The New Snobby Travelers, it seems, do not go to places where other people go. They like to find their own places in obscure spots on the planet, preferably areas no one has ever heard of and which don't ever see tourists, and then like to boast about it to their friends and associates, feeling the fillip simply because other people don't know where it is and certainly have not been there themselves.
A new brand of one-up-man-ship they're all playing with each other!
(Hey, may I suggest to these folk Ushuaia? There's a place that's ... mmmmm! ... got the right obscurity value and folks I know who've been there have told me, yes, at dinner parties, that it's ... mmmm! ... rather special!)
The article went on to say that these New Snobby Travelers have just discovered Luang Prabang in Laos and are furious that so many folk from around the world have already been there; that it isn't a discovery they've made for themselves; that they get no cache from the boast and they're annoyed because, well, Luang Prabang, the Royal City on the banks of the Mekong and Khan Rivers is just stunning, so has been well known to backbackers and retirement travelers for nearly three decades, thus they want to go there for the beauty but, no sorry, it doesn't have the right level of obscurity and 'boast-ability'.
Still, if this new influx of Flashpackers have now discovered Luang Prabang, maybe we can let them know about Luang Prabang Orphanage because I'm sure they would get "the obscurity fillip" from boasting about how they've "taken an interest" in the place and subsequently how much they do to help these poor little kiddies. And, trust me, those little kiddies do need help.
I love going to strange out-of-the-way places myself but do, however, have a wee concern encompassed within this general global jaunting. Let me tell you one little story to illustrate:
Friends of ours here in Hong Kong - two perfectly nice middle-aged Australian women who teach in Chinese schools here - recently went on a week-long holiday jaunt to Indonesia, and while there, one morning, decided on a whim to catch a ferry across to an island well off the coast that they'd heard was very pretty.
Nothing to it, right?
Wrong! They were there and "tourist-ing" (both are rather chunky sorts so were wearing the standard 'filo gwei-po' tourist uniform of calf-length baggy shorts, collared Polo t-shirts and Nikes-with-socks) ...
This sort of thing!
.... for no more than half an hour, when several locals grabbed them, bustled them down alley-ways, hauled them away into some little shack, saying there what they presumed was "Duck, duck" as they hauled them down below the window-line, peeping out themselves to see if anyone had seen.
Naturally, while lying on some strangers' floor in a shack down an alley, they wanted to know what was going on so, after a great deal of protesting, mime, and 'talking very slowly in English', one of these "kidnappers" kindly went off to get the island's resident English-speaker who explained to them that ... the island's Iman had seen them arrive, objected to what they were wearing and thus their presence there on the island and so had ordered their immediate deaths!
Yes, he ordered them KILLED! People we know personally were ORDERED TO BE KILLED!!! People no different from us WERE ORDERED TO BE KILLED!
However, their rescuers/"kidnappers" thought they looked like a nice pair of 'old ladies' so truly didn't want to do it and so had decided to risk their own lives to save them!
Yup, that's what happened! And they had to lie on the floor behind the sofa all day long, until well after dark, when these kindly locals then threw veils around them and secreted them along the back alleyways, to catch the late ferry back.
A lesson there for us all, I suspect. And certainly a lesson for The New Snobby Travelers! Yes, traveling to obscure places is all very well but you have to realise that sometimes ... the locals simply don't want you there!
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