A couple of days ago, I followed my “belly feeling,” (as my new German friend, Jessi, calls it) and wandered around aimlessly into the streets of Siem Reap. On this trip, I’ve seen this very bizarre reality where touristy streets are very developed and clean and fancy and maybe a kilometer away from the tourist areas lie in contrast, very underdeveloped streets with kids playing barefoot; cows, dogs, chickens roaming around; abandoned old machines and car parts on the road; and open homes with people never bothering to close their doors or open lights during the day when the sun is out. I particularly remember Gilli Trawangan, a very touristy island in Indonesia near Bali, which was packed with tourists drinking and partying and getting high and sunbathing by the beach. The town contained one main street, about three kilometers in length with the locals catering to ever tourist need and speaking English almost fluently. To find a quieter spot on the beach, I walked with my friend to the other side of the small island and was entirely shocked to notice how the paved and decorated roads turned to muddy unpaved streets with broken walls and trash and goats. I could not believe how the immense amount of money earned from the tourism did not reach the rest of the maybe 10 km circumference island. I’ve heard this peculiar argument countless times during my trip with travelers commenting on how their traveling was significantly benefitting the economies, and thereby the countries themselves. Yes, on a basic economic level, tourists traveling to a developing country and spending their money there rather than vacationing in their own countries does increase the overall GDP of a country. At the same time, to believe that the benefits of the increased GDP trickle down into the hands of those who actually truly need the money is quite an ignorant Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” fallacy. The idea that there is an invisible hand that governs an economy, thereby removing all needs of government intervention or conscious thought about expenditure, ignores the reality that tourists enter restaurants with the newest pop songs and cleanest fanciest looks and other features that cater to the new world hipsters. People who can afford to create these fancy hostels and restaurants and spas and cafes are either expatriates themselves or those who already had enough capital to invest in a fancy establishment. Sure, there is some trickle down effect with the wealthy owners hiring more poorer locals and getting their own dinner at smaller low budget restaurants, but that trickle down should certainly not be seen as western travelers saving the world with their money. This idea that there are rich countries and poor countries is a very strange way of perceiving the world. There are the global rich and the global poor populations. The proof of this is in every capital city, or major industrial city, I have visited in the world. There are always the fancy shopping malls for the local bourgeois where I can barely afford a meal, let alone any clothes. The prices for food can range from $15 to $50 for a meal, and everything is shiny and new. I am not advocating that these places not exist, simply because they are near impoverished locations. Just because America overall is an affluent country and for example, Sri Lanka, isn’t, doesn’t mean that Sinhalese people should ban or should not have access to a Prada store or Starbucks in Colombo, while there can be multiple in DC. I remember going to very fancy restaurants in Guatemala city with CDC staff and friends and realizing that we were not having some sort of “Guatemala experience,” we were just having a normal human life experience, with professionals eating out together in food areas with access to global cuisines and a fancy treatment. I remember a friend being surprised by Western music and the extent of white people in a night market in Melaka. White people and American pop are everywhere. People all around the world listen to American music even if they don’t speak English. I've heard Adele’s “Hello,” sung in almost every country with a wide range of accents. If we exotify every “foreign” location, looking for what we consider as “authentic,” we are willingly blinding ourselves not only to how similar humans are everywhere but also to the extent that globalization has already forever changed and influenced the world, in better and worse ways. English and what we consider “Western” clothing, no longer belong to the west. Pants and a shirt are easy to produce, very cheap and reduce restricting cultural boxes and are utilized everywhere. To be disappointed in seeing people not wearing “authentic” clothing, i.e funny weird clothing, is to be nostalgic for a reality that simply has not existed for decades. Traditional clothes still do have a place in many societies and are utilized mainly on special cultural or religious occasions and that is totally okay. Even in the US, I wear Pakistani clothes often when I visit my religious center, but I don’t insist upon wearing shalwar kamiz to classes everyday. It simply just attracts unnecessary attention, isn't what I prefer to wear, and isn’t needed. And wearing traditionally “western” clothing doesn’t make me any less authentically Pakistani.
While randomly roaming around that day in Siem Reap, I was not surprised to see how the fancy Christmas decorations and smoothies stands converted to dirty and dusty unpaved roads with only locals, who were all basically staring at me because I’m sure tourists, particularly female brown-skinned tourists, don’t randomly walk into their spaces. I was, and often still am, very concerned about the language barrier because I have been in so many countries where I did not speak more than four words in the local language (you'd be surprised at how sufficient the words “hello,” “thank you,” “bye” and “sorry” are in terms of getting by) and simply expected the locals to cater to my English needs. I have never been so surprised by how powerful and widespread of a lingua franca that English has become. I feel so entirely privileged to be fluent in basically the most powerful language in contemporary society. Still, in more random areas, I don’t expect to be able to have any conversation with locals because access to English knowledge and skills is still restricted to the most privileged of populations.
A truism that I’ve learned is that in foreign environments, the language barrier becomes almost irrelevant when you start making funny faces at children. Seeing how children in a particular society respond to random strangers is definitely an indication of how restricted a culture is, as well as how significantly personalities vary in a society. However, I maintain that I look pretty funny, so I always find kids willing to play with me even when I can’t communicate with them. As humans, we underestimate the degree to which facial expressions and body language play an huge role in human connection. I almost guarantee that parents warm up to strangers, regardless of skin color or size or sex, if someone makes a funny face at their child. So that day, I ended up playing with a couple dozen local kids throughout the day and even got invited inside one home for food/drinks, even though I couldn't communicate with the people beyond basic words.
To believe that there are defined distinct categories of humans, based on differences in norms and beliefs, is again a strange manner of looking at the world. From my trips, I cannot make the claim that Cambodians are nicer than Malays who are nicer than Sinhalese people who are nicer than the Turkish. To create these divisions based on geography or religious affiliation or skin color or age, to me, seems too simplistic. Yes, norms are highly important and when important and sacred norms are broken by others, as people, we have strong reactions to the breaches. I remember the local people being very horrified when a fellow traveller walked inside a temple in Sri Lanka with his dirty running shoes. Temples are holy and no one is supposed to enter with shoes. But for the most part, norms and protocols are smoke and mirrors disguising our shared humanity. I have come to believe that there are certain shared traits in human nature that cut across all socially constructed boundaries and barriers. We, as humans, need to feel love and compassion for others and need to feel needed and loved in return. As humans, we like to laugh and smile and laughing at that which seems strange is highly normal (I can’t count how many times women and even monk children have looked at my hairy legs and actually laughed- it’s highly amusing). There is a strange level of desperation and perhaps self-centeredness and consequent trickery and violence and deception that arises when people are deprived of basic needs like shelter or food or security or sex or love or compassion. Morality is relative everywhere, and we all seek to be the best we can be or at least we learn to justify our actions as ethical so that we can sleep at night.
I did this shameful thing twice in Java in Indonesia where I yelled at two people on two different occasions because I got so frustrated by all the lies and deception. The first was a man on a bicycle tuk-tuk who agreed to take me around the town for the day for $5000 IDR (which is definitely horribly cheap but it's the first price he offered). He then did not take me to the restaurant I wanted to go to because he claimed it was closed, then took me to a very expensive restaurant I could not afford and then walked me to another place to get food where I knew he was getting commission because the woman kept trying to sell me expensive coffee for 40 minutes. Afterwards, he claimed he had to go to work and could not take me around town and asked me to pay. I was so fed up of all the trickery and lies to get commission and I could not believe that I did not even get to see any of the major sites I wanted to visit so I became overwhelmed and ended up semi yelling at him for cheating me. I did a similar thing in Cemoro Lewong in Java where a person pretended to be the official public bus driver and literally asked us to pay 10 times the actual cost of the public bus. We were stranded in the town for two hours because everyone gave us prices at least seven times as much as they should be. Even when the actual bus driver arrived, he charged us twice the official government price and then other officials also kept trying to trick us. Maybe I have been too spoiled in my life because I am not accustomed to people tricking me or being so unkind to me. I am not the type of person to yell at people and it is not a proud moment in my life. After the interactions, I recognized that desperation does indeed lead to actions which seem skewed towards greater deception. There was a strange comment I remember my uncle in Pakistan making about three years ago, where he said that lying is unethical, except when it comes to lying required for business. My uncle said that in response to not knowing whether the seller of towels at the beach in Karachi was telling the truth about his prices. I still don't know how I feel about that logic.
I don’t claim to know many truths about the world and most of the time, I almost constantly feel utterly stupid on this trip for how shockingly little I know about anything. However, if there is one truth about the world that has become increasingly more evident to me on this trip is the idea of moral relativism. It is very common practice amongst backpackers to complain about other backpackers’ habits. And truly, I have seen an astonishing variety in how travelers interact in different global environments. There are some who are very hesitant about eating local foods and I find that they gravitate towards the ubiquitous Italian restaurants in every tourist location. Some of these tourists often depend on fast food establishments as a source of comfort in the knowledge that they will not get sick and will have a predictably standard recognizable meal. With such tourists, I’ve heard comments such as “finally, somewhere western and clean. How do people in such dirty and strange environments with such weird food?” You also see restaurants catering to such populations through subtle and sometime very blatant indications of a western and familiar look and hygiene. I don’t think I’ll ever forget walking down a street in Seminyak in the Island of Bali with a friend of mine when we passed a busy looking restaurant. As we discussed possibly eating there, we walked past and saw the sign with the words, “Aussie Origin, Aussie Hygiene.”It is very difficult for me to not be hurt by such blatantly racist comments, but truly, I have observed how difficult it is for people who have never travelled outside of perhaps Europe or Australia to find themselves in the midst of Asia with food and lifestyles that are worlds apart from anything ever experienced before. Another life truism: lack of exposure breeds fear, which often manifests itself through violence (examples include the recent new stories of violence against refugees, Muslims and black peoples in the US) or disgust/aversion (this restaurant’s racist assumption about Balinese hygiene). I certainly understand the tendency of irrational fear simply based on being overwhelmed by the newness of everything. Even after months of traveling, when I first arrived to Thailand, I was dropped off in the Malaysia-Thai border down of Hat Yai. The bus driver simply walked me over to a random lady sitting outside what looked like a closed warehouse. Neither the bus driver, nor the woman spoke enough English for me to ask them any questions about why I was getting dropped off at a random place rather than an official bus station and the woman ended up taking my paper ticket which contained any proof that I had paid for a ticket to Bangkok. And I faced a huge culture shock simply going from Malaysia to Thailand because the script in Malaysia is latin so I could still read everything and use google translate to understand and look up areas and signs. In Hat Yai, no one seemed to speak English, all the signs were in Thai script, and my heart was irrationally beating. I was completely disoriented and didn’t even know how I would manage to order vegetarian food and walked around for maybe an hour trying to find any establishment that looked fancy so that I would not get sick. It was a strange fear that I’m not accustomed to but just the script changing had such a disorienting impact on my psyche so I can understand people becoming very paranoid and afraid but still wanting to travel.
But what I actually don’t really understand is the desire certain backpackers have to travel. I have found that some travelers are most interested in partaking in activities which are easily available in their home countries but are far cheaper abroad. Their traveling to me seems to serve the purpose of a vacation at home but much cheaper. The examples of this includes diving courses in the Thailand and Honduras, and surfing courses in Bali (Kuta particularly) and Costa Rica. In a different but similar way, there are many travelers who enjoy the cheap alcohol, cigarettes and weed/hashish/magic mushrooms costs and use their travels mostly to party. It is almost too easy to find clubs and bars with the latest English pop and hiphop music, in every touristy town. There are then those who island hop or hop across coastal towns to sunbathe and relax at beaches with fancy cheap cocktails, followed by massages at fancy but cheap spas. After some initial irritation with such type of traveling, what I’ve learned is that some people only get two or three weeks of vacation, and there is nothing inherently unethical about wanting to relax on the beach or to actually be able to party or even to learn a new skill set offered at an actually affordable price. The key thing I have learned is that, for me, there are certain behaviors that cross a personal boundary for me in terms of ethics and then there are habits which simply vary from how I choose to travel. I do not prefer to frequent beaches or get massages often or eat American/Italian/Aussie foods or get high or drunk. But I have made the decision to no longer look down upon travelers who choose to vacation in this manner because their actions lie in the realm of different but not exactly unethical for me.
What does however become hazy and uncomfortable for me are racist comments towards others or somewhat violent actions (towards animals) that arise from ignorance. Personally, these comments have come to lie under the category of actions that make me highly uncomfortable and hesitant to pursue greater friendship/connection, but don’t necessarily lead to immediate un-friending of the person (which may possibly arise from how non-confrontational I generally am with most people except close friends). The most hurtful comment I’ve heard on this trip was during my travels in Sri Lanka. The Argentinian Italian guy I was traveling with for some time was so horrified by the extreme poverty in the capital of Colombo (we had not made it to the very opulent parts of Colombo yet), that he said, “This place is so underdeveloped and uncivilized, that I can’t even imagine how horrible it would be if the British had not colonized Sri Lanka.” As humans, we navigate categories of “us” and “them” seamlessly depending on circumstance, and never before have I so immediately flipped the switch of “us” and “them” in my mind. In that instant, as soon as he made that comment, the “us” for me became Sri Lankan people and this guy, who a moment ago was a fun friend became the “them,” imperialist white supremacists who actually believe that colonialism was a good choice for people who were colonized. I come from a background of people who live in a post-colonial environment, and I grew up using “Fair and Lovely” creams and foundation at least 10 shades lighter than my skin color. I cannot help but be repulsed by a system where I was called more beautiful than my sister for much of my life simply because my skin tone is lighter than hers.
I had the most beautiful and horrifying experience in Sri Lanka, because of local internalized inferiority based on being brown or darker skinned. I was heading from Kandy to Nuwara Eliye on the 3rd class train where I ended up sitting next to the cutest little girl, Radika,and her younger brother. Radika was wearing a hot pink shalwar kamiz with red churiya (bangles), a pink hair tie, pink shoes and pink nail polish. She just absolutely looked adorable! And luckily, English was her favorite subject in school, so I could have some basic conversations with her. As soon as we started talking, she told me I was very beautiful. I think within the first ten minutes, she must have called me beautiful at least three times. Her compliments seemed so adorable and harmless until two white women walked past where we were sitting and she said they were very beautiful as well. Considering that we did not even see the faces of the women passing by, it immediately struck me that Radika was complimenting me because my skin tone was much lighter than hers. As the hours passed, she made comments saying that white was one of her favorite colors (along with pink, of course) and that she was not pretty because her skin was not white. She must have called me beautiful at least 30 times in the three hours we were on the train, and although I must have insisted that she was very very beautiful at least 50 times, because she really was, she simply refused to believe me. There was even a point when I asked her to repeat after me saying she was beautiful and I continued to emphasize that she had a beautiful smile and a beautiful heart and beautiful eyes, I could see in her eyes that she would simply never believe that she could be as beautiful as I was, simply because of how much stupid melanin I had in my skin.
How can I possibly fault her when I too have forever felt not beautiful enough for much of my life? The way I look completely deviates from socially determined American beauty standards, and as much as I am well versed in calling out the Eurocentric, fat shaming, racist, and poor shaming B.S of beauty standards, I too can’t help but some days want to see a different face in the mirror. I am human and so was she and I saw myself in her. She was so beautiful and I wish there was something I could actually do to help her see that.
On a different note: I cannot even begin to describe the horror of being in different closed off train compartments based on economics- there is just something about such an obvious division of people by socioeconomic class that the person on a 3rd class train compartment either inevitably learns to resent themself or the 1st class person, or both. I recognize how I too strangely look down upon people in first class cabins on flights – and there is no rational reason because they are probably just very nice hard working people, and some must have saved up a lot to treat themselves to a first class seat. But there is something peculiarly misery-inducing about the juxtaposition of the very rich and the very poor. Further, I am still unsure about the ethics of foreign travelers getting 3rd class train tickets for a “real” experience, both glorifying poverty and taking up extra space in already packed compartments. At the same time, I personally felt uncomfortable as well just buying 1st class train tickets because if others have to sit in packed compartments or stand for hours, what makes me so special to deserve an AC compartment and a specified seat?
Going back to Radika and the Argentinian Italian friend’s comment in Sri Lanka, I realized that because of my interactions with Radika and because of my own sense of connection with Sri Lankan people because they do look very similar to me and we share similar foods and history and clothes and norms, I found my friend’s comment to be outside of my boundary of ethics. My only response to him was silence. Of course I know that being a bystander is almost (or equally) as bad as being a perpetrator, but there is something about pain and shock that can turn even the most vocal person entirely speechless. I was hurt, and my defense mechanism was to consider myself far more aware than this person and thus I considered him incapable of understanding the entirely horrifying nature of his comment, and I did not say anything to correct him.
I don’t know why, but I’m accustomed to some friends making hurtful comments where I am simply non-confrontational. I am silent when friends in the past and on this trip have said things like “desi men are generally not very good looking,” or “desi men are aggressive and too clingy,” or “Chinese people are obsessed with excessive junk and trinkets,” or “I’m just not attracted to black guys” or “trans people are so funny looking,” or “queer people can have attractions but simply choose to have enough self control to do what’s right” or “muslim women are so oppressed everywhere, having to wear all those those coverings.” It’s not that I’m always silent when friends make these comments, and I am cut throat with my replies when I’m talking to friends whom I really respect and expect better comments from, but I think I am mostly silent because I am so hurt by these comments and I don’t think that words are enough to change someone’s core feelings. I don’t know if racism or homophobia can be cured by words or logic. I think one has to feel like people are equal and deserve respect and that can mainly be taught through interactions and experiences with the people who are seen as less than. These comments take place on a much more frequent basis on this trip and other trips where I’ve traveled outside of the US, and it makes me grateful for how diverse and open-minded Americans are (at least to some degree, especially in the places I have lived).
I find that I am also silent when people make hurtful comments towards me. The most common one is when people outright say that I am “not American,” simply because I have brown skin. I cannot count how many times people have asked me what my “background” or “heritage” is, even after I’ve said I’m from the US. I find that travelers sometimes find me too exotic if I say I’m from Pakistan or was born in Pakistan. I don’t wish to be considered this inspiring person just because I’m a Pakistani Muslim woman traveling alone. I want people to like my personality or my habits or tendencies, and not just be enchanted by my socially constructed boxes. Additionally, I no longer wish to be an encyclopedia on Pakistani and Muslim culture and I am exhausted from ignorant comments about Islam. So I just stick to mostly telling other travelers that I’m from the US and hoping that they won’t continue prying further. Strangely however, I tell locals that I’m from Pakistan because somehow, I feel comfortable telling locals I’m from Pakistan, and it also saves me both the stigma/resentment as well as the added respect that Americans get everywhere. Plus, I find that somehow, telling someone I’m from the US makes them see me very highly, and thereby increases the gap between “me” and “them.” I guess I try to navigate my multiple identities in ways to camouflage differences and highlight the shared humanity.
I’ve also gotten some strange comments and looks about my hairy legs (which mostly amuse me because it shows how internalized sexism and gender roles are globally). A group of women at Angkor Wat temple basically pointed to me and all burst out laughing and I think it was because of my legs but could be because of my hair or glasses or skin color. I even had kid monks laugh at me, which was certainly strange.
Shockingly, I have not gotten many fat shaming comments on this particular trip. I got a lifetime’s worth in Guatemala, especially from friends and coworkers (disguised as friendly advice and concern), and far more over the years in the US, so I’m actually surprised. I did get a very nice receptionist at my hostel in Siem Reap to comment on how I had a beautiful voice, which she said made sense because larger people have better voices. Then she proceeded to tell me a story about a guy who fell in love with a woman over the phone because her voice was so beautiful only to be horrified when they finally met in person because she was large. After sharing her story, as if the implications suddenly dawned on her, the woman just smiled and said, “just kidding” and continued with writing out my bus ticket silently.
Let's talk about rigid global beauty standards some more. I made a beautiful Thai friend at the Golden Mountain Temple in Bangkok. She was so kind and joyful and I actually remember thinking that she was beautiful. Then, after visiting the temple, she took me to enjoy some juice at Victory Monument. There, she started complimenting my eyes for how large they were, my eyebrows for how full they were and my skin for how clear it was. It was such an uncomfortable moment because I see my face as a whole and not really as a compilation of different parts which could be labeled as good or beautiful based on some random ranking. She mentioned how she has only gotten eyelid wrinkle correction surgery and gotten her eyebrow shape tattooed to make her eyebrows seem fuller and nicely shaped forever. She said she didn't like needles and so she didn't continue with more surgeries but mentioned how Thai women are very addicted to plastic surgery, especially eyelid wrinkle surgery and breast (augmentation? reduction? I forgot to ask) surgery. She saw so much beauty in me while I kept thinking about how in the US, she would be considered far more beautiful than me. On another instance, I complimented the smile of the woman booking my bus tickets in Vietnam, with the woman shyly looking down in surprise and commenting that she thinks she is “ugly.”I don't make it a habit of ever handing out fake compliments. How did such a beautiful woman internalize that she was ugly? How are we doing this to women everywhere around the world?
I don't want to play this beauty game anymore. It distracts me from spending time on more important concerns like my education, or my value as a human and my impact on the world. I refuse to allow society to feed me BS about my beauty. I am absolutely stunning and I am going to proclaim it loudly and often. Fuck being humble. I’ve had far too many friends shame me for my arrogance. I will never claim that I am more beautiful than any other person, but I am definitely going to admire my face and natural body in the mirror and I wish all people would finally give themselves the permission to move beyond artificial guidelines of beauty and just own their absolutely stunning selves. It's not arrogance, it’s truth.
Another type of comment about my body, which was more discouraging, was when I was observing people play “foot badminton” (literally the birdie is hit with feet, kind of like a mix of football/soccer and badminton) in Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam, and the coach came to talk to me about the game. He tried explaining that the game can easily be learned in a couple of weeks with practice. Then, he looked at me from head to toe and laughed and said, “but you cannot play. You are fat.” Of course, he then continued to try to sell me the birdie as a souvenir. This interaction for me is connected to the issues I generally have with the phrasing of obesity as an “epidemic.” I can't do multi-day mountain climbs and can't run a marathon and some days, I’m a couch potato and eat too many Cheetos. But I can also easily hike for 10 hours, climb for about five hours, do several sets of leg presses with 200 lbs, lift around 100 lbs, and I mostly eat very balanced vegetarian foods. For someone to look at my size and make an assumption about my capabilities or my life expectancy is simply ignorant and incorrect. It’s committing basic atomistic fallacy- (I think that's the term?)- looking at an overall stereotype and making individual level conclusions about a specific person without sufficient evidence. I actually play badminton relatively well…
It’s not so much verbal comments from travelers that has affected my psyche as much as the unsaid differential behavior I’ve received from locals any time I have travelled with a white person, and the strange ways in which travelers never recognize that I’m actually a traveler and not a local.
The fact that I was able to enter into restricted areas of a temple in Bangkok because the staff of at least ten people was too busy taking pictures and interviewing the two white women I was hanging out with that day is clearest proof of the differential treatment I get compared to other white travelers. I have experienced countless examples of this. The time in Jakarta when my Dutch friend from Holland was basically interviewed and asked about where she was from seven times during one day (I counted), while I, who was standing right next to her the entire day, was talked to zero times. The time when my Japanese friend took pictures with at least 40 teens in Ulu Camii in Bursa in Turkey (I'm actually not exaggerating the number- it's the strangest thing I have ever witnessed), while I watched from the side and was asked to take many of the pictures. Each of the times when street vendors entered restaurants and asked every white person to buy their items before asking me (three times in two days in Ho Chi Minh- I counted again). The six times (I counted) I asked questions to the locals in Colombo (Sri Lanka), and the people I asked looked at my white guy friend to answer and ignored my presence. The countless times I've spent days in markets without being harassed to buy things while my white friends have complained about being so annoyed by all the haggling. The countless times when I was with another white traveller and someone asked us where we were from but didn't bother to wait for my reply. Sure I'm from Germany, UK, Australia, Russia, Canada, Netherlands, wherever my white friend is from. The time when my German friend was asked to be in pictures four times during one day in Pangkor Island and I was just there. The time when the two girls from Czech Republic, the one woman from New Zealand, the one woman from Sydney, and the one woman from Germany (all with minimal melanin) were each asked to dance by the local men at a Karaoke bar in Malacca (Malaysia) at least four times each over the course of four hours, while I was not asked even once. We were all sitting together by the end of the night, all friends. But I was brown, and the locals in Malacca treated me differently and I noticed. I have zero issues with dancing with other friends or by myself, and I guess I should be used to this treatment because it's similar in the US (and it makes my close friends highly uncomfortable because they've noticed over the years) but I can't help but be reminded of how “other” and thus, “less than,” I am to others. I have sufficient self confidence to not care enough or let these things get me down for too long, but it doesn't allow me the freedom to forgot how different/strange I look to people and I just want to be allowed the freedom to look beyond these silly boxes for a while so I can focus on more important things. I think this is part of why I do like NYC so much. More than in other places, people there don't necessarily ignore my boxes, they just look at me as more than the boxes and it helps me recognize that I am a person beyond the boxes and stereotypes. I love laughing and kids and food. I also love walking and reading and talking about boring academic things all the time. I am loud and crazy and sing horribly all the time and dance everywhere and am also strangely introverted and serious and sometimes shy. I want people to recognize these qualities.
I don't mean to imply that I don't have wonderful interactions with amazing people everywhere. I really truly do and I've forever changed because of these interactions, but the sad fact is that most of these interactions have only taken place when I've spent the day without white travelers and instances where I've gone out of my way to communicate with locals everywhere. It's disappointing because I worry about taking future trips with white friends or a white partner. I'm not used to being silent and observing from the sidelines but I find that I don't even make an effort to talk to locals anymore when I happen to travel with white friends I meet on the road, because it seems like wasted effort. I am convinced the locals are probably more interested in the white exotic beautiful creature next to me.
I know that I would feel highly uncomfortable being objectified and given special preference based on my skin color. I got that quite frequently in Sri Lanka and I absolutely hated it. I don't want to switch shoes and “walk a mile” as a white traveller. I actually love being brown in many many ways because I know that when people take an interest in talking to me, it's because they see me. I get complimented by people in the best ways, for my “beautiful smile,” my “beautiful heart,” my “crazy laugh,” my joy, my dancing, my happiness, my kindness, my love, my open-mindedness, my intelligence, etc. These compliments will always mean more to me than a compliment pertaining to the lightness of my skin or the shape of my body or my national origin. I guess I just want to live in a world where artificial boxes don't create divides or hierarchies.
On the topic of being treated differently by fellow travelers- it's strange to me that when I see western travelers, I feel an immediate sense of connection because I too am traveling from the west and live in a western country that I consider one of my homes. In terms of language and foods consumed and basic perspectives and lifestyle, I have more in common with white travelers than with locals. But these travelers often don't expect me to speak English and don't see me as “one of them,” until I initiate conversation. Sometimes the treatment is a bit obnoxious. One night in Malacca, when I was hanging out with two people from Sydney, we stopped by at a reggae bar along the river walk and for at least 40 minutes before I decided to leave, both of my friends were occupied talking to locals and other travelers about where they were from and where they were going and how much they liked Malaysia (basically the same scripted traveller small talk), while I was standing there just observing the conversations. What's with the white people solidarity? It's strange. But I guess it makes sense that there would be an immediate sense of connection anytime someone goes from being a majority somewhere to becoming a minority.
I too am perhaps prone to talking to white people more without realizing it. I was horrified at myself when I woke up to a Korean (she looked Thai to me…ugh) woman walking in the dorm room I was staying at in Bangkok and initially thought she might be one of the staff. Of course, I immediately caught myself and talked to her and we ended up hanging out the entire day and having a great time – as two foreign tourists visiting Thailand for the first time!
Going back to the idea of moral relativism, I have also come to the conclusion that we must not justify away all unethical actions. Just because there are core reasonings behind unethical actions doesn’t mean there is no actual true morality.People are not inherently good or bad, we all have the capacity to commit good or evil actions, depending on a multitude of external and mental circumstances. So we have to expect good things from each other, regardless of class or creed or color. This is where John Stuart Mill’s harm principle and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights become important to consider.
I've had too many discussions with people unwilling to challenge cultural practices because they didn't want to seem culturally insensitive. But some actions violate human rights and we need to stop thinking that humans from different cultures are so different that what we consider human rights violations become justifiable in some circumstances. To me, the following are inexcusable violations of human rights and we should all speak against these actions regardless of what boxes we belong in: Forced marriage, underage marriage, female and male genital mutilation, forced modesty/headscarf requirement by law, marital rape, any other form of sex without consent, murder and cruelty without cause, any form of slavery, any mistreatment/unequal treatment/discrimination based on unavoidable social labels of race or gender or sexual orientation or national origin or religion or disability. I think these actions violate human rights and the harm principle and as fellow humans, we ought to be activists for these causes.
I have been most horrified on this trip on exactly three days: the day I visited an elephant orphanage in Pinnewalla (Sri Lanka) where the elephants actually seemed to be mostly chained up and treated cruelly as if they were part of a circus; the day I learned about the cruel ways in which millions of Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia; and the day I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and learned about the atrocities committed by the American Government through the use of Agent Orange and other experimental chemicals during the Vietnam War. These were unacceptable crimes to me and I will always speak against these and try my hardest to never allow humanity to perpetuate these crimes. These cross the human and animal rights ethics boundaries and clearly violate the harm principle. This also explains my silence in certain circumstances but not in other circumstances. My friends are free to make ignorant comments. I have made ignorant comments my entire life and over time, I’ve improved and changed my perceptions. But their freedom and my freedom to say and do what we want ends the moment our actions are causing definite objective harm to someone outside ourselves.
I definitely sharply argued with a Lithuanian traveller when she threw a large stone at a resting reptile in Kandy (Sri Lanka); tried to argue with one of the elephant orphanage workers when he was using the metal pointed weapon thing to pull an elephant closer to take a picture with one of the travelers; and tried to dissuade two friends from paying/purchasing items from children (because it can encourage parents to continue taking their children out of schools for profits). It is part of my duty as a human to speak up, and I don't care that my culture or age or skin color varies from other humans.
If I've learned anything from histories of war crimes and genocides is that we’re all part of this shared humanity and similar atrocities have been committed towards and by almost every group in history, based on illogical divisions, rooted in ignorance, and solely in the name of power. We’re all capable of atrocities and we all have a responsibility make this world better.
While randomly roaming around that day in Siem Reap, I was not surprised to see how the fancy Christmas decorations and smoothies stands converted to dirty and dusty unpaved roads with only locals, who were all basically staring at me because I’m sure tourists, particularly female brown-skinned tourists, don’t randomly walk into their spaces. I was, and often still am, very concerned about the language barrier because I have been in so many countries where I did not speak more than four words in the local language (you'd be surprised at how sufficient the words “hello,” “thank you,” “bye” and “sorry” are in terms of getting by) and simply expected the locals to cater to my English needs. I have never been so surprised by how powerful and widespread of a lingua franca that English has become. I feel so entirely privileged to be fluent in basically the most powerful language in contemporary society. Still, in more random areas, I don’t expect to be able to have any conversation with locals because access to English knowledge and skills is still restricted to the most privileged of populations.
A truism that I’ve learned is that in foreign environments, the language barrier becomes almost irrelevant when you start making funny faces at children. Seeing how children in a particular society respond to random strangers is definitely an indication of how restricted a culture is, as well as how significantly personalities vary in a society. However, I maintain that I look pretty funny, so I always find kids willing to play with me even when I can’t communicate with them. As humans, we underestimate the degree to which facial expressions and body language play an huge role in human connection. I almost guarantee that parents warm up to strangers, regardless of skin color or size or sex, if someone makes a funny face at their child. So that day, I ended up playing with a couple dozen local kids throughout the day and even got invited inside one home for food/drinks, even though I couldn't communicate with the people beyond basic words.
To believe that there are defined distinct categories of humans, based on differences in norms and beliefs, is again a strange manner of looking at the world. From my trips, I cannot make the claim that Cambodians are nicer than Malays who are nicer than Sinhalese people who are nicer than the Turkish. To create these divisions based on geography or religious affiliation or skin color or age, to me, seems too simplistic. Yes, norms are highly important and when important and sacred norms are broken by others, as people, we have strong reactions to the breaches. I remember the local people being very horrified when a fellow traveller walked inside a temple in Sri Lanka with his dirty running shoes. Temples are holy and no one is supposed to enter with shoes. But for the most part, norms and protocols are smoke and mirrors disguising our shared humanity. I have come to believe that there are certain shared traits in human nature that cut across all socially constructed boundaries and barriers. We, as humans, need to feel love and compassion for others and need to feel needed and loved in return. As humans, we like to laugh and smile and laughing at that which seems strange is highly normal (I can’t count how many times women and even monk children have looked at my hairy legs and actually laughed- it’s highly amusing). There is a strange level of desperation and perhaps self-centeredness and consequent trickery and violence and deception that arises when people are deprived of basic needs like shelter or food or security or sex or love or compassion. Morality is relative everywhere, and we all seek to be the best we can be or at least we learn to justify our actions as ethical so that we can sleep at night.
I did this shameful thing twice in Java in Indonesia where I yelled at two people on two different occasions because I got so frustrated by all the lies and deception. The first was a man on a bicycle tuk-tuk who agreed to take me around the town for the day for $5000 IDR (which is definitely horribly cheap but it's the first price he offered). He then did not take me to the restaurant I wanted to go to because he claimed it was closed, then took me to a very expensive restaurant I could not afford and then walked me to another place to get food where I knew he was getting commission because the woman kept trying to sell me expensive coffee for 40 minutes. Afterwards, he claimed he had to go to work and could not take me around town and asked me to pay. I was so fed up of all the trickery and lies to get commission and I could not believe that I did not even get to see any of the major sites I wanted to visit so I became overwhelmed and ended up semi yelling at him for cheating me. I did a similar thing in Cemoro Lewong in Java where a person pretended to be the official public bus driver and literally asked us to pay 10 times the actual cost of the public bus. We were stranded in the town for two hours because everyone gave us prices at least seven times as much as they should be. Even when the actual bus driver arrived, he charged us twice the official government price and then other officials also kept trying to trick us. Maybe I have been too spoiled in my life because I am not accustomed to people tricking me or being so unkind to me. I am not the type of person to yell at people and it is not a proud moment in my life. After the interactions, I recognized that desperation does indeed lead to actions which seem skewed towards greater deception. There was a strange comment I remember my uncle in Pakistan making about three years ago, where he said that lying is unethical, except when it comes to lying required for business. My uncle said that in response to not knowing whether the seller of towels at the beach in Karachi was telling the truth about his prices. I still don't know how I feel about that logic.
I don’t claim to know many truths about the world and most of the time, I almost constantly feel utterly stupid on this trip for how shockingly little I know about anything. However, if there is one truth about the world that has become increasingly more evident to me on this trip is the idea of moral relativism. It is very common practice amongst backpackers to complain about other backpackers’ habits. And truly, I have seen an astonishing variety in how travelers interact in different global environments. There are some who are very hesitant about eating local foods and I find that they gravitate towards the ubiquitous Italian restaurants in every tourist location. Some of these tourists often depend on fast food establishments as a source of comfort in the knowledge that they will not get sick and will have a predictably standard recognizable meal. With such tourists, I’ve heard comments such as “finally, somewhere western and clean. How do people in such dirty and strange environments with such weird food?” You also see restaurants catering to such populations through subtle and sometime very blatant indications of a western and familiar look and hygiene. I don’t think I’ll ever forget walking down a street in Seminyak in the Island of Bali with a friend of mine when we passed a busy looking restaurant. As we discussed possibly eating there, we walked past and saw the sign with the words, “Aussie Origin, Aussie Hygiene.”It is very difficult for me to not be hurt by such blatantly racist comments, but truly, I have observed how difficult it is for people who have never travelled outside of perhaps Europe or Australia to find themselves in the midst of Asia with food and lifestyles that are worlds apart from anything ever experienced before. Another life truism: lack of exposure breeds fear, which often manifests itself through violence (examples include the recent new stories of violence against refugees, Muslims and black peoples in the US) or disgust/aversion (this restaurant’s racist assumption about Balinese hygiene). I certainly understand the tendency of irrational fear simply based on being overwhelmed by the newness of everything. Even after months of traveling, when I first arrived to Thailand, I was dropped off in the Malaysia-Thai border down of Hat Yai. The bus driver simply walked me over to a random lady sitting outside what looked like a closed warehouse. Neither the bus driver, nor the woman spoke enough English for me to ask them any questions about why I was getting dropped off at a random place rather than an official bus station and the woman ended up taking my paper ticket which contained any proof that I had paid for a ticket to Bangkok. And I faced a huge culture shock simply going from Malaysia to Thailand because the script in Malaysia is latin so I could still read everything and use google translate to understand and look up areas and signs. In Hat Yai, no one seemed to speak English, all the signs were in Thai script, and my heart was irrationally beating. I was completely disoriented and didn’t even know how I would manage to order vegetarian food and walked around for maybe an hour trying to find any establishment that looked fancy so that I would not get sick. It was a strange fear that I’m not accustomed to but just the script changing had such a disorienting impact on my psyche so I can understand people becoming very paranoid and afraid but still wanting to travel.
But what I actually don’t really understand is the desire certain backpackers have to travel. I have found that some travelers are most interested in partaking in activities which are easily available in their home countries but are far cheaper abroad. Their traveling to me seems to serve the purpose of a vacation at home but much cheaper. The examples of this includes diving courses in the Thailand and Honduras, and surfing courses in Bali (Kuta particularly) and Costa Rica. In a different but similar way, there are many travelers who enjoy the cheap alcohol, cigarettes and weed/hashish/magic mushrooms costs and use their travels mostly to party. It is almost too easy to find clubs and bars with the latest English pop and hiphop music, in every touristy town. There are then those who island hop or hop across coastal towns to sunbathe and relax at beaches with fancy cheap cocktails, followed by massages at fancy but cheap spas. After some initial irritation with such type of traveling, what I’ve learned is that some people only get two or three weeks of vacation, and there is nothing inherently unethical about wanting to relax on the beach or to actually be able to party or even to learn a new skill set offered at an actually affordable price. The key thing I have learned is that, for me, there are certain behaviors that cross a personal boundary for me in terms of ethics and then there are habits which simply vary from how I choose to travel. I do not prefer to frequent beaches or get massages often or eat American/Italian/Aussie foods or get high or drunk. But I have made the decision to no longer look down upon travelers who choose to vacation in this manner because their actions lie in the realm of different but not exactly unethical for me.
What does however become hazy and uncomfortable for me are racist comments towards others or somewhat violent actions (towards animals) that arise from ignorance. Personally, these comments have come to lie under the category of actions that make me highly uncomfortable and hesitant to pursue greater friendship/connection, but don’t necessarily lead to immediate un-friending of the person (which may possibly arise from how non-confrontational I generally am with most people except close friends). The most hurtful comment I’ve heard on this trip was during my travels in Sri Lanka. The Argentinian Italian guy I was traveling with for some time was so horrified by the extreme poverty in the capital of Colombo (we had not made it to the very opulent parts of Colombo yet), that he said, “This place is so underdeveloped and uncivilized, that I can’t even imagine how horrible it would be if the British had not colonized Sri Lanka.” As humans, we navigate categories of “us” and “them” seamlessly depending on circumstance, and never before have I so immediately flipped the switch of “us” and “them” in my mind. In that instant, as soon as he made that comment, the “us” for me became Sri Lankan people and this guy, who a moment ago was a fun friend became the “them,” imperialist white supremacists who actually believe that colonialism was a good choice for people who were colonized. I come from a background of people who live in a post-colonial environment, and I grew up using “Fair and Lovely” creams and foundation at least 10 shades lighter than my skin color. I cannot help but be repulsed by a system where I was called more beautiful than my sister for much of my life simply because my skin tone is lighter than hers.
I had the most beautiful and horrifying experience in Sri Lanka, because of local internalized inferiority based on being brown or darker skinned. I was heading from Kandy to Nuwara Eliye on the 3rd class train where I ended up sitting next to the cutest little girl, Radika,and her younger brother. Radika was wearing a hot pink shalwar kamiz with red churiya (bangles), a pink hair tie, pink shoes and pink nail polish. She just absolutely looked adorable! And luckily, English was her favorite subject in school, so I could have some basic conversations with her. As soon as we started talking, she told me I was very beautiful. I think within the first ten minutes, she must have called me beautiful at least three times. Her compliments seemed so adorable and harmless until two white women walked past where we were sitting and she said they were very beautiful as well. Considering that we did not even see the faces of the women passing by, it immediately struck me that Radika was complimenting me because my skin tone was much lighter than hers. As the hours passed, she made comments saying that white was one of her favorite colors (along with pink, of course) and that she was not pretty because her skin was not white. She must have called me beautiful at least 30 times in the three hours we were on the train, and although I must have insisted that she was very very beautiful at least 50 times, because she really was, she simply refused to believe me. There was even a point when I asked her to repeat after me saying she was beautiful and I continued to emphasize that she had a beautiful smile and a beautiful heart and beautiful eyes, I could see in her eyes that she would simply never believe that she could be as beautiful as I was, simply because of how much stupid melanin I had in my skin.
How can I possibly fault her when I too have forever felt not beautiful enough for much of my life? The way I look completely deviates from socially determined American beauty standards, and as much as I am well versed in calling out the Eurocentric, fat shaming, racist, and poor shaming B.S of beauty standards, I too can’t help but some days want to see a different face in the mirror. I am human and so was she and I saw myself in her. She was so beautiful and I wish there was something I could actually do to help her see that.
On a different note: I cannot even begin to describe the horror of being in different closed off train compartments based on economics- there is just something about such an obvious division of people by socioeconomic class that the person on a 3rd class train compartment either inevitably learns to resent themself or the 1st class person, or both. I recognize how I too strangely look down upon people in first class cabins on flights – and there is no rational reason because they are probably just very nice hard working people, and some must have saved up a lot to treat themselves to a first class seat. But there is something peculiarly misery-inducing about the juxtaposition of the very rich and the very poor. Further, I am still unsure about the ethics of foreign travelers getting 3rd class train tickets for a “real” experience, both glorifying poverty and taking up extra space in already packed compartments. At the same time, I personally felt uncomfortable as well just buying 1st class train tickets because if others have to sit in packed compartments or stand for hours, what makes me so special to deserve an AC compartment and a specified seat?
Going back to Radika and the Argentinian Italian friend’s comment in Sri Lanka, I realized that because of my interactions with Radika and because of my own sense of connection with Sri Lankan people because they do look very similar to me and we share similar foods and history and clothes and norms, I found my friend’s comment to be outside of my boundary of ethics. My only response to him was silence. Of course I know that being a bystander is almost (or equally) as bad as being a perpetrator, but there is something about pain and shock that can turn even the most vocal person entirely speechless. I was hurt, and my defense mechanism was to consider myself far more aware than this person and thus I considered him incapable of understanding the entirely horrifying nature of his comment, and I did not say anything to correct him.
I don’t know why, but I’m accustomed to some friends making hurtful comments where I am simply non-confrontational. I am silent when friends in the past and on this trip have said things like “desi men are generally not very good looking,” or “desi men are aggressive and too clingy,” or “Chinese people are obsessed with excessive junk and trinkets,” or “I’m just not attracted to black guys” or “trans people are so funny looking,” or “queer people can have attractions but simply choose to have enough self control to do what’s right” or “muslim women are so oppressed everywhere, having to wear all those those coverings.” It’s not that I’m always silent when friends make these comments, and I am cut throat with my replies when I’m talking to friends whom I really respect and expect better comments from, but I think I am mostly silent because I am so hurt by these comments and I don’t think that words are enough to change someone’s core feelings. I don’t know if racism or homophobia can be cured by words or logic. I think one has to feel like people are equal and deserve respect and that can mainly be taught through interactions and experiences with the people who are seen as less than. These comments take place on a much more frequent basis on this trip and other trips where I’ve traveled outside of the US, and it makes me grateful for how diverse and open-minded Americans are (at least to some degree, especially in the places I have lived).
I find that I am also silent when people make hurtful comments towards me. The most common one is when people outright say that I am “not American,” simply because I have brown skin. I cannot count how many times people have asked me what my “background” or “heritage” is, even after I’ve said I’m from the US. I find that travelers sometimes find me too exotic if I say I’m from Pakistan or was born in Pakistan. I don’t wish to be considered this inspiring person just because I’m a Pakistani Muslim woman traveling alone. I want people to like my personality or my habits or tendencies, and not just be enchanted by my socially constructed boxes. Additionally, I no longer wish to be an encyclopedia on Pakistani and Muslim culture and I am exhausted from ignorant comments about Islam. So I just stick to mostly telling other travelers that I’m from the US and hoping that they won’t continue prying further. Strangely however, I tell locals that I’m from Pakistan because somehow, I feel comfortable telling locals I’m from Pakistan, and it also saves me both the stigma/resentment as well as the added respect that Americans get everywhere. Plus, I find that somehow, telling someone I’m from the US makes them see me very highly, and thereby increases the gap between “me” and “them.” I guess I try to navigate my multiple identities in ways to camouflage differences and highlight the shared humanity.
I’ve also gotten some strange comments and looks about my hairy legs (which mostly amuse me because it shows how internalized sexism and gender roles are globally). A group of women at Angkor Wat temple basically pointed to me and all burst out laughing and I think it was because of my legs but could be because of my hair or glasses or skin color. I even had kid monks laugh at me, which was certainly strange.
Shockingly, I have not gotten many fat shaming comments on this particular trip. I got a lifetime’s worth in Guatemala, especially from friends and coworkers (disguised as friendly advice and concern), and far more over the years in the US, so I’m actually surprised. I did get a very nice receptionist at my hostel in Siem Reap to comment on how I had a beautiful voice, which she said made sense because larger people have better voices. Then she proceeded to tell me a story about a guy who fell in love with a woman over the phone because her voice was so beautiful only to be horrified when they finally met in person because she was large. After sharing her story, as if the implications suddenly dawned on her, the woman just smiled and said, “just kidding” and continued with writing out my bus ticket silently.
Let's talk about rigid global beauty standards some more. I made a beautiful Thai friend at the Golden Mountain Temple in Bangkok. She was so kind and joyful and I actually remember thinking that she was beautiful. Then, after visiting the temple, she took me to enjoy some juice at Victory Monument. There, she started complimenting my eyes for how large they were, my eyebrows for how full they were and my skin for how clear it was. It was such an uncomfortable moment because I see my face as a whole and not really as a compilation of different parts which could be labeled as good or beautiful based on some random ranking. She mentioned how she has only gotten eyelid wrinkle correction surgery and gotten her eyebrow shape tattooed to make her eyebrows seem fuller and nicely shaped forever. She said she didn't like needles and so she didn't continue with more surgeries but mentioned how Thai women are very addicted to plastic surgery, especially eyelid wrinkle surgery and breast (augmentation? reduction? I forgot to ask) surgery. She saw so much beauty in me while I kept thinking about how in the US, she would be considered far more beautiful than me. On another instance, I complimented the smile of the woman booking my bus tickets in Vietnam, with the woman shyly looking down in surprise and commenting that she thinks she is “ugly.”I don't make it a habit of ever handing out fake compliments. How did such a beautiful woman internalize that she was ugly? How are we doing this to women everywhere around the world?
I don't want to play this beauty game anymore. It distracts me from spending time on more important concerns like my education, or my value as a human and my impact on the world. I refuse to allow society to feed me BS about my beauty. I am absolutely stunning and I am going to proclaim it loudly and often. Fuck being humble. I’ve had far too many friends shame me for my arrogance. I will never claim that I am more beautiful than any other person, but I am definitely going to admire my face and natural body in the mirror and I wish all people would finally give themselves the permission to move beyond artificial guidelines of beauty and just own their absolutely stunning selves. It's not arrogance, it’s truth.
Another type of comment about my body, which was more discouraging, was when I was observing people play “foot badminton” (literally the birdie is hit with feet, kind of like a mix of football/soccer and badminton) in Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam, and the coach came to talk to me about the game. He tried explaining that the game can easily be learned in a couple of weeks with practice. Then, he looked at me from head to toe and laughed and said, “but you cannot play. You are fat.” Of course, he then continued to try to sell me the birdie as a souvenir. This interaction for me is connected to the issues I generally have with the phrasing of obesity as an “epidemic.” I can't do multi-day mountain climbs and can't run a marathon and some days, I’m a couch potato and eat too many Cheetos. But I can also easily hike for 10 hours, climb for about five hours, do several sets of leg presses with 200 lbs, lift around 100 lbs, and I mostly eat very balanced vegetarian foods. For someone to look at my size and make an assumption about my capabilities or my life expectancy is simply ignorant and incorrect. It’s committing basic atomistic fallacy- (I think that's the term?)- looking at an overall stereotype and making individual level conclusions about a specific person without sufficient evidence. I actually play badminton relatively well…
It’s not so much verbal comments from travelers that has affected my psyche as much as the unsaid differential behavior I’ve received from locals any time I have travelled with a white person, and the strange ways in which travelers never recognize that I’m actually a traveler and not a local.
The fact that I was able to enter into restricted areas of a temple in Bangkok because the staff of at least ten people was too busy taking pictures and interviewing the two white women I was hanging out with that day is clearest proof of the differential treatment I get compared to other white travelers. I have experienced countless examples of this. The time in Jakarta when my Dutch friend from Holland was basically interviewed and asked about where she was from seven times during one day (I counted), while I, who was standing right next to her the entire day, was talked to zero times. The time when my Japanese friend took pictures with at least 40 teens in Ulu Camii in Bursa in Turkey (I'm actually not exaggerating the number- it's the strangest thing I have ever witnessed), while I watched from the side and was asked to take many of the pictures. Each of the times when street vendors entered restaurants and asked every white person to buy their items before asking me (three times in two days in Ho Chi Minh- I counted again). The six times (I counted) I asked questions to the locals in Colombo (Sri Lanka), and the people I asked looked at my white guy friend to answer and ignored my presence. The countless times I've spent days in markets without being harassed to buy things while my white friends have complained about being so annoyed by all the haggling. The countless times when I was with another white traveller and someone asked us where we were from but didn't bother to wait for my reply. Sure I'm from Germany, UK, Australia, Russia, Canada, Netherlands, wherever my white friend is from. The time when my German friend was asked to be in pictures four times during one day in Pangkor Island and I was just there. The time when the two girls from Czech Republic, the one woman from New Zealand, the one woman from Sydney, and the one woman from Germany (all with minimal melanin) were each asked to dance by the local men at a Karaoke bar in Malacca (Malaysia) at least four times each over the course of four hours, while I was not asked even once. We were all sitting together by the end of the night, all friends. But I was brown, and the locals in Malacca treated me differently and I noticed. I have zero issues with dancing with other friends or by myself, and I guess I should be used to this treatment because it's similar in the US (and it makes my close friends highly uncomfortable because they've noticed over the years) but I can't help but be reminded of how “other” and thus, “less than,” I am to others. I have sufficient self confidence to not care enough or let these things get me down for too long, but it doesn't allow me the freedom to forgot how different/strange I look to people and I just want to be allowed the freedom to look beyond these silly boxes for a while so I can focus on more important things. I think this is part of why I do like NYC so much. More than in other places, people there don't necessarily ignore my boxes, they just look at me as more than the boxes and it helps me recognize that I am a person beyond the boxes and stereotypes. I love laughing and kids and food. I also love walking and reading and talking about boring academic things all the time. I am loud and crazy and sing horribly all the time and dance everywhere and am also strangely introverted and serious and sometimes shy. I want people to recognize these qualities.
I don't mean to imply that I don't have wonderful interactions with amazing people everywhere. I really truly do and I've forever changed because of these interactions, but the sad fact is that most of these interactions have only taken place when I've spent the day without white travelers and instances where I've gone out of my way to communicate with locals everywhere. It's disappointing because I worry about taking future trips with white friends or a white partner. I'm not used to being silent and observing from the sidelines but I find that I don't even make an effort to talk to locals anymore when I happen to travel with white friends I meet on the road, because it seems like wasted effort. I am convinced the locals are probably more interested in the white exotic beautiful creature next to me.
I know that I would feel highly uncomfortable being objectified and given special preference based on my skin color. I got that quite frequently in Sri Lanka and I absolutely hated it. I don't want to switch shoes and “walk a mile” as a white traveller. I actually love being brown in many many ways because I know that when people take an interest in talking to me, it's because they see me. I get complimented by people in the best ways, for my “beautiful smile,” my “beautiful heart,” my “crazy laugh,” my joy, my dancing, my happiness, my kindness, my love, my open-mindedness, my intelligence, etc. These compliments will always mean more to me than a compliment pertaining to the lightness of my skin or the shape of my body or my national origin. I guess I just want to live in a world where artificial boxes don't create divides or hierarchies.
On the topic of being treated differently by fellow travelers- it's strange to me that when I see western travelers, I feel an immediate sense of connection because I too am traveling from the west and live in a western country that I consider one of my homes. In terms of language and foods consumed and basic perspectives and lifestyle, I have more in common with white travelers than with locals. But these travelers often don't expect me to speak English and don't see me as “one of them,” until I initiate conversation. Sometimes the treatment is a bit obnoxious. One night in Malacca, when I was hanging out with two people from Sydney, we stopped by at a reggae bar along the river walk and for at least 40 minutes before I decided to leave, both of my friends were occupied talking to locals and other travelers about where they were from and where they were going and how much they liked Malaysia (basically the same scripted traveller small talk), while I was standing there just observing the conversations. What's with the white people solidarity? It's strange. But I guess it makes sense that there would be an immediate sense of connection anytime someone goes from being a majority somewhere to becoming a minority.
I too am perhaps prone to talking to white people more without realizing it. I was horrified at myself when I woke up to a Korean (she looked Thai to me…ugh) woman walking in the dorm room I was staying at in Bangkok and initially thought she might be one of the staff. Of course, I immediately caught myself and talked to her and we ended up hanging out the entire day and having a great time – as two foreign tourists visiting Thailand for the first time!
Going back to the idea of moral relativism, I have also come to the conclusion that we must not justify away all unethical actions. Just because there are core reasonings behind unethical actions doesn’t mean there is no actual true morality.People are not inherently good or bad, we all have the capacity to commit good or evil actions, depending on a multitude of external and mental circumstances. So we have to expect good things from each other, regardless of class or creed or color. This is where John Stuart Mill’s harm principle and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights become important to consider.
I've had too many discussions with people unwilling to challenge cultural practices because they didn't want to seem culturally insensitive. But some actions violate human rights and we need to stop thinking that humans from different cultures are so different that what we consider human rights violations become justifiable in some circumstances. To me, the following are inexcusable violations of human rights and we should all speak against these actions regardless of what boxes we belong in: Forced marriage, underage marriage, female and male genital mutilation, forced modesty/headscarf requirement by law, marital rape, any other form of sex without consent, murder and cruelty without cause, any form of slavery, any mistreatment/unequal treatment/discrimination based on unavoidable social labels of race or gender or sexual orientation or national origin or religion or disability. I think these actions violate human rights and the harm principle and as fellow humans, we ought to be activists for these causes.
I have been most horrified on this trip on exactly three days: the day I visited an elephant orphanage in Pinnewalla (Sri Lanka) where the elephants actually seemed to be mostly chained up and treated cruelly as if they were part of a circus; the day I learned about the cruel ways in which millions of Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia; and the day I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and learned about the atrocities committed by the American Government through the use of Agent Orange and other experimental chemicals during the Vietnam War. These were unacceptable crimes to me and I will always speak against these and try my hardest to never allow humanity to perpetuate these crimes. These cross the human and animal rights ethics boundaries and clearly violate the harm principle. This also explains my silence in certain circumstances but not in other circumstances. My friends are free to make ignorant comments. I have made ignorant comments my entire life and over time, I’ve improved and changed my perceptions. But their freedom and my freedom to say and do what we want ends the moment our actions are causing definite objective harm to someone outside ourselves.
I definitely sharply argued with a Lithuanian traveller when she threw a large stone at a resting reptile in Kandy (Sri Lanka); tried to argue with one of the elephant orphanage workers when he was using the metal pointed weapon thing to pull an elephant closer to take a picture with one of the travelers; and tried to dissuade two friends from paying/purchasing items from children (because it can encourage parents to continue taking their children out of schools for profits). It is part of my duty as a human to speak up, and I don't care that my culture or age or skin color varies from other humans.
If I've learned anything from histories of war crimes and genocides is that we’re all part of this shared humanity and similar atrocities have been committed towards and by almost every group in history, based on illogical divisions, rooted in ignorance, and solely in the name of power. We’re all capable of atrocities and we all have a responsibility make this world better.
