Lonely planet my ass
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Last week, I was in Bangkok, my first visit there. Since I was traveling in uncharted waters, took along a copy of every international traveler’s favorite travel aid, the Lonely Planet guide. Accordingly, my first trip in the city was to one of the book’s recommended highlights, the Wat Phra Kaew, or The Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Once I got there, discovered that a few million other tourists had the exact same brainwave as I did that morning, and unsurprisingly, a good number of them clutched the exact same Lonely Planet guide in their sweaty palms as I did. I made the most of it, however, and shoved and jostled with the best of them to get a view of the Emerald Buddha, which is actually made of jade and while splendid and all, is best viewed on a postcard. I’m not a religious person, but being in large cavernous spaces triggers in me an intense desire to meditate. I duly settled down in a corner, fixed my gaze on the Buddha, and lapsed into a reverie. When I opened my eyes, the Buddha had been replaced with the single word ‘NAUTICA’, which after a moment of reflection turned out to be the label on the substantial backside of a very substantial tourist. Now you know where the inspiration for the title of this post came from.
The thing to realize here is that Bangkok is full of temples. You can scarcely throw an amulet without hitting a Wat, Chedi or Stupa. There is a temple on almost every street corner, each of them with Buddhas of every imaginable type, style and attitude. There are sitting Buddhas, standing Buddas, and reclining Buddhas. You can find the Buddha meditating, pacifying the demons of the earth, pacifying the ocean, or pacifying mankind. We’re talking serious Buddha territory here. I mean, the guy owns the hood. Yet, such is the tourist herd mentality that if you go to any temple not mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide book, you will find hardly any tourists there. In fact, you will find hardly anyone at all because the absence of tourists drives away others who depend on their business. Chastened by the Emerald Buddha experience, I meandered around to the Wat Pari Nayok, a temple recommended by a Random Friendly Dude on the street. It was a small temple, but there was no one inside the building, or even on the grounds. There was a magnificent Sitting Buddha idol, but more importantly, it was peaceful, cool and quiet. I had my moment of meditation, and my epiphany: if it’s in the Lonely Planet guide, avoid it at all costs.
The next day, I took the train to the nearby resort town of Kanchanaburi, where the famous bridge over the river Kwai (or Kwa as the Thais would call it) is situated. I went to the bridge, walked over it, and found a nice little restaurant on the other side. There was no one in the restaurant, so I had to wake up the girl running the place, who was fast asleep in a hammock slung next to the counter. Got a can of Singha, walked over to the best seat in the house right next to the river, and settled down. At this point, I noticed a restaurant right across the river on the opposite bank. Though commanding pretty much the same view, that one was crowded full of tourists. And I mean full. For the next three hours, I did nothing except sit there listening to the mynas and sucking back Singhas. Watched long tailed skiffs shoot across the river, saw some local boys harpooning fish; and saw hordes of tourists march over the bridge, turn around, and march right back into the restaurant on the other side. I’m guessing that restaurant is mentioned in the guide book; guessing because by that time I’d stopped looking at the book. In that whole time, only one person actually ventured down to check out the view from my side. Even that guy just pulled out a camera with a telephoto lens that would give King-Kong penis envy, took a couple of shots and walked briskly away. I saw one person actually crossing the bridge reading the Lonely Planet guide, presumably looking for the exact spot where The Best View From Bridge was to be enjoyed. It’s a guide book, people, not the Holy Bible!
- Thou Shalt Enjoy the View from Scenic Spot.
- Thou Shalt Partake of Ethnic Food from Quaint and (until now) Little-Known Restaurant on Side Street.
It’s amazing how folks would rather recycle someone else’s memories than create their own.
Don’t get me wrong. The Lonely Planet guide book series is a helpful tool. It contains a lot of useful information about local conditions, language, customs and people. Used properly, it is a great resource. But while the places mentioned in the book may leave you feeling a lot of different things, there’s one thing you won’t feel… lonely.
Your experience reminds me of the trip my wife and I took to Hawaii (Kauai) a few years ago. After the first two days, we were ready to lose the tourists and so we changed some plans. We decided on one of the steeper hikes of the Wimea Canyon. It was a bit slushy in parts due to the rains but we were treated to some of the most magnificient views in the island with not another soul in sight. It was a truly memorable experience. Another evening we picked up a local rag and noticed that the entertainment section featured a classical music performance by the local orchestra. We were treated to a very nice classical music performance (with some Hawaiian variations) - and we were only surrounded by locals. After the concert we followed a few of them to a hole-in-the-wall Noodle bar that probably serves the best Ramen Noodle on that island.
Sometimes there are pretty good reasons why a restaurant is empty or why the other one is popular.
Staying for three hours at the restaurant after not having bathed for three days, for instance.
The problem lies in the popularity of these guide books. Ten years ago, LP was known only to a few travelers (as opposed to tourists). Now even your average cruise-going Tae Bo pratcitising grandma consults LP. There is a series called Hidden [insert place name] which purports to reveal to you the very same restaurants that papi scared away tourists from. But if that becomes very popular, how can this remain “hidden?”
I don’t use LP any more for my own travels, not because of the reasons outlined in this entry but because of the fact they have very little to offer to history buffs such as myself. I like to study the history of a place before I set foot on it. Rough Guides do that for me. I do think LP has the best maps though.
You forgot the laughing Buddha.
I didn’t see any laughing Buddhas inside any of the temples, only in souvenir shops. Besides, my statement wasn’t intended as a comprehensive list of all possible styles, since that would be a post all by itself.
Do you guys say “Booda” or “Buddha”? Don’t you think Indians change the pronunciation of Indian words to sound American / English, but people from other countries say words the way they’re said in their respective languages? For example Spanish-speakers don’t soften the “r” sound to sound more English.
The Spanish speaking countries don’t have their own version of English, do they? If we try saying Buddha to someone here (or in most English speaking countries in the world), they won’t understand what we are talking about. Indian English has many quirks that we have to change when in other English speaking countries to be more understood. The problem with “v” and “w” springs to mind. I am sure you do the same too with many words. . . you have corrected my own pronunciation of certain words many times after coming to the US.
God, don’t start attacking me right off the bat, man, what is Rantlust, an attack kinnum blog?
When I said Indians, I didn’t somehow anthropologically remove myself from that category.
Buddha isn’t an Indian English word to begin with. It’s an Indian word, I don’t know which language it comes from, probably Sanskrit, if that’s what was being spoken there 600-700BC.
I’m sure in Spanish speaking countries, there are people who speak English (duh). Do they change their pronunciations of Spanish words for Americans? I don’t think so. But even if Americans have a problem understanding, it goes on and on till the word is in American English with the Spanish pronunciation and accent, and not an Americanized version. Maybe I’m generalizing way too much, there might be tons of words which have become Americanized. But to my non-expert ears, I do hear stuff on the radio said in English, with the Spanish words spoken with a remarkable Spanish accent and pronunciation, with no effort to Americanize it.
Plus the v and w is just because people don’t know and are used to talking the way they talk Indian languages, it’s not as if the rules of Indian English say that you should use v for w and vice versa. Anyone who remembers his phonetics class should know this.
They do but that would be the equivalent of Americans speaking Spanish. It’s not a native language but something you learn. Whereas in India, our English has evolved into its own dialect just like Australia, the Caribbean, etc. It’s an official language. If we visited a country like America or England for a brief bit, I am sure we won’t change the pronunciation of “foreign” words like “Buddha” but if you live in one of these places for 10+ years, you tend to adapt the language, culture etc. A good example would be how we (or at least I) use American spellings these days when writing. Same with pronunciation.
That said, I don’t know if the first generation native Spanish speakers will change their pronunciation of Spanish words to suit American tastes even after many years living here. Probably not and you are right in that. But their children might.
I agree that it’s not a written phonetics rule but that doesn’t mean it’s not universal. This is a quirk of Indian English and is here to stay… one of the ways we have diverged from the Queen’s English.
Yes I think most of us who have lived in the US long enough, have changed their spelling to American English. I still on occasion get email admonishments from some Aussie relatives who disapprove of my usage of z (zee, I mean zed) or the lack of a u in words like realize or color respectively.
I do have a good English friend who absolutely refuses to spell English in the American way despite having lived here for nearly a decade. I guess having lost all other positions of global dominance, the last thing the British are clinging to stubbornly is the language, which also is becoming more American-oriented in some ways worldwide.
One absolute fraud is that Deepak Chopra guy. He’s lived here so long but in my opinion, cleverly retains his very strong Indian English accent as part of his effort to convey a more mystical image to his legions of followers. It apparently works as he laughs (Indian accent and all) all the way to the money banks.
Another thing is that I do realize now is that I myself subconsciously change my accent and even usage of words depending on whom I’m speaking with. My accent tends to become more Indian Englished when speaking with some of my Indian friends and more Americanized in general now.
Having grown up in Samoa where the English language and pronunciation is more New Zealand English oriented (”If you stop mucking around and get on it, believe you me that Friday week, I’ll be shouting you lunch”), on my last trip to Apia, an interesting thing happened. Some old friends I grew up with threw a party for madam and me. In the course of conversation, madam was a little stunned to hear my English pronunciation and jargon switch to Samoan-NZ style English and she asked me about it later. It was only then that I realized that it had all came back very naturally to me and I didn’t even notice it until it was pointed out.
I used to be pretty sceptical of Chopra, thinking he was just into making money off TM, and it was all a scam to begin with (what about that tallest building in India where everyone would practise levitation, plus he broke up with his own guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) but I heard an interview on NPR some years ago, his views were pretty cool, non-materialistic. I guess maybe once you’ve made your pile, you can afford to be? But anyway, I have a better opinion of him now.
“I’ll be shouting you lunch” = blowjob?
Sure it’s easy to talk non-materialism when you have everything you need or can get anything you need any time you wanted. In the end, he has made a lot of people happy (including himself) but I still consider him to be a fake. Maybe I need to watch/listen when he is interviewed next time as there may be more to him like you feel.
Trying asking a Samoan that and he’ll be eating you for lunch.
Funny you ask. Just the other day, a colleague of mine was talking about Booda and I found myself saying Booda before correcting myself. Sometimes this change of accent is very subconscious.
By the way kinnum, I think your random divergences from the topic at hand are because you are too lazy to write a blog of your own. So you do the next best thing and usurp other’s blogs.
Maybe the restaurant is not a good one? When I travel, I like to go to restaurants/bars which are filled with people…locals or tourists. That will be a better experience than going to one with nobody in it. And you might even end up meeting someone. When you visit an exotic place, most often the tourists themselves are from different places…places you have never been to. Just because you meet a Mongolian person in Mexico doesn’t mean you should avoid them.
I am not sure how much time you spent in Thailand but to truly experience a place, you have to spend at least a month there. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense to avoid the touristy spots. I am not talking about restaurants in this context but sights such as the temples you mention. They are touristy mostly because of some claim to fame. If you have never been to Paris or Beijing, by all means check out the Eiffel Tower and the Forbidden City when you go there.
Our planet is not lonely and it’s getting less so by the day. Better get used to it until they have books titled “Lonely Mars”, “Lonely Moon” and so on.
Boo, dah.
I was mentioning to Anup when we were in Argentina, while reading all these books that point out where to go to experience real Argentina, etc., etc., that I should write a chapter on Chalai in Trivandrum, in the Lonely Planet Guide to Trivandrum or Kerala, in India. It’s this bazaar which I used to hate as a kid. If it rained the streets were filled with rotting refuse, through which went myriad vehicles of different shapes and sizes, of course splashing mud onto the parts of your body that weren’t already immersed. And even without rain it was a shitty place, literally. But definitely it showed life as it is. Maybe some tourist from some peaceful place with only two people in the whole country would’ve loved it, but I hated it.
In China and Argentina we went through these neighbourhoods that were quaint, quiet, and again showed life as it, or in China, was. The same types of neighbourhoods in Trivandrum would be not considered good areas to live in, but they are there. Same with the backwater canoe cruises nowadays that are the rage in Kerala. I have an aunt who lives on the shore of one of these backwaters, and they fished from the river daily. We used to hate going there as kids.
I know this girl who grew up here in the US, and had to go back to India and actually cried at the prospect of going to one of those squat-down Indian toilets. But she’d probably have no qualms about going camping in the wilderness, and going behind a bush, that’s cool.
I think we’re all looking as tourists to experience life as it actually is in the places we visit, and when we find the majority of people in an area are tourists, we feel we’re missing something. It sounds romantic to go to Italy and spend a week in a remote cottage in Tuscany, getting fresh milk from the person who milked the cow, and not even go see Rome, but it might be boring, too.
One thing that kills a foreign experience is not knowing the language, it sucks that you can’t make conversation with the locals. You somehow come away with a fulfilled feeling when you’ve had a meaningful conversation with a local, the counterpart of whom at home you might not think twice about talking to.
The grass is always greener on the other side, dude.
These days they milk more tourists than cows in Tuscany.
Now it all becomes clearer. kinnum, if my childhood was as traumatic as this, even I would be a bitter old man
I’ve been watching some TV in India and something rather galling I’ve noticed is how they have people say Hindi words with a pronounced American or British accent. These are Hindi programs being marketed to a predominantly Hindi-speaking audience, and they use a foreign accent. Go figure! For example, they have a program called “Ek se bhale do”, which is pronounced something like “ack say ballay doh.”
Here’s a brilliant essay on the whole travel writing genre.