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www.travelweekly-asia.com | 3 TALKING POINT Published by NORTHSTAR TRAVEL MEDIA SINGAPORE PTE LTD SINGAPORE 91 Bencoolen Street, #05-08 Sunshine Plaza, Singapore 189652 • TEL: +65-6801-0450 FAX: +65-6801-0469 BEIJING Room 024, Building 8, Qijiayuan Diplomatic Compound, No.9 Jianguomenwai Street, Chaoyang District 100600, China • TEL: +8610-8532 3611 | FAX: +8610-8532 5293 SHANGHAI Room 2553, The Headquarters Building, No.168 Central XiZhang Road, Shanghai 200001, China • TEL: +8621-5179 8360 | FAX: +8621-5179 8360 Travel Weekly Asia is published on a monthly basis by Northstar Travel Media Singapore Pte Ltd. Located at 91 Bencoolen Street, #05-08 Sunshine Plaza, Singapore 189652. All rights reserved. Volume 10 Issue 10 Please address all subscription mail to the above address, Fax +852 3020 5794, or email travelweeklyasia@asia-ad.net. 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His writing has won more than 40 national awards, he created the industry's first destination information service (Weissmann Reports), authored a best-selling textbook and has served as publisher of critical hotel and destination guides for the travel industry. Live like a local? You sure? I was in Tbilisi, Georgia for only 48 hours, a break between meetings in Hong Kong and Marrakech, Morocco. A waitress at a Georgian restaurant near my apartment in New York had given me a list of things to see and do - primarily churches and streets to wander but also the Unesco World Heritage Site and former capital, Mtskheta, about 30 minutes outside the city. When I checked in at my hotel, I had asked about booking a car and driver who could take me to Mtskheta for a few hours. The guide turned out to be the driver's 18-year-old nephew, who was hoping to practise his English. As we were returning to Tbilisi, he asked if I had plans for the afternoon. Nothing firm, I replied. Would I like to come over to his father's house to assist in crushing grapes for wine and eat some barbecue? Absolutely. We drove to a part of town decidedly less charming than the city's centre and pulled up to a nondescript house behind a truck. Inside were large plastic bags, each holding grapes, mostly green but with purple patches on the skin. It took only about two and a half hours for the assembled group, which expanded to include the uncle's brother and his two sons plus a few friends, to crush the grapes using a hand-cranked press set over large plastic barrels. As we worked, we drank portions of last year's vintage. It was a shade of orange I had never associated with wine. "Is it red or white?" I asked. The uncle looked surprised. "It's white." This was a once-a-year activity, and it ended with a celebratory barbecue of pork skewers, a salad, home-jarred peppers and free- flowing orange wine. The patriarch initiated what would be a long round of toasts, blessing all who helped. When it was my turn, I thanked them for inviting me, saying that I had come prepared to enjoy Georgian culture, wine and food but had not imagined participating in such a warm experience. Airbnb (among other travel companies) explicitly promises travellers it can assist them to "live like a local" through its Experiences offering. Had I, through serendipity, accomplished it on my own? No. Not even close. I did get to see a part of town I might not have otherwise, and I had a great experience, the authenticity of which could have been compromised only by my presence. But there's another 'authentic', which tourists mostly miss, wrote Ed Schreiber of Pelitravel in Oregan, in response to a column I wrote about the difficulty of truly connecting to a host culture. "The 'authentic' to residents," he wrote of where he lives, "is seen in failing schools, poor healthcare, a destructive drug culture, increasing homelessness and lack of adequate law enforcement in many parts of our county." Even before my fortuitous wine- making experience, my impression of Tbilisi had been very positive. But I also had noticed many older women begging in the streets that I asked the nephew about it. "There is no welfare state in Georgia," he replied. Perhaps it's stating the obvious to say that societies are complex and that locals live in various strata of comfort and discomfort. I suspect that when visitors say they want to live like a local, they are often aided and abetted by the travel industry, usually romanticising the local they imagine they want to live like.

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