Should you travel, just try not to be an asshole wherever you go-even if it’s just across town. Italy and Spain seem to have been overrun with idiot travelers this summer, and many of them aren’t even Americans!
I knew someone who taught English overseas, usually in Saudi Arabia because the money was good. She hated the food, the culture, the language, the weather-and her pay was enough to keep her returning despite the rest.
It is interesting to see the recent spate of articles about how bad it is to be a tourist, especially if the locals “don’t like you”. You may be improving yourself by exploiting others is another theme. And yet, plenty of those destinations rely on tourism to pay the rent. Being polite, unintrusive and tipping well goes a long way to alleviate feelings of being insufficiently loved.
It’s been one of the more effective cons of the fossil fuel industry to convince well-meaning individuals that they’re the problem when it comes to global warming. Were he still alive, Bernays would light up a “torch of freedom” in their honour.
That said, we as individuals can always travel more mindfully, both in the journey and the destination. Bourdain was all about that as well.
One of the bits that I liked in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future is a reversion to rail and (high-tech, carbon-neutral) sail for transcontinental and intercontinental travel. I would love to see this in my lifetime.
As someone who has traveled to about 20 or so countries for a combination of work and pleasure I’m guilty of that myself. Significantly reducing world travel is one strategy but we also need to create and scale-up the production of synthetic carbon-neutral aircraft fuels and put in place government mandates requiring that airlines use it. It would probably make plane tickets much more expensive, but so be it.
Of course investing in alternatives to airplanes such as a functional high-speed rail system in the U.S. would be nice too, but apparently this country really sucks at building high speed rail.
I think a lot of folks (myself included) don’t realize how much we’ve lost there.
I’ve been reading history books about British Columbia here in Canada. Around the turn of the century, the entire province was covered in a network of passenger rail and lake paddle wheelers. You could go from the mining camps way up in Vanderhoof all the way to Spokane, Washington without ever needing to ride a horse or walk very far. You could pretty much get from any town to any other town any time, all by rail and steam ship.
Today there is virtually zero evidence that this incredible public transportation network ever existed. One or two of the paddle-wheelers have been preserved as museums. All the rails are gone. Now, if you don’t have a personal car, you can’t get anywhere here. Some of the larger towns have a once-a-day bus that connects them, but that’s it. Public transportation outside the city is mostly hitchhiking.
To see everything that was thrown away for the car and what it’s done to the planet is really tough.
While it is true there are often things to see within a days drive of where one lives, it doesn’t have the same impact of traveling somewehre else where the people and culture (and food) are somehow different, but also the same.
I have done SOME travel, and it definitely was a fun and different experience than local travel.
I will also say, if I made it my primary hobby, I could probably do it more. You can spend time and energy figuring out how to do things cheaper.
I came to the realization a couple months ago that I don’t care for travel. I appreciate the places I’ve been fortunate enough to go, but overall it’s not for me. And the suggestion that you need to travel or that you’re somehow incomplete without it sounds elitist, like a suggestion that the haves are in yet another better position than the have nots.
He’s right that in general we need to be open to new experiences and walk in other people’s shoes. Thing is, the travel doesn’t do that. Plenty of people travel with a closed mind (I’m reflecting back on my best friend’s white Midwestern mom traveling to her daughter-in-law’s hometown in Japan and shouting “ching-chong” sounds out the window). Travel is nothing more than a notch on a belt unless we set the right attitudes domestically first.
Of course, but doesn’t that apply to all human experiences that tend to enrich us?
Reading books doesn’t make you a better person in and of itself unless it’s paired with the willingness and capacity for growth, but it’s not untrue to recognize as a general principle that reading is good and can make us better, more well-rounded people. Same with learning to play an instrument or how to paint, or going to the theater or any number of other things, no?
I work with people who travel all over the world for work yet still come back and drive pickup trucks with blue lives matter/MAGA stickers, etc. Many of these guys are ex-mil and have already seen many parts of this planet while in uniform but unfortunately their world view remains a lot smaller than their travel budget. It’s actually comical to watch some of these macho mil guys hunker down in hotel rooms rather than explore and hang with the natives.
Conversely there are many more who embrace the experience trying new things, exploring, eating new foods and meeting new people. IMHO they are better off for it.
While I agree it’s entirely possible for a well-traveled person to remain a small minded xenophobe who sees the rest of the world through one-dimensional stereotypes, I would still argue that it is more difficult to do so after experiencing other cultures firsthand.
I’ve seen similar behaviour from the hyper-religious arm of my extended family. They fancy themselves cosmopolitan world travellers because they do missions or went overseas for school. However what they actually do is go stay in insular Evangelical communities and attend insular Evangelical schools in those places. I mean, what’s even the point? One cousin went all the way to Australia just to take the same dumb Bible study with the same people she could have done here, and as far as I can tell she saw nothing of the actual country.
That only works if you approach the different cultures as equally valid. If you look at a foreign country and culture as necessarily inferior to your own, seeing it will tend to reinforce your viewpoint.
This is one of the bases of colonialism. Why should the natives be allowed to live their lives the way they always have now that they can see how much better the way we do things is?
It also killed Robert Falcon Scott in the Antarctic. He refused to get advice from people who lived in the arctic, insisting that British wool and leather should be enough to keep any may warm. He refused to use dogs, because British ponies, especially white ones-they matched the snow-must be better. Initially he didn’t even want ponies, because British manpower should be more than enough. Mind you, the available local food was not very appealing.
Like I said, it’s possible but more difficult. It takes dedication and effort to continue believing your culture is superior in every way when you’re freezing to death for your refusal to consider new ideas.
Refusal to change and or adapt is a terrible thing.
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” -Anthony Bourdain
I feel what you’re saying a little bit.
There’s a social anxiety aspect to travel that deserves more ink. For people who already suffer from that at the best of times, travel can make it much worse. However I also found, paradoxically that it helped a bit. Sort of like exposure therapy, I guess. I was fortunate enough to travel a lot when I was younger and I pushed myself hard on the social anxiety aspect. I put myself in situations that I knew would be hard in that way. I am definitely better for it, but to your point, I didn’t enjoy it. It was work. It was good for me, but now in my latter years I feel more like I don’t want to do so many things that are good for me but not fun. 
There may be a chicken/egg dilemma there to some degree. Obviously it helps if one views a foreign culture as “equally valid” before experiencing it first-hand, but experiencing it first-hand can be a wonderful tool to reach that point. Of course there are countless examples of people rejecting that experience, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile in general.
I think that’s a really key point. I think a lot of people who have not travelled assume other cultures are inferior or that the people are somehow lesser or alien. However when you go to those places and see that we’re really all the same, I think that is what changes a person (again, unless they are actively resisting as has been said upthread).
I would guess travel opens more eyes than it closes. It’s the multicultural version of having a gay friend. Suddenly the social constructs are visceral in a way they weren’t previously.
This is so true. It’s wild how accessible everything used to be. My region of BC still has a couple of old paddlewheelers around and people who keep trying to get them back into service. Same with the railway. The last segment of active railway shut down around here about 10 years ago, now all we’ve got is about 20 km of tourist rail and one hell of a rail trail throughout the area.
I always wanted to travel but it’s mostly down to being scared and alone since I don’t have friends in real life. But I do agree with his view of going through the back roads and local restaurants to see what the place is like. Seriously, if I ever go to France or something like that, it’s going to be a road trip where I try out local food and see stuff that isn’t on the main path. Like sure maybe I’ll pop over to the Louvre but beyond that I wanna see France minus tourist trap stuff.
