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Thursday, February 18, 2010

"New Zealand - The Most Boring Place on Earth"

 

A few days ago Travel MSN UK published a list of the Most Boring Places on Earth. 

It was based on feedback from users of the site's message board,  readers were asked which places they thought were the dullest on the planet. "Home" came first in the first 4 locations, understandable because afterall this is a travel site, Brits aren't shy of saying what they think about their own backyards under such circumstances.
 
The readers' first placed foreign destination, New Zealand, may come as a surprise to a few but not to others. The country has long aspired to be the premier destination for cashed-up adrenaline junkies, how can it be boring? Interestingly it's not just travellers that responded to the survey but migrants living in New Zealand too.
"...And so to perhaps one of the most surprising entries on the world's most boring places list. The filming of the Lord of the Rings in New Zealand must have roughly quadrupled the number of British people who fantasise about the country as a place of mystery and beauty to which they long to escape.

Should they do so, however, they may find they have underestimated the (large) extent to which sheep outnumber humans in the country.

"We moved to New Zealand for a change of lifestyle," says Richard Fromage, one of several users disillusioned with the twin Antipodean islands. "We certainly got it: we felt like we'd moved into semi-retirement."


Another user calls the country "dull", with a "pompous" population who enjoy a "boring lifestyle". Yet another observes: "All you ever get from the Kiwis is how beautiful it is." So why are they all in the UK, he asks.

Yet Lalua is probably speaking for many when she says: "I lived in New Zealand for a year and thought it was very beautiful and the locals warm and friendly."
But this is nothing new.  Travel journalists have been taking their professional lives in their hands and saying New Zealand is boring for some years.

In 2002 Round the World Netjetter "Ellie" caused an absolute uproar when she described New Zealand in the Guardian newspaper as "One of the dullest places on earth." It quickly earned her the title of "public enemy number one" within New Zealand and even prompted a rebuttal from the tourism minister of the day. This is what she said that caused so much offence to so many:

"Describing travelling in New Zealand, I feel like the woman who swallowed a thesaurus in an incident described as tragic, awful, calamitous, disastrous and lamentable. There are lots of ways to describe the country, but it all boils down to the same thing: it's pretty. The Marlborough Sounds? Well, yes, they're beautiful. Fjordland? Dramatic. The glaciers? Remarkable. The mountains? Impressive. Waterfalls? Sensational.

What about the landscape, surroundings, terrain and views? Oh yes, they're all charming, dazzling, lovely, spectacular and striking. And they are. But nice hills and rivers don't hide the fact that New Zealand is essentially one of the dullest places on earth.

Take the Tranzscenic railway which runs from Greymouth to Christchurch. It is touted as one of the world's best train journeys. And while New Zealand remains as far away from most other countries as it is, Kiwis can probably convince themselves that this is true. But really, it's no nicer than that scenic bit in Staffordshire that British trains go through when they head north.

While Helen Clark, the country's prime minister, was in the UK trying to convince Britons that New Zealand is dynamic and ready for the 21st century, I was touring some of the cities here. Wellington, the capital city, has a population half the size of that of Luxembourg. Auckland, with over a million people, is supposed to be a cosmopolitan city. Nearly a third of the people in New Zealand live there. But a bustling city it certainly isn't.

One of the most frequently heard compliments about the country is that the people are friendly. They are, actually, but alas, friendly doesn't equal interesting. No wonder so many Kiwis spend years working for minimal wages in bars and pubs across the UK. I would too, if it was the only way to get away. The national bird is flightless and even the national fruit was brought here from somewhere else - China, in fact. Even New Zealand-born Russell Crowe has just applied for an Australian passport.

It's not that New Zealand isn't pleasant. As I've said, parts of it are very nice to look at indeed. It just lacks something. Personality, perhaps? The prettiest part of the country is the west coast of the South Island, which plays host to the Franz Josef and the Fox glaciers. I took a helicopter ride to a point on the Fox glacier where, kitted out with hobnailed boots, crampons and a walking stick, I hiked on the ice for a couple of hours. Because the glacier moves new paths and footholds have to be cut every day but, as this was the luxury helicopter hike, someone else did that for me.

The glacier can actually move up to 4m a day, surprisingly quick for New Zealand where "no worries" and "chill out" are regular refrains. "This hole is several hundred metres deep," said Ricky, the guide, pointing to a crack in the ice. I promptly dropped my sunglasses down it. This was the second pair to go, the first having committed suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Apart from the scenery, there are two things New Zealanders are proud of: Lord of the Rings, and being reigning champions of the America's Cup. Actually, make that three. New Zealand is also proud of being a nuclear-free zone. But this is one of the things the London Borough of Hackney boasts about, and you wouldn't want to spend three weeks touring Dalston, would you?

"I was in Lord of The Rings," said Dave, my bus driver. "I was one of the army fighting the Orcs in part two." We were driving through Twizel, a village on the South Island. "This here," said Dave, "was part of Middle Earth."

Ask a New Zealander to tell you something interesting about their country and after hesitating for several minutes, they'll probably come up with the America's Cup. For the uninitiated, this is a yacht race. As Team New Zealand are the reigning champions, a whole harbourside development in Auckland has been built on the America's Cup theme. "Look, there are our boys out on the water, practising," said the guide on my dolphin-spotting expedition. "Now all turn round and bow to them. They are our heroes."

The country has been living off this piece of sporting success for years, and probably will continue to do so for years to come. Which would be rather like the Brits still basking in the glory of their 1966 World Cup victory. Something we'd never do, surely?"
Here are some fairly typical responses from the NZ public to her critique of "God Zone"

  • "NZ lacks personality? You wouldn't know "personality" if it bit you on the arse, I'm afraid. All I can say is that it's high-and-mighty, jealous attitudes like yours which lost Britain its Empire!"
  • "For sure, New Zealand is a very small country, but for such a small and dull country we still manage to beat you in the recent cricket test and we often beat you by large and memorable scores in the rugby. Sure, our native bird may be flightless but you are wrong about the kiwifruit. See - we New Zealanders are interesting people." 
  • "It's a pity that you felt so bored in "Godzone". We certainly must be dull: we have no terrorists attacking us, no children being attacked by mobs and killed in front of housing estates and we enjoy a pretty fair amount of racial harmony for a country with such a diverse ethnic population. We also do not have to step over young men with dogs selling the Big Issue on the streets because they don't have a home to go to, most of us don't have to commute for ages just to get to work, and we don't get frozen in our moderate winters. We may indeed be dull for loving a lifestyle that can be found nowhere else on earth. If so, good on us!"
We are wondering what will happen when the news of the Travel MSN UK survey gets out!
See also:
The History of the Kiwi Fruit - Wikipedia 
See also blog posts New Zealand's problems with:
Crime
Child Poverty
Homeless People
Tourist Attacks
Armed Robberies
Racism
And
That's cold - exposing the myth about a sub tropical New Zealand
Migrants' Tales - First hand accounts of migrant life in New Zealand. 





Today's posts - click here

5 comments:

  1. http://sarah-stewart.blogspot.com/2007/12/emigrating-to-new-zealand.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. New Zealand on Youtube

    New Zealand combines beauty with bleakness, but the advertising material is so voluminous it hides the bleakness well. On Youtube, you will not see many New Zealand houses, or the insides of them. Some honest local movies show what many homes and the less upscale areas actually look like so that you can gauge the level of poverty, for which a standard definition has not been established. If you go on youtube for instance and type Tuhoe, you could find some of the social issues depicted.
    Ex.:
    http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=UMpUKNgAIoU&feature=related

    Maoris are trying to defend their land heritage from being carved up by greedy developers, and some of the justice is of the rough and ready local sort with areas placed off bounds to casual travellers driving around gormlessly in rural spaces:
    http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=jOr2afXQk9w&feature=related

    Travellers are not often warned of this happening, but regional papers will report instances of "access issues". You cannot just wander anywhere here. Land that you buy for example is freehold or rightfully leased from the tribe that owns it. Some land is in dispute, and you should be aware of this before you buy property.

    You do not escape drugs and violence in rural New Zealand.
    http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=1-n748hplH0&feature=related

    It's not all like this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umgchnWm2HQ&NR=1
    or this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNWPPMpaWc4&feature=related
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZJPA-IwS30&feature=related

    Fight Club:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZp1zmee1Hc

    Are Migrant Workers welcome?
    http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=9ss9S290J4w&feature=related

    This is not in English but a glance at the comments should give you an idea of what life for Indian people in New Zealand is like:
    http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=cFbM0a5fQ9g&feature=related

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/05/against_the_hum.html

    "the HDI is basically a measure of how Scandinavian your country is"

    Why does New Zealand measure up there with Scandinavian countries? Is it actually like an English-speaking Sweden? Would everyone even want to live in a Scandinavian country, or in New Zealand?

    I spoke to 2 people who had lived in both places and liked neither Norway nor New Zealand.

    They both mentioned that the housing was so expensive in both places. One of them said, "any place is nice if you have enough money to buy niceness from the locals". The HDI doesn't measure "niceness of the locals". The other one commented of Norway: "The population has indentured itself to 10 years of life-robbing "useless outside of your own country" socialized, autistically-boxed schooling". The other one mentioned the schooling in NZ as well, adding, "A highly educated population that mostly finishes school sounds good in theory, but what are they learning? To conform and accept. You have to consider the product that this education churns out, in both places." The other one then jokingly remarked, "make an index of how much money you make after that, the usable income after taxes partly buried in a litterbox deep within a cloud of fecal coliform, so you can't see the useless tyrannosaurus rex-like arms, the barking voice of authority proclaiming self-imposed superiority while you eat flour, fish and frozen imported peas..." The other one laughed and responded, "The rigid virtuousness and entrenched nature of the entitlement system discourages people from questioning and wanting to make needed reforms in both places". The one said of Norway, "If you don't jump off a bridge during the midnight sun season and drone on to be 90 years old waiting in line 2 hours to buy a f****ng bottle of wine, then you "win"...get it?" He added, "No- I dont. I'll jump off a bridge thank you". The other said of New Zealand then, "both very remote places with long lines for care, service and anything else. Both expensive, the middle class with clenched teeth laboring under crushing weight of wealthy who hire accountants to get them out of the taxes, and lower socioeconomic level welfare bums who play the system to avoid work. Both places with a lot of sullen neurotic people all drinking into oblivion and screwing one another over trying to keep their money away from the government". The other kicked in, "I knew an engineer who turned to selling drugs because he could keep so little of his income". The conclusion - both remote, expensive, full of cash-hungry jerks. The HDI only means anything if you'd hold Scandinavia up as the perfect place to live. To the extent that New Zealand is even comparable to Scandinavia, some similar characteristics apply.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I lived 5 years in New Zealand and had to desperately leave the country as I was living in semi-retirement even though I was only thirty. I could not agree more with your post. It is a beautiful country with friendly people, but unbelievably boring.
    And only a British would consider NZ tropical. Winters are cold and there is no central heating.
    I have great memories of my time there but am glad I have left!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Excellent description of New Zealand. I've lived here as a Brit for a long time and do like it, my friends are here, my family are here, i like the out doors the lack of people and the fishing and boating. But, it's just one of the "yes" boring places that one just has to leave at least once a year and travel. Otherwise i think my brain would turn to mush from listening to the yaya boys down the pub discussing yet another boring game of rugby. So, pity the Kiwi who cannot afford to get out of the place simply to see what the rest of the world is like. Unfortunately that is most of the population. Friendly? yes. Interesting? not particularly. Boring ? absolutely.

    Johnny, Christchurch.

    ReplyDelete

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