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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3106 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 24, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I suppose "place vs place, japan" is a common enough meme. Just have a look at the meme, it's easier than me having to type out an explanation.

I don't really relate to the main idea that people are overly enthusiastic about Japanese things, just because they are Japanese. I do think Japan has uniquely beautiful places, I like JDM cars for reasons other than the J, I actually think sushi tastes good, etc.

The meme generalizes to <thing/place> vs <coveted thing/place>.

For example this instance of the meme. The bottom location doesn't exist. But Ushuaia, Argentina is actually real. Both its landscape and cityscape are very similar to Scandinavia. The crazy part is, that my eyes know what's real, but my brain is tricking me, despite knowing otherwise. When I see the bottom picture from "Norway", I think along the lines of "wow that's a beautiful place, I wish I could visit one day", whilst I see the exact place in Argentina and think "It's alright I guess?". Of course, the context aids the preference, wine from the more expensive bottle tastes better even if it was switched with boxed wine, you get the idea. But I'm surprised that I would fall for it, post revelation. I thought those wine tasters were lizard-brained simpletons.

So what are your lesser known examples of Place vs Place,Japan?

One of my gotos are Swiss Alps vs Kashmir, Pakistan/India. Equally beautiful, and order of magnitude cheaper and less well known. (There are many alpine resorts all over Central Asia in Pakistan, Kazakhstan and other stans, and they are all dirt cheap relative to similar locations in EU and NA.)

I like that you gave the example of India. It is filled with instances of "place vs place". If anything, Kashmir is the more recognized version of 'place vs place' within India. Kashmir is well known, but the political instability around the region has made it difficult to recommend as a tourist place.

Kolikkumalai India vs NaPali Hawaii.

The western ghats, eastern 7-sisters and Himalayan areas are seriously underexplored.

I especially see the 'place vs place' phenomenon with food.

Pate, Escargots, Foie Gras & Caviar are all seen as delicacies. On the other hand, goat brain (bheja), frogs legs, tripe, gizzards, etc. are all seen as disgusting offal eaten by barbarians.

I see a similar trend in American Carnival food vs east-asian street food. Indulgent street food vs shitty gas station food. Korean street food gets praised to high heaven, while the exact same stuff in the USA gets made fun of for being hill-billy food.

India is kind of like a mini US in the fact that it contains so many biomes ranging from deserts to rainforests to alpine tundra all within its borders.

The mountainous regions of South India are especially overlooked relative to the beauty of the landscapes and how much people pay to travel to similar or worse destinations elsewhere in the world. Kodaikanal looks like its a different planet.

Hardly any good beaches I'm afraid, and I've been to most. In contrast, my recent trip to Thailand had me blown away by how picturesque the beach and emerald waves were, it's like they threw a photoshop filter on reality there. The closest could be the beaches on the Andaman islands, but they're within spitting distance of Thailand anyway.

That's entirely ignoring the maintenance of most beaches, they're not usually clean.

To be fair, Thailand seems to have some of the best beaches in the world. The part that surprises me most about India is how many beaches we have, and how almost all of them are heavily 'used' (abused?). (to put it politely).

1.4 people and nature do not go well together.

In Thailand I’m always surprised how, even in tourist shitholes full of drunk Russians in Phuket, the beaches are pristine. They’ve made a real effort and it’s paid off in spades, to have such beautiful and clean beaches even in cheap tourist destinations in a country much poorer than, say, the Greek islands or Florida (where authorities can brute force things by using huge tourism revenue to hire huge numbers of staff to keep things clean-ish) is impressive.

I'm starting to think you have a story to tell us about Phuket, given that you bring up multitudes of drunk Russians every time the topic of Thailand comes up.

I love Phuket and go almost every year for a few days on the back half of a roadshow we do in Asia. And, really, the drunk Russians are unavoidable (but often very charming). Less loutish than the Brits, typically.

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