Asian Travels: The Magic is still herePrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
“You have been traveling in Asia since the 1960s. That's a long time. It must have been great then."
This, more or less, is what I hear from people I meet for the first time after they learn I have been around Asia that long. Sometimes I might be accommodating and say: "Yeah, it was great." Or maybe, if we have the time and I find them serious, I will tell them more exactly how I feel.
When this happens, I like to start with an anecdote, like the time Thai Airways International sent me to Bali to do a series of articles to make this Indonesian island paradise known to the world. THAI was about to inaugurate the first jet service to the island.
"We've got to put Bali on the tourist map," Chatrachai Bunya-Ananta, who was then marketing manager and who later became the president of THAI, said earnestly, "Go do your thing."
It was a big assignment, and an important one. But I was worried. What could I possibly write about Bali that would inspire the world? Who, except a chosen few, knew anything about the island? There were no guidebooks, no pamphlets, no tourist brochures. What could I write that would make people take notice?
I did know one man, Swiss artist Theo Meier, who had lived for 23 years on Bali. He certainly could tell me about Ball's magic. I travelled up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to visit him.
"You're too late," Theo said when I saw him. "Bali has changed. It isn't what it used to be." And then Theo went on to tell how wonderful the island was twenty or thirty years ago. He made the changes sound terrible.
I went to Bali anyway. Of course, I had to. I was on assignment. I travelled overland across Java from Jakarta, and then took the ferry to Bali, convinced I would not like the place. But when the bus stopped along the roadside near Denpasar, and we all got out to let a religious procession pass, and a Balinese lady came and sprinkled flower petals over the hood, at that moment I fell in love with Bali.
I forgot everything Theo had told me. Bali was everything I dreamed paradise could be, and even more. What did it matter what Bali was like twenty years ago? This was my Bali, at that moment. And when people visit Bali today and a religious procession passes down the road, and they stop to watch it, then this is their experience, to cherish for their lifetime. No one can take that away.
The lesson I learned from this has been invaluable to me. This business of change is a traveller's curse. I get tired of hearing it everywhere I travel in Asia.
"You should have been in Singapore ten years ago, before they started urban renewal." "Now take Bangkok, before they started filling in the klongs." "Hong Kong, what a great place, when the only tourists were sailors from a navy ship in port." "Manila, you should have seen it before martial law in '72."
The truth is, I knew Asia before, and from the tourist point of view it wasn't anything like they say it was. When looking back at Asia, we look with nostalgia. What excitement to have visited here then! Let's look back.
Joseph Conrad did much to introduce Asia to the world through his writing. He made it all sound so romantic, even when he wrote about taking over command of a square-rigged sailing ship in Bangkok whose captain had died from fever, and whose crew were all ill in a hospital in Bangkok. What was romantic about that?
Writers taught us much about Asia through the use of flowery phrases that no one questioned. What did they mean when they talked about "serene, unspoilt beauty" and "the languid Orient?"
Singapore became "spoilt" when a Javanese prince decided to make it his capital, long before the first European tourist ever stepped ashore. And what is so "languid" about the Orient, with overcrowded noisy cities buzzing with beehive activity. Perhaps exciting, but not languid.
Bangkok was labelled “Venice of the East.” She was a water town and there were canals, or klongs, everywhere, even along Sathorn Road. Picturesque, yes, but to use them for transportation, hardly. In the dry season they gave off an unhealthy odour. You had to hold a handkerchief over your nose. And the traffic on the river was hodgepodge. There were no scheduled river ferries. You had to negotiate for your boat.
Imagine Bangkok without metered taxis. In the old days you had to bargain a fare before you stepped inside, and it nearly always ended up in an argument in the street.
Look at Bangkok today, with a Skytrain that takes passengers across the city in minutes, and an underground that is both speedy and efficient. Visitors can ride a tutuk but for amusement and not for dependence to get from one place to another. And with those metered taxis, you know you are not at the complete mercy of the driver.
We look at the past as being romantic but is this really want we want? I was set straight a few years ago when a New York magazine editor wrote to me and asked if I would help out a photographer they were sending to Singapore. The photographer turned out to be a cocky young lady who immediately announced that she wanted to "express Singapore as it really is."
Before starting off for a tour of the city we sat down and over coffee she asked what was Singapore really like before, I fell into her trap.
I began to tell her something about old Singapore that I knew and loved. I told about the excitement of walking through old arcaded streets, the noises and sounds, the smells, the mood, the passing of an era. I talked about old China town where laundry was hung out to dry on poles over the street and there was Sago Lane, a street where old people went to die.
She wanted to hear more. She was beginning to understand, I thought. I told her about the river then, the sampans with their painted eyes, the clapboard eating stalls jammed along the bank of the river. I even mentioned something about the awful smell along the river.
"Did you eat there along the river?" she asked
"Well, not exactly. You had to be careful where you ate." Then she asked if 1 ever stayed in the Chinatown I so fondly spoke about.
"You mean did I ever live there?" I asked.
"Yes, live there!"
"No you couldn't live there. You stayed up town."
Then she tore into me. "Precisely. You look at squalor as picturesque but you live and eat in your own world. That’s not what I am looking for,” she said. “I want the truth.”
I didn't admit it to her but she, of course, was at least partly right. We uphold picturesque poverty only for our lens' sake so that we can return home with interesting pictures to show and then in the same breath tell how great it was to live in grand style in Raffles in Singapore or the Oriental in Bangkok.
We make the mistake of telling ourselves we like to go to places where there are no tourists, to those places that are "unspoilt". Do we really mean it? What we fail to realize is that what really brightens up a country, what often makes it tick—believe it or not—is tourism. With developed tourism, transportation becomes easier, accommodations are more plentiful and better, there's more to buy and in many cases, more to see.
Countries often revive old traditions and culture for visitors to see. It also gives the people renewed pride in their couture and heritage. Ancient ruins that were once covered by the jungle have been opened up, and even things like drum festivals, an art that was almost lost, was brought back to life.
And let’s face it. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for modern jet travel and companies like Royal Orchid Holidays to take us to these sites. Three decades ago, unless we had a lot of money and had time to spend, with international transportation the way it was, we, the average tourist, would not have come to Asia. Or any place for that matter. We would have to have been content reading about the exotic East and dreaming about the day we could travel there, when we hit the lottery or a rich uncle died.
No, those places, those historical sites we long to see, they are still here, and we can see them while we return to our hotels at night and bed down in comfort. Asia is better today than it ever was.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERSQ. Dear Mr. Stephens, I enjoyed your stories on China. I wrote to you once before asking if you were glossing over the facts about travel in China. My husband and I are thinking about a tour of China but there are so many conflicting stories about China that I don’t know what to believe any more. —Hazel Copenfield, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
A. Dear Ms. Copenfield, if you are looking at a political analysis of China, I don’t want to disappoint you. I will leave that up to the political pundits, politicians and economists. I write stories about travel to bring the world closer together. I like to write about the romance of travel. I want to point out to readers that we live in a very beautiful world and let’s take advantage of the world that we live in, and enjoy it. I found when I travelled though China, if I smiled, people would smile in return. When I travel in China I feel very safe, perhaps more than I do in most counties of the world. My advise to any traveller is to stay out of politics. Remember you are there to observe and not to inflict your ideologies or opinions on others. You can’t go wrong then. —HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
