A big smile for the camera doesn’t cut it anymore. These days you need to strike a series of elaborate poses, as we saw recently in Southeast Asia.
Malacca, Malaysia
Do the woman in the window, above, and her friend with the camera have Instagram sites? I’d guess so. Are they “influencers” with sponsors and large audiences? Probably not. But one thing I know for sure: They weren’t unusual.
Jakarta, Indonesia
Simple snapshots have given way to performance across Southeast Asia and beyond. Posing has become a new kind of visual literacy, with people tilting their chins and curling their fingers into hearts, just as in a K-pop music video. Everyone has a smartphone and social media accounts, along with selfie sticks and face-retouching apps.
Tanah Lot, Bali
There’s nothing new about young people expressing themselves; fashion, music, slang and dance have always evolved. Now they’re expressing themselves through images that are elaborately designed, posed, cropped and filtered. We have lots of wannabe Kardashians in our own country as well and I’ve seen them in other parts of the world, too.
Ulu Petanu Waterfall, Bali
What I saw in Asia took this to another level. Many of the young tourists who crossed our path seemed more interested in posing than in learning about where they were visiting. Was this because their countries have a tradition of presenting a carefully curated public self? Was it due to Japanese kawaii culture, with its aesthetic of cuteness, or to Korean beauty influences, or something else?
Penang, Malaysia
I can’t explain why it’s become so prevalent, but it has, and I found it interesting. After noticing it repeatedly for about a week, I began quietly snapping the photos you see in this post.
If you hadn’t already noticed this trend yourself, I guarantee you will see it the next time you travel, especially if you go to Southeast Asia.
I hope the people I photographed won’t mind that I shared their poses with you. They clearly wanted their photos to be seen and, well, it didn’t seem like they’d get cheesed easily.
I learned a lot during our recent trip to Taipei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Manila — not only about these places, but about our own country, too.
Here are six things I now understand more clearly:
Bandung, Indonesia
America is not the center of the universe.
Our country has been so powerful for so long that it can seem like the universe revolves around us. But it doesn’t.
Many Americans are obsessed now with our political turmoil, and for good reason. When you leave home, though, you’re reminded that most people around the world are far more focused on other things.
As I wrote while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer several years ago, my Moldovan friends didn’t “care about American politics unless it affects them personally, which it rarely does. At least they know where America is, which is more than most Americans know about Moldova.”
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Did people ask us during our trip about President Trump, the war with Iran and other issues? Yes, and I plan to share some of those conversations in an upcoming post.
But we were asked far more often about our family and other matters that had nothing to do with American politics. The television in our hotel was more likely to show a badminton match than CNN.
Recognizing this doesn’t mean our American passions are unimportant. It’s just a reminder that others generally don’t share them with the same intensity.
Taipei. Taiwan
Countries are complicated.
Is Alaska the same as Texas? Obviously not. Yet Americans often blur entire regions, such as Southeast Asia or Africa. They use phrases like “developing” to obscure immense diversity within places.
The four countries we visited turned out to be significantly different. Taiwan is technologically advanced, orderly and democratic. Malaysia is striking for its multiculturalism and welcoming form of Islam. Indonesia has a huge population with diverse islands. The Philippines has strong cultural ties to both Spain and the United States.
We saw many other differences within and across the countries as well. They can’t be reduced to sound bites and neither can other countries around the world.
Sandakan. Borneo
They have their own histories.
America has been dominant not only in terms of its military, economy and political power, but also in its cultural imprint. Taylor Swift and LeBron James are more famous than many world leaders.
It’s humbling, therefore, to come to a place like Southeast Asia and be reminded that they had sophisticated civilizations and complex histories long before Europeans arrived, much less McDonald’s. They were shaped by trade routes, empires and migrations that had nothing to do with us.
Penang, Malaysia
The interactions among these countries were far more important until relatively recently. When Champa and I were in Malaysia, we stayed in a hotel that was once the mansion of a prominent Chinese businessman in Malacca. He and other Chinese immigrants played critical roles in the development of that city and others. The emigration of families from Taiwan centuries ago changed the face of the Philippines. Muslim traders reshaped Indonesia and Malaysia. The region’s majestic Hindu temples are reminders of India’s influence.
Once America did enter the picture, its impact was mixed. We liberated the region from brutal Japanese occupation during World War Two and provided essential economic and military assistance, notably to Taiwan in recent years. But we also employed scorched earth tactics to keep the Philippines under control in the early 1900s. We supported dictators like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek and Indonesia’s Suharto.
Taipei, Taiwan
There are far more people in Asia than in the United States.
Southeast Asia is among the most densely populated places on Earth. Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines have more people than the United States and Canada. Jakarta has more people than New York, Los Angeles, Chicago , Houston and Phoenix combined.
If you add in Vietnam, Thailand and other countries usually included in “Southeast Asia,” the comparison is even starker — and vastly more so if you include India, China and the rest of Asia.
Yet many Americans cannot place these countries on a map. Their visibility to us doesn’t align with their actual human scale. We regard our own lack of curiosity about other countries as normal and make jokes about it. Viewed from afar, our insularity is less amusing.
Harina train, Indonesia
Their economies are growing fast.
The United States is generally wealthier than Southeast Asia, in some ways dramatically so. We saw heart-breaking poverty in several places.
But we also saw new rail systems that operate efficiently. Most of the airports were modern and immaculate. Smartphones were ubiquitous. Mobile payment was common. Skyscrapers were everywhere. Many parks and other public spaces were spotless. Taiwan has the world’s leading computer chip factories and other countries in the region are also moving fast in the tech world. Millions of people are highly educated and middle class, or more.
So are we still ahead of them economically? Overall, yes … but that’s for now.
Manila, Philippines
Travel gives us perspective.
Probably my biggest take-away from this trip wasn’t about Southeast Asia per se but about travel generally.
Champa and I have been privileged to travel widely. We’ve seen repeatedly that what seems true and universal in the United States — our politics and assumptions about the world — are culturally specific rather than inevitable.
Especially at this moment when bombast and nationalism dominate our national conversation, it’s been therapeutic to view America with more distance, more nuance and less chest thumping.
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
I love my country. I’m proud to have served it twice overseas. But I’m also proud to be part of this larger world, which lately feels saner in many ways than my homeland.
We can learn a lot from other countries, even those that are “developing,” if we approach them with open eyes and open hearts. They remind us not only that the United States isn’t the center of the universe; it’s not even the center of our own small planet.
Manila, the capital of the Philippines, is overflowing with people. To grasp how dense it is, consider that the biggest city in my home state — Charlotte, North Carolina — has around 2,500 people per square mile. Manila is 45 times denser.
It has more people per square mile than New York, Paris, New Delhi or Hong Kong. In fact, depending on how you draw the lines, it’s the most densely populated city in the world.
We just went there for several days and were awed by the traffic. Manila is one of the world’s few megacities without a subway system, although it’s building one now. The average Manila driver loses more than five full days a year sitting in gridlock.
We experienced this ourselves while exploring the city with Grab, the local version of Uber. We stayed in Makati, one of the 16 neighboring cities that comprise “Metro Manila,” and had to allow bountiful extra time to drive anywhere else. These 17 separate city governments have no unified authority, which is a big reason why the infrastructure is so difficult to fix.
We spent only four nights there, just long enough to get a quick look and break up our trip home. Metro Manila occupies less than one percent of the Philippines land area and, despite its density, accounts for less than 15 percent of its total population. We were very aware it doesn’t represent the entire country. We wish we’d had the time to visit more of its 7,641 islands, which stretch a distance the same as Miami to New York City.
Still, we were able to visit Intramuros, the historic center of Manila. We explored Fort Santiago — the photo shows Champa descending into its dungeon — the beautiful Manila Cathedral and the old San Agustin Church, below.
We took a guided tour through the Chinese-Filipino Museum and wandered around Binondo, the world’s oldest Chinatown. We also visited the Ayala Museum, where we especially enjoyed its 60 intricate dioramas and other exhibits depicting Philippine history.
We kept hearing about the city’s giant malls so, even though we usually avoid malls, we went to two of the biggest. Both were modern and filled with shops offering every brand imaginable, plus diverse food options.
Needing a break from the tourist sites and commercial bustle, we took a (slow) Grab ride to the Arroceros Forest Park, a small urban riverside forest that serves as a green oasis for the city. It was lovely, even with the sign warning of snakes.
We spent our last day at Bonifacio High Street, a long boulevard lined with dining and shopping options.
Manila was the final stop of our trip that also included Taipei, Malaysia and Indonesia, so we celebrated our last night at an outdoor restaurant, watching the sun set over this immense, crowded, fascinating city. We would never want to live in Manila but we were glad to have visited it.
