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.
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