An Aussie dude decides to backpack all the way from Australia to Switzerland avoiding any air travel. Along the way, he encounters many other backpackers as well as impoverished hustlers trying to take advantage of First Worlder’s and their relatively large fortunes. Some offer to be his free tour guide only to lead him to a particular shop where they press him to buy a suit. Another grabs his bag and loads it on to a train and then demands money. Interestingly enough, I came across such a hustler in London. As I arrived at Piccadilly Circus from the train station, a middle-aged yob approached me and started talking to me. I could see that he didn’t have anything on him to try to sell me, and he didn’t outright ask for change, so I was game. We chatted for a little. I told him I was visiting from America and used to live in London. Then he asked if he could take my photo with my phone for money. I literally felt like punching him and looked around, but ultimately, my common sense got the better of me, and I just walked off hugely disappointed and annoyed.
English people aren’t particularly friendly to strangers on the streets, and I was by myself meandering around London, so I honestly thought I had lucked out on some bored English bloke who just wanted some company for a bit. But you have to be a lot more understanding of Southeast Asian hustlers who probably could feed their family for a week for a couple dollars. Imagine if Swiss tourists came to America, and you could drive them around for the day and they would pay you $500. There’d be a bunch of Americans waiting for them at every train station and port just like there are a bunch of Southeast Asians waiting at every station and port to drive around rich First World tourists. I guess Third World folks have every right to try to hustler First World tourists since their countries have been hustled by the First World paying cents on the dollar for their valuable natural resources or cheap labor, inflating their currencies by fault of their stronger economies, etc. Who’s hustling whom?
Funny, I mentioned this as I just read about the dude being scammed in Beijing. A couple approach him and tell him they want to practice their English, so they take him to a café where the three of them are charged $120 for three coffees and biscuits. Of course, he only had to pay $40, his share, but of course, it’s a scam. I would have dropped $10 and walked out and punched anyone trying to stop me. He paid up, but he later went back and got his money back, rather surprisingly. But then he goes back to try to find the couple. It’s such a horrible thing that scammers try to take advantage of people who are most vulnerable, foreigners who know nothing about the place or customs. But this is nothing new. Out west, there were countless scammers taking advantage of young men trying to get rich gold and silver mining. The biggest scam of all were the gambling halls where savvy, skilled gamblers could easily lighten the burden of gold from naïve, young men either through legitimate play or cheating depending on their skill or lack thereof.
I read a book once where they said any large upheaval results in people being scammed, as nobody knows the new rules and customs of the upheaval. There were a lot of scammers at the advent of the Industrial Age with all the naïve, illiterate farm boys and girls moving to big cities where they knew nobody. In China, the same thing is playing out with hundreds of millions of farm boys and girls moving to the big cities for factory jobs. Many girls being unwitting victims of sex trafficking. Imagine a young Aussie or American woman visiting China for the first time and having some couple approach her at a train station and taking her to a café where she’s charged $40 for coffee and biscuits. I can certainly understand how women are much more cautious and untrusting than men. This dude got his money back, probably because his beard made him look like he could do some damage to the café and their owners or workers.
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Perhaps the most shocking thing to me about travel books is just how racist travelers can be, those who just visit for a few days and even those who visit for years. One would think that someone willing to visit or live in a foreign nation would be a little openminded. I mean, if they hated Chinese people or Africans or Arabs, why on Earth would they go to China, Africa, or the Middle East? There are a lot of racists who never step foot out of their countries, because they don’t want to. They think their culture is superior, and they have no interest whatsoever in meeting anyone of any other culture much more going to their countries and being surrounded by them. So why on earth would a racist go travel to a country where they think they’re superior to everyone else?
One answer is that they want to feel more superior. There is nothing to make you feel more superior than visiting or living in a poor culture. Coming from a First World country, having more money, being taller and in many cases having fairer skin which is considered superior in many cultures (surprisingly and unfortunately), you are treated like royalty. And of course, you have to justify in your mind why you are being treated so well, so naturally, you look down upon everyone around you as inferior, poorer, lowly, undeserving of better or equal treatment, etc. It’s an ego trip. A lot of short Americans, Europeans, and Australians go to Pacific Asia to get dates whereas in their native lands, they get passed over for taller guys. I honestly can’t blame them. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they respect the Pacific Asian women. Many won’t admit it, but it’s shocking when they do and how much they look down upon the poorer natives. I can’t stand the old bigoted concept of uncivilized savages. During the Spanish Inquisition, so-called civilized Spaniards committee far greater atrocities against humans than so-called savages in the New World or Africa. World War II proved that the civilized were the greatest savages by committing genocide in the millions and murdering millions of civilians.
Certainly, many travelers start off open-minded but then are overwhelmed by the culture shock and eventually convert all their frustrations into a hatred or antipathy toward the locals. Perhaps they have no idea just how much they would stick out and be treated differently, and instead of immersing themselves in the culture, they are reminded everyday that they do not belong, that they’re outsiders, so they just get fed up and turn against the locals, over-generalizing and treating them exactly the way they are treated.
When I visited Korea, I was rather surprised at how much the foreigners hung out with each other and seemed to bond with each other, but it really wasn’t of their own doing. I’m sure many of them wanted to mingle with the locals and have local friends, but in Korean society, you it’s not easy to make friends outside of school and work. You just don’t go up to strangers and start talking and then agree to go hang out. This is a rarity. Their karaoke reflects much of their nightlife. You go out with people you already know and spend time with them and not mingling with strangers. Local bars are actually quite rare in Korea. There is no neighborhood bar with a Norm, regular character. Koreans don’t even hang out at bars. They go drinking with people they already know at restaurants and hang out at tables. I went to a restaurant once with a bar, and I was the only one at the bar.
The only place where you go to hang out at a bar with strangers is, naturally called a ‘Western bar.’ There, it’s not odd to sit at the bar by yourself and start up a conversation with another loner at the bar. It’s also not odd to hit on women at the bar whereas in a Korean restaurant, you couldn’t even hit on a woman, because they’d all be sitting down at a table with people they already know. It’s only natural then that the foreigners wind up hanging out with foreigners and the locals only hang out with locals, unless, somehow you actually end up dating one. It is easy then to see how your time in Korea would be spent viewing the world as an us (foreigner) vs them mentality. It would then be easy to form stereotypes and negative views about them while ignoring stereotypes and having positive views about us.
By the same token, in America, you always see foreigners hanging out at bars with other foreigners. They must think that they’re at home. If only they would have the courage to go out by themselves, they’d realize that in America, everyone at bars are friendly and willing to talk to strangers and form spontaneous friendships and hangout groups, especially out west. I have to think the reason for this is that out west, people move there and leave their social support networks, so they need to quickly form new groups and friendships. Bars out west were probably the most convenient place to do this, so it’s an expectation that at least out west, you go to a bar alone but you leave with many new friends and numbers.
I guess, one of the cool things you learn by not properly preparing and not having a lot of money is that there are so many people willing to help you out for free or for little reimbursement. It’s sad to think that at one time, we were more of a mutual benefit society and mentality that has been replaced in large part by the religion of government and believing that we no longer have to help or even be kind to our fellow humans, because we pay taxes, and government should help them out. Surprisingly, in many poor countries, government isn’t the bloated nanny state it is in First World countries, so people do actually subscribe to the old-fashioned idea of mutual benefit society and mentality. While certainly, the First World has its better healthcare, air conditioning, sanitation, and luxury amenities, it lacks perhaps what matters more, human connection and interdependence. I really think a lot of people travel to poorer countries and discover a world where they are materially impoverished but so much more socially enriched. They realize the big lie. They’ve been told to study and work hard so they become materially enriched, but in the process, become socially impoverished and find life to be empty and meaningless, visited upon occasionally by brief serotonin bumps from shopping, drinking, doing drugs, and eating.
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