The new contagion

"No one wants to go to the Philippines," an American travel agent from California told me during my visit to Shanghai. The terrorist attack in Bali, Indonesia has turned away American travelers from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and all Muslim countries, she said.

She admitted thinking, by the way, that Bali was all of Indonesia and that it was a Hindu nation — until the Bali attack. After that, she said, her clients refused to go to "all those Muslim countries including the Philippines."

When I reminded her that we are predominantly Christian, she said, well yes, but you have those Muslims in the south and aren’t they creating trouble? So her American clients prefer to go to Thailand and even Vietnam where travelers feel safe, she said.

I don’t know how reliable you can consider the assessment of someone who sees a terrorist in every Muslim and until last Oct. 12 couldn’t tell Indonesia from India. But I’m sure there are many others like her — and not just Americans. When they hear of a terrorist attack in Zamboanga City, they look at a map and see those little dots that make up the Philippines, and think the southern part is dangerously close enough to the rest of the country.

So they skip Manila and plan a vacation instead in Phuket, Thailand. But isn’t that the place where they planned the Bali attack? There goes Thailand’s tourism industry. It’s the new Asian contagion, and if not treated early, it could prove as devastating to the region as the financial crisis that started in 1997.

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Is the problem more a matter of perception than fact? That’s what Tourism Secretary Dick Gordon tells anyone who cares to listen. That’s also what Setyanto Santosa, head of Indonesia’s Culture and Tourism Board, told me in Shanghai. He proudly announced that Australia and the Netherlands had lifted their travel advisories on Bali. So soon? I asked incredulously. A Singaporean told me the travel advisories on Indonesia were merely modified so they would make no specific mention of Bali.

Still, the modification is achievement enough when you have a headache as big as Bali’s. Santosa admitted that since the bombings, hotel occupancy in Bali had plunged from an average of 75 percent to 15 percent.

What did Jakarta do to have the advisories modified?

"Soft promotion," Santosa told me. "Convince them. Touch their hearts."

By this he meant appealing to foreign governments, informing them about the ill effects of the advisories. Santosa said they told the Australians that the travel warnings have resulted in the loss of 500,000 jobs in Bali. In Yogyakarta, 45 percent of small and medium enterprises engaged in souvenir handicrafts have shut down.

Indonesia is trying to rebuild Bali’s shattered image by convincing the world that — as Santosa put it — "Everything is under control." The Bali bombers have been arrested, and Jakarta appears to be finally cracking down on Abubakar Bashir, alleged leader of the Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah. The ratio of cops to civilians in Bali has been raised from 1:2,000 to 1:200. Overall, security forces in Bali have been increased sixfold, Santosa said.

The Indonesian parliament has also approved an increase in the country’s tourism promotion budget from $3 million this year to $30 million in 2003, with emphasis on the message that terror can strike anywhere.

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Southeast Asia has to move quickly if it wants to keep international visitors from skipping the region and heading for China. Hotels in Shanghai are heavily booked through 2003, with most of the visitors business travelers.

These days business establishments lining the Huangpo River in the new development called Pudong are required to switch on all their lights from 7 to 10 p.m., with the government shouldering the power costs. The effect at night, when you cruise the Huangpo, can be electrifying: high-rises in ultra-modern Pudong sitting across the river from the brightly lit old European-style buildings in the British sector of the Bund, the city’s famous riverside area.

And it’s not just Shanghai that’s booming. The eastern coastal city of Qingdao, which the Chinese are touting as the Switzerland of the East, is now regarded as the best place to live in China. Qingdao is safe and squeaky-clean. It’s a modern city, but as in Shanghai, the government has also retained the old European-style houses, some of them a century old, which were built when the area was a German colony.

These days the German governor-general’s former mansion has been turned into a tourist spot, with guides pointing out the bedroom that Mao Zedong used during a stay in the city. A regular tour of Qingdao also includes a visit to the old section of the city where Europeans used to live — an area where Chinese used to be banned along with dogs.

Last year Qingdao received 10 million visitors, about 10 percent of them foreigners. If Dick Gordon could get even that 10 percent in the Philippines for the entire year he’d be happy enough, considering the fallout from Bali.

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You can hardly think of Bali or Osama bin Laden when you’re in China. A prominent member of the travel industry told me that China used to promote itself as a "safe" destination. But several members of the international travel industry protested amid the terrorist threat, so the sales pitch was modified: China is a "peaceful" travel destination. And it is.

China is even acting on some of the long-standing criticisms against it. Chinese journalists tell me they can now write stories exposing corruption and other articles critical of public officials, although the central government in Beijing and the military remain untouchable.

China has just tightened rules on Internet use, and facilities are not widely available, but I was able to file two articles using public Internet facilities. (I worked under more than my usual time constraints and couldn’t edit my stories, so please pardon the mistakes.)

Complaints against unfair trade competition are also being addressed. At the flea market in Shanghai — which locals have learned to call tiangge, after getting so many Filipino visitors — the fake Rolex watches, Mont Blanc pens and designer knockoffs are no longer put on display. But they are still offered surreptitiously and can be obtained in the dingy homes of hawkers.

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China is slowly responding to international concerns, and is successfully marketing itself as a safe destination for world travelers. When thousands of people are losing their jobs because of the terrorist bogey and there is an urgent need to reassure the world that your country is safe, you turn to places like China and ask yourself what it’s doing right.

Then you ask yourself how much you are willing to pay for safety. As terror spreads in Southeast Asia, governments must strike a balance between freedom and the need for security.