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A Modern Day “Grand Tour of the East”
Back in the late 18th century – long before the concept of a “gap year” was a thing – the Grand Tour of Continental Europe was a popular rite of passage for the wealthy elite of Britain and America. Well into the 20th Century, these lucky travellers enjoyed long and leisurely visits to the most cultured of European cities. They spent weeks/months in Paris, Vienna, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Athens and typically ended the tour in Istanbul. Their aim was to educate themselves, returning home with improved minds and equipped with better political and social connections which they hoped would give them an advantage in the job or marriage markets.
By contrast, there never was an official “Grand Tour of the East”. Before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, only colonial civil servants or merchants with business in the Far East made the long journey all around the Cape of Good Hope and the entire African continent to finally reach Arabia.
The Suez Canal not only opened up maritime trade by shaving months off this arduous journey but also proved pivotal in the birth of long distance leisure travel.
At this time, the Malay Archipelago was largely divided between the British, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German colonial powers. Those with sufficient time and money to spare could now use the major port cities in the East Indies (as South East Asia was then called), China and Japan as a base from which to take excursions to major historic sites and centres of culture.
The East Indies was a fascinating place for these travellers to linger for a while not only because of the geographical location but also because at that time, all of the major colonial European powers had significant territories in this far flung land of peninsulas and archipelagos. This meant that – although European and American travellers were many thousands of miles away from home – the growing port cities would have appeared reassuringly familiar to them because they were built in the style of the imperial cities of the colonising nation. They were almost like an extension or holiday home of sorts, offering comfort and respite to travellers between the vast and alien expanses of India and China.
In the 1920s, newly affluent Europeans and Americans had an insatiable curiosity to explore the East they had only previously read about in their newspapers and journals. Staying in one of the opulent hotels in the major port cities was a “must do” part of any Grand Tour of the East. These hotels boasted all the home comforts that a weary Western traveller might need including full suites with separate living/dining, sleeping, and washing areas. Modern conveniences like electricity and flushing toilets were standard too. Now, you didn’t have to make yourself uncomfortable to explore the world!
These iconic hotels became as much of an attraction as the destination cities themselves. Their charismatic draw continues to this day and tempts modern travellers with a romantic streak to splash out a little and explore what lies behind their glittering facades – just as Somerset Maugham, George Orwell, Noel Coward, Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad once did.
Imagine actually staying at the Raffles Hotel (Singapore) and sipping on a Singapore Sling at the cocktail bar? Or what about checking in at the Hotel Majestic (Saigon – now Ho Chi Minh City) and imagining yourself treading in the footsteps of Graham Greene (the Quiet American)? Or maybe snap a selfie alongside the fleet of 14 Rolls Royce phantoms lined up in all their splendour along the forecourt of The Peninsula (Hong Kong)? It is the stuff of dreams – right? Well for an incurable romantic like me, yes – it certainly is!
Unlike the Grand Tour of Europe, the aim of the early leisure travellers undertaking their Grand Tour of the East wasn’t really to educate and better one’s self but more to experience something new, exotic and exciting – and to come home with thrilling tales to tell. There was undoubtedly also a degree of colonial superiority – a tendency to judge unfamiliar Eastern cultures as inferior to the West rather than observing and learning from them. This was probably fuelled by the parallel desire at that time of the East to learn from the West.
By the turn of the 19th century, Cunard and P&O were offering pleasure cruises and so the dream of a Grand Tour of the East became a reality for the lucky passengers in a position to take advantage of the new opportunity. After WW2, flights made a trip to the far East even more easily accessible and economical and many more travellers were now able to make their own journey of oriental discovery.
These days, the port cities that sprang from such humble beginnings just over a century ago are now modern mega cities filled with towering skyscrapers and millions of inhabitants. These Far Eastern lands which were once largely closed to the outside world and familiar only to their original inhabitants are now famous the world over and visited by many millions of tourists every year.
So much has changed in the last hundred years and yet still, a Grand Tour of the East remains as enticing to many of as it always has. Even though we can now see documentaries on TV and social media means that we can hold images of far away lands in our hands 24 hours a day, the allure of the Orient endures. The desire to create our own first hand experience – rather than relying on a second hand version created by someone else – earns the Far East a place on the bucket list of many travellers. It has certainly been on my bucket list for a long while – thwarted for far too long by the COVID pandemic.
I was lucky enough to have my first taste of the Asian continent earlier this year on my first visit to India, but now, I am about to embark on my own version of a Grand Tour of the East. As a modern day traveller to the East, I aim to approach the journey with the mindset of those early travellers to Europe – i.e . to see what I can learn along the way.
Unlike those early elite travellers, I don’t have sufficient budget for many leisurely months of exploration basing myself in those romantic iconic hotels. What I do have though is a thirst for knowledge, a desire to share my experiences through Love to Wander and 4 weeks to complete my own version – a modern day Grand Tour of the East.
I invite you to join me on my voyage of discovery and see what we can learn along the way. Whether you aim to follow in my footsteps and make your own Grand Tour of the East or whether you are an enthusiastic armchair traveller, get ready to buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Let’s meet in Tokyo, Japan, where my tour of the East is all set to begin …
