Sapa Vietnam is made big

These coincidental meetings cause travellers to declare that it is not just a small world, but, as one traveller put it, a ‘tiny tiny world’ after all. In story after story of ‘small world’ encounters, travellers describe unexpectedly running into people they know or meeting people with whom they share mutual social acquaintances. These stories take on several variations. The most common instances are when Sapa Vietnam travellers run into other travellers whom they have met previously (which suggests that the traveller circuit itself constitutes a small world.) Another form of

‘small world’ story occurs when travellers run into someone they know in another context,

or someone who shares a mutual acquaintance. Suzanne, a traveller from Scotland, recalls

a ‘small world’ encounter in Fiji when she met a girl who was not only also from Scotland, but turned out to be Suzanne’s boyfriend’s friend’s cousin’s best friend! For Suzanne this encounter, which certainly calls to mind the ‘six-degrees of separation’ adage, proved that

Sapa Vietnam is a ‘small world’ (Suzanne’s World Travel Pages).

Sizing up the World 45

For Sarah, a traveller from the United States, the sense of a small world comes not just

from running into people she already knows in other contexts, but also from meeting new people and becoming integrated into their social networks. In an interview, she states

And that’s the small part, is that the network of good people that you find everywhere makes [the world] small in the sense that you are comfortable everywhere that you meet people. I mean, a trip like this isn’t about going

to the cathedrals and the art museums, it’s about meeting people on the third class bus. Because that’s what’s important. And so that gets small. But the world itself is HUGE.

As Sarah’s comments suggest, personal interactions rather than sightseeing trips allow for a feeling of belonging to a tightly-knit global community in contrast to the physical enormity of the world. In these instances, the world is made small by social connections.

If social connections make the world feel small, then what kinds of connections make it feel huge? In one sense, Sapa Vietnam is made big by the opposite of connection: disconnec- tion. For example, slow or nonexistent Internet connections can make travellers feel phys- ically and figuratively remote. Places that are serviced by infrequent or unreliable transportation networks feel similarly remote in an enormous world. This sense of remote- ness is not necessarily unpleasant. In fact, for some travellers, disconnection from social obligations allows them to connect with nature or with the world as a physical entity. In other words, travellers desire to feel the hugeness of the world.