Thai Tourism Takes Big Hit From Street Mayhem

Agnes Dherbeys for The New York Times

A porter in front of Dusit Thani, one of the grand hotels of Bangkok, as it prepared to close temporarily on Monday amid clashes between antigovernment protesters and the Thai military.

By SETH MYDANS

BANGKOK — Some of the city’s grandest hotels are shut and ringed with coils of glittering razor wire. Foreign visitors have deserted its temples and backpacker haunts. Military roadblocks hem in some of its famous nightspots.

Arrivals at Bangkok’s international airport are down by at least one-third, and hotel occupancy rates hover around 20 percent to 30 percent.

Thailand’s tourism industry, built on an image of gentleness, pleasure and smiles, is suffering its worst setback in decades — perhaps the worst in its history, according to tourism officials.

As scenes of the country’s violent uprising have spread around the world — bombs and bodies, street fights and gunfire — people abroad are asking whether it is safe to visit Bangkok.

The brief answer, from embassies and security experts and even some people in the tourism industry, is: probably not right now.

At least 37 people have died in five days of fighting between the military and antigovernment demonstrators, known as the red shirts. Although the two sides may now be edging toward negotiations, the potential for more violence remains.

Forty-seven nations have told their citizens to be cautious about travel to Thailand, and several, including the United States, have warned them to stay away.

The violence has been confined so far to a relatively small, though central, area of Bangkok. But the city is tense. Roadblocks, checkpoints and shutdowns of public transportation have made travel difficult. Taxi drivers refuse to take passengers to some parts of the city.

On Saturday, the United States Embassy issued an advisory that said, “All United States citizens should defer all travel to Bangkok and defer all nonessential travel to the rest of Thailand.” It said all nonemergency government workers and their families were authorized to leave.

On Tuesday, the Tourism Authority of Thailand issued its own advisory, saying, “Visitors and tourists are advised to be vigilant, follow news developments, exercise extra caution and avoid areas covered by the declaration of a severe emergency situation” — areas that include not only the capital, Bangkok, but also 21 provinces.

In fact much of Bangkok is peaceful, as are virtually all parts of the provinces covered in the advisory, and many Thais are disturbed to see their country portrayed as a place of violence.“When you get out from those areas of political turmoil, things seem to move as smoothly as ever,” said Korakot Punlopruksa, a travel writer and photographer. “We still live peacefully, we still love good food, and the sea is still beautiful.”

Thais try to break away from thoughts of the conflict, she said.

“Otherwise, we would go crazy.”

On Khaosan Road, a low-budget haven that is far from the fighting, the calm weighed like a heavy cloud over half-empty bars and souvenir shops and hostels. Rows of three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxis stood idle in front of empty Internet cafes and foot-massage parlors.

“It’s annoying,” said Muk Singh, 50, the proprietor of a tailor shop called Novo Fashion, speaking of the political violence. “It’s affecting us. We have expenses to meet and rent to pay.”

Most visitors seemed to shrug off the city’s tensions.

“We went to the train station today to buy tickets, and we saw soldiers with guns and police on barricades and SWAT teams,” said Jake Frieda, 19, from Britain, who is traveling before he attends college. “But I think they’re not bothering tourists. They’re leaving tourists alone.”

On Soi Cowboy, a street filled with bars where women dance in skimpy outfits, Bobby Edwards, 50, a retiree from Britain, said he had come here rather than to the more famous Patpong Road because of the protests.

“Patpong is the sex entertainment center of Bangkok,” he said. “The red shirts have basically closed it down because it’s located near of the center of their protests.”

Rebecca Hinckley, 33, a legal secretary from Ireland, said she had been terrified Saturday night when she had found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Two bombs went off, and we started running,” she said. “We could hear the crowds coming towards us, we could hear gunfire, we just started running like crazy. Everybody was very, very great to us. They were shouting, ‘Run, run, run!’ They were running with us.”

But still, she added: “I love Thailand. I still feel safe here. Unfortunately we were stupid enough to be out walking last night. It seems like everywhere else is quite normal.”

Tourism, one of Thailand’s most sophisticated and successful industries, accounts for 6 percent or 7 percent of the country’s economy. Twenty percent of employment in Thailand is directly or indirectly linked to tourism, according to the Thailand National Statistical Office.

Two weeks ago, before the worst of the violence erupted, Tourism and Sports Minister Chumpol Silapa-archa estimated that the number of tourists would slide by 10 percent, to 12.7 million this year, from 14.1 million last year. Earlier, officials had projected a rise to 15.5 million.

Charoen Wanganonanond, a spokesman for the Federation of Thai Tourism Associations, told The Bangkok Post: “It’s hard to say what will happen. What is certain is that the recovery process will be long and costly. This is the worst crisis ever faced in the history of the Thai tourism industry.”

Bangkok is already planning its clean-up operation once the protesters move out of the high-end shopping area they have occupied. The city administration said it would clean roads and sewers and water mains, remove garbage and bring in 1,000 monks to chant and accept alms.

Surveillance cameras, disabled by the protesters, will be repaired.

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Ethnic Minority Theme Parks Draw Crowds in China

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By EDWARD WONG

MANZHA, China — Tucked away in China’s steamy tropical southwest are the villages of the Dai people, famous throughout the country for a raucous annual tradition: a water-splashing festival where the Dai douse one another for three days in the streets using any container they can get their hands on — buckets, wash basins, teacups, balloons, water guns.

But in Manzha and four surrounding villages, the springtime festival has taken on added significance — or insignificance, depending on how you look at it. Imagine a nonstop Mardi Gras with fire hoses: at a site called the Dai Minority Park, water-splashing extravaganzas take place every day.

Yuppies from China’s boom cities arrive by the busload to take part in a wild frenzy of dousing and dunking and drenching with 100 Dai women dressed in bright pink, yellow and blue traditional dresses — “our warmest and sweetest Dai princesses,” as an announcer calls them.

“A lot of tourists want to come see this, but it’s only a few days a year,” said Zhao Li, one of the management office employees, who are virtually all Han, the dominant ethnic group in China. “So we decided to make it every day, so everyone can experience water splashing.”

The Dai park, with its wooden stilt homes, groomed palm trees and elephant statues, is part of an increasingly popular form of entertainment in China — the ethnic theme playground, where middle-class Han come to experience what they consider the most exotic elements of their vast nation. There is no comprehensive count of these Disneyland-like parks, but people in the industry say the number is growing, as are visitors. The Dai park, whose grounds encompass 333 actual Dai households, attracts a half-million tourists a year paying $15 each.

The parks are money-making ventures. But scholars say they also serve a political purpose — to reinforce the idea that the Chinese nation encompasses 55 fixed ethnic minorities and their territories, all ruled by the Han.

“They’re one piece in the puzzle of the larger project of how China wants to represent itself as a multiethnic state,” said Thomas S. Mullaney, a historian at Stanford University who studies China’s ethnic taxonomy. “The end goal is political, which is territorial unity. Parks like that, even if they’re kitschy, kind of like Legoland, they still play and occupy a political position.”

China’s 1.3 billion people are officially 96 percent Han; the rest range from Tibetans to Naxi to Manchus, categories fixed after the 1949 Communist revolution. The companies running the parks are generally Han-owned, say industry workers. The Dai park was started by a Han businessman from Guangdong Province in the late 1990s and sold to a state-run rubber company in 1999.

The most famous park, the Nationalities Park in Beijing, is a combination of museum and fairground. Ethnic workers from across China dress up in their native costumes for mostly Han tourists. (For a while, English signs there read “Racist Park,” an unfortunate translation of the Chinese name.) In some parks, Han workers dress up as natives — a practice given legitimacy by the government when Han children marched out in the costumes of the 55 minorities during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Yunnan, in the southwest, is one of China’s most diverse provinces, with 25 official ethnic groups. The Dai, one of the largest, are related to the Thai. Many live near Laos and Myanmar in the region called Xishuangbanna.

Dai farmers grow rice and have rubber plantations in the hills. Even in the Dai park, most villagers still farm rubber for their primary income. The villagers also make some money from leasing the land on which they live to Ganlanba Farm, the state-owned rubber company that operates the park.

In exchange, they have to follow rules laid down by the rubber company managers — no significant changes to their stilt homes, for example. By contrast, some villagers outside the park use brick and concrete to build homes now.

About 500 residents work here and put on the daily show, including water-splashing festivals and dragon boat races, held on a nearby stretch of the Mekong River.

Some tourists pay to sleep in family homes that stay true to Dai tradition.

“If you know how to run a business, you can benefit from the park,” said Ai Yo, a father of two who runs one of 27 official homestays. “But if you don’t do business, there’s no real benefit.”

Residents had become dissatisfied with the annual lease price for their land, he said. The rubber company was paying the villagers $73 a year per one-sixth of an acre. Only in recent months has the company agreed to pay about 20 percent more in rent.

Homestay owners have tossed out some traditions to meet the needs of Han tourists. The first tourists slept with their hosts on the floor of a large room, according to Dai custom, but visitors soon complained, Mr. Ai Yo said. So homeowners built separate bedrooms. Traditionally, too, the Dai were skittish about allowing strangers to look inside their bedrooms, because of a belief that the gaze of strangers would frighten away ancestral spirits.

Over all, though, he says tourism has bettered his life. “I had rice paddies, and I worked morning to night and didn’t seen any money,” he said while sitting outside his home one warm morning.

At another table outside were two Han tourists from the city of Chongqing. Zheng Jing, a big-bellied man wielding a Canon camera, was a repeat visitor. He said this park was the only place in the Dai region where he would ever consider staying.

“There are many villages around, and they’re all primitive,” he said as a Han motorcycle club pulled up to Mr. Ai Yo’s house for lunch. “It’s not suitable for us to go there. They don’t speak the Han language. You can’t have exchanges with them.”

That kind of attitude puzzles Dai residents living right outside the park.

“The culture here is the same as inside the park,” said Ai Yong, 32, a rubber farmer in Mannao village. “You’re getting cheated inside. You come out here, you can see everything for free.”

Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.

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East Timor May Use Its Struggle as Tourist Lure - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

DILI, EAST TIMOR — East Timor’s struggle against Indonesian occupation may soon become a money maker. The government is considering plans to promote major sites of the 25-year fight for independence as part of a tourism campaign.

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was invaded in 1975 by Indonesia, but a secessionist movement soon emerged, led by Xanana Gusmão, who is now the country’s prime minister, and José Ramos-Horta, its president.

Mr. Gusmão spent much of the occupation either in jail or on the run, often hiding with guerrilla fighters in East Timor’s mountainous terrain; Mr. Ramos-Horta lived in exile, campaigning for independence.

An estimated 180,000 people died during the occupation, including 1,000 the U.N. said were killed during a 1999 vote for independence.

But tourists regard East Timor’s turbulent past as an attraction, a Japanese tour guide, Noriko Inaba, said as she escorted a Japanese tour group to Dili’s Santa Cruz cemetery. More than 200 East Timorese were killed there in 1991, when Indonesian troops fired on mourners, an event known as the Dili massacre.

“It’s an historical place because of the tragedy,” she said. “This is one of the things we came to see here.”

The cemetery’s caretaker, João da Costa, said tourists often visited the site and took photos.

“If more people came from overseas, maybe we could develop faster,” he said.

East Timor’s tourism minister, Gil da Costa Alves, said the government wanted tourism to contribute more to economic growth in a country that is one of the poorest in Asia and dependent on oil and natural gas revenues for the bulk of state finances.

While there are serious obstacles, including poor infrastructure and a shortage of hotel rooms, he sees an opportunity to promote the historic sites, beaches and wildlife.

“We have this opportunity for historical tourism, for people who are interested in those sites that are part of our history,” he said.

“Even the cave where Xanana was in hiding — this is a place we can promote, and other places around the country where our leaders were hiding up in the hills.”

About 19,000 people visited East Timor last year, up from about 12,000 in 2006, when tourists stayed away because of political strife.

Mr. Alves said he hopes that East Timor can attract as many as 200,000 tourists a year within five years.

However, Loro Horta, an East Timor analyst based at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, was skeptical.

“The entire country has less than 700 rooms. Right now it’s already difficult to get rooms in Dili,” said Mr. Horta, who is also the son of the president.

“So 200,000 a year — that’s something like 700 a day. How exactly are they flying there and where are they going to stay?”

Mr. Horta said more affordable flights to Dili, a bigger airport and a more reliable power supply were also needed before East Timor could compete with Bali in Indonesia as a tourist destination.

“I really hope I’m wrong, but we will be lucky if we can get 50,000 a year by 2014,” he said.

Mr. Alves said a new infrastructure plan — including a $600 million redevelopment of the airport, the construction of boutique hotels and the improvement of basic infrastructure like roads — would increase tourism.

He said a broader tourism campaign would be aimed at the Australian and Japanese markets and would involve advertising and competitions like a recently opened fishing tournament and the Tour de Timor bicycle race, which took place earlier this year.

Last year, the government opened the Nino Konis Santana National Park in an effort to protect many of its animal and plant species while providing a new attraction for tourists.

“Our strategy is to focus on the things that make East Timor different to surrounding destinations,” Mr. Alves said.

Reuters

Palestinian Brewer Leads Struggle for Economic Progress - washingtonpost.com

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Beermaker Draws Crowds to Town of Taybeh But Sees Roadblocks to Progress, Prosperity

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 5, 2009

TAYBEH, West Bank, Oct. 4 -- There's more than a bit of Sam Adams in David Khoury, the mayor of this tiny Christian village in the occupied West Bank. Along with being a politician and patriot, he is a brewer, and he sees the craft as a symbol of the Palestinian state he hopes will emerge here one day.

To the usual images of conflict, checkpoints -- and in the case of areas influenced by Islamist groups such as Hamas, an intolerance of alcohol -- Khoury and his family-owned Taybeh brewery have added an Oktoberfest, a weekend of music, dancing, local crafts and free-flowing suds, just to the east of Ramallah and across the valley from nearby Israeli settlements. To the usual lineup of traditional products like olive oil and honey, he has added a lager that has caught on in Japan and been franchised for production in Germany.

"This is the other side of the coin," Khoury said of the two-day festival held this weekend outside his office. "It shows political freedom and democracy. It is resisting occupation by showing that we can grow the economy and build it."

It is a theme that is being heard more often among Palestinian officials and businesspeople these days. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has issued a two-year plan to build the institutions needed for a Palestinian state and has argued that Palestinians should work toward that goal as if Israel were no longer present in the West Bank, rather than wait for an uncertain peace process to change the facts on the ground.

The few thousand people that migrated to Taybeh this weekend might seem a small contribution to that end. But it shows some of the larger dynamics at work in the West Bank, as the small and somewhat off-the-beaten-path village has put its stamp on Palestinian society.

Taybeh is by reputation the only village in the West Bank without a mosque, and its thousand or so year-round residents are dominated by two families, the Khourys and the Khouriehs.

The brewery was started in 1995 by David Khoury and his brother Nadim, who had returned from the United States with his head full of ideas about hops and German beer-purity laws as well as his own recipes. They almost went broke during the intifada that erupted in 2000, and while never directly challenged by Islamist groups, they feared that the enterprise would be pushed to the fringes of Palestinian society.

That has changed. The brewery now turns a profit, the beer is widely available at restaurants in the West Bank and Israel, and the Oktoberfest, now in its fifth year, is helping brand the town as a once-a-year destination.

Along with a handicraft bazaar, falafel stands and plenty of beer taps, the stage acts brought a sense of the West Bank's diversity -- traditional dubka dance groups alongside Palestine rock-rappers CultureShoc and the hip-hop band Ramallah Underground.

"It has been great," said Manar Naber, a handicrafts salesman who said that, beyond the occasional busload of Christian tourists coming to look at the local churches, there was rarely a crowd in Taybeh before the Oktoberfest.

The growing sense of normalcy in the West Bank has been important, Khoury said, though he added it should not be misunderstood.

As a businessman, he notes that his trucks of draft beer still have to travel to a special industrial checkpoint far to the south before crossing into Israel for delivery to restaurants in Jerusalem, turning a half-hour trip into a four-hour excursion.

As a politician, he sees the limits of what Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has done so far in pursuit of what he calls economic peace. Checkpoints and barriers have been removed, people are moving more freely into and around the West Bank, and the economy is picking up as a result. But industrial development, capital projects and private-sector risk-taking remain at a minimum, he said, something also noted by World Bank and other studies which have concluded that the West Bank economy remains heavily dependent on public spending and money from donor nations.

But as a brewer, he has to say that life is good. The Taybeh Brewing Co. sold more than 150,000 gallons last year and has been marketing a nonalcoholic "halal" beer to extend its reach to Muslims.

And just like Sam Adams, he has his eye on Boston. He has children in graduate school in New England, and the hope is to use a family-owned liquor store in the Brookline area as a takeoff point for U.S. distribution.

"It is life, liberty and the pursuit of good beer," Khoury said.

North Korea to Reopen Its Border to the South

By MARK McDONALD

HONG KONG — North Korea said Monday that it would open its highly militarized border with South Korea to allow periodic family reunions and group visits by tourists from the South.

The conciliatory move, coming just after the high-profile releases of two American journalists and a South Korean worker detained by the North, seemed likely to ease the growing anxiety on the Korean peninsula.

Tensions had escalated since spring, beginning with the imprisonment of the Americans, the North’s second nuclear test in May, a series of missile tests and North Korea’s refusal to re-engage in six-nation talks over its nuclear weapons.

But the North, in the announcement Monday by its official news agency, also warned the United States and South Korea about their joint military exercises, which the North said were “obviously maneuvers for a war of aggression.” It said an “annihilating” retaliation could be one consequence. Still, that kind of bellicose language is almost standard from the North and was eclipsed by its outreach about the border and tourism.

Analysts have said North Korea is eager to re-establish contacts with Washington and Seoul in hopes of undermining the United Nations’ sanctions over its nuclear program.

The North said it would allow reunions of Korean families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, with visits taking place at Mount Kumgang, or Diamond Mountain, during the three-day Harvest Moon Festival, when Koreans traditionally visit their hometowns. This year the festival begins Oct. 3.

Regular visits to Mount Kumgang on North Korea’s eastern coast will start “as soon as possible,” the official North Korean news agency reported, as well as visits to the ancient border town of Kaesong.

Programs allowing tour groups — predominantly South Koreans — to visit the North were expanded in October 2007 but were stopped last year when a South Korean tourist at Kumgang who apparently entered a restricted zone was fatally shot by a North Korean guard.

The announcement on Monday followed a meeting Sunday between the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, and the chairwoman of the Hyundai Group, the South Korean conglomerate, which is the biggest investor in the North.

The chairwoman, Hyun Jung-eun, had successfully negotiated the release of a Hyundai worker whom the North held for several months on charges of denouncing the government and encouraging defections.

'Girl Taxi' Service Offers Haven to Beirut's Women

By DON DUNCAN

BEIRUT -- In Beirut, you don't hail a cab, it hails you, with a raucous honk. The city's ubiquitous, banged-up Mercedes-Benz taxis -- with their hissing engines, torn upholstery and smoking drivers -- are icons in Lebanon.

Pink Taxis Hit Lebanon Streets

A pink taxi car service, for women and by women, is seeing great success in Beirut, Lebanon. As WSJ's Don Duncan reports, some women feel safer in the pretty pink cars.

But these days the city's transport staple is facing some serious competition from a growing army of female taxi drivers, dressed in stiff-collared white shirts, dark shades, pink ties and small pink flowers tucked into their flawlessly coiffed hair.

All of them drive for Banet Taxi, or "girl taxi" in Arabic. It is Lebanon's first cab service for women, by women. You can't miss the company's signature candy-pink cars.

"I chose pink because the first idea that comes to mind when you see pink is girls," says Nawal Fakhri, 45 years old, founder of Banet Taxi.

Ms. Fakhri cut her teeth in business running a pink- and pastel-hued beauty salon in east Beirut. The aesthetic legacy of that experience is clear in her current venture.

She launched Banet Taxi in March with just three cars and three drivers. Her fleet of late-model Peugeots has grown five-fold since then with enough drivers to provide 24-hour service. She is hoping to double her fleet this summer, to 24 cars.

The company is part of a regional trend. Entrepreneurs across the Middle East have recognized the business potential in offering secure transportation options for women. Banet Taxi follows on the heels of successful women-only transportation models in Dubai, Tehran and Cairo.

In Beirut, the growing company is a sign the private sector is succeeding where the politically volatile public sector fails.

"I like being one of the few female taxi drivers in Lebanon," says Maya Buhaidai, 34, as she takes a sharp turn on a windy road in the mountains overlooking Beirut. "And I like the work. It's easy, it's fun and I get to talk and laugh with my passengers."

As the sun sets, Ms. Buhaidai drives passenger Lamia Samaha, 37, from a suburb on the mountain slope to the busy central Beirut district of Hamra. Along the way, they chat about the news, TV shows and children.

"I am at ease because I am accompanied by a woman. I sometimes find men hard to handle," says Ms. Samaha, causing her and her driver to laugh heartily.

But, as with many of the pink fleet's passengers, Ms. Samaha is also serious about her choice.

"One of my daughters is 15 years old and I send her in this taxi all the time, especially at night ... and not have to worry."

It is the promise of a safe and uneventful ride that attracts a wide range of female passengers: older women who want a quiet drive, young women out partying until late at night, and even preschoolers put in the cars by their teachers.

Passengers' reasons for choosing Banet are based, in part, on their cultural and religious backgrounds. Beirut's population breaks down roughly into thirds, Christian, Sunni and Shiite. Conservative Muslim women might take Banet Taxi to accommodate rules against traveling with unknown men. Others just want to put comfort and safety first.

"I studied Lebanese society well and my first customer is the Lebanese woman," says Ms. Fakhri. "I am well aware that I could be making a lot more money with this if I also accepted male customers, but to me it is clear that in Lebanon, women need a service like this."

Lebanon has no shortage of women who are skittish about taking regular taxis. Reporting of sexual harassment remains low in a country with much taboo surrounding abuse and victimhood.

Yasmine Hajjar, a 23-year-old student in Beirut, says most of her female friends have a story about being harassed in a taxi. In one extreme example, she says she narrowly escaped being abducted by a taxi driver when she was 15 years old -- by pulling out her knife and holding it to the driver's throat.

"I think the pink taxis are a good thing," says Ms. Hajjar. "It's the safest way to go."

Banet Taxi is positioned to reap the benefits of the summer tourist season, an estimated $1.7 billion industry, with about 30% of revenues coming from conservative Muslim visitors from Gulf states.

Once the summer bump in business is over, Ms. Fakhri expects demand for her fleet to remain as strong as it has been in her first quarter of business. That will put her on target to bring in at least $200,000 in sales for 2009 -- a full return on her initial investment, she says.

African Roots Still Run Deep For Blacks on Mexican Coast

By Alexis Okeowo
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 28, 2009

You have to really want to go to Chacahua. The island is nestled along Mexico's Costa Chica, a 200-mile-long strip that straddles the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero on the Pacific Ocean; the nearest hub is Puerto Escondido, a developed beach in Oaxaca.

After your flight from Mexico City or Cancun, the easy part of the trip is over. From Puerto Escondido, you need to reach El Zapotalito, a tiny spot on the coast. The land journey can be done by private taxi or, for the braver, by public transportation. From El Zapotalito you can take a boat to Chacahua.

Luckily, I did want to go. I was on the hunt not only for an idyllic beach getaway, but also for a hidden group of people who call themselves Mexicanos negros (black Mexicans). The end of slavery after Mexico's independence from Spain left black Mexicans throughout the country, but today black towns remain only in remote areas. The African part of Mexican history was neglected by the new Mexican leadership, leaving slave descendants to wonder about their origins.

Yet with the rise of tourism to Costa Chica in recent years, modernity has slowly come to the fishing villages that rest on a sultry, stunning stretch of the Pacific coast. In Chacahua, virgin beaches, glittering lagoons and fresh-seafood-only menus have created an alluring destination that is still little known -- much like its inhabitants.

In Puerto Escondido I squeezed into a colectivo (public van) headed for Rio Grande, not far from El Zapotalito. As the hour-long ride went by, the crowded beaches gave way to lush, neon-green grass; the sun seemed to get brighter and hotter, the waters bluer, the people browner with kinkier hair.

In Rio Grande, I made my way to a taxi stand to cram into another shared car that would take me to the boats. As I walked with the driver to his cab, he smiled down at me. "Hermanas. You two could be sisters," he said, pointing back at the taxi stand. There, a black Mexican woman who was staffing the stall watched me with curiosity.

Chacahua is divided in half by a series of lagoons filled with exotic birds. The surroundings make for a gorgeous ride whether you hire a private boat or take a public ferry to the island. The boat can take you straight to town or you can disembark, as I did the first time, on the island's edge.

I then hopped onto a pickup truck, along with other Chacahuans, for a half-hour's ride on rocky sand past scraggly bushes and cactuses into the village. Once we maneuvered around rams and cows that had decided to congregate in the middle of the road, I had finally reached my destination -- three exhilarating hours after leaving Puerto Escondido. My escapade had begun.

"They say a boat full of slaves, with dark skin like me, was headed for South America," Omar Corcuera told me over lunch the next day at Restaurant Punto de Quiebra. The young surfer, with deep-brown skin and a shock of naturally blond-brown hair, was recounting the far-fetched tale of a wrecked ship whose survivors populated the shore; I would hear it more than once.

What historians know is that the black Mexicans on the Pacific coast hail from the African slaves who were brought by the Spanish to work on cattle ranches during the 16th and 17th centuries. (On the Gulf coast, slaves were mainly deployed on sugar plantations.) Overall, the Spanish brought more than 200,000 Africans to Mexico for slave labor. The residents of Chacahua say they do not know much about their history, and different tales have gotten jumbled together over time.

The community of black, white and mestizo Mexicans (those of mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage) on this island numbers about 700 and has been around for some two centuries.

Nevertheless, Omar said, "I feel that I am African and Mexican."

Nearby, Paulina Marcial, scooping up her curly-haired daughter from an impromptu card game, added: "I just think of myself as Mexican. I don't know anyone anywhere else." Patting her Afro, the petite cook then walked off with a wave.

At least 10 sand-floor, door-less restaurants are on the beach, each with multicolored hammocks swinging in the breeze. At Restaurant Punto de Quiebra, fresh seafood meals fetched $5.50 or less, and breakfasts were all under $3, notably a plate of huge enchiladas with shredded cheese, green tomatoes, chili and cilantro for $2.30. A couple of yards down is Restaurant Siete Mares, where the bungalows are the beach's best, with airy, colorful cabanas.

At least seven of the restaurants have bungalows for rent. On my first night at Punto de Quiebra, the feisty housekeeper, Modesta, led me to my room, demanding to know where I was from and marveling over our shared skin color. I tell her that my parents are from West Africa, but that I was born and raised in the United States. Each day after, I would wave to her as I caught her on a hammock, lazily smoking a cigarette.

At Siete Mares I had a tall tumbler of freshly squeezed orange juice with the owner, Luis Carlos Gutierrez, and Rey Ramirez Gopar, the owner of Cabanas Los Almendros, which is near the lagoons. Various people stopped by our table as the day wore on, first American and European tourists, and then a talkative black Mexican teacher named Angel Saguilan, who offered to buy me a beer.

"They call this Little Africa," Angel said, gesturing to the pale sand, illuminated by a pink setting sun. Children in a dazzling rainbow of colors shrieked as they played volleyball nearby.

"I feel Afro-American more than I feel Mexican," Angel went on to say.

He explained that because his dark skin makes him stand out in Mexico, other Mexicans often joke that he is really from Brazil or Cuba. Angel tells me that he knows he is different from non-black Mexicans, but he is just not sure exactly how.

I later walked down the path into the village, passing by Rey's Cabanas Los Almendros. The gruffly amusing Rey could usually be found drinking a beer at one thatch-roofed structure or the other on the beach, but he and his wife, Eva, built Los Almendros out of love for Chacahua, and the devotion is clear in the massive dark-wood, blue-painted bungalows with glassless windows facing the lagoons. Serene artwork decorates the walls of the rooms.

As I continued into town, I came across two men named Juan.

"Prima!" called out Juan Ortiz. I was having a conversation with another Chacahuan named Juan, but as soon as Ortiz saw me across a construction yard, he dropped his wheelbarrow, yelled the Spanish word for "cousin" and rushed over.

Before I could react, the stout fisherman with burnished brown skin had scooped my face in his hands, kissed me on the cheek and was leading me to his boat for a ride on the lagoons. "Everyone is family in Chacahua," he said.

Chacahua Lagoons National Park is one of Mexico's hidden gems. The lagoons allow for not only a breathtaking ride, but also prime bird-watching. The calm, soothing waters are a welcome contrast to the beach's buoyant waves, which attract surfers from Mexico and abroad. At the helm of his speedboat, Ortiz paused at a dock to take a family to the other side of the lagoons, and then told me what he knew about his community's identity.

"We are Mexicans, but black Mexicans," Ortiz said. "We still have traditions of the Africans, in costumes, in dances." He added that relations between black Mexicans and white and mestizo Mexicans are pleasant. Black Mexicans, he said, often advocate intermarriage in the hope their children will better integrate into society. But as for Mexico's politicians, "The government has forgotten about us." The Afro-Mexican communities are some of the poorest and most rural in the country.

As we docked and the family paid him, Juan pulled the father in for a warm handshake. "Now you know my name is Juan Ortiz, not just 'El Moreno' [the Brown-Skinned Man]," he told them with a laugh.

I decided to head back to my favorite hammock with my book, already planning what kind of empanadas I would order from the pink-frocked Morena who wanders on the beach.

Alexis Okeowo is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.

The Vacation Recession

On a typical weekend afternoon, Beijing's Silk Street Market buzzes with the sound of tens of thousands of tourists haggling over antiques, jewelry and knockoff Gucci handbags. Rickshaw drivers normally scoop up these marketgoers, pedal them to their hotels and return with pockets full of foreign currency--a lucrative cycle that drivers can repeat dozens of times a day. In recent months, though, the Silk Street Market's once reliable bustle has thinned dramatically. "I haven't seen a single tour bus pulling into the market this morning," says Lao Qian, a 49-year-old rickshaw driver taking a long lunch break. "And I've had a total of three customers since yesterday."

From China to the Caribbean, Thailand to Tanzania, workers in the travel industry are feeling the icy chill of the worldwide recession. From 2004 to '07, global tourism boomed, with an average growth of 3.6% a year. But as consumers tightened purse strings and canceled vacations in the second half of 2008, tourism's contribution to the world economy grew just 1%, the industry's worst performance since the bursting of the tech bubble, the outbreak of SARS in Asia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks hit international travel earlier this decade. "The last months have been increasingly challenging," says Jean-Claude Baumgarten, president of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), an organization of travel executives, "and we clearly haven't seen the end of it yet."

That's an understatement. During the first quarter of this year, China, which in 2004 overtook Italy to become the world's fourth most visited country, saw the number of international visitors drop more than 7% and its foreign-tourism revenues shrink more than 15%. In Spain, year-on-year arrivals dropped 16% in February--the country's sharpest decline in years. And in the tropical islands of the Caribbean and South Pacific, it's a case of surf, sand and empty beach chairs. In February, French Polynesia reported a 30% drop in year-on-year arrivals. Tourist numbers there are now at levels last seen in 1996. The WTTC estimates the travel industry will contract 3.5% this year and shed 10 million jobs by the end of 2010.

You might think the last thing we should be worrying about is taking a vacation. Aren't we all meant to be saving and paying off mortgages? But that's underestimating the size of the global tourism industry and its potential to energize the world economy. By most accounts, tourism is one of the world's biggest industries, employing 7.6% of the world's workers (220 million) and generating a staggering 9.4% of global income ($5.5 trillion). "If you look at its linkages with other sectors, you see how deeply it cuts into the economy," says Geoffrey Lipman, assistant secretary general of the U.N. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). "Construction jobs, manufacturing jobs, restaurant jobs--they can all flow out of tourism."

Industry officials now want governments to start looking at the sector as a way to get economies back on track. "What are governments trying to do in a recession? They're trying to create jobs," Lipman says. "They say, 'Let's bail out the car manufacturers. Let's do something about the banks.' And they forget about the major opportunity they have with the travel sector."

A few governments are already moving. In March, Madrid pledged $1.3 billion to modernize Spain's tourism infrastructure to fight off competition from sunshine destinations like Turkey and Egypt, which have become more competitive as the euro has appreciated. In Spain's Canary Islands, where tourism represents upwards of 60% of the local economy, the municipal tourism board recently began a series of seminars to help tourism workers cast off their perceived grumpiness. Course materials advise cabbies to "ensure your taxis smell nice, and don't drive too fast" and remind hotel staff that "a smile costs nothing."

Italy has taken a more traditional route by boosting advertising. In April, the national tourism board launched a $13 million initiative called "Italia Much More" to lure tourists from the U.S., Canada and the rest of Europe. "The crisis is tangible for everyone, and Italy will suffer," says Matteo Marzotto, head of the National Tourism Board. "We're in the middle of a war." That may sound dramatic, but consider this: in 2008, Italy's tourism revenues fell 5%, the first drop in seven years. The slump has already translated into a loss of $5.2 billion and at least 150,000 jobs.

The battle for the shrinking pool of tourists, naturally, is good news for anyone touring. Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have cut visa fees and worked with airlines, hotels and tourist sites to slash prices. Caribbean operators say deep price cuts have been essential to keeping the region in people's minds during the turmoil. Some Caribbean resorts have cut prices in half. "We're hoping that these deals will never have to see the light of day again," says Hugh Riley, secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, the body representing the travel interests of 32 nations in the region.

Once prohibitively expensive, places such as South Korea and Iceland have been transformed into bargain getaways. The weakening of South Korea's won helped the country attract 7% more tourists last year--a faster rise than that of any other Asian destination--and so far this year, 50% more Japanese tourists have visited. In Iceland, where the krona has fallen sharply, the nation is betting on increased arrivals: this summer Icelandair will open up new routes to nine cities in Europe and North America. And VisitBritain, the official U.K. tourism body, is running a $2.6 million ad campaign urging foreigners to "see more of Britain for less." "The pound isn't going to be this weak forever," says spokeswoman Hayley Senior.

Boosting tourism, however, isn't merely about attracting foreigners: governments are also courting their own citizens. In China, local authorities have distributed domestic-travel coupons nationwide. In Wuhan, a city along the Yangtze River in central China, $146,000 worth of coupons was snatched up within 10 minutes at a promotional event, and the city has pledged more vouchers, totaling $73 million. In Britain, it's estimated that 5 million more citizens will choose a staycation this year rather than venture to the pricey euro zone.

The sense of urgency is most pronounced in the developing world, where a job in tourism can be the difference between poverty and prosperity. In Kenya, a single employee at a hotel or restaurant supports four other people, according to Gerson Misumi, managing director of Tamarind Management, a hospitality firm in Kenya and South Africa: "There's a chain of services that depend on our industry." Adds Lipman of the UNWTO: "Tourism is a good development agent because poor countries don't have to manufacture it." Developing nations already have their product--nature, culture, tradition--and all that's required to profit is a bit of investment in infrastructure and marketing. "The market comes to these countries then wanders around depositing foreign-exchange income wherever it's directed, including poor rural areas," Lipman adds. That's a handsome return on investment for any country, developing or otherwise.

Timor-Leste Rises Again

This morning I proclaimed on Facebook that Timor-Leste had sunk into the Virtual Sea. Hardly anyone seemed to care. Now Trip Advisor, a site which I often use, advises me by email that Timor-Leste has risen again. Understand, I can't guarantee that any of these Trip Advisor recommendations will actually get you there and make your stay a pleasant one. But since T-L remains among the most neglected countries in the world (excepting maybe in Australia and Portugal), here it is.

East Timor CHANGE LOCATION WRITE A REVIEW East Timor Flights Hotels Restaurants Things to Do Forums This week's special deals East Timor: Top Experts to Plan Your Trip Tripology.com Top Travel Agents - Save Time & Money 100% Free! East Timor: Great Prices, Great Rooms hotels.com We Know Hotels Inside And Out. Click or Call an Expert at 1-800-434-6835 East Timor Hotels See all East Timor hotels East Timor Restaurants See all East Timor restaurants East Timor Things to Do See all East Timor attractions East Timor Airfare Deals See all East Timor Airfare Deals Learn more about East Timor

Global Problems Briefs #1

US Corporations Size Up Their Carbon Footprints (series of news stories)
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc2009061_692661.htm?link_position=link1

It's Not Too Late to Save the Tuna (news)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124416336079787523.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Cape Verde's Largest Island Struggles to Balance Tourism, Development (news)
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-06-04-voa56.cfm

Pharma's New World Order (news)
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/June/05060902.asp