It is quite unlikely none of them exist; these men – for men they will be.
They are medium to high IQ male adults with low emotional quotient. They may be engineers, quants, analysts; … degree educated, perhaps, but not people people – not salesmen or HR professionals. Women like their men confident, sharply dressed and generous; these awkward, slobby niggards are consequently single…. and they tour the world on Google Street View.
They might be called “Googlenauts” or “Street View Cruisers”. In the gardens of Japan and from Bombay to Yucatan they have got to know cities by walking the streets virtually. They have the knowledge of world towns they have visited and traversed without ever leaving the comfort (or safety) of their own lodgings.
It makes such excellent financial sense: no flight tickets, no bus, train or taxi fares to shell out for, eat your own food made in your own kitchen and at night, your own familiar bed already paid for. No mess, no fuss, no Delhi belly, no confusing foreign currencies or languages to deal with, and your own non-squat toilet always on hand and furnished with toilet paper. The world at your feet for the cost of highspeed broadband and an HD screen.
But they’re missing something, are they not, these “Mac Packers”?
Those who have made the real, physical and geographical journey to Yosemite will recall this. Before visiting this Californian valley, travelers mostly know what they are going to see. They peer at Ansell Adams’ photos, and a thousand others taken by those on a quest to capture the place on a 2-dimensional image. Colleagues and friends tell them: “Nothing prepares you for actually seeing it when you are there”; like so many tired old cliches, this one too is true.
The sheer heart-stopping, breath-catching majesty of a vertical mile square of sheer rock doesn’t really fit in a Jpeg, nor on the glossy page of a coffee table book. No-one finds their hand involuntarily rising to cover their gaping mouth as they regard a landscape in a computer image. Apart from the diminished visual element, our “Web Walkers” as they click from El Kapitan to Half Dome, won’t get the scent of snow and pine on the icy downdraft that bespeaks a completely different climate up there within reach of your eyes, or the sound of water that spends 30 seconds in free-fall echoing off a flat perpendicular granite face the size of a large town on the other side of the valley. The formic humility of being a tiny human in such a place simply doesn’t come across vicariously.
For the Yosemite experience you have to go there. You always will do. Words fail us, and technology will never be up to the job either.
Dragon’s teeth. Jungle capped limestone outcrops
All this applies with Ha Long Bay as well.
If you have seen the films, and the travel programs and the pictures of this place then you have still seen very little. “Nothing prepares you for being there”. Vertical granite abounds, again and plays its role in the ambiance, but with 2,000 islets absorbing its energy the South China Sea is as calm as a turtle pond. Each island has its own cap of tropical jungle, once joined up, presumably, but now a separate micro environment every one. It reminds a traveler of Snoopy and the Coffee Pot, the red rocks of Arizona, but at their base, not scarlet sand but turquoise water…
Heartless and unimaginitive would be the folk who lived in such a place without inventing a suitable mythology for its origin, and the tale of the dragon’s landing and his scattered teeth is fittingly wild and violent.
Feral children at large in rowing boats selling “interesting shells” to deep pocketed holiday makers
Visiting out of season in grey weather, we were upgraded to an almost empty luxury cruiser to make our journey between the draconian molars and canines. We joined a flotilla of shabby white craft threading their way between the spectacular outcrops like a line of floss.
The Vietnamese chef on board produced a series of meals during our 2 day cruise, each one an exhibition of the sophistication and refinement of his country’s cuisine. This can be rare to find in a country where Pho Bo (noodle soup with beef slices) at £1 a go is the staple lunch for most folk, cash-strapped as this country still is.
Some arrangement. Carved veggie flowers, part of on-board cuisine
Junk Food: Squid salad
Watch out for a revival in interest in Vietnamese cooking – it is ancient and complex and packed with tropical flavours – much more than spring rolls and noodle soup.
Put Ha Long Bay on your must see list if you haven’t been there. You know you have to go there to see it properly, and you Googlenauts, get out of the house a little more often.
Asian Food Safari 