It is good to visit the
carribean to put things in perspective. This allows me to appreciate the other side more. What I can't understand is why there are so many people sailing here and so few over there.
What I can say is the
carribean is full of boats. This definitely spoils it. For example, the
price of
food is more or less 4x higher for everything and the variety in the market much lower.
The biggest factor for me is the local people. In the carribean I don't like most of the people I met, but in
indonesia I really did.
The
funny thing is, people with very huge boats like
lagoon (or anything above 40ft) often remark the opposite perspective. In
indonesia or similar places they will get hustled a lot.
In the carribean I think these same people like it maybe because they enjoy enslaving the locals with their
money by paying them $5 to do things for them like bring them
water or take their trash. This is similar to slavery by reinforcing that they are not on an equal level.
This is to such an extent that some local people "boat boys" survive off this, and make it their "occupation" They now expect all foreigners to have
money to pay them for services. Other locals often become hostile if you decide to walk down the beach with empty pockets.
In indonesia and
vanuatu, the local people understand and respect me for being
engine free. Many people there told me it was a good thing and they were happy to see this. In the carribean, the local people tell me that I am wrong for not having this evil and should install a "6hp outboard". This is not one person on one island, but 4 different people on 3 different islands. For this reason I was given only 7 days visa in st vincent by the immigration in chateubellair and denied extension in bequia. I was forced to miss sailing the grenadines.
I have had more bad experiences in the carribean in 2 months than everywhere else (except
new zealand which has many horrible people as well) after traveling nearly 7 years.
In
vanuatu the locals on various islands often explained that they don't like the style of excessive boats. For this reason they invite me to custom dance for free, and give me free fruits, and tour the island hunting trips etc. This seems to annoy some people on larger boats when I told them because they were forced to pay. This is a good thing. I gave some locals in vanuatu my bicycle, a
solar panel and
battery, teach their
kids how to use a soldering iron and how to wire it to play
music etc... They take me to their garden and dig up 2 months of
food so I sail to
philippines. In phillipines, I go on local boats
fishing, and they insist I keep what I catch, and they are only glad to have me along to make their life more interesting. In indonesia I can build a tree swing in the
school with
rope from brunei, all the
kids are playing and they run around and collect mushrooms for me. I fixed some kids bicycle etc and they are happy to share what rice they grow and show me around the island. I have many more examples.
In the carribean these things just aren't possible because the people are corrupted. In fact, they drive
motor boats and cars here in a wasteful and dangerous way. You cannot offer them anything besides money this is all they care about, and anything else is "an insult" and "disrespect"
Unfortunately these same locals do not like me much because I am not a means for them to profit off of. I cannot make any friends with locals here despite my best efforts, I must keep to myself. I think these are possibly the most ignorant people in the world. I could go on for several pages supporting this conclusion.
On the bright side, there is fast
wifi which is free, where in
philippines I had to pay $1 for 24 hours, or 5 cents for 15 minutes of
internet at the same speed. It is also easy to meet more people on other boats because there are so many of them.
Now I am dreaming about the other side.
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