When traveling, I often expect the people I meet to ask questions about me. But I wasn’t prepared for the question locals asked every day during my six-week trip to Indonesia: Why are you Asian?
It may have been a mistranslation, but it also felt like a challenge.
I grew up in a white suburb of Los Angeles, where my peers often called me a “Twinkie,” “banana,” and any other cruelly creative nickname that children could invent. It felt like they were pointing out the obvious. I may appear yellow, but I was white on the inside.
I am ethnically Filipino, Japanese, and Polish. If you explain that to most people, they’ll look at you like you’re from Mars. Like many Asian Americans, I spent my younger years embracing the urge to assimilate. I mentally reframed the playground taunts as compliments, albeit ones that tied my stomach in knots and made my fists tighten.
As I focused on fitting in, I suppressed a growing concern that I might be a “bad Asian.” I often felt disconnected from the generations that sacrificed so much for me to be born and raised in the United States. But I also knew that I didn’t fully belong in the sea of white and blonde that I existed in.
Traveling around Asia
Touching down in Asia felt new and familiar at the same time. Unlike past trips to Europe or Australia, my first trip to Asia crackled with an untapped energy.
When traveling around Indonesia, people asked me why I was Asian around 200 times. Shortly after that, I joined my family on a trip to Japan. My mother speaks fluent Japanese, and we visited the Fukuoka province, where our family is from. Despite my roots, I felt like a palm tree among the sakura. When I put on a yukata for the first time, I wondered if I was just another tourist in a costume.
Local people would approach me speaking Japanese, and they’d go cold when I didn’t understand what they were saying. Suddenly, I wasn’t one of them. I was a foreigner. I am accustomed to white people seeing me as an outsider. But it felt different with Asian people. It made me wonder if anyone would embrace me as their own.
As I moved through Asia to Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam, I continued to confuse local people. Most people in Asia will greet you with endless warmth and friendliness, no matter who you are or where you are from. The people-pleaser in me wished I was Asian enough to warrant their excitement. However, once again, I felt like an imposter when they asked about my background. I couldn’t give them the straight answers they wanted.
The problem with expats
When I imagined the connections I would experience in Asia, I forgot to account for one crucial fact: travel is white as hell.
White Americans are the most likely to travel abroad. Similar patterns can be seen in expat communities or other tourist spaces. Most white travelers come from the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, or Australia.
In digital nomad hubs or other popular tourist spots, I rarely met another person of color. Somehow, even when I traveled all the way to Asia, I was still the only Asian person in a room of white people.
This is not a problem on its own. It’s great to see people explore more places off the beaten path. The issue is a general attitude of disrespect that grows alongside these more privileged crowds. Sometimes, these bubbles become full-on echo chambers.
Given how inexpensive many Southeast Asian destinations are, a lot of white travelers walk around with an inflated sense of entitlement and power. Many are quick to look down on Southeast Asian economies and businesses without acknowledging that Western countries play a role in these places. With digital nomads especially, there is often an ignorant mindset. People look at the world as their playground rather than honoring the cultures they visit.
White travelers sometimes mistook me for their waitress or another local person. People I met would ask me to teach them Thai phrases even though I’m simply not Thai. Worst of all, for some reason, being in Asia seemed to enhance people’s curiosity and lack of boundaries about my race. People loved to tell me that I should speak more Tagalog and that I didn’t seem to know much about Japanese food.
The power of anger
I felt angry. And strangely, that was one of the most impactful parts of this experience. As a young Asian girl, I have always been taught to be demure and accommodating. I am expected to brush aside the comments that make my blood boil. After years of trying to make everyone else comfortable, the audacity of these random white hippies to be racist to me in the countries of my ancestors unlocked an anger that I didn’t know I had in me.
My anger reminds me that my feelings are valid. It’s evidence that my emotions make me powerful, not weak. My anger defends me. It stands up and calls out the micro-aggressive behavior that has gone unchecked for generations. It may make people uncomfortable, but it also might make them more thoughtful. We should draw attention to these issues, and we deserve to take up space in the conversation.
Souvenirs from Asia
If I were going to have a quarter-life crisis, I’m grateful that mine sent me on a global scavenger hunt for self-discovery, identity, and connection. Despite everything, I do feel like I found many of these intangible things in unexpected places.
When sitting in silence on the pristine trains of Tokyo, I felt connected to the small children who had the same awful bowl cuts my parents gave me. In the Philippines, I played guitar and sang with so many lovely local people. I had never realized that my love of music could come from a culture that considers karaoke to be its unofficial national sport. I saw people who looked like me everywhere, and I saw the beauty in that.
None of this would have been possible without the privilege and joy of travel. Often, it’s exhausting to put myself in uncomfortable situations over and over again. Surrounding myself with strangers or unfamiliar settings teaches me how to approach the world from a place of curiosity and kindness. It teaches me about myself as much as I learn about the world around me.
However, the reality of being a multi-faceted human in an increasingly complicated world is that we may never get to a point where we can firmly say we understand who we are. What would be the point if we could? We’re constantly changing. And while race is merely a part of our identity, I am done pretending that it is something I can extricate myself from when it’s convenient.
I may not know why I am Asian, but I’m glad I am.
Acacia Gabriel is a travel writer from Los Angeles, California. She has traveled solo through Europe, Australia, and Asia, and she encourages young women to embark on their own adventures.
