{"id":53035,"date":"2020-02-27T01:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T06:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=53035"},"modified":"2020-02-26T09:09:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T14:09:07","slug":"qotd-cliches-of-bad-travel-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/02\/27\/qotd-cliches-of-bad-travel-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Clich\u00e9s of bad travel writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>The poor-but-oh-so-happy sentiment pops up without fail in any crappy travel magazine version of a visit to Myanmar, Laos, or Nepal (and probably any other desperately poor and badly governed country), in which &#8220;the people&#8221; are always gleeful, generous, and colorful. I&#8217;m not exactly sure what it is about being ruled by insane dictators that makes people so damn nice, but here&#8217;s an idea: If you&#8217;re a Western travel writer, or, say, German tourist, and you&#8217;re going to an impoverished country full of hungry people in which you clearly stand out as someone with money to spend, people might be extra nice to you.<\/p>\n<p>Kerry Howley, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reason.com\/hitandrun\/2005\/08\/but_the_people.shtml#010618\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;But the People Are So <em>Friendly<\/em>&#8220;, <em>Hit and Run<\/em><\/a>, 2005-08-18.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The poor-but-oh-so-happy sentiment pops up without fail in any crappy travel magazine version of a visit to Myanmar, Laos, or Nepal (and probably any other desperately poor and badly governed country), in which &#8220;the people&#8221; are always gleeful, generous, and colorful. I&#8217;m not exactly sure what it is about being ruled by insane dictators that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28,41],"tags":[91,202,134],"class_list":["post-53035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-media","category-quotations","tag-poverty","tag-travel","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-dNp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53035"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55292,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53035\/revisions\/55292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}