T A B L E_T A L K The perfect retreat: Have you found it? Discuss the vacation of your dreams in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Club Fed By Jeffrey Itell How Madeleine Albright spent more than $40,000 on a Caribbean weekend (04/10/98) Mondo Weirdo Readers' worst travel tales (04/09/98) Tiger, tiger, burning bright By Jeff Greenwald A blood-curdling encounter in Nepal (04/08/98) My grandfather's village By Amy Brill Searching a Greek island for roots (04/07/98) The Chinese friend By Chris Taylor Fate brings together an outsider and a foreigner on a bus tour of China (04/06/98) Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Editor's letters archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		__SILVER LININGS IN THE ASIAN CLOUD .|. PAGE 2 OF 2 To understand all this accurately, of course, you have to know something about PATA itself. Founded in 1951, the organization today is the largest tourism body in the world, with more than 2,200 organizational members. PATA's charter mission is "to contribute to the growth, value and quality of travel and tourism to and within the Pacific Asia area on behalf of its diverse membership." Given the extraordinary range of this membership, from mom-and-pop out-island tour operators to multi-continental luxury hotel chains, PATA's seas have always been more tumultuous than tranquil -- but through the decades the association has acted to help coordinate tourism marketing and development, to promote environmentally responsible travel and to gather and share information and ideas. The annual PATA conference, held in a different member location every year, is the grand showcase for all these efforts -- and a hustling, bustling back room-cum-bazaar where members can sit down face to face, roll up their sleeves, huddle over notepads and calculators and make the deals that will generate waves of slick brochures and press releases and alter the shape of the industry in the year to come. In other words, depression and despair just aren't on the PATA agenda. In fact, the entrepreneurial, tourism-grounded energy, vitality and optimism -- the sense of developmental destiny -- manifest in this meeting have astounded me every year since my first conference in 1987. Though a new austerity was evident this year -- gone were the lavish government-sponsored feasts complete with flown-in dance troupes, actors and orchestras that enlivened every night a decade ago -- the buoyant camaraderie that has always distinguished the conference was still abundantly present. On opening day, the gleaming lobby of the Westin Philippine Plaza Hotel, the conference headquarters, was a constant parade of hugging, back-slapping delegates who view this as a once-a-year homecoming to their extended Asia-Pacific family. Amid the speeches and panels, the stand-up buffets and sit-down award ceremonies, some important news and ideas did emerge: a new initiative to counteract child prostitution in Asia; the unveiling of a dynamic, $13 million advertising campaign by the Hong Kong Tourist Association, designed to revive the former colony's flagging tourism scene; Australia's ambitious and innovative plans to promote tourism for the upcoming Sydney Olympics and beyond, including the creation of a new Aboriginal tourism minister; strategies for harnessing and utilizing the Internet for travel promotion and commerce. The biggest news for delegates was the announcement that PATA would be moving its world headquarters later this year from San Francisco to Bangkok. For PATA members, this decision resolved an issue that had fractured the group for years, and powerfully symbolized the association's determination to respond to the times by forging closer ties with its Asian constituencies. But the most impressive lessons for me were the ones that crept into my consciousness, that I absorbed unaware, almost by osmosis. One of these was the incredible resiliency of the Asia-Pacific economies -- a resiliency based on the passionate dreams of innumerable large- and small-scale entrepreneurs just like the delegates all around me. Another was the fundamental humanity -- the person-to-person warmth and connection -- that still undergirds and glues the travel industry around the world, and that distinguishes this industry from virtually all others. A third lesson was the extraordinary crossover you can still find in this part of the world, where Asians who have studied or worked abroad and smoothly adapted Western dress and manners mingle with Western expats who hopscotch from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore to Hong Kong but are always more comfortable in Asia than wherever they came from; I find something endlessly fascinating and sanguine in these international people, who have transcended birthplace and birth culture to create a small societal slice of their own. The most moving lesson of all, however, came to me one night in the Manila Hotel when I stood adrift in a vast ballroom filled with people from San Franciscans to Sri Lankans -- a jostling and joyous sea of saris and barongs, aloha shirts and batik skirts, kimonos and seersucker suits. Asia -- vibrant, irreplaceable -- surrounded me; I could see it, hear it, smell it. And I realized once again just how hugely diverse the Asia-Pacific region is -- and how sadly misleading and just plain ignorant we are in the West when we use phrases like the Asian contagion or the Asian flu to encompass such a wildly eclectic collection of countries, cultures and economies. Sometimes you have to experience this diversity firsthand to really understand: Japan is different from Singapore, which is different from Indonesia, which is different from Malaysia and the Philippines, which are different from Tonga and Palau and Fiji. As all the countries of this region navigate their individual paths of peril and prosperity in the months and years to come, I will try to recall that intricate, embracing sea in the Manila Hotel. SALON | April 13, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Don George is the Editor of Wanderlust. You can e-mail him at dgeorge@salonmagazine.com.