Virtual reality will never make you a traveler

The best experiences are totally unexpected - and it is important to enjoy them in real life

Waiting for a medical appointment, I idly picked up a magazine - the sort I would normally never look at in a month of Sundays - and read an article extolling virtual reality as a way of visiting exotic places.

Sorry, but that doesn't work for me. You have to go somewhere to sense a place, to talk to people, to get a feel for it.

I've been an inveterate traveler for as long as I can remember, and journalism became the ideal vehicle. Even to this day, I end up somewhere and my first thought is, "Wow, I'm being paid to do this?"

That was my first question when I landed as an extremely callow correspondent in 1972 at Singapore's old Paya Lebar International Airport, now replaced by the superefficient Changi International.

As they cracked open the door of the Malaysia-Singapore Airlines Boeing 707, that never-to-be-forgotten smell of tropical Asia hit me. It was like walking into a warm, soggy sponge. (For aviation buffs, that flight from London, which stopped in Rome, Abu Dhabi and then Singapore, was one of the last by the jointly owned airline. Shortly afterward Malaysian Airline Systems and Singapore Airlines were born.)

Relaxing with a very cold Tiger beer next to the pool outside my room that night, I listened to the cicadas chirping away and wondered again: "I'm being paid to do this?"

So I guess that's when I got hooked, and it's been a great ride that certainly is not over yet.

There have been moments, thrilling and surreal, that stick in my mind.

There was, for example, my flight from Saigon, as it was then called, to Vientiane, the sleepy capital of Laos where the word for "tomorrow" makes the Spanish word "manana" sound like a swearword.

We trundled along at just over 3,000 meters in a much-abused DC3 of Royal Air Laos until - at a stopover in Savannakhet in southern Laos - a large, beaming Laotian lady plonked herself down in the seat across the aisle. The cabin attendant came up with her baggage and put it in the seat next to her. It was a large, protesting piglet, stoutly wrapped in a rattan basket affair. You couldn't make this up.

In Vientiane itself, a fellow correspondent and I, at a loose end one evening, decided to head into town for a drink. Lured by a sign that said "Draught Guinness", we went through a barrel-shaped door and stumbled into the Purple Porpoise.

Behind the bar stood a one-eyed giant of a man, who greeted us in pure cockney: "Allo gents, Monty Banks is the name, all the way from Bethnal Green. What's your pleasure?" I could tell he was a cockney straight away by the way he pronounced his birthplace - "Befnal Green".

Two satisfying pints later, his story came out. He said he'd been a radio operator with one of the joint US-UK Deer military teams that were parachuted into the region in the dying days of the war against Japan, and he never left.

Now he was operating this bar. As the gloom lifted, my colleague and I realiszed we were the only civilians in the room. The rest were all men in their 50s and 60s, wearing white aviator shirts and almost to a man sporting huge, chunky gold bracelets - Air America pilots.

Air America was the CIA-sponsored airline that got up to all sorts of devious tricks. But I'll save what happened to us for another day.

So you tell me, can you get that sort of experience with virtual reality? No way.

China is my next target: I want to tackle the Great Wall, which I missed out on during my last visit, and also take in the Three Gorges and, if I can, Xi'an.

China does that to you - you think you're well-traveled until you look at a map. It's huge.

Can't wait.

Chris Peterson is Managing Editor for China Daily in Europe. Contact him at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com