"After peeling myself off my train bunk bed, I trudged with my backpack (I go carry-on only — no wheels — for the practicality and the bragging rights) around the neighborhood in search of lunch before I could check into my hotel. Along a narrow and chaotic road, a passing motorbike caught one of my backpack straps and nearly dragged me to the ground into traffic. Shaken but okay, I finally found a street food stall with enough room for one more, sat down self-consciously and overanalyzed how I was eating. Being a 'tourist,' on the other hand, is freeing.... You are allowed to be a guidebook-toting, comfortable shoe-wearing, selfie-taking outsider — all enthusiasm, no shame. The tourist trap welcomes the tourist with open arms. You’re not just allowed to be there, they
want you there...."
Writes Natalie Compton in
"In defense of tourist traps/Being a cool traveler all the time can be exhausting" (WaPo).
Here's my old post on the traveler/tourist distinction.
Are you traveling or touring anywhere soon? Do you make it easy on yourself or hard? Does your pride/shame drive you to work on staying on the correct side of the traveler/tourist distinction? Does it just come naturally to you because you are cool? Is there subtle work entailed in getting to yes on that last question? Or are your standards just low?
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51 comments:
"Are you traveling or touring anywhere soon?"
Yes, and I'm looking forward to it. But my dream trip is still awaiting Mrs. Hawkeye's approval: 180 days 'round the world on a small-ish cruise ship. Plenty of logistics to think about, but I think it would be marvelous to be away from "my" world for a half-year.
What do you think?
That original post was well before my time here. Thanks for the rehab.
Leaving aside what I consider unrewarding philosophistry about a meaningful Travel/Tourism dichotomy, I'll say that I enjoy visiting different places, and reading about other places that I know I will never visit.
Caputo's "The Longest Road" is a good read about life in an Airstream across America. The masters of travel writing to me are Leigh-Fermor, Raban, and Theroux, with nods at R.D. Kaplan and Colin Thubron. Hell, even Bryson has his moments.
They write, and I read, about places I know I'll never go to, but to me that's as significant as the fact that I'll never live the history I read about either.
My wife is fond of saying "Trying to be cool is the root of all evil.". Or, why should I do things I don't want to do to impress other people? When we travel we go where we want, wear what we want, stay where we want and eat what we want. It's a vacation from the imperatives of life. We travel with 3 or 4 rolling carry-ons and check them all. Not cool.
I used to wear Hawaiian shirts in Europe, so that my family could find me in a crowd at 100 meters. My coworkers were horrified that I would be so obviously an American tourist. But I AM a tourist. Briefly in Romania, when my wife and I were going every year to work at orphanages and medical clinics and worship with a persecuted minority in rural villages, I bordered on being something else, though I have no description. But that is twenty years gone, and I am a tourist anywhere outside New England. I'm fine with that.
I made the mistake of going to England with a classmate who didn't want to do anything touristy because that was lame and she was sophisticated.
So she spent her spare time in the college bar while I jetted to Paris and Geneva and did lame tourist stuff.
It was the first time for the both of us so I thought touristy was in order. Why pretend? Worst thing was the crowd at the Louvre. Best was Chamonix/Mont Blanc.
A well matched travel partner would have been a dream.
"Cool traveler," "tough-guy persona," "bragging rights" - her misconceived association of those terms to travelers immediately informed me that this writer, Compton, really has little idea what it is to be a traveler. A real one, that is. She's a wannabe traveler it would seem. Who got tired of the demands of true traveling it would seem. "Before I could check into my hotel," she says. Heh, real travelers find available lodging when they get wherever they end up that day. There's no waiting to check into a hotel.
Neither Compton's article nor your old post convey an understanding of what travelers are. Tourists are about destinations; travelers are about the getting there. Heat Moon and Caputo know this, of course. Well, that in fact was the principle point of Heat Moon's book "Blue Highways". Those two guys know what they are talking about; they are true travelers. As it happens, I do too, since I've traveled farther and wider than both of them combined.
"The correct side of the traveler/tourist distinction." There is no correct side of that, other than that which best suits your circumstances. I don't know, maybe tourists (which I occasionally am, btw) feel that the distinction is important, though I doubt that most tourists understand what the true distinction is. Travelers certainly don't care about it.
a passing motorbike caught one of my backpack straps and nearly dragged me to the ground into traffic
Sounds like attempted theft. Motorbikes don't usually "catch" your backpack strap, but a motorbike rider or passenger might. Being caught off guard like that makes her sound more like a tourist than a traveler, no matter how uncomfortable she wants to make her trips.
I don't think that I understand traveler/tourist issue anymore. Perhaps geography is an indicator. Isn't everyone (except business travel) traveling to Europe, SE Asia, Australia/South Pacific, and South Africa a tourist? Anyone going anywhere else mainly because they haven't been there and it is on some stupid bucket list is a tourist. It is getting very hard to be a traveler anymore. 60 years ago was the golden age of the tourist/traveler when you could at least pretend to be a traveler.
I am getting too old for even a pseudo attempt at travelling at this point and am tired of bumping into so many fellow tourists trying to be travelers. Natalie is clearly a tourist.
Theroux is alright, but Thoreau is the travel writer's travel writer. Who else has ever described his Maine Woods Indian guide patching a leak in a birch bark canoe with ... well, he told Henry when Henry asked him what he used, that "there are some things I don't even tell my wife."
My first real international travel (not counting a short honeymoon in Mexico) was to Ireland. At that time, outside of Dublin there were no hotels or motels, just "homestays" (what we would call B&Bs).
The Irish took the traveller/tourist distinction quite seriously. Any hint that you self-identified as a traveller would result in there being no room at the homestay, reservation or no, with no more than a quick explanation that none of their cooking or farm implements needed repair.
The only true traveller is the business traveller. Like Marco Polo, he travels with a purpose.
...
Most travel writing is bogus, unreal and superficial. It is bogus because it pretends adventure which, as Admundsen said, is simply bad organization. Wandering around the Hindu Kush is nothing to fighting your way around the Tokyo underground in the rush hour. Rafting down the Brahma Putra is a piece of cake compared with trying to sign a deal with a government minister on his knees in the middle of a mosque during Tabaski.
...
Business travellers ... hit the ground staggering. But immediately they hit the ground, they are part of the history and culture of the country. As soon as he arrives, the business traveller is absorbing and mastering the customs of the country, because if he doesn't he won't do any business. He also has to learn how to survive riots, curfews, coup attempts and management reshuffles back home.
Peter Biddlecombe Travels with my Briefcase
Trying to be cool is uncool, especially for anyone over the age of 15.
We always go to popular tourist destinations on first-time trips. They tend to be popular for good reasons.
As far as I know the “a traveler not a tourist” phrase came from Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, one of my favorite books.
A tourist runs around with 4 casters on the bottom of their Samsonite that weighs over 50 pounds.
A traveler carries a backpack.
Are you traveling or touring anywhere soon?
I'm going to the Smokey Mountains at the end of this week. I'll be camping.. and eating at Waffle Houses (maybe some local diners). There's a restaurant on the top of mt mitchel is DEFINITELY a tourist trap.. But the view of the fog is impressive
Laster Bangs from Almost Famous is applicable - "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."
It's uncool to worry about looking like a tourist. Too self-conscious.
In 1952 my father's lottery number hit big. He won an All Expenses Paid Trip around the world.
Well, half way around the world.. Korea (North Korea) to be precise. But it was definitely All Expenses Paid.
Food
Lodging
Travel
Medical
and, most Important of all.. Entertainment. He said that he did NOT like his prize.. At ALL
The place was muddy; except when it was frozen. And the people were VERY Rude. To be fair, MOST of the people he dealt with were from Red China, and it's Possible they thought that HIS contributions to the Entertainment programs were impolite Too.
A tourist is on a tour (maybe self guided). They go around in a circle.
A traveler TRAVELS. They go from point A to point B
For a tourist, the tour IS the deal. The cruise ship, the shops, the museums.
For a traveler, the destination is the deal. The End point.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. A tourist travels the steps of their tour.
A traveler might see some sights while on their travels.
My dad spent several days in Tokyo in the middle of his tour. Then he returned to the mountains near Pork Chop Hill. When was he a traveler? When was he a Tourist?
Speaking of travelers...
https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/
robother said:
"The Irish took the traveller/tourist distinction quite seriously. Any hint that you self-identified as a traveller would result in there being no room at the homestay, reservation or no, with no more than a quick explanation that none of their cooking or farm implements needed repair."
My brother hitchhiked around the west of Ireland with a backback and lodged in numerous homestays. He was always welcomed, and was treated with great curiosity by his hosts.
This was, of course, "back in the day".
I will admit that I have over planned some vacations. There is a definite need to balance between "do as many things as possible" and "enjoy yourself." There's also the issue if you do too many things that they just start to blend together and have less impact. When you do 100 things, it is harder to appreciate, much less remember, them all.
Tomorrow my wife and I commence an adventure of touring and traveling. Overnight in Dulles VA, fly to Seattle the next morning, and after two nights in a decent hotel downtown, on to a week's cruise in Alaska. Following that, then one more hotel night in Seattle,then driving back home in a rental car - the way I drive, about seven days' travel - with a stop in Northern CA for a visit with family friends. We enjoy touring and traveling about the same.
Do these alien spacecraft work? Have we been flying them? If so, why are we spending billions on primitive rockets and shit?
Suppose the astronauts on the space station were, for some reason, stranded, in peril of their lives and time was running out. And the only way to rescue them was to use one of our intact alien spacecraft, but doing so would expose the fact that we had them. Would the government save the astronauts or let them die to keep it all secret?
They'd probably let them die. There's too much money in slowly dribbling out the reverse-engineered alien tech and pretending it was innovated by humans. If people knew about the alien craft, they'd want all the tech to be made publicly available for free.
Plus, they'd find out Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates really are lizard people after all.
My wife and I will not be traveling much this year. She's going to KCMO in August for some Outlander cult thing, but I told her to find someone to rideshare with, or take a plane.
It's already outrageously expensive, but with the economy about to go up in smoke I don't think it makes much sense to be cheap now--and we're eyeing another Viking river cruise (Danube this time) in '24, and assuming that sort of travel is still going on in a year.
The cruise is by far my second choice--I'd rather rent a car and stay in remoter places while hopping about at will. But my wife is less and less able to drive (or even sit) for long periods, and her night vision is completely gone.
We Eurailed around Benelux, Switzerland, No. Italy, Austria, and W. Germany in April-May of '78. Backpacked with no fixed schedule, staying in pensions and small hotels. If I'd been alone or with guys I'd have gone hostel, but mu wife wasn't having that. My big regret is not spending the time and money to go to West Berlin. Like most people--even most students of history and political science--at the time I thought the Iron Curtain would be there a long, long time . . .
Between that year and 2016, neither of us visited Europe except for a week or so in '96 when I presented at a conference in Wurzburg, but had to go alone.
I avoid the usual tourist stuff because I hate crowds and I’ve found there are always things not in the guidebook that are as worthy of my time as the stuff in the guidebook. Maybe not as flashy, but every bit as interesting/beautiful/enjoyable. And it’s not crowded.
When my wife and I spend a few days in a city, we always spend at least one day on bicycles. The funnest, most memorable thing we saw/did that day is almost always something we saw unexpectedly, between our destinations. There’s an element of serendipity in the things we find because we rode instead of drove.
Hawkeye - That would be quite the adventure. I wonder for modern man, which is harder, learning to captain the boat around the world, or being cutoff from technology and one's normal routines?
Rome wasn't built in a day, but with my wife, it can be walked in one.
Your post made me recall in college I read a chunk of, and got bored and quit, Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour. I should give that one another try. I bet I could dig it.
Assistant Village Idiot - Please share more about your time in Romania in open threads. Sounds very interesting and impactful. Bravo!
Just the other day- are you a hiker or a walker? Variations on a theme. For most of us most of the time a distinction without a difference.
I’ve been to Guam, Honolulu, Tokyo, Auckland NZ, Halifax Nova Scotia. Cartagena- Spain and Columbia, Jebel Ali, and other places. Because the Navy took me there. Which of the two categories does that fall into?
I'm a traveler. For a living, not fun. I wish the rest of you fuckers would stay home. I might have found a parking space at the Houston Airport today. But, no! Too many tourists and hipsters. And I don't do vacations at all.
Gospace said...
Because the Navy took me there. Which of the two categories does that fall into?
you were on a tour, ipso facto: tourist
I imagine the Navy is similar to the Army..
Join the Army!
and Travel 'round the World, Meet Interesting People.. and KILL THEM
" MadTownGuy said...
Tomorrow my wife and I commence an adventure of touring and traveling. Overnight in Dulles VA, fly to Seattle the next morning, and after two nights in a decent hotel downtown, on to a week's cruise in Alaska. Following that, then one more hotel night in Seattle,then driving back home in a rental car - the way I drive, about seven days' travel - with a stop in Northern CA for a visit with family friends. We enjoy touring and traveling about the same."
Fly to Seattle, have a steak dinner at the Metropolitan Grille. Skip the Alaskan cruise. The rest of your plan sounds pretty good.
Some of the best traveling I ever did was with a bicycle tour group in Belgium and Netherlands. We hit a lot of cities, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Leeuwarden, and an equal number of smaller places. My advice for the best travel experience is to find a great small tour operator. Or go to places you know people who can show you around.
We boarded the converted canal barge that would serve as our floating hotel in an autobus parking lot outside Bruges. We went to a small sandwich shop before boarding, and one of our group asked the waitress what kind of cheese was in the sandwich she had just served. She answered, “it’s just cheese.” That’s the kind of local experience a lot of people miss.
Another time I took an auto tour with my sister through North Yorkshire. We had a guide book with backcountry directions through the moors from Whitby to Thirsk, but were going from Thirsk to Whitby, so had to follow the directions backwards, in the days before cell service and Google maps. We had fish and chips at a pub in Whitby where we couldn’t be sure the locals were speaking the English language. Our “Thanksgiving” dinner at a restaurant in York featured a beef dish that was cooked in some horrible way for which we were not thankful. This was just before the UKs mad cow disease outbreak became public, and the thought that that one bad dinner might kill me festered in the back of my mind for a couple of years.
Always struck by how important it is to distinguish oneself from all the soulless proles who are too dim to appreciate their betters. It’s an endlessly entertaining exercise in us-vs-them in which Team Us (the writer and his crowd) never fails to come out on top, even as they differed about what ‘top’ in the sense of a good-life-lived-well might mean. So many of my favorite authors— Jane Austen, Henry James come to mind— were especially good at that.
Are you traveling or touring anywhere soon? Do you make it easy on yourself or hard? Does your pride/shame drive you to work on staying on the correct side of the traveler/tourist distinction?
Yes, when I was younger. As a teenager I hitchhiked around the US and Europe and took pride that I was doing and experiencing something that the older bourgeoisie could not do.
I did a fair amount hard core travelling in third world countries when I was older, but I lost most of my puerile pride in these undertakings by then. And I would have unashamedly travelled in more comfort if I had the funds.
I'm with my family in Belgium right now, on our way to Amsterdam. It's been a great trip so far. We saw the touristy stuff in Paris and Brussels, plus some stuff more off the norm. Both have been good. The famous things got that way for a reason, but having to negotiate crowds and lines does dampen enthusiasm somewhat.
Traveling as the head of a group is more stressful than by myself and with just my wife. I definitely feel like I have to be on alert more, especially in places like bus/tram/train stations.
We have tried to teach our kids not to worry about being cool. I actively avoided it myself when I was younger. Another advantage of being an engineer--no one questions us if we're weird it dorky.
Get me away from home, and I'm a Poker-arounder. Especially in places unlike home which reward poking around.
I took a road trip from Florida to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in October. Gettysburg is a tourist destination, of course, with a battlefield museum and bus tours of the battlefield, and I made a point of going to see the Shriver House Museum, since the house was originally built by my first cousin, seven times removed, George Washington Shriver. I also stopped off at the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine on my way up, and at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia on the way back, both of which are also tourist destinations. But I also stopped at lesser-known places that had a family connection for me: Bentonville Battlefield in North Carolina, where one of my great-great-great-grandfathers fought with the 57th Alabama Infantry Regiment; Tarboro, North Carolina, where my namesake paternal ancestors lived in the 1700s; and Pendleton, South Carolina, where one of my ancestors fled to from New Jersey as a runaway indentured servant in the 1770s. Walking the streets of Tarboro and Pendleton where my ancestors had also walked was a really cool experience. I also drove for a couple of hours on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, which kind of straddles the line between traveler and tourist. Highly recommended, by the way, as it is breathtakingly beautiful. This all shows that it is possible to be both a tourist and a traveler at different times on the same trip.
Has no one here read Paul Bowles?
As others have said there are places you should see that can practically only be seen as a Tourist. Once you've seen those you should go where you want to go and in whatever fashion most suits you.
I spend part of May every year in Northern England working on an ongoing archaeological dig. Carry on only, although I do cheat a bit and leave some kit with friends. I am not generally mistaken for a local although in at least casual greetings I perhaps could pass as one. After a few more words I'm uniformly mistaken for being Canadian.
A somber thought.....if you have a long time favorite travel destination as I do, then every trip there is another trip somewhere else Not Taken. Choose well and hope for long lasting good health.
okay, putting aside any snarkyness, i have a Serious Question
When i travel to the Gray Reef (or the Henry's Fork (or the White river (or the San Juan))) to fish..
Am i a tourist?
I might glance at shoreline (what's that Moose doing there?), but i spend my time staring at my flies
(okay, usually staring at my strike indicator (bobber))
I'm there for the fish.
So? tourist? or just an asshole that's pestering wildlife?
@ Political Junkie - thank you. I commented on the Sunrise post just above this one.
Due to family and work obligations, I drove between SW Florida and northern Atlanta countless times.
I-75. I knew exactly where I had to gas up: Arabi, GA, where discontented Middle Eastern men watch flyspecked VCR tapes of the same soccer match over and over. I wonder if they had settled there for the name, expecting the familiar. They have a giant cow sculpture looming over the freeway.
We once had to detour to Americus for a court appearance, and the good hotel (a worthily famous historical site) wouldn't take our dog, so we had to stay in a worker's motel, a rough one, and buy a business suit at the Walmart. The desk clerk told us not to open our door after dark. The cinder block room had jail-sized windows and a much-kicked-in metal door with multiple locks, but the highway workers in other rooms shared the meat and beans they grilled outside their rooms, and the dog could have lived there forever.
Me too.
There's a motel in Ocala that was once something more prurient: the beds are round, the ceilings mirrored, and an old VCR is built into each headboard. Loads of questionable velvet.
American history bares itself between the Little White House outside Americus (where FDR conducted the war and died with his mistress) and the haunting grass acres of the Civil War POW camp, Andersonville. The stop in 'Vi'anna' has a shockingly authentic Viennese restaurant among cotton fields and unused railway crossings (another mistaken identity?).
Columbus, Georgia borders Phenix City, Alabama. I searched for the advertised Murder Museum but never found it. The search sufficed. I never felt more haunted by violence anywhere.
I haven't been to many places, but I have found endless worlds.
I tried Bowles, but was not grabbed.
It’s a mistake to get caught up in the tourist/traveler distinction, because it indicates that you are mostly focused on what others think of you. Screw ‘em. We don’t need a justification for our travel, all we need is intent. When we get there, we do what we came to do, and leave time for what occurs to us while there. Mostly we travel for golf. Also don’t care what you or anyone else thinks about that. Spend time in Scotland every year; we’re foreigners, not locals, and no further identity or label is needed. Focus should be on what brings you joy, and you don’t need to have a guilty conscience about having the wherewithal to enjoy travel or, more specifically, doing whatever it is you like to do away from home.
I have been a one-bag traveler (46L backpack, max carry-on size) for many years now. Yeah, I used to brag about it, LOL. After my last trip though, I think I may move to a roller bag (and a little +1 bag). All of my little aches are pains are talking to me, so I'll listen to my body in my advancing age.
I have been both a tourist/traveler/backpacker and a worker (oil field) in Latin America. When I was working in Latin America, I didn't meet many tourists on my days off. One exception: in Argentina, on a 450 mile 24 hour railroad (love nationalized enterprises) trip through the Chaco, I met an American who had just finished his Peace Corps hitch in Colombia. Turned out that I knew his Colombian boss, who was a professional colleague of my father.
After my time in the oil field, my trips to Central America were mainly to visit local friends, with some tourist spots added in. Usually I visited - revisited- tourist spots with local friends.
One interesting aspect of working in a foreign country is to get perspectives on countries that tourists- many who speak little or none of the local languages- cannot get in their quick views. I worked on a drilling rig in the Guatemalan jungle during a guerrilla war. A nearby rig had guerrillas take it over for several hours. After I left Guatemala, I saw a notice on the job board at the Houston office: "Due to mortar fire at air strip, we are considering increasing per diem by $10." Thanks. Rig workers had little love for either the generals or the guerillas. Wanted to be left alone.
During my weeks off from the drilling rig, I met a family on a bus who invited me to spend time at their clan's house near the Biotopo del Quetzal in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala. At the house, I met Mario Darcy Rivera, who was the guiding light behind the establishment of the Biotopo. Some guerrillas killed him not long after I met him. I revisited the Biotopo many times. T Or meeting in Las Casas some relatives of the then-current President-General, Lucas Garcia. Which of itself isn't that newsworthy, except to point out that the madame of a house of prostitution made the introduction.
I grew up in a tourist town in the mountains, and yet I never really thought badly of tourists when I lived there. Hey, those were the folks wealthy enough to take a vacation! That sounds pretty sweet to me. So I've always been a tourist on all my vacations, and that's fine. I've seen a lot of cool stuff and had a lot of fun*. We were in France for 12 days in May with our kids (23 and 20) and it was glorious. Paris and then Provence - lots of good food and cool stuff to see. A good time was had by all, and we're already wondering if we can swing a trip to Argentina in January. The guys will be out of school and probably unable to travel with us soon, so we have to get these things in while we can.
*that Biotopo Richard mentions is not fun. At least not after 2 weeks in the Peten jungle. At that point, when none of your clothes or shoes are properly dry anymore and you've seen enough mud to last a lifetime, you do not want more jungle. I was there with a university archaeoastronomy trip in 1990 and the word "biotopo" was thrown about as an insult for some time after we returned to school. Almost everything else we saw in Guatemala, however, was pretty wonderful.
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