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Hello, everyone and welcome back to America Under the Microscope, advanced episode.
Hi, lulu, hi, everyone.
Hi James.
So let's go on and continue our talk about vacationing and traveling that we were previously covering.
I have a question.
Yeah
Because when we were wrapping up last time, you were talking about how you traveling is more seen as family event, because if you're just single or if you just got married, you probably don't have a lot of money to travel. And you probably will spend the time working. I have a question then do people generally see traveling as a must or luxury because in Europe, I kind of got the feeling like in the UK and also in, let's say Southern European countries, going on vacation is like their right, every summer they have to do it. It would be pretty awkward, it would be pretty weird if you don't go on a vacation.
But what about in America, do people see it as a must or luxury?
No, that's completely different. Americans definitely see it as a luxury not a must, not a right. Because for one, a lot of Americans don't really like the idea of something being a must. It goes against like our freedom to choose. But also a lot of Americans they have to work pretty hard to have the life that they want to have. And that means sacrifice since traveling is a pretty big expense that is one of the things that gets sacrificed.
It's not unusual to come across Americans who don't travel much or can't travel because they have other things that they need to pay for. They have to feed their kids and other stuff, so it's very much a luxury.
Yeah. I think this is why in movies and TV shows it's very common to see the sort of like when an older couple when they both retired, they're like now we can finally travel.
Yeah, because they don't have to worry about their kids. Their kids are all grown up. They don't have other responsibilities. So it is usual for retirees to travel a bit more, they have the freedom to do so.
So if it's a luxury then do people show off their vacations like to your colleagues?
Oh, yeah. Like it's not unusual to... this was almost like we just got back from the Bahamas. Here's a picture of my husband's swimming in the beach. Here's a picture of ...we got really bad.... sun brings addiction, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It goes on and on. So it's absolutely sometimes Americans will talk about and show off about.
So you just talked about going to the beach at beach resorts. But sometimes you see in America, people travel not by the usual methods they would have like an RV.
Yes, right.
A recreational vehicle like 房车. Is that very common, those are expensive, aren't they? They’re very expensive?
From my part of the country they're extremely common whether it's the full RV camper or if it's just a camper trailer which you connect to the back of a truck, those are extremely common for upper middle class, suburban or more rural Americans because they want to travel and see nature but they want the comforts of home.
I see, and people buy those right, they don't rent RV.
Oh, you can rent them, but for the most part people buy them, like a big RV it's about the same price as a house, camper vans are...they're not cheap, a camper van again it’s gonna be $100,000 expense to buy and then you have to maintain them.
A camper van. It's just like a smaller version of RV?
Yes, so we think of it as the smaller version of it.
So when American thinks of an RV think of bus size it's the size of a bus.
I see.
When we think of camper vans they're much smaller. Like in china I've seen camper vans in china, I can see it's becoming more and more popular to rent one and go on in the countryside and stuff. But I've never seen an RV here, not one.
Because they're hugely expensive. I think they cost millions.
And they're just hugely huge. They would have a difficult time going on a lot of roads in china.
And also in China, we just don't have the infrastructure for RVs like where are you