It’s fun debating friendliest, prettiest, ugliest place in this world of travel. But some negative superlatives can strike me as particularly careless or hollow — particularly when based on a quick, solitary visit.
It’s what I call the ‘one-pillar pagoda.’
No opinions should be built on the back of a lone observation or experience. But often they are. I can’t say the number of times I’ve heard swipes at Vietnam — ‘greedy loud locals ripping off tourists’ — from visitors who stuck with the deeply rutted backpacker trail from cafe to cafe, travel agent to travel agent. Go a block or two in any direction — away from the fly-paper tout zones of banana pancakes and Internet cafes — it’s another story.
Alas.
I fight this urge to demean or overly sell a place all the time. In fact, one of the key things I’ve learned from updating a couple dozen Lonely Planet guidebooks has been to NOT trust yourself. At least not always. Particular giddiness or fortune in meeting/knowing locals that connect you to a place, or the presence of an untimely headache can greatly alter how one sees — and talks of — a destination for years to come.
This same principle, of course, works in life too. One-pillar structures exist (like the Hanoi pagoda above), but there’s a reason most buildings are built on at least four supports.
