Travelfish #405: Pause and take a breath

Some thoughts about The Fear, and what destinations need to be thinking about now, as they struggle to reinvent travel.                                                                                                                                                                                                        [Travelfish #405: Pause and take a breath]( Some thoughts about The Fear, and what destinations need to be thinking about now, as they struggle to reinvent travel. [Stuart McDonald]( Oct 5 Hi everyone, Hello in particular to the bunch of new subscriber’s that signed up after last week’s issue [on that legal case in Thailand](. Latest is they are trying to sort out their differences—I wish them luck. [Subscribe now]( Last week we published our second long read, titled “[Ko Pha Ngan then and now](”, by Tom Vater. It follows on from last month’s [piece on Bali]( by Julia Winterflood. If you haven’t already, please give them a read! All these long reads have been funded through our crowdfunding. Thank you! Some work required. On an architecture walk in Phnom Penh. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- On the topic of [crowdfunding](, this is our last week, and I’ll wrap it up next Monday. If you’ve loose change, please keep it in mind. [You can follow our progress here](—and make a donation if you wish! Last week on pay to read Couchfish I did [an architecture walk](, then visited [Tuol Sleng](. I also wrote a wrap on some of [my favourite places to stay](, about the [National Museum]( and [took a trip upriver](. On free to read Couchfish, [I wrote about colour]( and why it is my “small detail” that makes a place more memorable. From a week earlier, my piece on [the merits of doing a street food walk]( continues to get plenty of reads. My apologies for any hunger pangs it may have brought on. Grim memories of Tuol Sleng, Phnom Penh. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- As always, most of the photos in this newsletter are from last week on Couchfish (one slipped in from our break over the last few days in Bali). Over on Thai Island Times, David has his regular [Thai island and beaches]( wrap—always a great read. Cheers and again thank you for all your support Stuart --------------------------------------------------------------- Support Travelfish! If you'd like to chip in (if you haven’t already) for using the site, we'd love you to sign up for a year-long subscription for just A$35. [See more here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Pause and take a breath Over the last few days we’ve been staying [at an eco–lodge in the back of beyond]( in Tabanan, Bali. It is a lovely spot, with fantastic mountain views and pristine rainforest. Thanks to Covid19, business is slow, but the place is ticking over. Not a bad spot to hide out in the hills of Bali. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- One irritant is we need to order our meals in advance. It feels churlish to whine about this, particularly in these times, but it bugs me. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know what I’ll feel like for lunch or dinner at breakfast. Luckily, all the food is great, so it is hard to go wrong. Sitting here waiting for the lunch I ordered at breakfast though, I got thinking about it. Not my lunch, but rather the broader implications of my needing to plan ahead. Remember when overtourism was a thing? At the time. pundits, [myself included](, suggested one balm could be reducing “free range travel”. Destinations would need to ask tourists to book everything in advance. Want to go to such and such a museum in December? Book in July. Museums would have strict limits on admission, and if you missed out you missed out. The Pavilion is a great spot for lovers in Phnom Penh. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- The theory was it would allow better people management and a better guest experience. Using this sort of a “trickle up” approach, destinations as a whole could be able to better manage numbers. After all, who wants to go a museum town if the museums are booked out? That was the theory anyway—it feels like a lifetime ago. In the current climate, concerns about overtourism feel ludicrous. If anything, undertourism is the new concern. Colours can make travel all the more memorable. Sumbawa, Indonesia. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- The irony is, travellers could well end up with this “trickle up” approach anyway. It seems when travel does restart in any volume, numbers are going to need limits anyway—but for different reasons. Interviewed the other day [on the Southeast Asia Travel Show](, one of the concerns I talked about was The Fear. Not the fear of having a scooter crash or getting pickpocketed, but rather the fear of Covid19. All destinations regardless of the Covid19 situation, are going to need to deal with this. They’re going to need to assuage this fear. How warranted the fear is, is irrelevant—[the fear exists]( and destinations need to deal with it. For nations who’ve not done well on transparency and honesty, the stakes are doubly high. They’ll have to win trust back before anything else. If travellers don’t trust government numbers on Covid19, why would they trust the same mob saying it is safe? Getting out on the water in Phnom Penh. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- So circling back to my whine about needing to order in advance, I think this will become a new norm. Restaurants, cafes, bars and hotels, will all need to maintain decent guest separation. Once a 20 table restaurant is a 10 table one, or a 100 room hotel a 50 room one, the math changes. Their bottom lines will demand reliable custom. People already need to book months in advance for popular spaces. How long in advance when there are half the seats or beds available? And places will be ill–equiped to absorb no–shows. Book a table for lunch, expect to pay a non–refundable deposit. Take this separation in the lobby or restaurant floor, to the back–office or kitchen. Of course staff deserve the same protective practises as the guests. A need for separation will re–invent staffing levels. Less staff means less food, less rooms cleaned, less tables wiped down. Many already rely on governmental support to stay in business and for many, these new norms are already in place—the hits keep coming. Grazing in Phnom Penh. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- With half the kitchen staff serving half the tables, chances are we’ll all be ordering dinner at breakfast. A great loss will be the more free–formed trip. The whole where should we go today, tomorrow and next week? Or even what will we have for dinner?! It seems a small price to pay for a safer world for everyone, and a step towards dealing with The Fear. Nations who have fared well like Thailand and Vietnam, need to consider this now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. More colours. Classic Cambodia. Photo: [Mark Ord](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Nations need to pause and take a breath. They need to stop with the stop start, on again off again plans to get some high–paying live bods through the front door. They need to provide a clear, agreed upon, well considered outline, of what travel will be—for the rest of us. High–end travel bubbles might work for the few, but what about everyone else? Without this, all the good work they’ve done with keeping the virus at bay will be undone. A “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” approach to reviving tourism does nobody any favours. Have some vision please. Good travels Stuart --------------------------------------------------------------- Premium members only: Book a round the world with [roundtheworldflights.com]( (must travel from the UK via Asia, Australia, New Zealand AND the Americas) and get £30pp off your trip. Offer valid for departures to December 2021. Log in to the Member Centre on Travelfish now for your coupon code and [start designing your own round the world trip]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Ten things worth reading Finding home in a bowl of noodles “Ultimately, I discovered I enjoy cooking. I find it calms me down and keeps me focused. And I love feeding people [because it reminds me of our old house in Yangon]( and of those happy, festive celebrations, with the smell of curries and rice cooking and gaggles of guests coming and going.” Our magical, humdrum Hanoi lives “Whenever we got itchy feet, we’d jump on our motorbikes and crisscross the town, over and over, till hunger for food or a thirst for beer, whichever came first, signalled us [to dismount by a plastic table on the pavement](.” Explore the aquatic wilderness of this hidden lagoon in central Vietnam [Terrific pics](—and not far from Hue. Coronavirus pushes 38m Asians below poverty line $ “Adding 38 million ‘new poor’ in the region means 517 million people there now live below the poverty line, an increase of nearly 8% from 2019 and [a reversal of the steady improvement in recent decades](.” Seven questions with Zeppelin Bar’s Jun “This small bar and the music is my life. I feel at home here. I love my costumers. They are no-bullshit people that [only come for the music and drinks at reasonable prices](. Not for girls and pool tables.” Why is Singapore falling behind in press freedom? It has been behind in press freedoms for decades. [This case just its latest sorry chapter](. Covid19 has been devastating for Bali [My latest ramble of Covid19]( and what the future holds for travel in the region. Shaking off delay, tourism ministry promises tourists this month On again, off again, on again, [now off again](. For now. The silence of Myanmar’s whistle–blower cop $ “When asked, he said: ‘Please don’t make me answer this. One day, without being asked, I plan to talk about what happened there under circumstances that would be good for me.’” [It doesn’t work that way dude](. Earning the Vietnamese public’s trust “Over the course of that week, this most keyed-in segment of Vietnamese citizens became very aware [that something very, very big was happening](.” [Subscribe now]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Something to read In the Time of Madness “In the Time of Madness is arguably the most compelling book written about Indonesia in the late 20th century. British correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry brings the roiling turmoil of the era to life [with his snappy but sensitive reportage](.” --------------------------------------------------------------- Photo of the week The Covid19 storm is far from passed. Haad Salad, Ko Pha Ngan. Photo: Stuart McDonald. --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you! Thanks from reading the Travelfish newsletter. Please feel free to forward it to all and sundry and your feedback, as always, is much appreciated. Travel light! Stuart & the Travelfish team If you liked this post from [Travelfish weekly newsletter](, why not share it? [Share]( © 2020 Stuart McDonald [Unsubscribe]( Bali, Indonesia [Publish on Substack](