Ruminations on Other American Travelers

I met four other Americans staying at my hostel in Christchurch, two of them, surprisingly, from Long Island, one from New Hampshire, and one from Florida. The three girls had been studying abroad in Australia and were now on vacation in New Zealand for ten days before returning home. The 18-year-old boy was on a two-year Australia/New Zealand student exchange program for young adults just out of high school.

When I asked him what he was doing in New Zealand he responded, “Trying to find my place in the world and how I fit.” It was a bit too philosophical and pretentious of an answer for my tastes, but I could respect that. I feel the same way sometimes, but in a quieter way. I don’t need to be overt about my reasons for traveling. I could tell he loved to declare this answer whenever anyone asked.

He inquired about my itinerary so I named the places, in order, where I would be traveling.
“Why aren’t you going to Japan?” he questioned condescendingly as if I had no idea what I was missing.
“Because I chose not to. There are enough places on my itinerary already, and I only wanted to travel to certain parts of Southeast Asia right now,” I answered.
“But why? If I was going to Asia, the place I’d want to go most is Japan,” he replied obnoxiously. Well good thing I’m not you then, I thought but said nothing. “I want to go to China, Korea, and Japan,” he continued.
“Those are a few of the most expensive Asian countries to travel to. If you went to Southeast Asia, you could save yourself some money,” I suggested.
“Money is nothing. It comes and goes,” he responded with a shrug. I wanted so badly to retort, That’s easy for you to say seeing as you’re undoubtedly traveling on daddy’s dollar at the moment, but I just smiled and excused myself. I’d had enough of his idealistic-on-the-verge-of-pompous affirmations. Who did he think he was to tell me where I should be traveling when he was only 18 and fresh out of high school with no experience with which to base his notions? He chose to travel to two of the most westernized-as-close-to-America-as-you-can-get countries he could find and was clearly someone that had no idea what was going on in the world but liked to think that he was above it all. I don’t like when people pretend to know what the world is like when they haven’t actually seen any of it.

He wasn’t very aware of the state of his own country for that matter (which I can appreciate, I’m not the best at keeping up on the news either), but he had no knowledge that the Democrats had essentially taken over politically and said naively, “But the elections aren’t for two more years,” when I responded to his “What’s going on in America?” question with “You missed the elections.”
One of the girls added, “There’s mid-elections for the house and senate.”
“Oh I don’t care about those. They don’t do anything,” he said waving a dismissive hand in the air. Unbeknownst to them, apparently the house and senate are just for show…

It’s people like him that give young American travelers a bad reputation. Foreigners see us as haughty know-it-alls who only believe in one way of living. I have for the most part liked the other Americans I have met along the way and am proud of the country I hail from, but for a brief moment, I saw what people from other countries already see.