I am a Tourist

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17 May 2001

So friends, today is going to be a “true confessions” episode. Yes, it’s a little embarrassing, but your loyal correspondent, the activist formerly known as a fearless fighter for justice and seeker of truth has morphed into (gasp) … a TOURIST !!

Some of the details are too gruesome to get through the BillGatesGlobalThoughtPolice ® , but here is some damning evidence in the case against me.

First of all, you know the term “Tourist Trap”? Well, that’s no longer acceptable language. Since my metamorphosis, I have come to understand the emotional violence such accusatory language does to people that are just trying to see and do as many scenic vistas, photo opportunities and authentic craft shops as they can handle. Anyway, where to begin the sordid tale …

Perhaps swimming with the seals in Kaikoura, or maybe traipsing up the Franz Joseph Glacier, overrun with a bunch of 19-23 year-olds traveling on the notorious Kiwi Experience bus or hanging at the hot springs.

In Kaikoura, we spent our cash to go swimming and snorkeling with seals. Well, how it works is this: you pay your money and get a wetsuit and snorkel. Then the guy takes us to the spot off the public beach that has seals. You know the spot – everybody does, it’s posted on signs and listed in all the guidebooks. But for our cash, someone leads us there in a wetsuit! And then he floats on a board and points to the seals saying helpful things like “Look at the seals!” I, of course, can’t help but imagine the film version of the trip, and the scene, shot from above, with ten little tourists dutifully swimming about the public oceanfront as a pack, following the outstretched arm of our “guide.” Yes folks, we’d had ourselves a tourist experience.

On a more personalized note, have you ever seen the “miniature bungalow” of New Zealand? I thought not. Looking back, it was an important, if hard to explain, part of my tourist conversion. There I was, driving my rental car (reminding myself to stay on the left side of the road) down typically twisty, lonely and well-paved NZ road, when a teeny little sign on one of those tourist sight directional arrows caught my eye: “Miniature Bungalow”. Hmmmm. THIS wasn’t listed in any of the six (6!) guidebooks on NZ I’d been given by friends and family (naturally, I received no books on any of the other 7 countries on my itinerary, so have found myself utterly lost everywhere else).

So, in a blindingly, lightning-fast reaction, I stopped the car, executed a 3-point-turn to go back to the turn-off I’d missed, and followed the arrow. And followed it, and kept going a little farther and just as my confidence was waning, there it was! Or, at least I thought that must be it … there wasn’t anything else around for miles (oops, I mean km) around, and I felt like I’d certainly driven far enough, for cryin’ out loud, so this had better be it. And it was. A small bungalow, well, actually not a true bungalow, which as all housing and banking people know, is a term commonly misused to describe any old one-story house … but I digress.

So, there was the miniature bungalow. It was small, for a bungalow, but seemed large, to me, for a miniature. I was expecting a “dollhouse-on-steroids”, but this was more like oompa-loompa size. I took it as sort of a lesson in humility and not being locked into pre-conceived notions. So there it was: the miniature bungalow. It seemed to be simply but nicely furnished, as we saw through the semi-curtained windows (it was locked up). There was also a small schoolhouse in the 3-building complex, and the plaque on the outside informed us that the miniature bungalow had been designed and built by the schoolchildren, with help from several local carpenters (I forget their names). It wasn’t clear why it had been built or what, if anything, it was now used for now. You say that’s a bit too much detail for a miniature bungalow of uncertain meaning or significance? You may have a point, but I had been there, done that, and how many people could make the same claim?!? Yes, the rallying cry of a tourist.

Then, also in New Zealand, there was the National Marae. The marae is an important part of indigenous Maori culture and society, sort of a combined meeting hall, ancestral homeland and anchor of an iwi or tribe. Several guidebooks spoke well of this marae and I wanted to get a range of experiences of Maori culture, so I called to reserve slots for hanggi (traditional dinner) and the cultural show. They called it the “Night of Maori Magic”, which started some alarm bells going off in my head. But, deafened by my new tourist sensibility, I went ahead and booked. The dinner was fine, but served by a white-looking man with Maori henna tattoos drawn onto his face with magic marker. Alarm bells getting louder. The cultural show included several hakas (Maori dance/rituals used to challenge, welcome and otherwise size up situations or send messages to outsiders), which, being a tourist, I thought was pretty cool. Then came the audience participation portion, in which teaching us the Maori words for various body parts suddenly turned into … the hokey-pokey. I mean, really ... could the chicken dance be far behind? The kernel of integrity remaining under my tourist cloak felt queasy. Then came getting the men to follow a leader to do parts of the haka, up on stage, that deteriorated into aping and armpit scratching. It all wound up with the crowd being told we could take pictures with the performers, all included in the admission fee. I felt dirty, which I now take as a sign that my conversion was not yet complete.

Fast forward to Australia and my continued descent into tourist degradation (yes, I promise to keep it shorter). First there was the weekend stay at an island resort that included several people greeting our boat, waving in floral shirts and giving us an orientation to the resort’s departments (e.g. the water sports desk, “where you can book any water-based activities” and reception where you pay your bill and can sign up for the meal package). I suppose I can be forgiven this one since it was my companion’s birthday, but c’mon … overpriced parasailing, windsurfing, archery, free drinks at the “welcome first night guests sunset pavilion” is a bit debauched. Later, intermingled with the volunteer work and other legitimate activity, was the overpriced day-trip by plane to a coral reef island to snorkel.

But really, the tale I’d started out to tell was about the jumping crocodiles and hand-feeding swarms of fish.

I know large numbers of fish are said to be traveling in ‘schools,’ but that is far too tame and civilized a term for these babies. In a school, one presumes some sort of order and decorum – perhaps even a schoolmarm. Nothing doing in Darwin at high tide, where you pay your ticket and get to hand-feed bread to huge numbers of swarming, battling, jostling hungry fish. At first I saw people doing this and was mildly amused. After a bit, I ventured down the stairs and, knee-deep in the ocean, dangled some bread on the surface of the water and watched these fish fight for the bread in my hand. As I watched one 2-foot-long milkfish come from one direction, another swooped (if a fish can swoop) past and grabbed the bread – and my finger! Here I am in a foreign country with a milkfish sucking on my finger. All for only $5.50(Aus). I burst out laughing.

Also in Darwin, we went to see the “jumping crocodiles,” which consists of going out in a small boat on the Adelaide River with someone dangling hunks of pig heads on a string to lure the crocs into jumping for the food and everyone on the boat crowds the side to get the photo. Can you say “tourist”? How about “interference with the natural ecosystem and feeding patterns of crocodiles”? But, I’m now a tourist, and I got a kick out of it. Especially when a huge sea eagle swooped past to snare some food dangled off the side of the boat.

In Bali, Indonesia, (where I was kicked out of the ocean by lifeguards … reminded me of Rogers Park) we took a “cultural tour” that seemed to consist primarily of being dragged from place to place to buy authentic native cultural handicrafts that were specially made, on-site (“antiques made-to-order”) for tourist consumption. At each stop, except for the temples, which seem to be sincerely revered, someone would follow us around pushing us to buy and offering “good price.” And hawkers everywhere, pushing, pushing, pushing something. We were the only 2 people on the group tour, and we kept asking our guide to stop at one of the many little fruit carts on the side of the road, thinking we’d prefer some fresh fruit to having to eat at the tourist restaurant at the volcano. Our tour guide, who up until then seemed a nice a friendly guy, suddenly became deaf. It took four or five times of asking about stopping for fruit for him to acknowledge he heard us. He didn’t want to stop, of course, because he gets a cut of what we spend at the pre-selected stops. When we bugged him enough, he eventually stopped at a vendor that charged us 25,000Rp for fruit that should have had a street price of about 2,000. He became less and less chatty as he realized we weren’t going to buy random stuff at all these stops.

Bali, in general, seems to be struggling with its take-over by foreign tourism. Fully 50% of its economy is now tourism. It is sold to outsiders as “cultural tourism,” which commodifies an unchanging “tradition,” but has turned the corner into a “culture of tourism,” with every significant road lined with shops selling “authentic” stuff that is produced exclusively for tourist consumption. And because people buy it, the same figurines and sarongs and jewelry are mass produced (by hand), including stuff that’s based on Borneo or African or even Native American culture. Some of it is just imported into Bali and then exported via tourists, so half of the island has become something of an import-export shop.

In our (and Bali’s) defense, I should mention that we were in Legian, a more commodified area, because we’d been asked by one of our Australian WorldWideWorker hosts to get her some stuff that she resells in her local market. She had given us names of people from whom to buy pearls, blankets, scarves, hairpins, etc. But none of the people were where she’d said and we ended up spending much of three days running someone else’s shopping errands.

When we got out of Legian to a more remote coast, we were greeted by representatives of about half the available rooms-for-rent. We eventually got across that we wanted to look around and compare places to stay and ended up getting a tour of all the places, followed by a crowd of 14 people. It became a bit of a joke as people called out, in English, “Number 3” as we looked at our third lodging option. Others called out to us from their places “I’m number 5”. When we made our decision, to stay in relative luxury (a fridge in the room, no AC or hot water for $US6), the crowd laughed that we’d chosen “number 1”.

Well. There’s more but …. Gotta go.

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