Lisa Mastny: are Americans really xenophobes?

• Author: Mastny, Lisa
• Position: WORLDWATCH FIRST-PERSON

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. --St. Augustine Every year, I try to immerse myself in a new culture. It seems fitting, as a Worldwatcher, to leave the cocoon of my home town on occasion and experience the wider world we track so studiously. This past November, I spent 15 days in Vietnam and Cambodia. It was certainly a whirlwind trip, but I saw more than I imagined possible--the cultural splendor of the Angkor temples, floating fishing villages in the Mekong Delta, Hmong girls harvesting rice in the northern mountains, the traffic and nightlife of Saigon. I saw rapid economic transformation and brimming optimism about the future, but also the legacy of poverty and political oppression.

And, of course, I met lots of other travelers. In a tiny cafe in Dalat, I chatted with two English girls just out of high school who were spending their "gap" year working at a Saigon orphanage before heading to college. Trekking near the Chinese border, I met a German flight attendant who was escaping the bitter cold of Europe for two months. On the sleeper train heading south, I shared a berth with a guy from New Zealand on an around-the-world ticket, who planned to "keep going 'til the money runs out." The place was crawling with foreigners, which isn't too surprising given that Southeast Asia is now the world's fastest growing tourism region. Since 1990, arrivals to Vietnam alone have increased by 20 percent a year on average.

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Oh--and I met two Americans. In two weeks. Not that this was anything new; I hadn't seen many on earlier visits to Asia, either. But the question nagged me throughout my trip: where are all the Americans? Are we really as insular as the world thinks we are? I'd heard the scorn in the voices of other travelers: "Only 7 percent of Americans even have passports, you know." And nationwide surveys have long revealed our worldly ignorance: 60 percent of us can't find Great Britain on a map, and 11 percent can't even find the United States. Maybe that's what happens when U.S. news shows devote 95 percent of their airtime to domestic stories, leaving only a few minutes for the rest of the planet.

It's embarrassing. But are we really xenophobes, lacking interest in the people and events of the wider world? As it turns out, our shameful passport record comes straight out of Michael Moore's bestseller, Dude, Where's My Country?--and he got it wrong. In fact...