This cartoon came from the March 2014 issue of The New Yorker, which I only just read last week. It’s amusing on its own but is made both more funny and disturbing in light of our recent honeymoon research.
Do you use travel review websites? Trip Advisor? Agoda? Booking.com? Any or all of the above? Adam and I have been using them regularly to help narrow down our hotel search and give us a better idea of where we’d like to stay in Bali. To be honest, there is just so much information out there, and so many hotels, that we were hoping that some reviews and insight might clarify our decision-making.
In some ways, these search engines have helped mightily. We’ve already booked two out of the three places we will stay and we were alerted to special deals (that said they were one-time-only but have mysteriously reappeared over and over again…) and what felt like insider tips on where to/not to stay. But, the more we look past the 1-10 value scale based on location, service, cleanliness, etc. and dig into the personalized testimonies and reviews the more disappointed I am in today’s traveler.
Below are a few samples of what we come across every single time we do a hotel search. For once, focus on the negatives:
“Wifi very uncertain”; “Wifi did not work properly”; “breakfast was a let down”. The things people complain about never cease to amaze me. The wifi is slow? Obviously! You’re in the middle of a jungle in a relatively poor province of what may well be considered a developing country. To think that you are going to have wifi that works with the same precision and speed as the one at home is both preposterous and ignorant. I understand the need to access the Internet: you need to check on something at work, access your bank information to make a payment, or schedule an appointment, excursion, or hotel for later in the trip. There are obvious reasons as to why you would want to log on, but again, I must point out that I’m concerned you didn’t take your location into account when complaining about its speed, or lack thereof.
Also, what do you have for breakfast at home? Are you getting a new menu every day? If so, we’re coming over!! We eat yogurt, cottage cheese, toast and cereal around these parts, and on weekends we try to make bacon and eggs or pancakes maybe every other weekend. But, yeah, breakfast is kind of boring. Maybe since you are on vacation you assume you’re entitled to a palatial breakfast with engorged sausage links and overly sweet Belgian waffles, but once more, I want to remind you where you are. Is the jungle setting not palatable on its own? It’s not whetting your appetite? Why are you looking for eggs benedict in Bali? Have a mixed fruit shake. It’s in a abundance in the tropics!
When we were in Thailand we had the same thing for breakfast for nearly a month and it looked strikingly similar to what we have now (and had then), but maybe a bit heavier on the tropical fruit. Every morning for eight days at Cookies Salad Resort in Koh Phangan our great friend brought us two fried eggs, toast, and terrible, terrible coffee. But it was awesome because I wasn’t making it and I was sitting in a tree house in a bikini about ready to take a hot nap in the sun.
Despite what appears to be an unstoppable rant, I’m not trying for a “holier than thou” effect. I’m really not. I’m just troubled by how disappointed people are that the Wifi is slow in a remote jungle province. It can disorienting and unnerving at first to be so out of touch with what is happening in the world (we’ll save the “of significance” part for another rant, er, post), but once that disconnect is established it becomes refreshing and emotionally stabilizing. It does for me at least. And I don’t want to suggest that everyone should embrace disconnecting in such a strong way. Maybe just don’t define your entire Balinese stay on a wobbly Internet connection.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you rely heavily on Wifi when you’re traveling in the tropics? Are you all about unplugging? Someone please help me off my soapbox so we can have a good chat about this!
