Waddling Down the Quay

As you might expect from a legendary and life-altering trip memories and reflections on my time in the African and Asian developing world bubble to the surface at odd and unexpected moments.  I continue to be struck by these two thoughts: 1. Man, were the people in these places great - happy, resigned in a dignified way, eager to please, and 2. Man, do we have it good here in the developed world.  You know how you can take your good health for granted and then you get sick and feel like shit for a while and when you recover it feels great to just not be sick and you think: "Man, why do I take my robust health for granted?  I'm going to stop doing that." and then you stop doing it anyway?  

I mused today about a port we visited in Malaysia.  To reach the tour buses the passengers had to walk down a long jetty passing a restaurant and some shops along the way.  Hundreds of passengers.  On the way back to the ship after our tour we stopped at the outdoor restaurant for a coffee and the legendary hookah experience.  I could have had a free coffee on the ship and some free canapes or appetizers or crudites or finger foods or whatever the fuck they served us and I could have avoided the always somewhat uncomfortable experience of navigating the ins and outs of a restaurant in a foreign country: how do you order, how do you pay, does anyone speak English, am I going to eat/drink something bilious that will lead to projectile vomiting, those sorts of thoughts.  We stopped and had a wonderful, wonderful cultural experience, highlighted by the attention paid us by our bright-eyed and amazed child-waiter from Pakistan, who absolutely wallowed in the attention we paid him, clearly eager to interact with us but nervous about his English skills and wondering what level of dismissive we might be as wealthy Westerners.  His boss, a mildly racist Indian, sat with us for a while.  I didn't know what anything cost beforehand and was, of course, amazed at how little the bill came to, as I tipped like one hundred percent because the bill was so ridiculously small.

Here's the most striking fact of this encounter: we literally watched dozens and dozens and scores and hundreds of cruisers walk by and no one else stopped.  No one.  Not a single person.  I don't know how I interpret this: fear of a cultural encounter, arrogance about their place in the world, a desire to save a few dollars by eating the safe, paid-for ship fare in a safe, comfortable, familiar setting?  To me they missed the whole point of being in a foreign place by waddling from a cushy ship to a cushy tour bus to a curated tour and they back again.