After Bali, the backpacking crowd cautiously carries on
By Rafael D. Frankel
Special to the Tribune
October 27, 2002
KOH PHANGANG, Thailand -- The first time I came to this delectably tropical island in the Gulf of Thailand, I stayed on a secluded beach where, at 6 p.m. every day, the generator would make a sound somewhere between the rat-tat-tat of an M-16 and a dozen of those fireworks that are only a big flash of light accompanied by a thundering boom. While most of the young backpackers and travelers picked their heads up slowly from their tropical fruit shakes to offer a somewhat quizzical look, the Israelis all jumped--that sound was all too familiar.
In nearly every country in the region, there is one place where the backpackers take a break and party through the night to unwind from the often difficult and patience-testing trails of which Southeast Asia is replete. Bali was one of those places. Koh Pangang still is. No matter where they were, or where they are going, thousands of those traveling Southeast Asia gather here for the once-a-lunar-month full-moon party, which rages from nightfall of every full moon until noon the next day on Hadarin, one of the island's white-sand, bar-strewn beaches.
But this full-moon party that came off without incident last weekened was like none before, as the backpacking community of Southeast Asia struggled to come to grips with attacks on their own while also trying to decipher the ramifications for traveling in the region.
Nevertheless, while many of the estimated 200 dead from the Oct. 13 terrorist attack in Bali were just such backpackers, going to just such a place, another raging party went on this time around.
My trip back began on Koh San Road, in Bangkok, the backpacking crossroads of Southeast Asia. On its 300-yard-long, neon-light infested street, young people converge to start, end, or take a short break from their sojourns around the region. Like the hundreds of other travel agents on Koh San Road, Suriyon "Tommy" Saritdiwut, 28, who sold me my bus/boat ticket, speaks an effective street-learned English. Despite what happened in Bali, he is not worried about things slowing down in Thailand and says bookings have even picked up slightly since then. Like most locals here, he simply cannot imagine Thailand--a country that takes pride in offending no one--ever being a target for terror.
On the 13-hour bus trip south from Bangkok, Joanne Hunt, 18, and Rachel Adlard, 19, squirmed in the seat next to me. They left England just two days after the Bali bombing for their gap year--a year taken by many Europeans between high school and college for a combination of as little work and as much travel as possible.
Like everyone else I spoke to who had plans to go to Bali, they changed their minds. However, they remained undeterred about traveling in the rest of the region. They were in Thailand to sightsee and party, Adlard said, and having heard about the full-moon party from the book (later made into a movie) "The Beach" and from friends back home who had experienced it first hand, it wasn't something they were going to miss.
Adlard was not alone in her sentiment. Though many travelers said they are now planning on avoiding large gatherings, those coming to Koh Pangang specifically for the party were, admittedly, making a rather large exception to their self-imposed travel restrictions.
"We're here; we have to go, otherwise we'll kick ourselves later. We can't allow fear to set in," said Emma Frost, 22, from England who is traveling with her boyfriend of four years, Jonathan Jones.
Both Frost and Jones heard about Bali while trekking in northern Thailand from two Norwegians who had left Bali just two days before the bombings.
Indeed, stories of near-misses and serendipity ran rampant on Koh Pangang as the boat loads of travelers arrived in the days before the party.
Toby Bellis, 23, from Canada, said he was at the Sari night club in Bali every night for nearly a month. It was the best place to go on the island "after a day of surfing." However, on the night of the bombings, a stomach ache kept him in his room.
Mariah McBean, 28, and Katherine Switzer, 20, also from Canada, had an even more fortuitous story. They had walked into the Sari club just five minutes before the bomb exploded, but ran across the street to buy a bottle of water.
Yet even with their amazingly close calls, and the knowledge that at least a few of the travelers they met died in Bali, Bellis, McBean and Switzer weren't deterred from being in the middle of the party here. "What are you going to do, stay home?" McBean said as the three got together the night before over a drink to talk about how they are coping after Bali. "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be. I'm not a God believer, but I am a fate believer."
Tempting fate, though, seemed to be the order of the day, even more so than usual for backpackers who tend to be a bit fatalistic as a group. "Fate does take on a role in life. You could get run over by a car. You have to be cautious, but there's nothing really you can do," said 26-year-old Australian Steve Aronowicz.
"If I die, I die. At least I was having fun dancing," said Randy Ballard, 22, of Reno, Nev. His smirk and half laugh barely covered what appeared to be a permeating unease of a group of people determined to live their lives as they would, despite a nagging feeling that perhaps what they are doing is not the most cautious nor prudent course.
But among this group, caution is not yet the winner. No, they won't go to Bali, but giving up the full-moon party--and more broadly, changing their lifestyle--was too high a price to pay now in exchange for a little more safety.
But try as they might to forget about the danger, a piece of every backpacker's innocence is buried beneath the rubble of the Sari night club in Bali. This time, when a loud smoke bomb exploded in the Cactus, the most popular bar on the beach, it wasn't just the Israelis who jumped. The fear was in everyone's eyes, and real panic was just seconds away.
For now, the party is on. But one more Bali, in a place like this, and the entire Southeast Asian backpacking circuit could come crashing down just like Sari.
©2002 The Chicago Tribune
Sunday, October 27, 2002
Sunday, May 05, 2002
Europe´s bias lies in its short memory, not anti-semitism
By Rafael D. Frankel
OPINION
VIENNA, Austria--Though residual and burgeoning anti-semitism is
surely a factor in Europe´s pro-Palestinian bias in the current Mideast
War, it cannot be said that even a sizeable portion of Europeans harbor
genuinely anti-semitic attitudes.
In Germany, merley mentioning the holocausst brings a look of shame
upon peoples´ faces. And in France, site of the most recent wave of
anti-semitic attacks, voters strongly rejected Jean-Marie Le Pen, a man
who in their minds symbolizes the old attitudes of racism and anti-
semitism with his anti-immigrant policies and notorious remark about
the holocaust being but a "footnote" in history.
Why then the overwelming anti-Israeli media coverage and pressure from
the governments in Europe?
Despite their acknowledgement of the henious crimes millions of
Europeans took part in during the holocaust, they now see that chapter
in history closed. Consequently, they fail to grasp the inherent
insecurity complex into which the State of Israel was born, and from
which--due to the unceasing threat posed to Israel first by its Arab
neighbor states and now terrorists--it has yet to recover.
Yesterday, I attended Shabbat services in Budapest at the oldest
synagogue in Europe. Where churches and cathedrals stand every few
blocks on this continent as monuments not only to previous centuries,
but to previous millenia, this "relic" is a baby in comparison, built
during the U.S. Civil War. There were, of course, synagogues of radiant
splendor built across Europe during the last 2000 years, but after the
inquisition, progroms, the holocaust, and other acts of violence
against Jews which ocurred with regularity, that is the oldest.
Today, in Vienna, I wandered through the former orthodox Jewish
neighborhood where my grandfather grew up. It is now a neighborhood
like any other in Austria. There is a grocery store, a park, even a
strip club--and no Jews. Of the 200,000 that lived here in 1939, only
6,000 Jews now reside in Vienna, the majority of which do not even have
family roots here.
Despite his experiences with the Nazis, my grandfather never carried
with him any hatred toward Germans or his fellow countrymen, and he
raised his children and grandchildren to carry only love in our hearts.
Nevertheless, during the last week while traveling through Germany,
Hungary, and Austria, I have been overcome by confused emotion. With
every elderly person I see here, I cannot help wondering if they were
complicit in the crimes commited here against my family.
For Europeans, the holocaust may be ancient history, but for Jews and
Israelis--who are still victims of anti-semitic violence on a near-
daily basis--it happend only yesterday.
When the truth about the holocaust emerged from post-war Europe, one of
the common questions asked was: why didn´t the Jews fight back? Having
been mostly passive as we were threatened, shipped as cattle to
concentration camps, and eventually exterminated so recently, can
Europe seriously expect Israel to be passive again and excersie
restraint while Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority support
terrorist organizations whose stated goal is no less than to drive every
Israeli Jew into the sea?
Indeed, having been the perpetrators of the worst anti-semitic crimes
in history, Europe has a special burden to bear in supporting the right
of Israel to live peacefully as a Jewish state. This does not mean acquiesing to an Israel which would completely deny the right of Palestinian self-determination. But it does mean the European governments need to tone down their rhetoric and acknowledge that Israel is currently engaged in yet another war for her survival, and temper their judgement accordingly.
For its part, the European media should realize that by making false
reports of massacres and tossing around terms like "genocide," they are
only inciting the anti-semitic tendencies their progenitors brought
to bear here; the results of which they have yet to come to terms with.
If my grandfather were alive today, he would be speaking out
passionately for the right of Palestinians to live with dignity and freedom on land under their own control. But he would be preaching with equal zeal against Europe´s short-term memory and her inability to this day to give the Jewish people and the State of Israel a fair shake.
©2002 Rafael D. Frankel
OPINION
VIENNA, Austria--Though residual and burgeoning anti-semitism is
surely a factor in Europe´s pro-Palestinian bias in the current Mideast
War, it cannot be said that even a sizeable portion of Europeans harbor
genuinely anti-semitic attitudes.
In Germany, merley mentioning the holocausst brings a look of shame
upon peoples´ faces. And in France, site of the most recent wave of
anti-semitic attacks, voters strongly rejected Jean-Marie Le Pen, a man
who in their minds symbolizes the old attitudes of racism and anti-
semitism with his anti-immigrant policies and notorious remark about
the holocaust being but a "footnote" in history.
Why then the overwelming anti-Israeli media coverage and pressure from
the governments in Europe?
Despite their acknowledgement of the henious crimes millions of
Europeans took part in during the holocaust, they now see that chapter
in history closed. Consequently, they fail to grasp the inherent
insecurity complex into which the State of Israel was born, and from
which--due to the unceasing threat posed to Israel first by its Arab
neighbor states and now terrorists--it has yet to recover.
Yesterday, I attended Shabbat services in Budapest at the oldest
synagogue in Europe. Where churches and cathedrals stand every few
blocks on this continent as monuments not only to previous centuries,
but to previous millenia, this "relic" is a baby in comparison, built
during the U.S. Civil War. There were, of course, synagogues of radiant
splendor built across Europe during the last 2000 years, but after the
inquisition, progroms, the holocaust, and other acts of violence
against Jews which ocurred with regularity, that is the oldest.
Today, in Vienna, I wandered through the former orthodox Jewish
neighborhood where my grandfather grew up. It is now a neighborhood
like any other in Austria. There is a grocery store, a park, even a
strip club--and no Jews. Of the 200,000 that lived here in 1939, only
6,000 Jews now reside in Vienna, the majority of which do not even have
family roots here.
Despite his experiences with the Nazis, my grandfather never carried
with him any hatred toward Germans or his fellow countrymen, and he
raised his children and grandchildren to carry only love in our hearts.
Nevertheless, during the last week while traveling through Germany,
Hungary, and Austria, I have been overcome by confused emotion. With
every elderly person I see here, I cannot help wondering if they were
complicit in the crimes commited here against my family.
For Europeans, the holocaust may be ancient history, but for Jews and
Israelis--who are still victims of anti-semitic violence on a near-
daily basis--it happend only yesterday.
When the truth about the holocaust emerged from post-war Europe, one of
the common questions asked was: why didn´t the Jews fight back? Having
been mostly passive as we were threatened, shipped as cattle to
concentration camps, and eventually exterminated so recently, can
Europe seriously expect Israel to be passive again and excersie
restraint while Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority support
terrorist organizations whose stated goal is no less than to drive every
Israeli Jew into the sea?
Indeed, having been the perpetrators of the worst anti-semitic crimes
in history, Europe has a special burden to bear in supporting the right
of Israel to live peacefully as a Jewish state. This does not mean acquiesing to an Israel which would completely deny the right of Palestinian self-determination. But it does mean the European governments need to tone down their rhetoric and acknowledge that Israel is currently engaged in yet another war for her survival, and temper their judgement accordingly.
For its part, the European media should realize that by making false
reports of massacres and tossing around terms like "genocide," they are
only inciting the anti-semitic tendencies their progenitors brought
to bear here; the results of which they have yet to come to terms with.
If my grandfather were alive today, he would be speaking out
passionately for the right of Palestinians to live with dignity and freedom on land under their own control. But he would be preaching with equal zeal against Europe´s short-term memory and her inability to this day to give the Jewish people and the State of Israel a fair shake.
©2002 Rafael D. Frankel