Bubble Girl : On the Social Hierarchy of International Tourism

Screened at TheSan Francisco Art Institute
April 2006
03'13 minutes
w/sound



"This is your captain speaking... We are steadily climbing to 25,000 feet and the temperature is a cool 62 degrees outside... We'll be flying briefly over Nevada in twenty minutes and should be arriving on time in Florida around 4:30 this afternoon. We hope you're enjoying your flight."

Imagine for a moment that you are flying from Los Angeles to Florida. Everything seems as usual except you happen to be the only other American on board, and the flight is filled with rich tourists from India. It is not just this flight, but all flights flying from Los Angeles to Florida are filled with tourists from Asia 365 days a year. Is this not a strange phenomenon?

I was flying over the Himalayas from New Delhi to Leh, Ladakh and it was very odd to note that nearly every seat except for one was occupied by European and American tourists. On our way home it was even more dramatic as the Leh Airport was packed with stranded European and American tourists. There were a handful local travelers, but they were very rare. I was even more disturbed that no one else found this to be strange, as though it was normal for nearly all domestic flights to be dominated by foreigners.

It made me very sad that even colonialism reverberates in the tourism industry. From the formation of the International Monetary Fund, and the establishment of the international currency exchange rate: it establishes that my friend, Azhangle Tsetan’s big country house is worth less than my tiny leased apartment in San Francisco. Is this not the height of lunacy? Moreover there was the idea of normalization. It is “normal” for my dollar to go twice as far in India, “normal” for tourists taking over the flights from Delhi to Leh, “normal” practice to drink water from a bottle…

The water bottle ultimately separates me and the Ladakhi people… It is because our worlds are unequal that I must isolate my biological environment, my body, from the water-borne-bacteria in Ladakhi water. In a true normal world, Ladakhi water would be as safe to drink as any water in a major industrialized city. Ladakhis would enjoy an international minimum wage standard, and the monetary exchange rate would actually be fair.

It was a most ugly symbol: the water bottle. They were found everywhere around Leh and its surrounding landscapes. In river streams, by temple steps, on rest stops… empty plastic bottles everywhere thrown away by careless tourists. I was living in a bubble--literally: a psychological and biological bubble.