The tour that [Howard Henry Chen] chooses to guide us through is one of attractions: a package excursion to parks and beaches and venues safe, clean and artificial. We're not jumping into any cultural immersion here, and we'll return happily home without a word of the language retained, and no chance of a parasite. We don't meet families in their homes or individuals busy at their jobs (except for ticket-takers and souvenir-vendors, and these are out-of-focus and in the background). We peer through Chen's lens not as travelers or anthropologists, but as tourists viewing a world that seems to reflect its surroundings about as much as Disney's "It's a Small World" ride reflects the planet we squat on.

Chen demonstrates his awareness of these ironies through a few of his image titles. One reads, "My Vietnamese cousin on his first trip to see the grounded Huey in Ho Chi Minh City (Me: 'What?! Twenty-six years and you've never been here' to which he replies 'What's this stuff got to do with me?' He had a point.)."

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