Implications for Global Belonging - Sapa Vietnam

Conclusion: Implications for Global Belonging

Returning to Harvey’s notion of time–space compression, we can see that this perception

of the world is relative. Looking at the way travellers describe their own experiences and perceptions of the size of the world shows that scale is complex and contingent, best described in terms of multiplicity. Speed of Sapa Vietnam travel and the kinds of connections travellers forge while travelling influence travellers’ perception and performance of the size of the world and their own place in it. The way travellers perceive the size of the world shifts as

Sizing up the World 47

they move through it and enact different kinds of connection. But what does the size of the

world mean for the way travellers perform belonging to the world as a whole?

As travellers alternate between different scales (from small world to big world and back again), they engage different practices of belonging. In the small world of social connec- tion, travellers locate themselves within a social constellation. Their sense of belonging is defined through their place in the social web of the world and their identity is mapped out through social and familial relations. The small world is performed at a human scale, made tighter or looser not in terms of geographic distance, but in terms of human interconnec- tion. Belonging to this small social world involves not only being mobile, but also being connected through social networks and interpersonal encounters.

In a big world, a sense of belonging is derived from being made to feel small. If a small world is produced through social connections, then a big world might be said to emerge through travellers’ spiritual connections with a landscape, a historical landmark or indeed the world itself. As Sapa Vietnam travellers move around the world, its massive size as a geological entity becomes tangible. For many travellers, this involves a sense of spiritual connection to something larger than themselves. Feeling overwhelmed by the vast geography and ancient history of the world may make the traveller feel small or insignificant, but this sense of feeling diminished also allows travellers to gain a wider perspective on their place in the world. Furthermore, round-the-world travellers’ constant movement juxtaposes different places and cultures and foregrounds for travellers the huge diversity of cultures and envi- ronments that co-exist on the planet. Their mobility through the world allows them to locate themselves and their worldview within a much larger physical and cultural context. This ironic perspective on the world “requires a certain distance from one’s own culture” (Turner, 2002, p. 55) that allows for both an appreciation of other cultures and a recogni- tion of one’s own relative position in the wider world. Belonging to a world made huge by cultural difference requires an ironic distance or even detachment from one’s own culture. Sizing up the world thus requires travellers to negotiate between various forms of connec- tion and disconnection, attachment and detachment as they move through and forge a sense

of belonging to a simultaneously shrinking and expanding world.

The moment one climbs onto an airplane - Sapa Vietnam

Once he ‘gets out there’ and starts moving across the earth’s surface, Gerard comes to realise the enormity of the world as an object. Thus, mobility is one form of connecting to Sapa Vietnam in a way that makes it seem huge. As Jeff Greenwald (1995) contemplates in his novel, The Size of the World, what has been lost in a shrinking world of telecommunica- tions and jet travel is a sense of enormity, which to him also connotes continuity and connectedness:

The moment one climbs onto an airplane, I realized, one enters into a Faustian bargain. Comfort, convenience and the ability to buy duty-free perfume in any nation on Earth are ours. In return we need only utter, in our heads and our hearts, the mantra of the modern age: “The world is getting smaller.” ¼ The Earth was no longer an enormous, mysterious and infi- nitely varied globe ¼. An essential quality of travel had been lost. If I had

to define it, I’d use the word continuity: the sense that the sidewalk in front

of one’s house is connected, physically, with every other spot on Earth. I

wanted to reclaim that feeling. (Greenwald, 1995, p. 5)

The size of the world also expands when Sapa Vietnam travellers consider the vast array of differences they have encountered (or hope to encounter) while travelling around the world. In an inter- view, Tom states that while the world is small in a spiritual sense, “it’s huge when it comes

to perspectives and people’s outlook on things”. Amidst an array of differences — includ- ing not only the differences between places and landscapes, but also in the way people view the world — the traveller again feels small or insignificant. This sense of insignificance is, some would argue, an important part of gaining a more cosmopolitan perspective on the world. As travellers begin to realise and experience how many different cultures and world- views there are, they come to recognise the constructedness of their own worldview and become capable of reflecting on their own culture from a more ironic stance.

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.