Holidays - Asia

The Far East is an English term mostly describing Wast Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The term came into use in Europen geopolitical discourse in the 19th century, denoting East Asia as the "farthest" of the three "easts", beyond the Near East and the Middle East. For the same reason, ancient Chinese people called Weastern countries. Significantly, the term evokes cultural as well as geographic separation; the Far East is not just geographically distant, but also culturally exotic. It never refers, for instance, to the culturally Western nations of Australia and New Zealand, which lie even farther to the east of Europe than East Asia itself. Far East in its usual sense is comparable to terms such as the Orient, which means East, the Eastern World; or simply the East. Southeast Asia and the Russian Far East might now be included in the Far East to some extent.