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Abstract
Drifter-style tourism in Asia has become a sanitised and institutionalized
tourism alternative. Over the last thirty years it has developed its own
tourism myth and spawned a mobile subculture of Western travellers. The study
seeks to illustrate the historical background, nature and ideology of present
day travellers in Asia and to present an "insiders view" of the subculture
based on more than 6o in-depth interviews conducted during the fieldwork. It
will also document the impact of those travelers on destinations in Asia by
chronicling the fate of the islands Koh Samui and Koh Phangan in Southern
Thailand. Those islands, at one stage or another, were among the largest
traveller-centres in Southeast Asia and have subsequently achieved Hollywood
Fame through Alex Garland's popular novel "The Beach".
However, even without Hollywood, Asia's traveller subculture is worth
attention. With rapidly increasing numbers, it now represents a viable market
in its own right, one that fits in well with an ecologically sustainable
tourism product. However, development of this tourism alternative is being
undermined by unsustainable growth due to a lack of planning and by the
destruction of its destination sites by other tourism sectors. Experience shows
that without advance strategies for their development, many of those sites
develop either in an unsustainable manner or become the target of "hostile
takeovers" by outside operators and competing tourism sectors. This state of
affairs has been instrumental in condemning travellers to remain always just
one step ahead of conventional mass tourism.
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Westerhausen, Klaus
Beyond the Beach: An Ethnography of Modern Travellers in Asia.
Studies in Asian Tourism No. 2.
Series Editor: Erik Cohen
ISBN 974-4800-09-7
Publisher: White Lotus
(Bangkok 2002)
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