Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Punta Cana = Sandakan + Siem Reap + Ottawa

    Indolaysia took a break from frigid upstate NY for a beach vacation in Punta Cana, D.R., last week. This is a new vacation concept to us: going somewhere without any intention of doing anything except for sitting around, getting sun, and playing in the water. This is the type of vacation that a 2 1/2 year old will enjoy.

    Rally Round the Family, Pocket Full of Shells

    Punta Cana is the place to do this. I had never even heard of it before we started looking for tropical islands within easy striking distance of Newark. We did not encounter anything like “culture” or “history” or even “nature” that could be explored. It’s not like Cancun, which is near interesting ruins and an interesting part of Mexico. Punta Cana is the beach and the sun, plain and simple. This is not to say that there is no culture or history or nature around; rather, it’s not for sale as a tourist commodity, in the way that these things are for sale around Cancun, or Siem Reap, or Bali. The closest thing to “culture” that you encounter as a tourist is rum (Ron Brugal: [El] Ron [de los] Dominicano[s]!) and mamajuana.

    We would describe Punta Cana like this: 1/3 Sandakan, 1/3 Siem Reap, 1/3 Ottawa.

    1. Sandakan because of its physical appearance: warm and clearly tropical but not particularly lush, very sandy soil, pretty flat. (Sandakan is very different when you move inland and away from the airport, which might be true of this part of the D.R. too.)
    2. Siem Reap because of its infrastructure and economy: massive poured concrete resort hotels interspersed with lots full of trash, some of it on fire. The entire economy is devoted to the tourist sector.
    3. Ottawa because our hotel was full of people from Ottawa. Also, because you get the sense while visiting that Punta Cana was planned, it did not emerge naturally. This goes along with the emphasis on the beach and the sun, rather than local culture or history or nature.
    Not knowing what to expect, this was all a bit surprising to us, but not unpleasantly so. EP certainly didn’t care. Perhaps even more surprising is how popular this place is, especially among Europeans and South Americans!

     

    Is there any other airport with non-stop service to Santiago, Moncton, and Moscow?

  • Studying Faraway Places from Faraway

    ALERT: VENTING TO FOLLOW. In the past day, two colleagues have said in public forums that my understanding of Malaysian politics is superficial (and therefore misleading) because I live far away. One accused me of “parading.” By public forums I mean “in situations where there are lots of my colleagues listening.” I’m not embarrassed to say that such accusations sting. They sting even if no one else is listening, but they sting even more when I know that my friends and colleagues are.

    What to do about this? Well, I could stay up at night worrying about it, or I could try to fire something back, but instead what I’d like to do is to accept the critique with a caveat. Yes, I am just not able to have an on-the-ground understanding of Malaysian politics that others can. Being employed in a U.S. university with teaching and research and service requirements and a young family and so on makes it nearly impossible to travel to the other side of the planet very often. When I do, it’s quick, and I rely on old networks to get information—these contacts may no longer be relevant or informed. Consequently, lots of deep contextual information is hidden from me. It’s a problem. And I know that it’s a problem. I know it without having to be lectured about it.

    The caveat, though, is that I don’t think that this is precisely the challenge that these critics think that it is. I view my task as bringing the area into conversation with the rest of the discipline: with non-Malaysianists who do Asian studies, or with political scientists more generally. To do that requires a rather different sort of intellectual endeavor than really describing with complete nuance all of the facts on the ground. It requires distance. It requires something other than careening from crisis to crisis or scandal to scandal. (Importantly, nothing substantive that my critics said after noting that I study Malaysia from far away leads me to change any inference that I have drawn about Malaysian politics.) Sure, I can give my thoughts on current events in Malaysia (that’s what this is for), but if you want an expert, don’t ask me because I don’t know, and I’d be the first to tell you. If you want the broader picture, the one that deliberately abstracts away from the details because doing this is useful, then that’s where I can help (that’s what this is for). So I take my cue from the baby elephant: