Travelling American

Its been raining hard the last few nights - so I'm chilling out and catching up on email tonight. Today we learned to work on the back, neck and head in massage class. When I finished my routine, my practice partner, a tall, english girl from Glastonbury had to be roused from a light slumber.

I ran into 2 young Mormon americans on the main road to the temples tonight. They were from Utah and wore the customary white shirts and name tags. It's always nice running into americans - even if they are trying to proseletize. At first they called out to me in Thai, then they remarked how good my english was before they realized I was american. They seemed homesick and were having a tough time finding converts in a country where Buddhism has had over a thousand years of deep influence in the culture and traditions.

On the topic of Americans, people in the region (and most of the world for that matter) often have a hard time differentiating between national identity and ethnic background. A typical conversation goes like this:

local: "Where are you from?"
me: "America."
local: "But you look like [substitute local asian country], same same. Not like American."
me: "No I am American. My family is from Taiwan."

It usually isn't until I mention Taiwan that the incredulous look starts to fade - in their minds, that is my national identity. When I ask what an American looks like, the answer invariably refers to a caucasion. I guess years of exposure to american movies/media with paltry asian american representation has reinforced the concept. In some ways, my experience perhaps parallels asian americans living in parts of middle america, where asians, even if their families have been there for generations, are regarded as perpetual foreigners. Sad since if there is a place where a nation is founded upon an idea, and not a race - its America - the land of refugees.

Americans on the backpacking trail are rare. Even rarer still are solo asian american backpackers. We had an interesting conversation during lunch - the others at my table (who come from europe, india, middle east) also remarked how few americans they encounter travelling. Before tonight, I could count on 1 hand the number of americans I've encountered travelling in the region in the past few months. Is it because Europeans get 4-6 weeks of legally mandated vacation time per year (vs 2 weeks for us)? You can travel reasonable comfortably for $10-15 a day (incl. room/board) in most of the region (so cost should not be an excuse). All the american travellers I've encountered are working, middle class or recent graduates.

Perhaps if americans travelled more, we would think twice about bombing other countries (who don't directly threaten us) and perhaps modify our concept of collateral damage.