Same Same But Different: Tourism in Southeast Asia

3 minute read

Editors’ Note: While Jörg Brüggemann shot this in 2006 and 2007, we felt that this commentary on the ironies of tourism would be a good start to the Indian tourism season.

Through the 20th century, writers, poets and artists have all wrestled with the troubling reality of modernity: that we live, as one famous German theorist put it, in a disenchanted world, sapped of mystery by our modern, secular, technological society. The search for wonder has animated a host of new age faddish trends in the West. It sent hippies to ashrams in India, made Tibetan Buddhism hip in Hollywood and launched travelers down paths of wanderlust and serendipity across the globe.

But something has happened along the way. Photographer Jörg Brüggemann joined the backpacker trail in South and Southeast Asia: a stretch of turf that has been densely charted already by Lonely Planet, that is lined with tours and scams ready to swallow up the unsuspecting, and that is trod over by millions each year. Many of these tourists are young people on gap years or study abroad, journeying ostensibly on latter day quests of self-discovery, financed on a shoestring. But, according to Brüggemann, what were once whimsical, individual explorations have turned into banal spectacles of packaged mass tourism. “Thailand,” he says, “is already like Mallorca.”

His photos from Thailand, Laos and India capture the backpacker experience in its ironies and idiosyncrasies. Young Western kids smoke hash, ape the meditation of holy men, pad around hostels, get drunk. Throughout Asia, it seems tourists are rarely engaging in the country they visit on its own terms, but rather, on the hackneyed ones manufactured by the whole backpacker tourism industry. In his seminal work Orientalism, the great, late, humanist intellectual, Edward Said, described how many Western scholars of the East—the Orient—treated it not as a real place but as a “theatrical stage affixed to Europe.” In a different context, the backpacker circuit achieves the same effect.

But of course, this is of minimal importance to the locals looking on. This is their home, their quotidian existence. The swollen tourist trail may be unsightly, but it’s usually profitable to those making a living on its sidelines. And that’s a virtue that has universal appeal.

Born in 1979 in Herne, Germany, Brüggemann studied under award-winning photographer Peter Bialobrzeski. He is currently working as a freelance photographer in Berlin and is a member of OSTKREUZ photo agency. More of his work can be seen here.

Ishaan Tharoor is a writer-reporter for TIME and editor of Global Spin. Find him on Twitter at @ishaantharoor. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEWorld.

Water tubing down the Nam Song river is a popular backpacker activity in Vang Vieng, Laos, with many opportunities to stop at the riverside bars and have a drink or swing, December 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
Hostels, an internet cafe and a hot spring beckon visitors in Vashisht, India, August 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
A backpacker holds her Lonely Planet Travel Guide on a street flooded by monsoon rain in Delhi, India, July 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
A backpacking couple at a restaurant. The young man has adopted the local custom of eating with the right hand in Varanasi, India, December 2006.Jörg Brüggemann
Backpackers share a bus with two Indians dressed to perform for tourists. The man on the left is costumed like the ape god Hanuman in Hampi, India, January 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
Three backpackers defend their beach towel against a cow. Cows can move with complete freedom in India and in Goa they love the tourists' towels in Arambol, India, January 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
Four Israeli backpackers wait for their bus by a Buddhist prayer wheel in Hunder, India, August 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
Four Israeli backpackers watch local women guide their animals down the mountain in Vashisht, India, August 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
In the Thar desert, near to the Pakistani border, a Swedish backpacker waits for her camel safari to continue in Jaisalmer, India, December 2006.
A group of Israeli backpackers and locals chat during the famous New Year’s Full Moon Party. In the background are stands which sell mixed drinks. The stands often display Stars of David in an attempt to appeal to the large contingent of Israeli tourists in Hat Rin, Thailand, December 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
An Italian backpacker and two Indians, who, judging from their dress, are probably visiting from the city, survey the hot spring in a temple in Vashisht, India, August 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
A backpacker and a local girl who have made friends walk near the famous temple ruins of Hampi, India, January 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
A tourist smokes a chillum pipe filled with charas, a form of hashish in Old Manali, India, August 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
A backpacker plays in the sand in Arambol, India, January 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
Two young men sun bathe at Sunrise Beach. Tourist boats are moored in the background in Hat Rin, Thailand, January 2008.Jörg Brüggemann
Two French tourists practice yoga to warm up for a session of juggling on the rooftop terrace of an inn in Chiang Mai, Thailand, December 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
Just before midnight at the New Year’s Full Moon Party in Hat Rin, Thailand, December 2007.Jörg Brüggemann
A local Thai woman cleans up the beach after the New Year’s Full Moon Party in Hat Rin, Thailand, January 2008.Jörg Brüggemann
An Austrian tourist looks down the Nubra Valley from a Buddhist temple. He wears a t-shirt of the diver's association of Ko Phangan, Thailand in Hunder, India, August 2007.Jörg Brüggemann

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