Why you can’t love every place you visit…
“Some would certainly stone me for saying this, but I don’t travel to places for the people anymore. It’s the sights and things to do there that are why I go. Friendly locals are always a bonus in my book, but they don’t make or break a trip for me”.
The above is a comment I received not so long ago. I’ve deleted it because I don’t want to single out or embarrass the commenter (a very popular blogger).
But the comment stuck in my head and nagged away at me. I’ll get to that in a minute.
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But a few things first:
Different travel bloggers travel and blog for different reasons. I’ve seen a few bloggers, popular ones like the commenter, who’s travel experiences consist of Press Trips, spa treatments, reviews of Broadway shows or hotel stays. 90% of their travel experiences are sponsored by a tourist board, hotel, or some kind of tourist event. They usually have a disclosure at the bottom similar to this: “Disclosure: Our stay at _______ Hotel and visit to the __________ Spa were hosted by _________Hotel in order to bring you this story. As always, all opinions are entirely our own”.
I’m not belittling these ‘Professional’ Bloggers, they probably end up seeing more places than the rest of us and, honestly, they’re the envy of most travel bloggers. Imagine travelling on someone else’s dime, being guided everywhere you go by a host, and just having to write reviews about their experiences? Sweet! (or “Mint!” as a British blogger I know likes to say). Again, I don’t mean to be belittle these kinds of bloggers – they’ve earned their success through smart marketing and hard work and actually have a paying career thanks to the work they do with their blog.
What is “travel”? I also don’t want to be one of those travel snobs who compares tourists to ‘real’ travelers. The guy travelling to one of those all-inclusives in the Caribbean (does it really matter where?) is ‘travelling’, by definition*, just as much as someone hitch-hiking through Peru.
* Merriam-Webster Dictionary on the word travel:
: to go on a trip or journey
: to go to a place and especially one that is far away
: to go through or over (a place) during a trip or journey
: to move from one place to another
‘Professional’ Bloggers have as much right to call themselves travelers as the guy staying at that all-inclusive or the adventurous hitch-hiker, right? Again, I don’t want to insinuate that there are different classes of travelers and that some are better than others.
But here is what bothers me:
As a traveler, and especially as a blogger, how can you form an opinion or recommend a destination if you are excluding people/culture/history from the equation? Is travel just about visiting tourist sites or going places to bungee jump or skydive?
It bothers me fundamentally because every opinion/feeling that Lissette and I have about a destination has been formed by our experiences with people and culture. Every country we’ve ever visited was chosen because it was of interest to us. And we had different ideas/perceptions before going to each. But the one constant is that we’ve been in some way surprised by every single place we’ve ever been to after spending time there and getting acquainted with the people and the culture. Examples. We thought we’d love Brazil. Everyone does right? We didn’t. We found the people unfriendly. Maybe they weren’t representative of the average Brazilian. People tell me that we weren’t lucky, that the stars didn’t align. I don’t know. But that was our experience. And experiences shape perception. And that is why I say everything is personal.
We went to Cuba for a bit of history and because we wanted to save some money – staying in Casa particulars (private homes) and getting to know Cubans made that trip one of our best ever. Nowhere have we felt more comfortable with the people. I’ve been to the Dominican Republic 6 times and spent 4 weeks backpacking through the country. I love the DR. Someone just looking to review a beach resort or do some surfing may have had a different opinion. But the people and the culture made me fall in love with it. Again, it’s personal.
So how can one write about a country without people or culture being an integral part of the equation? How can you be indifferent to your experiences and perceptions? I love Hong Kong but saw it from a different perspective when visiting it with Lissette. She didn’t like it. Maybe she would have loved it if it had been just about seeing sights and doing activities. Like taking the Peak Tram or reviewing a fancy restaurant. But she hated how she felt as a colored person in Hong Kong. And that far outweighed any wonder that she might have felt taking that 10 minute tram ride up to the peak. We spent a little over a month in Costa Rica a few years ago and were both left very indifferent. We felt that the country had sold out to foreign interests. Other countries keep us coming back; Germany, Italy, Colombia, Thailand, and Mexico are all places that we’ve been more than once. What keeps us coming back? Above anything else it’s how we feel going to those countries. Others may come away with totally different feelings about a place because of a multitude of reasons (race, culture, expectations, itinerary) but I can almost guarantee that those feelings are shaped by the locals they met along the way and the everyday stories…and not because they experienced a cool canoeing experience in a country halfway around the world.
So are you really ‘travelling’ if you don’t care to interact with the people or culture?
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Case in point Bangkok, where we arrived a week ago. Damn, this city definitely won’t be loved by everyone. We’ve spent the first 7 days in an Airbnb rental in Sathorn in the city center. Lots of foreign embassies, so you know this is an ‘upscale’ neighborhood. But even here you walk down the street and you’ll be assaulted by the smell of raw food and sewage and will be stepping over broken sidewalks and street dogs/cats (some in such bad shape you almost wish them death) and mounds of garbage. Lights on streets are sometimes barely functional and you’ll stumble over the occasional rat as we did last night in Patpong . You’ll see beggars including women with babies and men with missing limbs. Even with this being our 5th visit here, Bangkok is a shock to the senses and we’re still in the process of settling in mentally. We spent the last 3 months in beautiful Prague and it couldn’t be more different. Unlike Prague which has tons of ‘must see’ attractions Bangkok only really has a handful. You don’t come here solely for the sights.
It’s the people and culture that keep people coming back and you’ll never appreciate Bangkok unless you actually take the time to try embrace the culture, food, and people. A week in and we are regulars on our ‘soi’ (the alley that leads to our apartment). The fruit-selling lady beams a big smile and says hello, a lady who I don’t even recognize from the building waves an enthusiastic ‘sawadeeka!!’ and her kids do the same. I guess we’re pretty recognizable. The waiter at our regular restaurant always comes out on the street to chit-chat. In Thailand even a small 2-block soi becomes a little neighborhood onto itself. There are more reasons why Bangkok is worth a visit and I’ll cover that further in another post.
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For Lissette and I, experiences with locals shape how we feel about a place and how we describe them on the blog. We are probably positive of about 85% of the places we’ve been on our travels, which I think is pretty good. You can’t love every place you visit the same way you won’t love every restaurant you eat in. And some people will on occasion call us negative or biased in our opinions. Of course we’re biased, they’re our experiences. What’s important, at least to us, is that our reflections on a place are an honest portrayal of our experiences and feelings. Other travelers might have totally different experiences and be left with totally different opinions and feelings for a place. Great, that’s what makes travel interesting and we’ve had some good conversations with other bloggers about different places. It’s fun to compare notes.
But when I hear a blogger, an experienced blogger, tell me “I don’t travel to places for the people anymore. It’s the sights and things to do there that are why I go” it, to us, misses the whole point. It reduces travel to this:
So maybe we can all talk about our experiences climbing the Eiffel tower. Now, is that so interesting? 🙁
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Related: We’re not on Holiday! Differences between vacationing and travelling explained
Related: Does the Romance of Travel still exist?
Related: Group Tours vs Independent Travel. The Pros and Cons… and some thoughts
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Its like sport, food and drinks. I don’t know why people get upset on forums when you say you dislike a place. If you dare say you dislike Hua Hin or Chiang Mai on Tripadvisor the guardians will attack like wolves. It doesnt make sense cause when a place becomes too popular the temples, roads, beaches, attractions become too crowded do its actually better if less people visited. Im quite happy if the places I like arent popular. That keeps them from being ruined. Look at Phi Phi and Samui. Great islands ruined by fame.
I couldn’t agree with you more. The one constant everywhere we travel is that the fewer the tourists, the friendlier the locals.
Very well said! Travel is certainly not just the sights. It’s not possible to exclude people from a place; they form the culture! True about Bangkok too. I was born there and lived there all my life, and although it’s beautiful, the essence is the people, the culture. It’s the way of life that makes it special.
And you’re right. A person who chooses an all inclusive holiday doesn’t deserve to be judged or belittled in comparison with a more adventrous one. Just because one travels more, they certainly don’t have a right to say that their way is the correct way. Each has their own journey to travel.
Great post! 🙂
Ah, I didn’t know you were from Bangkok Nita. Thank you very much for taking the time to comment, happy to see you agree 😉
Reading the comments here (for me anyway) really proves your point–travel is personal!
Some of my favorite destinations have been Mexico and Bolivia, because I love the culture (I speak Spanish, which I think makes a big difference) and have always found the people friendly and welcoming. My least favorite so far (mainly because of bad experiences with the local culture/people) has been Paris. There are comments above from people who have had the opposite experiences in all three places!
Paris had a lot of interesting sights of course, and I have to say, I have some pretty beautiful pictures from the city, but I never felt comfortable there, partly because it was much dirtier than I expected and partly because of the people. (I’ve recently written a blog post about it if you’d like to read more about my experience there.) Anyways, Paris definitely tops the list for a lot of people for the “sights” (Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, all those iconic ones) but I just did not have good experiences with the people, which ruined the trip for me. On the other hand, I’ve been to Mexico five times on home-building mission trips. I love Mexico and the people I’ve met through this–we spend three days building the house while getting to know the family. I really enjoy talking to the kids, meeting the pastors of the churches where we stay, and often eating delicious Mexican food made for us by the families. On these trips we don’t see any kind of tourist sites (there really aren’t any in the places we go anyway) or do any “activities” besides building the house and sometimes playing soccer with the neighborhood kids, but some of my best travel memories have been from them. These two examples for me prove that travel, and more to the point, your opinion of a place, are about a lot more than the sights you can see and the activities you can do there!
Great comment Laura. Interesting about Paris, I was recently told the same by our tour guide in Prague. She couldn’t get over how dirty Paris was…she was really disappointed. I haven’t been in about 20 years.
We’ve never been to Bolivia but agree with all you say about Mexico. Very nice people. Home building mission? Must have been a good experience.
Thank you for the comment Laura!
Can you hear me applauding you really loudly from Australia. Because I am. Travelling IS all about the people and the culture and that it what we revel in. Seeing simple little things that may be different or maybe similar. Talking to people and finding out how they think, feel and what they do. Getting that little bit more understanding or what a diverse world we live in, though sharing many common bonds is why we continue travelling. That is precisely what travel is about. We met a man in Alsace recently and we we spoke about him being French, but we were quickly put in our place because he is Alsatian – a very big and significant difference and this conversation led to further chats and what he liked and didn’t like about that other place “France”. Well said Frank and Lissette. PS I love Bangkok, smells, noise and funny as it, the stall holders near where we stay always remember us despite it being a year between visits. That’s nice I think. We feel like we are becoming a part of it.
Thanks Paula/Gordon, you nailed what this post was supposed to be about. And that is nice about the stall holders, its one of the immeasureables that we always take away from a trip. Yes, the wats are nice – but we still sometimes talk about a certain person we met 5 years ago that made a certain trip special.
Travel is personal. We try to balance it out. I always laugh when people say they don’t want to visit the tourist areas, because guess what? I’m a tourist. I don’t live there. I’m a tourist. But do I want to get sucked into the tourist traps, no, but I do want to visit the stand-out sites and if that makes me a tourist, so be it. But, I also enjoy getting to know the people. We spent 3 weeks in Paris, rented an apartment and lived among the local culture and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. But we also went to Versailles and the Louvre, etc. Balance.
Honestly, I don’t envy those bloggers out there who travel solely (or 90%) on comped trips. The occasional comp is great. We just scored comped Eurail passes in exchange for promotion. Yay! But that’s just a very small part of our upcoming journey. Sometimes when I read a blog that is all about the comp, it can come across as insincere, perfectly posed, perfectly spoken with very little heart. First we did this, then we did this, the food was great, the views were lovely. Why not weave those thoughts into a story from the heart, rather than just a travel dialogue? I’d much rather read that, which is why I rarely read blogs that are all bout the comp. I don’t feel a sense of balance.
In some ways I can see the commenter’s point, but mostly just for places within the U.S. There are certain cities and states that have attractions I’d like to visit, but I have absolutely zero interest in interacting with the people. A lot of that is due to stereotypes, preconceived notions, political beliefs, etc. When I do end up visiting those places, I hope to come across people who will change my mind about my perception of them. But if they live up to their reputation, well, I’m not disappointed since I came for the sights!
But when it comes to traveling to other countries, I think culture is a huge part of the experience. Those who travel just to see and do aren’t any less travelers than myself, but I feel like their experience is bound to be somewhat muted. Just like eating food is a muted experience for someone with no sense of smell, traveling without ANY interaction with the culture is a very different experience. I do have to say, though, that since I only get 10 paid vacation days a year, I focus on the attractions first. But the people have a huge impact on whether I end up liking a place. We really didn’t like the Romans we encountered, but loved the people in Pompeii and Sorrento. Because of that we ended up liking the first half of our trip to Italy more than our time in Rome. But since I went to Rome to see ruins and not necessarily the people, it didn’t “ruin” (pun totally intended!) our trip!
Interesting post – thanks for sharing! I’m going to keep ruminating on it, and I might find my opinion changing. 🙂
Thanks for the comment Karina – yes, maybe I should have prefaced it by specifying foreign locations. In this case the comment was left on my post on Rio. And I agree with you that sights do have something to do with picking a location to visit but is part of the equation. I’d like to see the Taj Mahal but that includes the broader picture of travelling in India – which we’d like to do but which we don’t feel ready to do just yet. Maybe after 6 months in Thailand when our immune systems have built up after eating all that street food 🙂 . What I’m saying though is that our feelings/opinions of India will be formed more from our interaction with Indians than from a day spent at the Taj Mahal. Unless of course we are taken there in a limo straight from the hotel and escorted around so we don’t have to deal with those insufferable locals 🙂 .
You enjoyed Pompeii and Sorrento more than Rome despite Rome’s ruins because, like you say, the people. And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make on this post.