5 TRAVEL EXPERIENCES THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT TO INSTAGRAM

Travel in this age of connectivity is very often idealized in the hashtags we attach and the filters we layer our photos with. I, for one, am not immune to this and if you look at my Instagram feed, I'm a big fan of DeluxeFX and multiple hashtags in every post. What can I say? I'm a social media-addicted human being living in this IG era: iPhone, GoPro, and IGers. :) What doesn't make it to the headlines of carefully-curated social accounts are the daylight robberies, luggage losses, and yes, everyday racism and profiling. While I still maintain that I've mostly met wonderful people while traveling, I have had my fair share of being treated as a third-class citizen of the world because of the color of my skin, my passport, and being a single, female traveler.

Tossed a coin into the Trevi Fountain and wished that when I go back,

I'll have a better Italian Embassy experience :)

1. While applying for my first-ever Schengen visa at the Italian Embassy in 2009, I had the misfortune of applying during the day when a fellow Filipina traveler was being questioned by the consulate for overstaying in Milan during a previous travel. This was when I realized that it was bad enough that I'm holding a third-world passport, but it's worse when you're a SINGLE, FEMALE TRAVELER queuing up after a delinquent countryman. Never mind the fact that I'm a professional working in Singapore with all the right documents and employer backing ... the passport and solo travel were reasons enough for the assessor to call the consul to grill me not once, but THRICE for my itinerary in Italy, as though hoping to catch me stumble and give inconsistent answers. Thank goodness I'm naturally OC, I had my travel plans memorized by heart. I do understand that it's their jobs to ensure that the applicants' reasons for visiting are true, but it got so exhausting I wanted to recall my application and cancel all travel plans. Stat. I felt like I was being painted as a gold-digging Filipina traveler either wanting an illegal domestic worker job or a rich Italian husband to save me from my third-world status. Not that I blame them as sadly, there are precedence for these. Net, be ready to be handpicked from a crowd and questioned lengthily by officials. Funnily, when I lined up at immigration in Rome, they didn't even take a second glance at me when I handed them my passport. They simply stamped it and monotonously said, "Next!" ​

Pretty harbour with a not-so-pretty side

2. Going thru the last security check at a domestic Australian airport, the guard was happily sending off travelers to their boarding gates. It took him one look at my passport for his expression to change. Never mind that my passport at this time was full of stamps from other countries I've traveled to before. The barrage of questions came. How long are you staying? What do you do back in Singapore? What's your daily budget while here? You know, standard questions, but the change in demeanor, coupled with the fact that people were staring and I was being singled out, made the experience a wee bit uncomfortable.

3. At a restaurant in yet another developed country, a female server was pointedly ignoring me, and I knew that because she was serving the white couple right beside me and have gone by a few rounds in my section bringing food and drinks to other white customers who came in later than me. I was the only brown-skinned customer in there. Exasperated, I waved my hand frantically while saying a loud, non-eloquent: "HELLO?! I CAN PAY, YOU KNOW!", until another female server came, all apologetic, and happily took my order instead. At the end of the meal, I gave that server a huge tip as a thank you for being a lovely human being and as a monetary fuck-you to the one who ignored me. ;-)

Warm skies and waters, but chilly immigration reception

4. Immigration at a resort destination that's not exactly a first-world country stopped me to ask why I was traveling solo (some countries seem to think all solo female travelers are drug mules). At this point, I was already an emboldened traveler so I replied: "because I can afford to. I have money to stay in a 5-star resort. In fact, my private chauffeur's waiting for me outside the airport as we speak." All with the sweetest smile I could muster, of course. Sometimes, you gotta tell it in an in-your-face kind of way for them to stop thinking you're a mule with bags of cocaine stashed in your belly, and that hell yeah, you can afford this trip.

Amazing Oresund Bridge: connecting places, not people

Image by Wikimedia Commons

5. This last one didn't happen to me, but I witnessed it. I was riding the train from Copenhagen to Sweden and we had just passed the famous Oresund Bridge and entering Malmo when the train stopped. Officials boarded and I looked around to see who were in my carriage. Almost everyone was white save for me and a gentleman traveling on his own too. He got handpicked for the random check, they peppered him with questions and was asked to retrieve his bag from the overhead bin for a check. Turns out he was an EU citizen on business to Stockholm and I couldn't help but wonder if he was instantly picked over me because his skin was several shades darker than mine? While these might seem intimidating, they only do represent a minuscule percentage of my experiences and for most of the time, people are just doing their jobs, especially those in immigration, embassies, and border patrols. Though sometimes I do get tired with all of these singling out that I react in a haughty manner. Not everyone is rude though, I've had a couple of experiences in Baden-Baden and Melbourne where the customs guys were a bit embarassed that they had to ask me a couple of questions, apologizing profusely, even if it's just SOP. :)

As much as racism and profiling shouldn't happen, they do, every day. Don't let it mar your travel experiences; you just have to be ready for such instances even when you're in your happy travel bubble.

HAPPY TRAVELS! x

#selfdiscovery #Malaysia #listicles #Europe