the lot of them. I’m staying home from now on where I only have to do daily battle with the bloody neighbours and the surly staff on the trains and in the shops. You know where you stand in England – we all keep our expectations low in anticipation of disappointment. Works for us.
Karrrrggghhhh
The Green Lady really made me laugh! One person can love a place and the next person can’t stand it…usually for an isolated experience that is specific to that person. I think many of what we term bad experiences are largely due to attitude. If we are traveling to truly experience the reality of another country then we have to accept that these experiences are just part of the learning how other people live… inconveniences and all. In 10 years of constant travel, having my computer stolen on the Prague subway was the only experience I would call bad…mainly because of the trouble in replacing it because it was a MAC.
And a WHOLE lot of other things happened too..a teacher strike in Oaxaca that paralyzed the city for months…and I just returned from Thailand where the entire shopping area and business districts were paralyzed for 6 weeks with up to 100,000 demonstrators that ended in 3 days of rioting that burned down the second largest shopping mall in Asia and at least 25 other buildings and the burning of thousands of tires that turned the city black…and the deaths of 80+ people including 2 journalists…one Italian and one Japanese. And others critically wounded. And a curfew that is still in place. Imagine having to be in your hotel from 9pm until 6am. When one up-country demonstrator asked why they burned down Central World he answered that he has no sympathy for the store owners. We have no money, he said. “Do you understand?”
This is the reality of the poor up-country farmers in Thailand in the face of institutional corruption. Not that I support all the violence. And some backpackers are grousing in the CS Bangkok Group! I remember a couple with 2 small children in Oaxaca City who stopped me to ask what was going on. They were quite angry as they were stepping around burned tires in the intersections. Knowing what the lives of the poor mountain people were like, I had no sympathy for them.
But I just choose to not consider these bad experiences. I am a guest in these countries. They are not there to accommodate me. Although the one thing that does irritate me are the topless women on the beach in Thailand because it is so disrespectful of the locals who really don’t like it but would never say anything.
Happy Travels Everyone!
Zoe