Date: Fri 23-Jul-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: JEFF

Quick Words:

Travel-reporter's-Notebook

Full Text:

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: The Unhappy Tourist: When Traveling Becomes Trampling

B Y J EFF W HITE

He was an American "backpacker," what New Zealanders call all independent

travelers who tramp around with their lives compressed into large bags of

rip-stop nylon on their backs. For the sake of anonymity, I will call him Ed.

He was in his early 20s, tall, with sandy-blond hair.

As the day's waning light cast shadows onto Mahinapua -- a town with a

population of around 30, on the west coast of New Zealand's south island -- Ed

stumbled through the door of Mahinapua's only hotel.

The hotel, of course, was not so much a hotel as it was a conglomerate of

tepee-style bunk houses, with one working shower that wheezed and spit out

glacier-cold water.

Ed did not look like he was having a good time. He looked cold and

disappointed, as if he expected Mahinapua to be the Eden all New Zealand was

supposed to be.

However, the shower was too cold for Ed, his room's heater was not hot enough,

there were a few bugs in the bathroom sink, and the price of his night's

lodging did not include a cooked breakfast (the room cost US $3). He

complained, not hysterically, but persistently and adamantly. The hotel staff

of one, a Maori woman named Sarah, looked overwhelmed.

At one point, our rugged traveler very matter-of-factly justified his

insistent irascibility. He said to Sarah, "People like me keep you in

business."

It was a comment of remarkable rudeness and audacity, I remember thinking. But

Sarah went about and fixed things the best she could. When all was

satisfactory, and Ed swaggered off to bed, she stood behind her counter and

shook her head.

There is a remarkable constant on the road these days: you can always pick a

Canadian backpacker out of a group of travelers because of the maple leaf. It

will always be stitched somewhere, be it on a backpack, parka, or shirt

sleeve.

I have asked why this is, why all Canadians feel the need to distinguish

themselves in this manner. I have almost always received the same answer. "We

don't want to be mistaken for Americans," they say.

And more often than not, I have seen, on the road, why they might want to take

such precautions. American travelers are viewed internationally as pushy,

impatient, at times even intolerant. We spend much of our time picking out

what is different from home, rendering such discrepancies as exemplars of

inferior cultures.

We often have an attitude that red carpets ought to be kept in an empty hanger

at whatever airport we arrive. In short, we reduce ourselves to Ed in

Mahinapua.

I am not exempt, mind you. At times, I have walked too heavily through

different cultures, groaning at differences, bugs, and broken heaters. But I

do reflect afterwards and wonder why I would have expected things otherwise.

I am confident that more Americans than not embrace differences when abroad,

take things with grains of salt, approach bunk houses with open minds. But

there is still a perception out there. Maple leafs continue to be sewn onto

backpacks.

Despite my confidence, I read things that make me wonder. I picked up the

"Back to School" issue of Abercrombie and Fitch Quarterly the other day and

read their tale of "typical Americans" on a tour of England.

Sure, A&F Quarterly is ultimately a clothing catalog, meant to do one thing:

sell both the clothes and the image. Judging by the number of high school and

college students who wear the clothes, they are doing a ripping good job.

But in that particular issue, there is something distressing in the

Abercrombie travelers' impression of the British, a "backward" population,

"brimming with brain-hemorrhaged alcoholics," as they post the question,

"Where else can you score points with girls who are used to a life of kissing

cavities, just by smiling?"

Yes the catalog -- which uses a trip to London as its setting, and takes every

opportunity to show how our "English cousins" fail to stack up -- is purely

marketing. But isn't there something roiling beneath the surface here?

Tourism is the world's number one industry, and each summer thousands of

American high school and college students get their hands on an Eagle Creek

backpack, a Eurorail pass, and set off. These same kids are Abercrombie's

target market.

There is a tendency for American travelers to constantly differentiate, to

compare and contrast. The danger in always observing what is different is that

these variances can bolster ethnocentric arrogance.

It is a "you'd-never-see- that -back-home, we-saved-your-butt-in-WWII,

be-thankful-for-my-business" mentality. It is manifested in Abercrombie's new

catalog, it was alive and well in Ed on that cold New Zealand night. It causes

our Canadian neighbors to say "hold on just a minute, we're not like them ."

When we act surprised at differences in other countries, does that not imply

that we expected things to be the same as at home? And if so, what does this

ultimately say? We need to ask ourselves why Abercrombie chose to market its

fall line of clothes in an "us versus them" manner. I am sure they had a good

reason.

Do we embrace variation as the reason why we would want to travel in the first

place, or do we shake hands with Ed, expecting hot showers and bug-free sinks?