Reality Check Needed

[RedMileDJ]

nm

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by darklord700

Well, I can't live without running water, modern plumbing, internet connection and other creature comfort that my life has afforded me so far. Actually rather than I can't it's more like I'm not willing to give them up in exchange for someting else.

You can easily travel the world without giving this up entirely. You might pay a little more but it doesn't mean you have to stay at the Ritz or local Westin. Think of coming to Calgary and staying at a Travelodge. I'd recommending doing this for your 1st trip to put your concerns at "ease". Might lead you to going cold turkey - at a minimum it's still getting you out to see the world....

One of my favourite things in life is travelling to a far away place, experiencing that culture shock and having it set me and my priorities straight when I get back home.

I think this is one of the best things about travel. In Hanoi I met a woman working at a restaurant who worked 7 days a week, 12 hours a day for about 50 cents per day. But she did it with a smile, and was fast and efficient - but boy did she work hard doing pretty much everyhting. When you see people like that it puts Calgary and the wealth we have into perspective... you learn to become happier with with you have instead of lusting for the best of the best and trying to keep up with what you "think" is necessary.

I've often thought that people in the world must think that that "westerners" are so damn SOFT! Wanting special water and food, air conditioning, and all these amenities.... You kind of feel embarassed when you buy a bottle of Nestle La Vie water for the same price that feeds a local for 3 days... Or you go to a hotel room that an entire family would normally cram into.

Travel (especially to non 1st world western countries) truly does change your perspective on things - as long you're the contemplative type. I have a friend who's idea of travel is Phoenix/Vegas when you travel for a "good time" and whom fine dining is Montanas. Pretty closed minded as to what the world and life should be. The concept of being a traveller is completely lost to him and frankly, wasted on him. You can see that in some of that in earlier comments in this thread....

Yeah, reverse culture shock is definitely a thing. I went to Australia to visit a friend 2 weeks before coming home. I think this helped a lot since I was in a western country with expensive prices and English speakers everywhere, but I was still away from home. So this "transition country" helped. I think I would have been way more messed up coming straight back from Cambodia or Thailand to Calgary.

LOL, I had a friend that went through this (unfortunately with work I've never been able to get away for more than 4 weeks). "Argumentative" is the word he used to describe it. He said coming from asia he found himself constantly trying to haggle prices when he came back. He'd walk into a store/restaurant like Starbucks and automatically want to pitch a price 20% less because that's what he was used to doing in Asia. That and the storekeeper was always trying to hose the whitey with the tourista premium.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

Y
I think this is one of the best things about travel. In Hanoi I met a woman working at a restaurant who worked 7 days a week, 12 hours a day for about 50 cents per day. But she did it with a smile, and was fast and efficient - but boy did she work hard doing pretty much everyhting. When you see people like that it puts Calgary and the wealth we have into perspective... you learn to become happier with with you have instead of lusting for the best of the best and trying to keep up with what you "think" is necessary.

What I've been amazed by in my travels is how genuinely hospitable people are once you get a bit off the beaten track. Being invited to eat meals with families, or even spend the night in their home with only a few hours acquaintance. Can you imagine Calgarians inviting a Turkish traveler they met at Prince's Island into their home for dinner and a bed for the night? A truck driver offering to give a couple backpackers from Slovakia a ride to Vancouver 15 minutes after meeting them? There's almost an inverse relationship between how affluent people are and how open-handed and trusting they are.

[FurnaceFace]

I've spent part of today going through your entire blog. Really enjoyed reading about the stans and some other areas I'm unlikely to travel to. Your experiences are awesome, I can't imagine biking as much of Vietnam. Your patience through the difficulties of traveling in off the beaten path places is impressive. I'm happy you were able to go on a trip like this. I think travelling on your own is a right of passage everyone should undertake at least once.

Cliff has an interesting point about hospitality. I think in our culture we are more apt to assume people are self sufficient where other cultures this is less so. I suspect people who have travelled are more in tune and more open to helping. Small example but walking to the train on Friday I happened to notice a couple who had backpacks, their phone out, and we're looking around. Sure enough, they needed directions to a bus which required my navigating the transit website to get them directed. Lots of other people had passed by them without helping but having been there before many times myself, I stopped.

Back on point, awesome trip Worth, you should do some presentations/talks about your trip.

[worth]

The Stans to me seem so foreign now. I can imagine being back there in Bishkek or Tashkent and it's sort of hard to believe I was there. I organized some of my pictures last night. The first time I've seen them since taking the photos back in August/Sept. Hopefully by the weekend i'll be ready to post some up.

On the hospitality thing, you guys are dead on. I Hitchhiked through Turkey ad got bought breakfast and lunches and tea. I cycled through Vietnam and got offered beer and rice wine and tea, everyone in Thailand is so smiley, in central Asia I drank enough vodka to never want to return (almost) and was fed everywhere I went. People would give me their phone numbers even though they could hardly speak a lick of English and tell me to call them if I needed help. And they genuinely meant it. I have a notebook full of phone numbers of random strangers offering help.

The other thing, in a lot of other countries, it is really easy to spot who's a tourist, and who isn't. In western countries it can be a lot harder because of our multicultural background. I stick out like a sore thumb in rural Uzbekistan. But an Uzbek in Canada is not necessarily an odd thing. I think if Canada was a homogeneous society, and tourists were coming here, we'd react much more in the same way that we find others do to us. That being said, I met plenty of people that wanted to hang out with me on their weekend off or show me around, and i'm not sure I can say that I would want to do that for some random person. It is an interesting thing to think about and how it relates to your own life.

[CliffFletcher]

A lot of countries still have a very traditional attitude towards hospitality that goes back to the times when people mostly lived in isolated communities. Travelers were interesting people because they brought news, and they would return to the rest of the world with news about your community. So if you were the household who hosted a traveler for a meal or an overnight stay, it reflected well on you within our community. And if you treated people well, news would spread outside the community. "The people of [town XYZ] are honorable and hospitable people."

And people in countries that the Western media has a negative or wary attitude towards (such as Turkey) are aware of that reputation, and are really keen in dispelling it by being friendly and helpful (I've heard Iran is one of the most hospitable places in the world).

Some countries also have very strong social norms around eating. Meals are a communal, social activity, and you just don't eat a meal without offering to share it. I spent the morning at a restaurant in Turkey once. It was the off-season, and the restaurant was dead, so I just had a bowl of soup and spent the next two or three hours writing letters and reading the newspaper. I'd nod and say a few words to the waiters/owners once in a while. Lunch time rolls around, they're all about to eat, and they slap a bowl of spaghetti on my table. At some point, I went from being a patron of their restaurant to being a guest, and they would not eat without feeding a guest also.