Friday was a day of anticipation and nervous excitement. I couldn’t sit still at my desk, maniacally tapping pens and toes and fingers, waiting until 4:30pm to leave the office early, run back to the Ibis to throw a change of clothes in my purse (yes, I packed in my purse, that’s how short our trip was), and head off to the airport.
We flew Air Asia, an airline that I would never recommend to anyone…although most of you know that I’m not a stellar airplane passenger to begin with. Our no frills airline, motto: “Now Everyone Can Fly” (something about that didn’t resonate well with us) moved to the tick of its own clock, and we waited from delay to delay from 8:30pm until 11:30pm to finally take off. Air Asia did regain some points with its in-flight merchandise for purchase: bright red Air Asia baseball cap or windbreaker, anyone? The offer to dress as if I worked on the crew, in addition to some stellar people watching, and the discovery of a half-chewed hot dog under an airplane seat, made Air Asia a flight to remember.
We landed in Bangkok around 1am, jumped into city taxis (which are hot pink in color…and have posted signs/illustrations of what is not acceptable passenger behavior, including no smoking, no drinking, no pets, no urinating, no having sex, and no carrying durian – a really smelly fruit – in the taxi) and headed toward the city center. We booked a 5-star luxury hotel in Thailand – and we will do the same for Vietnam – because they’re wildly inexpensive in American dollars and everyone needs a little weekend luxury getaway.
The Millennium Hilton did not disappoint. Actually, if we had an extra day in Bangkok I might have spent it in the hotel. It was palatial, modern, luxurious…it was so fancy I can’t believe they let a mess like me inside. The rooms were so big that when I first got inside I accidentally made a wrong turn into the closet. And that breakfast buffet….Karen, it would’ve knocked you over. Of course, we were only in the hotel when we were sleeping, but for those 6 hours, it was heavenly.
By the time we got checked in to the hotel it was nearly 3am. I crawled into bed and dreamt of peanut sauce and elephants. I was in Thailand.
Monday, July 6, 2009
36 Hours in Thailand: Life in the Tuk-Tuk Lane
For the month of July, some classmates and I have planned trips to different places in Southeast Asia each weekend. The great thing about the region is that it’s fairly compact but each country has its own distinct rhythm and flavor to experience and wonders to discover; this makes SE Asia an awesome and easy (and unbelievably inexpensive) place to travel around. The only obstacle for us, with working full-time, is finding cities we can go to on quick weekend trips. After much debate over locations and itineraries (and heartbreak for me…Cambodia will have to wait another 22 years) we landed on three destinations: Bangkok, Thailand; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Manila, The Philippines.
This past weekend, Friday July 3rd – Sunday July 5th, we went to Bangkok for a grand total of 36 hours, and it was inspiring. As we knew it would be when we booked the flight, it was much too short a trip to fit everything in (especially sleep) and only served to whet our appetites for more of Thailand. We now dream of Phuket and Chiang Mai and the Andaman Coast…the more exotic and pristine, less-industrialized areas of the country.
Yet it only took 36 hours in Thailand for me to get the third-world-bug (the good kind, not the stomach kind)…I now have this intense desire to give up on my scholarly and professional American dreams and just live life in some wild, gritty, enchanting corner of the earth and wander from remote village to foreign city – and maybe pick up a lover and a lemur for company along the way.
The preserved culture and character of Thailand is amazing and it’s pervasive under the blanket of westernization happening in major cities like Bangkok. More than exotic and evocative, it was eye-opening. It’s one thing to hear my father talk about what life is like in the rest of the world and it’s a wholly profound experience to see it with my own eyes. Although we stuck to enjoying touristy-delights and achieving sight-seeing-records in the capital city, and even staying in a too-high-end-for-our-own-good luxury hotel, the feel of the city, the smell of the streets, and my interactions with the people of Thailand are what I hope to remember years from now.
This past weekend, Friday July 3rd – Sunday July 5th, we went to Bangkok for a grand total of 36 hours, and it was inspiring. As we knew it would be when we booked the flight, it was much too short a trip to fit everything in (especially sleep) and only served to whet our appetites for more of Thailand. We now dream of Phuket and Chiang Mai and the Andaman Coast…the more exotic and pristine, less-industrialized areas of the country.
Yet it only took 36 hours in Thailand for me to get the third-world-bug (the good kind, not the stomach kind)…I now have this intense desire to give up on my scholarly and professional American dreams and just live life in some wild, gritty, enchanting corner of the earth and wander from remote village to foreign city – and maybe pick up a lover and a lemur for company along the way.
The preserved culture and character of Thailand is amazing and it’s pervasive under the blanket of westernization happening in major cities like Bangkok. More than exotic and evocative, it was eye-opening. It’s one thing to hear my father talk about what life is like in the rest of the world and it’s a wholly profound experience to see it with my own eyes. Although we stuck to enjoying touristy-delights and achieving sight-seeing-records in the capital city, and even staying in a too-high-end-for-our-own-good luxury hotel, the feel of the city, the smell of the streets, and my interactions with the people of Thailand are what I hope to remember years from now.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
More Cool PR Happenings in HK: Anti-Tobacco Initiatives
I abhor cigarettes and strongly support any legislation that removes cigarettes and their cancer-causing-stinky-smoke from my life.* I’m also really interested in health communication (thanks in large part to my dad’s influence working on global public health campaigns) so I tend to take notice of anti-tobacco initiatives, which strike me as the most interesting.
Why the most interesting? How about because for years and years now there has been proof that smoking causes irreparable damage to the body – everything from bad skin and stained teeth to dozens of types of cancer and other debilitating, fatal diseases – and this information is readily available to the masses. Smoking has absolutely no benefits and its harmful effects are even outlined on the product packaging. And cigarettes are increasingly expensive. My sister once figured out that with the amount of money she spent on cigarettes over 10 years of smoking she could’ve bought a luxury car. (For those interested, she successfully quit smoking – she is amazing!) So you can waste large sums of money while increasing your odds of dying early, slowly and painfully. Sounds like a great time, right? Yet with all this information and all these reasons not to smoke, every day people make the decision to start smoking…and then get addicted, become unable to quit, and pay the consequences with their health and quality of life. Why do they continue to choose cigarettes? If that’s not a fascinating and challenging problem to solve, then I don’t know what is.
I digress…but that’s the danger of letting me have an internet pulpit to preach from. Anyway, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening in Hong Kong with anti-smoking and health campaigns that I thought I’d share with you.
First off, Hong Kong, like many Asian countries, is a smoking society. In Hong Kong, cigarettes are an integral part of culture – walk into any mahjong parlor and you’ll understand. When something is so ingrained in society and traditions, it is incredibly hard to change behaviors surrounding it. In an earlier blog post I mentioned the ubiquity of city ashtrays on every street corner, and the policing of cigarette butts – drop on one the ground and you’ll get slapped with a ticket. There are also fines for spitting in public (and sorry smokers, you’re the biggest offenders)…so at least it’s a clean city, even if it’s a smoky one.
What I think is pretty awesome are the warning labels on cigarette packages here. Instead of just a small text box, the warning labels cover almost half of the cigarette packaging and contain explicit, graphic images of the health hazards of smoking. There are dozens of different warning pictures and each is equally disgusting and disturbing. One image is very culturally interesting – it shows an old Asian woman with dark and haggard skin yearning for her youth when she had pure, fair skin.
The warning images are the work of the World Health Organization and other partner organizations that are pushing for graphic warnings to become the international standard for cigarette packages. Canada, Australia, several European countries and several Asian countries have adopted these warning labels. The United States, however, hasn’t changed its warning labels – small white and black print on the side of the package – since 1984, according to the WHO. Ah, to be a citizen of Marlboro Country.
The idea behind the graphic warning labels is that images are more emotionally charged than text and may be more likely to evoke behavioral change. Use of these labels has had positive results in Canada and Australia, according to the WHO.
I agree that the images are shocking – but what I think is even more significant about using pictures rather than pure text, is that images are universal and can transcend constraints of language and literacy. For example, in Hong Kong where Cantonese, Mandarin and English are widely spoken in addition to dozens of other Asian languages – how does one decide what language to print warning labels in? Or for the large population of illiterate smokers, especially in developing countries, what good is a warning that cannot be read and understood? The graphic warnings leave no room for misinterpretation that the cigarettes inside the box will cause you harm.
It’s important to point out that this sounds great – and makes me happy – but smokers live in a reality, rather than in the WHO’s innovative campaign vacuum…much as they may wish it were otherwise. For many smokers, the images have become normalized and merely blend into the packaging – just another warning label like any other. There’s also apparently a novelty in collecting the different images…like baseball cards for smokers…and it’s always “exciting” when new images debut on packages. The graphic warnings may be doing more to appease people like myself who are already against smoking (“Oh look at that! That’s good that they’re doing that! Smoking is so bad!”) than to deter smokers from lighting up or convince smokers to quit.
In addition to adding explicit images on cigarette boxes, HK is making moves to eliminate images of cigarettes in popular culture: CoCo Avant Chanel movie posters throughout the city have had the cigarette airbrushed out of Audrey Tautou’s hand. Similar airbrushing has occurred in several countries, including France, interestingly enough.
Finally, and very timely I might add, July 1st (today) a smoking ban went into effect, making it illegal to smoke in nearly all public places in Hong Kong. Leading up to the ban, smoking was prohibited in some bars and clubs, and as of today, the ban has been extended to cover all indoor public spaces such as restaurants and workplaces, even mahjong halls and massage parlors. The same Tobacco Control Officers who issue tickets for throwing cigarette butts will enforce the ban with fines of up to $5,000 HKD ($645 USD). Lobbying groups in opposition of the new legislation argued that the economic slump should be reason enough to postpone the ban – restaurants and bars all already experiencing diminished business due to the economy and the HK Bar and Club Association claims that 90 percent of customers are smokers and the ban will have a devastating effect on business. The Hong Kong government initiated the ban to protect both workers and non-smokers from second-hand smoke, which has all the same harmful effects as smoking does.
It will be interesting to see where Hong Kong is a one, three, five and ten years from now in terms of smoking behavior and health outcomes.
*I feel it is appropriate to explain that I know many wonderful, caring, good people who happen to be smokers – I do not think you are a bad person if you choose to smoke. Everyone should be able to do what they choose to with their body and no one should be able to tell them otherwise. I understand that addiction is a disease in itself - I sympathize with those who struggle with addiction and admire those who overcome it. That being said, I personally believe – and as someone who wants to use communication and public relations to make a positive impact on the world – that individuals should be provided with accurate and easily accessible information about risky behaviors to then be able to make informed, personal choices. The effective delivery and internalization of this information, as well as the protection of individuals who do not smoke and often are exposed to second-hand smoke, is what I am advocating for.
That’s also my Miss America speech, for those of you wondering…
Why the most interesting? How about because for years and years now there has been proof that smoking causes irreparable damage to the body – everything from bad skin and stained teeth to dozens of types of cancer and other debilitating, fatal diseases – and this information is readily available to the masses. Smoking has absolutely no benefits and its harmful effects are even outlined on the product packaging. And cigarettes are increasingly expensive. My sister once figured out that with the amount of money she spent on cigarettes over 10 years of smoking she could’ve bought a luxury car. (For those interested, she successfully quit smoking – she is amazing!) So you can waste large sums of money while increasing your odds of dying early, slowly and painfully. Sounds like a great time, right? Yet with all this information and all these reasons not to smoke, every day people make the decision to start smoking…and then get addicted, become unable to quit, and pay the consequences with their health and quality of life. Why do they continue to choose cigarettes? If that’s not a fascinating and challenging problem to solve, then I don’t know what is.
I digress…but that’s the danger of letting me have an internet pulpit to preach from. Anyway, there’s a lot of cool stuff happening in Hong Kong with anti-smoking and health campaigns that I thought I’d share with you.
First off, Hong Kong, like many Asian countries, is a smoking society. In Hong Kong, cigarettes are an integral part of culture – walk into any mahjong parlor and you’ll understand. When something is so ingrained in society and traditions, it is incredibly hard to change behaviors surrounding it. In an earlier blog post I mentioned the ubiquity of city ashtrays on every street corner, and the policing of cigarette butts – drop on one the ground and you’ll get slapped with a ticket. There are also fines for spitting in public (and sorry smokers, you’re the biggest offenders)…so at least it’s a clean city, even if it’s a smoky one.
What I think is pretty awesome are the warning labels on cigarette packages here. Instead of just a small text box, the warning labels cover almost half of the cigarette packaging and contain explicit, graphic images of the health hazards of smoking. There are dozens of different warning pictures and each is equally disgusting and disturbing. One image is very culturally interesting – it shows an old Asian woman with dark and haggard skin yearning for her youth when she had pure, fair skin.
The warning images are the work of the World Health Organization and other partner organizations that are pushing for graphic warnings to become the international standard for cigarette packages. Canada, Australia, several European countries and several Asian countries have adopted these warning labels. The United States, however, hasn’t changed its warning labels – small white and black print on the side of the package – since 1984, according to the WHO. Ah, to be a citizen of Marlboro Country.
The idea behind the graphic warning labels is that images are more emotionally charged than text and may be more likely to evoke behavioral change. Use of these labels has had positive results in Canada and Australia, according to the WHO.
I agree that the images are shocking – but what I think is even more significant about using pictures rather than pure text, is that images are universal and can transcend constraints of language and literacy. For example, in Hong Kong where Cantonese, Mandarin and English are widely spoken in addition to dozens of other Asian languages – how does one decide what language to print warning labels in? Or for the large population of illiterate smokers, especially in developing countries, what good is a warning that cannot be read and understood? The graphic warnings leave no room for misinterpretation that the cigarettes inside the box will cause you harm.
It’s important to point out that this sounds great – and makes me happy – but smokers live in a reality, rather than in the WHO’s innovative campaign vacuum…much as they may wish it were otherwise. For many smokers, the images have become normalized and merely blend into the packaging – just another warning label like any other. There’s also apparently a novelty in collecting the different images…like baseball cards for smokers…and it’s always “exciting” when new images debut on packages. The graphic warnings may be doing more to appease people like myself who are already against smoking (“Oh look at that! That’s good that they’re doing that! Smoking is so bad!”) than to deter smokers from lighting up or convince smokers to quit.
In addition to adding explicit images on cigarette boxes, HK is making moves to eliminate images of cigarettes in popular culture: CoCo Avant Chanel movie posters throughout the city have had the cigarette airbrushed out of Audrey Tautou’s hand. Similar airbrushing has occurred in several countries, including France, interestingly enough.
Finally, and very timely I might add, July 1st (today) a smoking ban went into effect, making it illegal to smoke in nearly all public places in Hong Kong. Leading up to the ban, smoking was prohibited in some bars and clubs, and as of today, the ban has been extended to cover all indoor public spaces such as restaurants and workplaces, even mahjong halls and massage parlors. The same Tobacco Control Officers who issue tickets for throwing cigarette butts will enforce the ban with fines of up to $5,000 HKD ($645 USD). Lobbying groups in opposition of the new legislation argued that the economic slump should be reason enough to postpone the ban – restaurants and bars all already experiencing diminished business due to the economy and the HK Bar and Club Association claims that 90 percent of customers are smokers and the ban will have a devastating effect on business. The Hong Kong government initiated the ban to protect both workers and non-smokers from second-hand smoke, which has all the same harmful effects as smoking does.
It will be interesting to see where Hong Kong is a one, three, five and ten years from now in terms of smoking behavior and health outcomes.
*I feel it is appropriate to explain that I know many wonderful, caring, good people who happen to be smokers – I do not think you are a bad person if you choose to smoke. Everyone should be able to do what they choose to with their body and no one should be able to tell them otherwise. I understand that addiction is a disease in itself - I sympathize with those who struggle with addiction and admire those who overcome it. That being said, I personally believe – and as someone who wants to use communication and public relations to make a positive impact on the world – that individuals should be provided with accurate and easily accessible information about risky behaviors to then be able to make informed, personal choices. The effective delivery and internalization of this information, as well as the protection of individuals who do not smoke and often are exposed to second-hand smoke, is what I am advocating for.
That’s also my Miss America speech, for those of you wondering…
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