My friend who goes to places and takes photos and rides tour buses ("And over there are some homeless people! Ooooh!") and goes shopping constantly is a tourist. I think of a traveler more of someone who wants to learn something, who stays outside the main part of town, who goes beyond the guidebook, who brings themself fully and hopes to learn....someone who isn't afraid to take risks or try new things.

Well, I'm not going to be riding buses and doing the group travel thing, but I'd still call myself a tourist...if I didn't call myself a tourist, I agree w/ some of the others who have said it's rather pretentious (not that any of you guys are...)

I just think making all of these little subcategories is kind of silly; I mean, sure, all of us are gonna be guilty of judging people based on how they choose to travel, but the fact of the matter is that in my opinion, ANYone who ventures off to see a new place is at least trying to experience something different. Sure, we can all argue about everyones motives, and whether they *really* care about the culture they're visiting, and whether they're *really* stepping outside of their comfort zone..but whatever, I tend to agree w/ Barukh that the backpacker culture is just as cliche and segregated as the tour-bus culture.

We're all tourists if we don't really live with the locals for a long time and really get to know the place, and become part of the place.

Lynn

For a list of bad words, you may want to contact the FCC, or George Carlin.

quote:

Originally posted by Taylor:
Tourist is a synonym for backpacker or hitchhiker or vagabond or whatever else you want to call it.

Vagabond is what a Victorian poof calls you before he slaps you across your face with his glove. Nobody has ever asked me if I was a vagabond while traveling. If asked I would say no, I am more of a rapscallion.

The New York Times is so funny. The Gray Lady actually thinks it's hip sometimes. They taunt readers with the grandest hyperbole and the crudest "keeping up with the Joneses" shtick. "Oh, everyone's going to Tajikistan/Moldova/Eritrea. What planet have you been on?" It makes me want to vomit.

But that's just my own biased, bitter opinion. Thomas Swick had a much more eloquent rip on the Times Travel section a couple of months ago. He mentions this
story on Bhutan. The headline asks: "Why is Everyone Going to Bhutan?"

So who here is going to Bhutan? I wouldn't worry too much about an invasion of Kiev just yet.

Damnit. Bhutan made my travel wish-list 3 yrs ago; now some stupid article is going to make 'everyone who's anyone' want to go there?

I feel the same way about the travel section in our city paper - they'll print an article on an obscure, less-traveled country/city, and then everyone gets it into their heads that they have to go there, and then all of a sudden it isn't obscure and peaceful anymore.

Well, what can you do? That's how it goes. All of us encourage fellow citizens to travel and see the world, but the cost is going to be that at some point everything will be discovered, or westernized, or whatever. Overpopulation, more travelers, ya know. Or maybe I'm being cynical, and that won't happen.

There is nothing wrong with the word "Tourist' if indeed that is what one is doing .... 'Touring'.
There is also the term "Visitor" which to me means someone who stays a bit longer than it takes to snap a fw photos and pick up a few trinkets. I've been to places that don't refer to travelers as tourists .... but as visitors. I like that - it makes me want to stay a while longer.

I vote we all get really pretentious and call ourselves explorers. Who's in?

Okay, well.

Someone earlier posted that "concern for the poor" is cliche. That's a pretty stupid and rude comment to marginalize something that people should be doing.

I don't care if concern for the poor IS a fashion trend, it's the right thing to do. I don't care if washing your hands after you pee is "all the rage, how cliche".

I don't care if these horrible backpackers grow out of their concern for the poor either. Any concern is fine. I don't care if Bono was "going through a phase" when he let the world know about Jubilee, either. People are so selfish.

Concern for 'The Poor' among many travellers I have met often takes the form of romanticising the poor. They are seen as authentic and quaint. Much of what one sees when talking to these kinds of people is a fetish for authenticity. The form it takes is usually a kind of vague snobbery; 'Oh, yes, you have been to Thailand. Many people are going there. I am going to Afghanistan very soon,' etc, etc.

Always these hints, this name dropping. Whatever the conversation is about, one who has 'just returned,' (translation: went 8 years ago) from their exotic locale will say, 'well, you know, in Malaysia, they do this or that.'

The travellers see a seductive poetry in poverty for the poor have been uncorrupted by the influence of Western dacadence. Never mind they are illiterate or themselves deeply intolerant and conservative. All that matters not for the slum dwellers of the third world have 'culture.'

So the travelers go to these places, mope around the youth hostel wallowing in fatal amounts if liberal white guilt. Lots of Enya, lots of incense, lots of Bob Marley, lots of bongos. The truth is the 'traveller culture' is rooted in fear and aloneness. Travellers need each other to remind themselves of who they are; the hostel is there to safeguard the nose-ringed liberal arts student from the seriousness of the world that lies outside the padlocked hostel doors.

Cartoons speak louder than words. One of the finest cartoonists working today. One of his pieces, Ex-Pats Say The Darndest Thingsis brilliant.

Well obviouisly these people you speak of are just cartoon characters. Demystified by yo-bad self.

You seem just as pompous as those that you just made a caricature of. By the way, in case you have any delusions yourself (gasp! no!)- that was a highly over generalized and dramatized caricature.

I don't know if people over romanticize the poor or not, because I don't know a whole lot of travellers. I guess you do, maybe I should just take what you are saying as true.

But working with charities and people that dedicate their lives to helping others, like at www.heifer.org for one, I don't hear one bongo, or any romanticizing of poverty.

Actaully now adays you can't swing a cat without hitting some right wing know it all windbag, tho.

If the people I am speaking of are 'cartoon characters' I'd like to know how you know that. After all, you 'don't know a whole lot of travellers.'

I [we, everyone who has posted here on this thread] are indeed making generalizations because we are speaking of vast groups of people.

What I am talking about is the fashionability of travel. Self-inflicted dereliction, in Conrad's terms.

'There are people,' Naipaul has written 'who wish themselves of societies more fragile then their own and in the end do more than to celebrate their own security.' These people are not cartoon characters, I see them all the time. The poor attain a certain type of wisdom, a nobility because they are poor. For the Western backpacker, emulation of the poor, mimicry of the poor or simply being amongst them equals a certain type of honour and dignity.

At any rate, these are my opinions and I am disappointed in your need to call names. Let's try and keep this as..adult as possible, shall we?

quote:

Originally posted by Barukh:
If the people I am speaking of are 'cartoon characters' I'd like to know how you know that. After all, you 'don't know a whole lot of travellers.'

I also said that I should beleive you then, because obviously you have met plenty. I was trying to force an evaluation by you or any reader of your post to face reality and count on their fingers how many actual human beings that they have met that resemble the cartoon that you have drawn. Is that more clear?

The point remains: my opinion is that you are pompously over dramatising travelling people in to caricatures -cartoon characters-ironicly compalining that these travellers do the same thing with the poor.

I'd say that's a pretty adult assertion.

...And ironicly complaining that I may have implied some kind of "name calling".

I think adults that dish it out, should be able to take it- but that's just me. And my opinion. That I'm allowed to have.
For a dose of reality:
www.heifer.org
www.doctorswithoutborders.org

If anyone wants to contribute, even if they think it makes them noble (god forbid) or it helps them celebrate their own security (oh no!)-go right ahead. Even if you are some wishy washy freak, hey your money is good here!
Go nuts!

quote:

Originally posted by Barukh:
The travellers see a seductive poetry in poverty for the poor

nice alliteration

quote:

So the travelers go to these places, mope around the youth hostel wallowing in fatal amounts if liberal white guilt.

Not all travellers are white or liberal (in both classic and modern definitions of the word).

Barukh,

You make some great points here, points that most people ought think about, and I point of view I for one certainly appreciate. However please tread carefully as in this section:

quote:

Lots of Enya, lots of incense, lots of Bob Marley, lots of bongos. The truth is the 'traveller culture' is rooted in fear and aloneness. Travellers need each other to remind themselves of who they are; the hostel is there to safeguard the nose-ringed liberal arts student from the seriousness of the world that lies outside the padlocked hostel doors.

You are just as guilty of labeling and judging as those you criticize. I am sure there are some people who fit this mold, pehaps more than some, but please be mindful of the house rules of no abusive or inflammatory posts.

jedimasterbooboo,
(nice screen name by the way),

It is clear that you have strong feelings about how people ought act towards the poor; however please remember that calling other people stupid and rude because they do not adhere to your values is also against the house rules.

Well, I totally know what barukh is referring to, and I wasn't really offended by his posts; I think there's definitely truth in them. However, I would also agree that his delivery wasn't fantastic, and it comes across in a very judging way, which could definitely get misunderstood by people.