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Aidan Barrett's avatar

"The French… unlike the English do not suffer from guilt about their colonial past"

Interestingly, it is the Dutch who are most nostalgic about their former empire.

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/fh2y6g/the_dutch_are_most_proud_of_their_former_empire/?rdt=59597

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David Cockayne's avatar

I lived there many years ago, when the Dutch thought of themselves the most Liberal of liberals, especially when it came to criticising our monarchy, system of government, and (obviously racist) empire.

When I reminded them that they too had a monarchy and an empire, they seemed genuinely puzzled. Should I be bold enough to press the matter, they invariably turned hostile, especially if I had the temerity to mention their cousins the Afrikaners.

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Tom B's avatar

Lovely writing - great way to fill a Saturday morning waiting for my son to finish his music lesson

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Ed West's avatar

thank you!

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A. N. Owen's avatar

I am sorry about your daughters' food poisoning. When I went to Vietnam more than a decade ago it was my traveling buddy who came down with food poisoning and spent five days curled up in his hotel room, leaving me all alone to explore. Who knows why I never got sick, perhaps my steady diet of cigarettes and coffee at the time helped. Same with India.

Hope all are better now.

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Ed West's avatar

yeah it was fine! Just a couple of days of vomiting - good for the character!

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David Cockayne's avatar

Yes, indeed. Tell that to kids today etc . . .

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Keith's avatar

I'd like to ask the sculptor of the Titov statue why he carved him giving a hesitant 'Hi' gesture. Or perhaps he's slowing down after a run.

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Aidan Barrett's avatar

"There are children everywhere, either playing or sleeping (in restaurants, you may find a child fast asleep outside the toilets). They were even playing football in the middle of the street, with sandals for goalposts, despite the constant movement of scooters and cars; it made me feel uneasy about the way we coddle our children in Britain"

So seeing how there is this much more spontaneously in a country formally under the ideology of a totalitarian state than in one of the world's oldest parliamentary democracies.

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Richard Ferguson's avatar

Not only that but ask any resident of colonial Hong Kong (and for a number of years after the 1997 handover) which society offered more genuine liberty: Hong Kong or the UK. "Democracy" did not figure in Hong Kong but you were unimaginably free.

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Ed West's avatar

Hong Kong must rank as one of the best colonial experience of all time.

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Richard Ferguson's avatar

It was an astonishing experience (partly driven by youth obviously). I lived there for nine years (1993-2002). For me, it redefined freedom and liberty. A benign colonial dictatorship set some broad rules and parameters and then let everyone get on with it. The freedom that comes from that is/was intoxicating.

It also provided an early insight into "elites" as we have defined them more recently ie, a class not defined by narrow confines of class or race but one which coalesces around the pursuit of wealth, status, educational attainment, influence and power. In short, more often than not, a muslim Malaysian woman could work and socialise easily with a European Christian male through these common aims.

I think the last point is especially relevant if we want to rediscover a conservative renaissance in the UK (or the west, more generally). Our multiple identities, no matter how sharply they contrast with other individuals, can find common ground as long as the guiding principles set out in law are (i) few in number (ii) rigorously and equally enforced and (iii) minimise exceptions. In a practical sense, consider the obvious multiple - and contrasting - identities of the likes of Konstantin Kisin, Kemi Badenoch, Yuan Yi Zhu, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Katherine Birbalsingh. Despite the seeming lack of commonalities, their firmly "liberal conservative' outlooks are centred on a set of common values (and also, perhaps, for some of them, being witnesses to the excesses and failings of their own original societies).

Living alongside neighbouring tyrannies, less benign dictatorships or oppressive societies also provided a sharp contrast to the freedom of many Hong Kong residents. The other lasting impact was how residency provided you with a sense of your own British identity. When I lived in the UK, any cultural identity arose - infrequently - from the "differences" between Scotland and England. In truth, I rarely thought much about what my Scottish or British identities entailed. Possibly it would only be seen through the infrequent lens of sport. I think living in Hong Kong pulled identity into much sharper focus (although that possibly happens everywhere as living in Paris for a few years after my Hong Kong experienced also had an impact).

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Neil C's avatar

"we were served a dish called the Obamam, named after the US president who visited the country in 2016" the guy he beat to the Presidency visited Hanoi *decades* before him.

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Ed West's avatar

true!

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Greg's avatar

Ah, John McCain, a pilot who was shot down while helping to carpet bomb children and old people during the Vietnam War.

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Keith's avatar

Some dishes, like pizza and curry, go international for obvious reasons. Other foods, like natto, don't leave Japan's shores, for equally obvious reasons (like most healthy things, it's horrible). Yet I can't understand why egg coffee hasn't gone international. It sounds magnificent.

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Ed West's avatar

It was pretty nice! I remember there was a Vietnamese restaurant near Hoxton which served coffee which had first gone through the digestive system of a weasel. For some reason this never took off.

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Keith's avatar

Hmm, nice. I wonder if they were envisaging doing another chicken tikka masala on the Brits.

I worked in Poland 30 years ago and zubrowka, if I understood it correctly, is vodka with a soupcon of grass that a bison has urinated on. I'm not mad about vodka at the best of times and weirdly, that extra twist didn't make me rethink my position.

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JonF311's avatar

Re: just as one should always avoid spirits in any country which doesn’t use the Latin alphabet.

Huh? One dare not drink ouzo in Greece? Or vodka in Russia?

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Ed West's avatar

definitely not the latter!

In fact beer became popular there because there were so many deaths and blindings in the 90s.

But fair enough, Greece is probably an exception to the rule.

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JonF311's avatar

Huh. I didn't know that about Russia. But I have heard it about some other countries (including Latin alphabet ones). An old friend of mine suffered methyl alcohol poisoning in Bali a few years ago, though happily she recovered fully.

I wonder if Russia ever cleaned up its water supply. At one time you couldn't drink the tap water due to giardia risk.

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Aidan Barrett's avatar

"Among the country’s most popular spots is Halong bay, a jewel that has become an example of the mass tourism phenomenon that horrifies the adventurous and concerns environmentalists, but which for tourists like us offers something quite special."

Top Gear's Vietnam Special ended up there.

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jesse porter's avatar

Does anyone outside universities and NY Times believe communist propaganda?

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Aidan Barrett's avatar

"It’s a horrible feeling when your children are sick on holiday, even worse when it’s in a far off, developing country, and it’s very hot and you wonder if you’ll have to visit a hospital because they’d eaten some prawns washed in a toilet. It was at this point I’d really wished we’d gone to France, or even the ferry to Dún Laoghaire"

I find it so ironic that civilization around the world largely began in the tropical and sub-tropical regions.

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