Culture

The West's Biggest Export?

Alex Donaldson

  I spent a month over the summer of 2002 trekking in Borneo with a team of 15 other boys from my school. This was the first time that I had traveled outside England, my home, to a destination that was not geared towards hosting tourists. The expedition provided me with a very interesting perspective on the march of developed culture across the globe. The tourism industry is simply one example of this expansion, but it is an interesting example because it is the industry that takes the public to these “exotic” lands.

  The 20th century has seen the creation and rapid expansion of the tourism industry, fuelled by our ability to travel faster and more conveniently to remote places on the planet. Tourism describes a huge variety of different activities, all falling under the banner of people traveling for pleasure. I think of tourists as falling into two main categories, those people who travel to find somewhere to relax, and those who travel to experience new cultures. The first category has less direct effect on the spread of tourism, as these people prefer to travel to places in developed countries, where they can relax in comfort. The second category likes to travel to experience new cultures and environments without necessarily having a relaxing trip. It is these people who are constantly pushing the tourist industry into new areas. Once the tourist industry realizes a region is becoming popular with adventurous tourists, big resort hotels appear, and the wild is tamed for the benefit of the tourist who likes to feel adventurous without having to endure the hardship of dingy, cockroach-ridden hotels. The location is now ruined for the adventurous tourist. These westernized resorts can be found all over the world, giving a highly sanitized version of the local culture. This leaves the adventurers to go in search of a new location to visit, an even more remote and exotic place is visited, and so the cycle continues until we will have a resort hotel next to every lake, mountain, forest and beach on the planet.

  I have been lucky enough to see this expansion of tourism firsthand during my trip to Malaysian Borneo in the summer of 2002. This was a very interesting place to visit because different parts of the country are at different points in the transition between untouched wilderness and popular tourist spots. The place I visited where this transition was furthest developed was the city of Kota Kinabalu in the north of Borneo. I knew from the start that this town was different from the others I had visited further to the South. The airport was fully enclosed and airconditioned, with numerous gift shops; all of this was clearly designed with the foreign traveler in mind (Malays find air-conditioning too cold after living in the tropics all their lives). We made a couple of day trips to one of the numerous little islands a 30-minute boat ride from Kota Kinabalu. This island could only be described as paradise; pine trees shaded the beach from the blazing equatorial sun. Ten meters out in the deep blue sea there was a coral reef buzzing with life, and best of all there were only 50 people on the island at most and this was at the height of the tourist season. I cannot see the situation staying like this for long though; several large hotels already dominate the sea front of Kota Kinabalu. We had to pay to get onto the island, and there were Pizza Huts and MacDonalds scattered around the town. Yet we still stood out as tourists; seeing other white people was rare, because Kota Kinabalu is not an international tourist destination. All it would take would be one well-placed newspaper or magazine article and it could become a very popular destination.

  Another town that I visited was just starting on the road to becoming a tourist location. Bario is a small (pop ~500) rice-growing town, accessible only by air. The only foreigners to visit were student groups (like my team) or people with a professional interest in the area. There was no infrastructure to support any other kind of visitor. My team had the privilege staying in one of the village longhouses; these are literally long wooden structures housing several family groups. The accommodation was definitely not luxurious, but for backpackers it provided a place to stay where we could immerse ourselves in the culture. For a week we lived under the same roof with 10 village families, and we ate their rice and wild boar crouched around one of the few electric lights. We worked alongside the locals repairing the irrigation system for their paddy fields. On our final night in the village we even took part in a traditional ceremony and dance, performed for us for the work we did for the village. This is what some tourists want from traveling, so there is definitely the potential for Bario to support a tourism industry even if it is only a few rooms for rent. Our local hosts recognized this and were very interested to hear how we felt while staying in the village. They were very eager to learn how to make the longhouse a more comfortable environment for travelers. We had some trouble convincing them that they had provided the most enjoyable accommodation on the trip; in fact it was a place many of us will never forget. By the end of our stay there was talk of our team leader returning to Bario to help the longhouse establish itself as a place for people to stay, hopefully without loosing the genuine feel we experienced while staying there. It will be many decades before Bario develops even a small tourism industry, but it is only a matter of time. Fifty years ago no group of students would have been able to delve so deeply into Bornean culture, yet now it is seen as common thing for youths to do (at least in Britain) as part of a wider education about the world. Fifty years from now those boundaries will be pushed even further back, to the point where they may even disappear entirely.

  As the developed countries, like Japan and America reach out into more and more remote locations it can dilute and westernize the local cultures, as I experienced firsthand in Malaysia. Before the trip I received many warnings about the culture shock that I would go through on arrival in country, but in reality that concern was misplaced. Everybody had mobile phones and went around wearing football (soccer) shirts, and the malls were filled with bootlegged copies of all the latest Hollywood and Bollywood movies. Even all the way out in Bario the locals rode around on mopeds; it was quite a sight to see a village Elder bumping down a dusty track, elongated earlobes flapping in the breeze. I could also still buy my Mars bars and Coke at one of the local shops, albeit at twice the normal price. This is not to say the culture was not different, but there were some very strong western themes running through it. I found this slightly disturbing, that a country should forsake its own roots to copy the developed nations. This was clearly what was happening, because alongside the western cultural ideas there were also strong Japanese links, such as Japanese MTV on all the local televisions. The Japanese connection makes more sense considering the closer geographical and cultural proximity of the two countries. But every time we met a local the conversation quickly strayed to discussion of English soccer teams. This is all very bad news for global cultural diversity; it looks like we are heading to a world filled with different flavors of Western culture, a product of the huge increases in global travel. The majority of people who travel for business or pleasure feel more comfortable not having to deal with a completely different culture. In its efforts to be accepted globally maybe Malaysia is doing the right thing to make westerners feel more at home, but only at the expense of its own individuality. Malaysia has even set a time frame for its progress as a world player; the government has declared that the country wishes to be “developed” by 2020. Exactly how they define this I am not sure, but the impression I got from living in the country for a month was that “developed” meant, simply, like America.

  Does this mean that the backpacker’s days are numbered? Maybe, but I believe it will be a long time before Western culture completely dominates the globe. There will still be places for us to explore and new cultures to experience for a long time yet. Of course these places will be more and more remote, but that only adds to the challenge. My experience in Malaysia may paint a gloomier picture than is representative of the overall situation. Malaysia is a long way down the road to becoming a developed nation; there are plenty of other countries in the world in far worse situations than it is. These places still have a chance to preserve their individuality. I cannot help but ask myself, am I being selfish? Should these countries be striving to preserve their individuality? To do so is to swerve away from the conventionally accepted path to development. The question this poses is, is the American way the only path to development? I find this a very difficult question to answer. Japan does seem to have managed to become a world leader, while still maintaining strong links with its heritage. I believe this occurred simply because the two cultures grew side by side; Japan had an established “developed” culture by the time American culture really started to sweep the globe. These were the first global cultures to emerge, which is why everyone else is now following them. The rest of the world will always be following them though; these countries simply have too great a head start. Only by finding their own unique brand of development will places like Borneo really succeed. I do therefore believe that the wish to preserve the individuality of a developing country is very important and not entirely selfish. I hope that the developing countries wake up and realize this before it is too late.