Secondly, the impact of a ‘tourist.’ Goes somewhere already ruined (if you will), or at least completely inebriated with the sense of offering everything they can feign (and for real to, I’m not being mean) for the viewing delight of foreign curiosimas. Pays top freaking dollar for everything, leaves with 2 lamps, a picture, a hooka, and about 20 local bracelets for gifts to mates and family back home. Supports the Disneyesque portrayal of a local wedding dance. Tips. Maybe even huge. Buggers off home at the end of his trip without planting a seed into the head of an unexposed local, or telling one more story that swells the already steady stream of curious travelers up a river in front of some local fisherman with a homemade outboard chinese motor (or even worse, a paddle) to that small village 2 hours up the way where they’re just starting work on a road to connect to the outside world – the village needs more beer to be brought in on sale for the thirsty foreigners who can’t handle the humidity. The worst are travelers reading about these destinations in Lonely Planet, along with how many other million readers? Right then, and the tourist goes home.

Ever see those small african villages or Laotian tribes and walk away commenting on how happy these people are, and how silly we are in the west? There’s a reason for that! And it’s because they haven’t boggled their minds with a million different career options in 14 different countries, after finishing a degree 1200 km away from their family because the university in that town was marketed well.

Clearly, the biggest problem here is the way tourism dollars flow. If foreign investors weren’t able to build what they do, where they do, and local governments, out of pride (or sense of cultural preservation) insisted that their countrymen were the ones to decide what, and where, things would be offered to tourists (something like Myanmar, I think off the top of my head? Anyway, that’s a different topic), then we’d really be talking. Then we’d really be saving a nation’s culture, their happiness. Then, if we purely visited these places, as tourists rather than as travelers, then we’d really be talking.

Just occurring to me, off the top of my head. If a Russian bloke opens a resort in Thailand, how much tax does he end up paying to the Thai government? And, if the Thai government didn’t have the money to invest in building this place and advertising for tourists, then maybe one could understand why this Russian would be in the shoes that he happened to be in. So, through this investment, a small, isolated area is used for touristic income, and taxed to high hell. Most of the resort staff is local, and all the produce and most of the liquor (or maybe just some, but at least your local flagship beer) is local. Tourists pay 4 times as much as they do in the outlying villages. Villages that have been surviving for a very long time just fine enough thank you on farming and fishing and don’t need those Euros anyways. Right, so getting back to that tax money. What does the Thai government do with it? Well, that’s a pretty important thing, once again clearly a political issue that could be organized really beneficially for the rest of the country, and if not, well then that’s not so great.

So, say you really, really love Thailand. Do you want their original culture to be preserved, or do you want every Thai to be wearing Nike sandals, adidas shorts, pink shirts and caps that superimpose the letters N and Y on them, because some 22 year old Belgian man ‘connected’ with your fifteen year old and left it as a momento? Would you want more tourists supporting a well run government initiative – or more travelers gently caressing the curves of the country and infiltrating their villages – to visit there in the future?

By the way, I’ve been traveling sensitively for the last 5 years, only supporting smaller local businesses. My girlfriend is studying tourism management and just recently ran into a bargain ‘5 star resort half board 7 nights’ trip, so we took the plunge into something that we’ve always disliked and criticized as backpackers. It was terrible. Phony. We had some brilliant turkish belly dancers in the hotel lobby one night thou. Everyone there (except us) spent a bloody fortune on just about everything, everywhere. Amazing. I never want to do it again. Anyways, the experience got me thinking about the whole thing. And now I sort of feel like a cultural criminal and my travel bug has turned a guilty shade of green.

Am I just crazy?

I agree with your opinion on this, however, I believe that it might not necessarily be a bad thing. Let’s take Hula for example. I wonder if Hula dancing would have even survived as an art form if it weren’t for the “disneyization” of it? And another example, in my native Wyoming, there are several “chuck wagon dinners” that cater to tourists. Cheesy? Yes! But the chuck wagon dinner isn’t practical for anything other than being a tourist attraction these days, but at least the history of it is being preserved. History is important and anything that can be done to preserve history (and culture for that matter) is a worthwhile effort.

though a lot of countries are gearing up towards sustainable tourism, i’m sure that action could help protect the environment, but i’m not sure if it could protect the local culture from disappearing…

And yet if it does, and it encourages the fanny-pack brigade to arrive and spend their dollars liberally into that country’s economy, who are we to tell them to reject the advances that this might bring them? Where we might see disappearing shacks along the river and loss of traditional ways of life, others may see a refrigerator, running water or affordable education as a result of this influx of money. In the end, we may be more interesting in preserving a way of life for our own tourism purposes than those who live it.

As an aside, I would encourage all those who make such sharp distinctions between the behaviour of travellers and tourists to spend a few days with both camps. I have seen many a fanny-pack wearer engage freely and meaningfully with local people they meet while travelling, and have met countless backpackers whose immersion in local culture centres on getting drunk/stoned/laid with other backpackers. The stereotypes might be convenient but they don’t reflect the reality. We all choose the way to travel that best suits our time/money/desire for comfort. The tourist/traveller label is unhelpful. Those who travel with the real desire to to experience and to learn are equally present in all types of travel; our instinct to lump people into groups and assign those groups with communal behaviours is a powerful and dangerous one.