One will have a spiritual awakening and decide to book a quick trip to Bali, Indonesia for a spiritual retreat.  

Or one will claim to love learning about non-Western cultures but proceed to gawk at the locals with water buffalos in Vietnam cultivating rice fields. 

Or become a polyglot for the sake of YouTube content, posting videos of them speaking in Vietnamese or Thai to impress non-cons locals for the sake of clicks.  

Or promote moving to southeast Asia and never have to learn the native language, but hold a different standard to anyone moving to the Global North, saying they have to learn Dutch to assimilate in the Netherlands. 

Well, thanks to social media, curating travel itineraries has never been easier. With a quick search on TikTok, Youtube or Instagram, you’re able to create the perfect trip to any country you desire. 

Also thanks to social media, you’re able to quickly find other people’s opinions on the places they traveled to, stating whether or not the country is worth visiting. While people are entitled to their opinions, there is some level of Western entitlement that surfaces when talking about southeast Asia that isn’t seen when rating Western countries. 

I scroll on TikTok until a travel related slideshow shows up on my for you page, rating various southeast Asian countries based on the person’s travel experience. 

The picture reads: 

Singapore: 4/10 

–       Too expensive for a southeast Asian country 

–       Was very westernised, didn’t feel like I was in Southeast Asia 

Hanoi, Vietnam: 3/10 

–       Super dirty and seedy 

–       Very expensive for Vietnam 

–       Extremely overrated 

It begs the question, what is considered ‘too expensive’ for southeast Asia, or what do people mean when they say Singapore feels westernised? Do they just mean that locals are trying to make a living knowing they are in a touristy destination? And do they also mean that they were surprised that not all of southeast Asia is a poor jungle as poorly portrayed by the West and Singapore is a developed economic power? But also surprised that southeast Asia is not as developed as Singapore? What is it that people expect? 

Conversation surrounding southeast Asian travel isn’t new. With ‘tips’ such as haggle with the locals because they give tourists inflated prices and don’t give money to the poor, since it’ll encourage other people to beg, it encourages Western tourists to be oddly entitled to the Orientalised East to conform to their standards. Locals have to speak English, but the tourist doesn’t have to learn a simple hello, please and thank you in the language of the country they’re visiting. 

Orientalism, as defined by Edward Said, is a construction of an image of the East to portray them as exotic, weak and vulnerable. And with the Western portrayal of the East, southeast Asia comes off as an ‘exotic playground’ for many Western tourists, containing spiritual retreats that are heavily rooted in Buddhism, and tourists seeing how many locals they can make uncomfortable by asking them condescending questions to capture on video.  

This isn’t to deter anyone from visiting southeast Asia. It’s a beautiful region of the world with so much to offer, but it also comes with questions of ethics. Before travelling to southeast Asia, ask the question of: has there been a self-reflection of biases? 

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