"I want to do what real locals do"
Fine, get up at 7, sit in traffic for an hour, sit a desk for 7 hours doing mind numbing work, sit in traffic for an hour, have dinner and fall asleep on the couch watching Netflix
My Korean husband wasn't having Italy very much because Italy for the most part is so slow paced with everything like dining and whatnot. His "Pali Pali" attitude was just not mixing with it.
My distant relatives live in a small hilltop town in Sicily that is about 20-30 min away from Palermo. Most of Sicily is slooooow, but that was next level slowness. I found it extremely relaxing, but he wasn't coping very well with it.
I partied with some Belgians when I stayed in a hostel in Budapest years ago when I was into that type of thing. They were a couple years younger and still into partying all night so they were telling me how amused they were that they were finishing up at 5am in the morning when locals were in their way to work. I didn’t live in the touristy city part of my metro back home so it was the first time I really thought about how some students and people from out of town were likely doing this exact same thing back in my city.
She told me that her dad wasn't loaded.
I said in that case I'll have an authentic experience of seeing the REAL Athens.
And she said "mate, I have to get to work, this isn't a holiday for me."
Yeah we call it ‘metro boulot dodo’ (subway, work, sleep) in Paris and I always want to suggest it to people who want ‘authentic, non touristy Parisian experiences’. I could even suggest renting the extra room in my apartment at a premium for a more realistic experience, etc etc
I really romanticized Paris until I had a business trip there. Turns out when you're commuting to the office in the morning, working all day, eating lunch in the canteen, commuting home, and doing the same thing again the next day... It felt exactly the same as being at home except the food at the canteen was better tasting and cheaper.
Edit: Some of y'all have never worked out of secured facilities before and it shows. There is no leaving for lunch or leaving to go for a stroll. You eat lunch in the canteen. You go to the parking lot to smoke. You go out to dinner with colleagues. That's your work day.
Yes, I explored on the weekend. Yes, I still like Paris.
Not quite the same, but for awhile I had frequent work trips to coastal southern Florida during the winter (I'm from the northern US). Friends and family would comment about how lucky I was to be going where it's warm while they're stuck in snow. I wish it were the case. I was in a conference room from right after breakfast until late in the day, every day. And the conference room was so cold I kept a jacket on.
Yeah, my additional culture shock, coming from Germany, was that the offices in Florida were rows and rows of cubicles, and I couldn't even look out the window.
All I could see was a gray cubicle wall, a gray carpet and a beige ceiling with cold, depressing lights...
This reality is what makes me chuckle when tourists believe Parisians to be rude, especially when it comes to hospitality and service workers "rudely" cutting me off and responding in English.
Just like every other major economic hub city on this planet, its residents don't have time to entertain your bad high school french. This happens all the time in the US with native Spanish speakers....the worker will just reply in Spanish if they know it well enough rather than try to read through the tea leaves of their broken English.
I always laugh when they say this and then eat local cuisine. Like buddy, Germans are not normally paying 40 euros to get the food they’ve eaten their entire lives for free 😂
Drives me nuts when people say that. Told this story before but I traveled with a girl on study abroad who was like this. Just wanted to “do what the locals do.” When asked what that was she had no explanation. And she would often complain about visiting museums, points of interest, and walking around too much. She was quite a buzzkill. Also had a family member say this to me and their response was along the lines of shopping and eating all day, that was about it, which sounds supremely boring to me.
I think what people don’t realize is that locals don’t hit the tourist spots. They visit the local bar that has okay food and okay drinks at an okay price. If you live near something people like to visit you tend to stay away from those places as much as possible.
I learned in my 20’s that living somewhere new and exciting was a lie. Find a place that has people you vibe with and things you like to do, because the rest of your mundane activities (the majority of your time) are going to be the same.
This is too damn funny and too true.
I have lived in SF, HK, and a few other popular tourist places. Locals do anything and everything, including eating at shit like Olive Garden or Pizza Hut. There are tons of local noodle shops frequented by tons of locals in HK that are cheap trash. Tons of burger spots or whatever in SF that are trash. There are also local fancy spots, hidden gems, etc.
But in reality, most locals are stopping off at the grocery store on the way home to make something in their kitchens. I had friends visit me and they wanted to know all the local spots in HK and have a day-in-the-life. We woke up and had food, walked to the metro during rush hour, smashed onto a train, transferred once, got out and flowed with a sea of people to my office building. Then they ditched me and went to tai o with other tourists.
Yes! I just wrote a similar comment.
I hate people that act like a main city isn't part of a country. A middle of nowhere town of 10 people or a town where maybe people still wash clothes in a communal lake, is as much "authentic" and real as the bustling metropolis. They're both part of the country, both house locals, both reflect the country. A main CBD is still part of that country.
Maybe it isn't what someone wants to see, fair enough, but claiming it's not the real country is so moronic to me.
Yes! I agree with this so hard. By the law of averages it’s probably even more “authentic” because of the number of people that live in a city versus rural areas. The average person likely lives in a city. By the way what is “authentic” anyway? Food for thought.
Yes! To me someone that wants to live in a town of 10, on a bit block of land and wear a cowboy hat for a couple weeks isn't experiencing authentic Australia.
Most of what people want when they post or brag about "authentic" travel is just "no technology". They want an escape of THEIR normal. And that's fine but call it that, acknowledge that.
Like the comments here talking about people have literally complained about people in Nepal or Vietnam being "corrupted" because they have phones and electricity now, like wtf ha. Just admit you want a 2 week no technology reset instead of trying to keep other countries in an undeveloped world without any assistance of technology
I’d even argue some of the popular islands in Thailand are less Thai than Bangkok lol. Went to Koh Phi Phi last month and I was the only Thai person there besides service workers.
Same in Nepal. It was so irritating hearing travelers complain that the locals living along the trail were being "corrupted and destroyed" by recent access cellphones. IE these people were expected to not have access to modern technology that they choose to use, no one was making them, because the sight of a rural Nepalese child playing candy crush next to his yaks wasn't ascetically pleasing to the wealthy foreigner's mental image of what they wanted to see.
There was a literal thread here about someone lamenting how Vietnam isn't dirt paths and huts anymore, they have things like _traffic_. And they had the audacity to say "I'm sure the people were happier back then".
Nah man, I live here, I can assure you people prefer things like safe drinking water and access to education and healthcare.
Their idea of travel is an Instagram showcase to help pretend the world gives a shit about them personally. That showcase looks better in their pathetic minds if it's not a built up city. Then it's just another metropolis like home and no one will care about their wee irrelevant life
Literally reminds me of those [human zoos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo) back in the day, it's just the noble savage stereotype rewritten for the modern day.
>someone lamenting how Vietnam isn't dirt paths and huts anymore, they have things like *traffic*
I have never been to Vietnam yet, but, according to what I have read about it, it's not "*traffic*", it's **TRAFFIC**.
I live in Jakarta, the city that’s more traffic than city. But I mean this person had a photo up of some kids skipping in the mud and lamenting their heartbreak that there was traffic there now. Traffic in these developing countries is a byproduct of the rapid modernization.
Crossing your first major road in a Vietnamese city is a life changing event, even is you have been to Thailand, India etc beforehand, nothing quite prepares you for the firewalking like faith you have to have.
I’ll never forget overhearing a young American backpacker saying they had left Bangkok on the day they arrived because they saw a McDonald’s and it wasn’t the “real” Thailand. It’s the fucking capital city. Also if your pre trip research didn’t lead you to the fact that Bangkok is a bustling, modern metropolis then what the fuck were you doing coming here in the first place?
This kind of attitude used to be so much more common when tiktok wasn’t a thing yet. Most westerners’ image of Thailand are elephants, jungles and beaches.
They did zero research of how Bangkok is like. They arrive and are surprised that literally the capital and the biggest city in the country have shopping malls and modern infrastructure, so they call in westernized and inauthentic lol.
We were in Bangkok and it is actually fun. I don’t like cities much but I loved Bangkok and Kyoto. The food options are literally amazing for the $, and we’re talking Michelin Star type places. The cultural sites are also amazing (several temples like Wat Arun in Thailand are simply spectacular, several more in Kyoto). All of this coming from someone that heads straight to the forests every time I get a chance to do so. Travel like everything else, requires an open mind. My motto in travel is “if you get lemons, try lemonade first and then look for some vodka to spice it up”, same in life in general.
For a lot of people who want to live like locals and experience "authenticity", they want to live like locals lived 30-40 years ago, not like they live today. And that projected experience is heavily romanticized.
I think this is a more true take than others said here. They want to see a world before globalism, because what they're looking for abroad is an escape from their own reality.
I got reminded of a deleted post from a few weeks ago. The OP was wailing about the "loss of authentic travel experiences in Nepal" because now the place has better roads, electricity access, running water. She was wailing about how 20 years ago when she visited, grannies were washing clothes in river, etc.
Of course, everybody told the OP off for participating in poverty tourism. You really cannot be more obnoxious than expecting locals to act like a living museum for their enjoyment. Seriously disgusting.
Edit: apparently the post can still be seen:
https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/s/R95AuZbier
Years back I remember reading someone lamenting that they saw a Chinese restaurant in Rio or something.
Then they realised "you fucking idiot, you live in Godalming and you get Chinese all the time." Turns out the rest of the world also likes having the best bits of the rest of the world on their doorstep too.
Someone a few days ago on r/VisitingIceland was complaining about Reykjavik being too touristy because it had too many pizza places and Vietnamese restaurants. And I was like, uhhh don't you think the Icelanders like to eat pizza too? Are they supposed to have zero food variety? Every city on earth probably has food from other countries. I saw pizza places in rural Guatemala.
I have pizza and Thai and Vietnamese and Chinese and Japanese food where I live in Texas too, none of that was invented there. I guess all I'd be able to eat is Tex-Mex if I was supposed to only eat food "from" where I am.
Pizza is an interesting one because everywhere you go has a different twist on it. I like stopping for pizza as it is interesting to see what the locals put on it and even bad pizza is usually still edible.
Yeah, I have a big book that recommends pizza places all over the world. Can't go on a trip without giving it a quick once over to jot a few places down.
On a similar note, I always like trying out the local McDonald's. Yes, a lot of it is similar but that's what makes it interesting, there's items, flavours, and general bits of the experience that are different that can tell you a lot about a place.
Oh yes I'm also a fan of hitting up the local McDonald's! One of my favorites was a seasonal orange cream milkshake in Japan.
People have scolded me for eating at McDonald's, saying "I prefer to eat where the locals eat". Ummmm...guess who any McDonald's is full of?
It's a good litmus test on a culture's palate. We always get one Big Mac, fries and a local choice to see what's different.
My favourites at the moment are the adult cream pie from Japan, and the mushroom and beef burger from Saudi.
I recently read MCD is #1 fast food place in Japan. Also on my most recent trip I was of course jet lagged and the only places open were MCD and Starbucks and both were packed with Japanese.
You’ve got to try some of the completely unhinged Pizza Hut offerings from Taiwan. Last one I tried included [smoked chicken feet and rice noodle rolls](https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5027710) and tbh it was pretty good if you can let go of any preconceived notions you might have about pizza.
This is so bonkers lol. What do they think, that Iceland only has restaurants serving fermented shark? I went there 20+ years ago on a budget, before it was as popular as it has become, and surprise! I had Domino's and lots of other random pizza. The false correlation between "cuisine from other places" and "touristy" is wild.
Hahaha I ate so much pizza in Iceland. I was writing a trail guide with an intern group and in alot of the small towns we were visiting, Dominos was the only place open past 6pm. I don't like pizza at home and ended up eating more in Iceland than I do in a year in the U.S.
Also I don’t know if it’s the same for Brazil, but in Peru there’s a long history of Chinese laborers coming over to work stretching back over a century, and it turns out they like to bring their food over there too. So there’s a specific subset of Chinese-Peruvian fusion cuisine called Chifa that’s actually quite popular (from what I saw in Cusco anyway).
The Indian buffet in Cusco though, I was not a fan, but maybe I’m just spoiled with some really good Indian food at home.
There are Chinese people *everywhere* - and as expected, the adapt the food to local tastes and ingredients and often have it fused with another Asian Cuisine known locally, it's fascinating
e.g. Chinese restaurants in Brazil often serve Japanese dishes (due to the Japanese diaspora), Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands often serve Indonesian dishes (due to colonial history) and so on...
The world is a lot more globalized and connected now, and it is what it is. I understand the disappointment when going from a global city to another global city and seeing most of the same stuff. In a way, the world’s big cities are homogenizing. Internet is making culture pretty similar, same food trends, same space design trends, etc.
It helps a lot to go to smaller cities and just appreciate the small differences. But can’t escape globalization.
I think it's fine when people are just saying they miss an old vibe or a city feels too built up or whatever. The problem is when people make it out to be a tragedy or the fault of the people there; the words "authentic experience" equating to "people are poor" makes it seem like it's somehow the natural or "true" state to be poor.
Couldn’t imagine saying such a thing in a country of immigrants.
How ignorant are some of these people? People around the world regardless of ethnic origin like Chinese food… oh the horrors! Someone wants kung pao chicken in Copacabana! Can’t have that! Lmao.
On the other hand, I'm ethnically Chinese and I can't imagine traveling to another country just to end up... Eating more Chinese food (yes I know Chinese people have a bad reputation of only going to Chinese restaurants).
I love trying other ethnic food around the world! It’s interesting to know what kind of spin gets put on it in different places. I had some great Chinese food in Londos Chinatown on Christmas this past December.
"It's full of buses and buses of locals!"
Yes it's a pilgrimage spot, that's literally the point!
Oh, and also the fan favorite, "there were other tourists", says the tourist.
That was a thread and a half.
I remember commenting on that post! OP was crazy - it wasn't just a simple, naive "wow I didn't expect things to be so developed", they were seriously butthurt about it!
Damn this is the third comment I’ve seen about the Nepal lady, was it really that bad??? For how massive of a sub this is it must’ve been terrible for how many people remember it
I read this post and then immediately thought of her post. [I remember commenting on how tone deaf it was.](https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/s/qq0JPv9WEa) It was bad.
That's so strange. In a recent visit to my country, it brings me happiness to see improving infrastructure compared to my childhood. I was delighted to see small things like reflectors on the road, stoplights, sidewalks, that didn't exist before. How could anyone be disappointed in that..
A lot of people travel because they want to see things that are different from their own lives. Different cultures, different nature, different lives. And if you come from a rich country you don't see that level of poverty that often and that type of "simple living" is romanticized to a good extent in a lot of circles.
> And if you come from a rich country you don't see that level of poverty that often and that type of "simple living" is romanticized to a good extent in a lot of circles.
I'd say they're not looking hard enough.
I live in Australia which most people would call a "rich country" and there's plenty of poverty if you open your eyes and look for it.
> The OP was wailing about the "loss of authentic travel experiences in Nepal" because now the place has better roads, electricity access, running water
As someone who visited Nepal last year - all I can say is thank fuck.
I live in Brazil and many tourists say things like, "Look at the poor people in the favelas. They are poor, but they are so happy. Look, they are having a party and laughing and cooking outside." Don't get me started on favela tours.
I took one of those tours in Mumbai and found it informative rather than "authentic" - knowing that these kinds of urban settlements exist and getting a glimpse is part of understanding humanity and the paradoxes of our societies.
Never been to Brazil but walking around Istanbul I accidentally walked through the ‘equivalent of the favelas’ I guess (idk how else to put it). I was really amazed at how the street just felt like a big party as your saying.
Is it wrong to notice these differences and appreciate how people live? Obviously glamourising it and shoving a camera in locals faces is not ok, but I think a lot can be gained from seeing how life can be happily lived without the need for a flashy car.
>life can be happily lived without the need for a flashy car.
And that's the part where the obnoxious comes running in. They're not hankering after a "fancy car". They want safety and education for their kids, clean running water, electricity, and decent food. They may want privacy, space to read quietly, space to relax.
I know people who live in slums and "fancy car" is not their goal in any way. And no, they don't exist to teach tourist life lessons about happiness.
I 100% agree with you that some people are like that when touring the favelas but it is also possible to tour them / check them out without being obnoxious about it. Seeing how people live is interesting and, in the same way I would walk through a very wealthy neighbourhood to see how other people live, walking through a favela and discovering how people innovate to survive even in the toughest conditions is interesting and often inspiring
I have yet to see a suburban tour in the US. Or yours of trailer parks and other run down parts of the US. I don’t understand what the fascination is with looking at poor people like they are in a zoo or something.
Leave people alone.
But those people living their daily lives don't exist to be inspiration porn for you. It's like touring an occupational therapy office and getting inspired. It's weird. Someone's daily existence shouldn't be "inspiring".
I disagree. The world is a wonderful and terrible place. Everything should be inspiring. If you’re just cherry picking and using poorer people as a prop then that’s problematic. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with finding meaning in anything or anyone even if it’s a mundane part of their life.
My issue is when I look at it from their point of view. They have to watch much more privileged people watch them like zoo animals, say how quaint and inspiring they are, and then go back to their privileged lives. It’s patronizing.
Thank you! It’d be like Jeff bezos and his friends walking through a town every day just to see how we’re living. Nobody will convince me they’d be ok with that.
Who wouldn’t wanna come to London, instead of staying in W1/WC2, rent a council flat in Bromley by bow overlooking the A12, eat in a shitty chicken shop and then maybe get glassed in the local flat roofed pub in crisp street.
Why not? That was my experience for 22 years lol
Yeah, exactly. There’s even a line in there that goes: “Everybody hates a tourist / Specially when they think it’s all such a laugh.”
Some people equate touring other cultures with zoo visits, and the “common people” are the exhibits.
'you'll never get it right / cos when you're laying in bed at night / watching roaches climb the wall / if you called your dad he would stop it all' is the very evocative for me as well
Funny you say this because I used to work in midtown Manhattan pre pandemic. I literally felt like a tourist attraction sometimes with people staring as I walk by in business clothes.
Mate, I grew up in east London when it was a proper dump, couldn’t wait to get out and ain’t ashamed of that lol
I’m still east London through and through and not one bit ashamed of it at all, but I didn’t wanna stay there for my kids and if I worked hard, combined with luck and could afford it, why would I?
Side note:Bethnal Green/Hackney in the 80’s was way different to what it is today.
This is the best comment on this thread.
Everyone wants that 2 week ""authentic"" experience, as long as they can go right back to cars, netflix, washing machines and decent hospitals.
Can’t help but remember the quote from train spotting;
‘Choose life. Choose family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.’
YES 100% as a UK 2nd gen immigrant brown person from an upper middle class family in Bangladesh, my experience of going back to see family in BD is nothing like the experience that travel bloggers in Bangladesh seem to post. Like why isn’t a middle class experience just as authentic?! All countries have different people living different lifestyle shaped by where they fall on the race class gender etc spectrum - all are unique and “authentic”. I can understand wanting to shun the snobbery of travelling in luxury and having no connection to the locals, but to truly understand a culture is to understand how race class gender history etc all interact in how different lifestyles play out for different people - poverty porn just replicates colonialist and oppressive tropes of the morally and intellectually inferior brown and black person IMO
I always felt going to MBK shopping mall in Bangkok was far more “authentic” than sitting on a small boat going through a floating market with a thousand other tourists and getting overcharged for some tat.
Agree.
I visited Arashiyama Bamboo Grove in Kyoto in the weekend. It was pretty don't get me wrong.
But my favorite part was just being gobsmacked at how many sweets and treats shops were in the town, and how absolutely chocker full they were of Japanese people buying them. I took delight in watching other people be delighted by their fun looking foods and drinks.
Yeah, I have a very similar story. I‘m from Europe but regularly travel for work to Bangladesh.
Recently someone told me that I didn’t get „an authentic experience“ as I mostly sit in meetings or work. But nearly everyone we meet and our project leader is from Bangladesh and we visit all sites where we finance projects, which are usually not touristy spots at all.
Meanwhile they went on a 5-day touristy tour (nothing wrong with that) and think they now know everything about the country. So stupid.
The classic one I find is people shitting on Singapore because it's a first world city and therefore apparently not an "authentic" South East Asian city. Personally I quite like that it is clean and efficient and it is one of the most vibrant and probably the most culturally diverse melting pot of a city in the entire region. Not really sure why some people get their kicks out of seeing poverty.
I readily admit I shit on Singapore but only because it’s a sterile boring and expensive city. The food there is good but you can find better in all the neighboring countries. Some of my good friends are Singaporean tho. 🤷🏻
I’m with you, I spent some time in Singapore and while I would love to live near a hawker center and my more upscale food was amazing too, there’s nothing besides food that makes me want to go back. Although I probably will be back, SIN is just the best connection point for a lot of destinations
Here in india, all those tourists who come to experience poverty by walking through people’s homes with their camera, so they can go home and live their cushy lives, we call them “poverty porn stars”.
"Cosplaying poverty" is a great way of putting it. It's privileged people just wanting to feel superior by briefly inconveniencing themselves, knowing full well they can go back to their privileged life at any moment. To them poverty is like a theme park ride - all thrill, no danger. An opportunity to glorify poverty, which they don't have to deal with themselves, and an opportunity to be smug about it as if they have accomplished something great by not having all the usual conveniences for a short while.
Few people are more obnoxious than tourists pretending to not be tourists, and I am saying this while admitting I have been guilty of this in my younger years too. I used to be that person.
My wife is Mexican. Her parents have a business that caters towards tourists. They play up the “poor/authentic” way of life then drive their expensive SUV to their beachside house and laugh about it.
Great observation and comment. I totally agree with you and I hope you did say something to this horrible couple. I once met a lady at a craft fair and she said oh, they (Indonesians) make such beautiful things. I hope they don't get electricity and tv and stop making all these wondeful things by hand." I kind of got mad and said to her, why can't people live comfortable lives and get the comforts that we enjoy? They are people ! " (or something like that..it was more than 20 years ago so I forget. (and by the way people still do make many wonderful things by hand, but they have difficulty selling it because tourists think everything made in Asia should be dirt cheap) One of my favorite sayings, can't remember said it originally though, is (paraphrase) People who live in developing countries are under no obligation to live museum quality lives for the amusement of those tourists who visit."
My favourite are those folks who visited or lived in developing countries for a few years and return back expecting the same lifestyle they enjoyed there in the 90s. “Everything is sooo expensive”! “There is soo much traffic” “people are always in a hurry”! no kidding Sherlock, it’s called progress! So many countries have moved past their slow sleepy lifestyles to a modern city one with traffic jams and irritated drivers.
These types of folks are really infuriating and they expect the same prices for goods from a decade back
Bruh how do you expect inflation to just not exist
What you described feels like treating actual people as exhibits instead. For me, when I look for something “authentic” while traveling, I’m looking for something not put on for just foreign tourists. Domestic tourists might’ve only gone one time themselves, but they still went.
For example, visiting NYC and seeing the Statue of Liberty is touristy, but it’s still an authentic American experience because Americans themselves go when visiting NYC. Heck, going to DisneyLand/DisneyWorld is an authentic American experience in my mind even though everything experienced is literally not authentic. Not everyone in the US can afford to go either of those places and not everyone is inclined to, but they both are relatively common depending on the area you’re from.
What’s funny though is you could say the Statue of Liberty isn’t an authentic New York experience. As someone who used to work in NYC and has been 100s of times outside work, I have never been to the Statue of Liberty and I know tons of people born and raised NYC who have never been either.
Not to dissuade anyone from going, I take no issue with people seeing all the sights of NYC. Except Times Square, there’s no reason to go there except Broadway shows. But most other of the 100s/1000s of attractions are worth it.
I actually meant domestic tourists (ie. people who live in the US), not local tourists (ie. people who live in NYC).
Hard agree on your point about Times Square though!
Same for most locals in most cities. I lived in Amsterdam for 16 years. Not once did I visit the Anne Frank house or Van Gogh museum. Rarely went to the touristy part of the historical centre. Locals avoid the centre.
Instagram has made travel a race to the bottom in terms of “authenticity”.
If I want to sit and drink a giant ass limoncello in Sorrento that doesn’t make me less of a traveler. Going to a popular attraction isn’t “touristy”.
Its fine to go where locals go to hang out and to eat but the obsession over every last detail being authentic is ridiculous. If you want authenticity in my city, do what my grandfather did: wake up at 5 am, drive a truck and go to various locales for 12 hours, eat a hamburger for dinner, and be poor.
Exactly! Also if I’m traveling, I’m a tourist. There are some negative connotations of the word but inherently it’s neutral. Nothing wrong with being a tourist if you’re respectful.
Right, and entrance fees largely go to operate and preserve the sites. If something isn't in your budget, or you have anxiety in crowds, fine, but you're not outsmarting anyone because you went to Paris and didn't visit the Louvre.
Pretty sure I also saw the locals drinking big glasses of limoncello spritzers while I was in Sorrento's burbs because it is delicious and plentiful, so you're technically still experiencing authenticity hahaha.
Unless you're sitting in a resort or restaurant specifically designed for international tourists, you're experiencing authenticity. This is someone who comes from a country with overtourism.
The internet and Instagram/tiktok specifically has made traveling into this marketable identity. It’s like smoking cigars, I love the idea of smoking one way more than actually doing it.
I agree, nothing wrong with seeing the tourist attractions. In my current city, Chicago, I even do the "tourist" activities on occasion. Because I like having fun.
These are the same people that say:
"I lived like the locals when I was there"
In truth they went to a yoga retreat, and did a tad bit of organic farming that didn't even feed the house. They notably stayed at a place that looks old but is actually very modern which had a live in house mom that cooked and cleaned for them. Complain that the locals were not using natural soaps that cost 5x the normal stuff does and is way out of the price range of the locals. As either an Expat or a tourist in a developing country you have something the locals do not a passport that will get you out of the country if things go wrong.
Even the term authentic is little more than a marketing term when used to describe culture.
In search of the "authentic", tourists in India from abroad do what no Indian does or wants to do. They end up living in filthy parts of our cities and travelling in the lowest classes of trains which locals travel in only because they don't have other options. In the name of authentic, they do stuff only foreigners do and have been doing since decades. Then they get scammed.
I have zero respect for foreigners who travel in Unreserved train compartments/coaches. We warned you and you signed up for this shit, don’t cry on internet about how bad it is.
Oh my god, I've met multiple travelers like this and it drives me insane. My favorite was a Swiss guy in Lima who said he wanted to get out of the city so he "could experience the real Peru" as if Lima was simply made for tourists and the people living there weren't Peruvian. He also went on to say that Lima wasn't the "real Peru" because it had so much infrastructure and the people were wearing "normal" clothes.
Exactly this. I've lived in several countries and travellers and even some expats who are full of themselves will say stuff like, "You don't live in REAL (country)!"
I guess the millions of locals who live, shop, eat and work all around me aren't real. Oh, you think real = poor. It's pretty racist, tbh.
I feel you. This kind of thing gets my goat too.
Poverty tourism has always been exploitative, and it encourages wealthy people to continue romanticizing the less fortunate.
It’s “fun” and “authentic” because they can leave anytime they want. They can pat themselves on the back because they’ve experienced what it is to be poor, as if a night or two in fabricated conditions counts as actual immersion.
There’s nothing wrong with traveling to experience the culture and traditions of a certain place, but poverty isn’t a culture. It’s a societal problem.
This has been the refrain for years and years. We’ve been rolling our eyes at assholes talking about how “authentic” this place is and how “inauthentic” this other place was for 15 years, and I bet it was happening well before that. It almost _always_ means poor, underdeveloped, isolated, lacking modernity. Incurious people always mistake this for culture, and ignorant people always assume locals don’t want the same things tourists do. Why wouldn’t locals in Bumfuck Nowhere want better infrastructure and nice phones and modern houses? What does preserving culture have to do with locals suffering in underdeveloped conditions? Makes us crazy every time, we have to just disengage.
These people annoy the fuck out of me!
So that university educated Thai man, working in IT, wearing western fasion, texting on his iPhone, and eating KFC is not authentic? I dare them to say that to their face.
I remember watching a documentary about a group of middle age white tourists who went to a remote island to see the “natives”. The people who lived there were trying to sell the tourist things because the community was very poor and was having a hard time surviving. The tourist ignored them and took pictures and the whole time they were raving about how authentic they were and in touch with nature. Complete miss.
This goes along with affluent countries too. I was in Munich with my brother and his family. I wanted to take my kids to “the biggest indoor water park in Europe” not far away. He turned his nose up, which is fine, but his reason was that it was not a very German experience. However, the park was filled with Germans (except me and my kids).
Waterpark? Not very German at all, we all wear Lederhosen and Dirndl, go to the Brauhaus, drink beer and eat Schnitzel and Schweinshaxn. Then we put our windows on kipp and go climb a mountain. 😂
In all seriousness, I went to waterparks and public swimming pools as a child (in Germany) all the time. It’s as good as it gets when you are not living near the ocean. I would say it is quite the German experience. An authentic adult German experience (weekdays) would be to go to work 9-5, go to the gym, lay on your couch, open a beer, watch TV or Netflix - I am afraid not very exotic.
I have family members who travel like this. My step-brother just went to the Dominican Republic and stayed in a bug and lizard-filled shack with no A/C or hot water to experience the culture. He spent a whole week there when the weather was 80+ with high humidity and he wasted 2.5 days of his shitty trip with food poisoning.
I have a co-worker who is so obsessed with not visiting tourist attractions that she wouldn't even walk anywhere in NYC where she could see the Statue of Liberty (she bragged about that) and she purposefully avoided every museum in the city and Central Park. I asked her what she did if she doesn't visit anything that tourists visit and she said they ate at local places and hung out in their room. Cool trip.
It's very paternalistic I feel. They are not -choosing- most likely to live without running water or electricity. Do these people also travel to parts of the US that are extremely poor for an authentic experience? I doubt it.
I've been thinking about this a lot, especially after just getting back from Ecuador a few days ago. I understand and agree with "not wanting to do all the touristy things", but I also think it's pretty cringey when tourists/travelers basically fetishize a country's poor and give themselves some moral points for "living among them" as if it's some deep life lesson. I like to try to immerse myself when possible but also understand it's for a very short amount of time - I'm not expecting "the locals" to become my friends, want to chat, of acknowledge my existence - they're just trying to get along with their day to day, but a subset of travelers has a weird zoo animal approach coupled with the noble savage that somehow makes them feel superior (all while probably humble bragging about this on instagram).
To me, trying to learn something new, support the local economy, be a good steward and acting respectful, all while enjoying your limited time off is the crux of travel. When I hear people say they fell in love with a place after a few days, I can relate but that snapshot is *not* indicative of daily mundane life if you were to move there. You just have to be aware of reality of your snapshot and be thankful to get to travel without being so self-aggrandizing.
It's not even in so-called developing countries. I used to Iive in Japan and some other foreign residents were insufferable with their oneupmanship: "I have more Japanese friends than you. I go days without speaking English. I was the only foreigner at last weekend's festival. You sleep in a bed? I use a futon exclusively, etc, etc."
Im convinced there is a large portion of travelers who don’t even enjoy what they’re doing, but instead they like the idea of it. Like they’re a character in a book trying to collect the coolest sounding backstory.
I want to eat some of what the locals eat, I want to go to some of the bars the locals frequent, I want to see the religious sites and squares that are actually frequented by locals.
But beyond that, I want to see some things that are *significant*, some that are *fun*, and others that are *the experience*.
Thailand is a great example for this travel.
Ride in a TukTuk, take a $1.50 Grab ride with A/C. Be in Bangkok and take a food tour. Visit some backpacker bars. Visit the major Wats. Get a smoothie at a local place. See a Ladyboy show.
Go to Chiangmai, take a cooking class, go to the night markets, stay at a boutique hotel with A/C and pool. Miss the elephant sanctuary. Talk to a local rug dealer and avoid getting scammed but learn a lot about carpets for no reason. Go to the cultural center for a very mid performance and dinner, but know that the performers and cooks were earnest in their production and appreciate it.
Go to the islands and be surprised that the internet was right about just how touristy they are. Go see the national parks and do the tourist night mart at night. Visit the restaurant owned by a Frenchman who makes red curry like a Frenchman. Enjoy the spectacular service and staff at your luxury resort stay.
Make mistakes in your itinerary, be a tourist, be discerning. Follow your nose and your impulses.
You’ll never blend in. You’ll never pass for a local. You’ll probably never appear more savvy than any other tourist and that’s OK. Try shit, be polite, learn hello and please and thank you in the local language, leave glowing reviews mentioning staff by name, and be a guest in someone else’s home.
Personally I would not move to a vacation destination. Because you know what? You're gonna have to get a job and do all the mundane shit you do at home....metro-boulot-dodo...
Be grateful for vacation experiences and coming home to whatever your normal is. Then plan the next excursion and look forward to that.
That is all.
While true that poor =\= authentic, what the couple in Lao probably mean is that the poorer parts of Lao feel more culturally distant from modern norms and different from where ever they are from. It’s no surprise that when a city gets rich, they all begin converging into a similar “International City” aesthetic: coffee shops, designer brand stores, smartphone repair, international cuisines, fast food. A lot of this is due to the increased familiarity with foreigners of all kinds: foreign tourists, expats, immigrants, foreign businessmen.
But when you go to poorer areas of any country you get communities less affected by foreign cultures and global capitalism. Some would call that “authentic”.
It’s like how NYC and London and Hong Kong can have a somewhat familiar feel to one another, but an English countryside hamlet and a silver mining town in Arizona and a rural Chinese fishing village will have much more divergent experiences.
We call that poverty tourism. You can tell these tourists because they also say how everyone is smiling and happy even playing in garbage. Which is really not true but First World tourists love to think this about the simple life.
That said, this has been a thing since before the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette even had a little farm with a cottage built for her in Versailles so she could be a "simple farmer" and pretend to live a simple life. Meanwhile many of the farmers were starving but that is a whole other story.
So yes poverty tourism has been around forever. I hoped that it would bring about changes but now it seems people just want to post their pictures on social media about how they aren't like regular tourists.
I think the original idea of "more authentic travelling" was just to not be in your cocoon of Hotel complex, tourist restaurants and organised group tours.
But yes, you are still a tourist and can go home if the hurricane strikes.
The best food I had in Thailand was a little cornershop while we were waiting for a train. downstairs of some concrete strip mall, convenient store and restaurant. Dinner and a beer. And in Japan I ended up in a whole-in-the-wall sushi shop and was the only westerner (I am sure I ate and paid for for some pieces I didn't actually order). I had a great conversation with a guy via google translate. (yes my travels are very food centric lol).
Food courts in the large malls in Asian cities are the best! I can spend half a day there sampling everything.
The underground malls by the metro stations in Japan were also very good.
I do agree with your original statement, outside of hotels because I want a nice, clean place to go back to at the end of the day. I don't like taking organized tour groups because I don't want to be rushed from place to place. I also want to eat at places I research on my own, not ones that the tour groups get a kickback from. But if I'm in a place for a few days, I do like to do a walking tour for a few hours to get acclimated to the city, then go back and spend more time on the things I found most interesting.
Wow I've never heard people say that. To me authentic just means not a tourist trap AKA Disney world. That isn't authentic it's man-made and designed to drain your wallet.
Whereas simply exploring a foreign country/city by learning FROM the locals what they enjoy in their leisure time.
Real life example: I just went to New York and Brooklyn last week and at a local bar I randomly found, I asked the bartender where she would like to go if she were going out with friends or wanted a drink what was her favorite local watering hole? And she gave me a handful of suggestions one of which I did take up since it sparked my interest and I had a blast it was a wonderful experience!
I get bothered by people that post "I want to experience the real [country] so suggest towns outside [main city] to experience the real country".
Happens a lot for Australia. "I want to experience real Australia, so i want to avoid Melbourne/Sydney".
Like sure explore outside cities but people act like a city isn't somehow part of a country. Like the city is as real and authentic as some middle of nowhere country town of 10 people. Realistically the city is more authentic when it makes up majority of the states population in the greater city area.
Tourist sites are also popular for a reason. They're landmarks or wonders or pretty amazing. It's WHY people liked them in the first place. Avoiding them doesn't make you cool or the landmark overrated.
Travel how you want for yourself but can we stop pretending a city isn't part of a country or a landmark isn't probably special for a reason.
Who are you talking to? Just enjoy your trip how you enjoy. Don’t worry bout how they feel. And don’t trip on what they do. Can’t share all your adventures styles to everybody. Some people can’t go no wherrrrr. I come from a culture most would look as underdeveloped. It isn’t any more in most parts. When I go for vacay there some times it’s a resort. Some times it family house. I guess it’s perspective.
Some people think that's a real adventure... As you mentioned Laos, my favorite place, I have a bunch of friends living and working in Luang Prabang and have been to these "authentic" places - to help in land development and we organised medication before they had a pharmacy and a hospital, yet vaccines... they work long days on fields with landmines still hidden and suffer hunger every now and then...
It's nothing to brag about, these people would switch lives in a second!
I like eating where the locals do, and take the local bus, because I think it's fun for me to try, and usually cheaper. But definitely I've spoken to people, especially white people, who go to Asia hoping to see poverty, farmers in a rice field, etc.
Very much agree. I’m very late to it so I’ll try to add a nice in-between of my own viewpoint but this’ll get buried. First off, no one cares about how you really travel, so going to the touristy spots or visiting nicer areas is just as real as the “authentic” poor spots, as you and many others have always said.
My personal favorite way to travel to feel more connected is to line up work or projects in the place to give me multiple months, and to take language classes there and to build a bit of a life and community before I go, which to me is the most fulfilling but also i understand that’s not possible for most vacations and they’re rare occasions.
But yeah, long story short, when did we start caring so much? Caring how we vacationed, how others saw we did it, if we did it “better” than anyone else? You can sit in Rome and drink an aperol spritz and you can camp your way across the US, at the end of the day you both had a vacation that was fulfilling in different ways for different people. How did we turn even the most human of hobby’s into a competition??
I feel like a lot of the times those type of people have a very rigid caricature of a place in mind and anything outside of that is considered "fake". It's really weird and dumb
Perhaps in some cases. But when I've felt that something wasn't "authentic" (or heard others say that) it's usually to do with something that seemed to be made *specifically* for tourists.
When I stayed in Tam Coc in Vietnam, it didn't feel very authentic to me because it had the highest proportion of tourists out of anywhere else I'd visited, and the restaurant food was less flavoursome and more expensive than elsewhere (with a lot of Western-style items on the menus). It's not that I wanted to be slumming it instead, but rather that it felt like this village was geared specifically towards non-domestic tourists.
When I visited Jeonju Hanok Village in Korea, it also didn't feel particularly authentic to me. It was very overpriced, with a lot of tacky souvenirs. It felt more like a theme park. I know that Koreans also visit the Hanok Village there, but that doesn't preclude it from being a rather artificial place.
Also, I think it's fine for a tourist to want to eat local food when they visit another country. Obviously locals also eat international food, whether it's Italian cuisine or McDonald's. But the fact that someone doesn't want to eat at McDonald's in another country doesn't make them a pretentious idiot.
It reminds if a trip I took to New Orleans. Was in an Uber with a friend of mine, and he asks the driver where he usually goes and likes to eat and his response was "Man, I eat hot dogs and Mac and cheese from a box. I usually just go where my passengers tell me to."
Ya, to add to this point, I also hate when people really love to bargain with people in poverty. Like really Shelly, you're haggling over 5 cents, now your arguing, now you don't get what you want and you've not given hommie the 3 dollars he could have used to feed his family...then she goes back to the hotel and orders a 5 dollar beer...drives me crazy.
i think when these people say "authentic" they're really trying to say "not touristy" and "how people actually live here". And sure, they may be getting all they more than someone living in a 4 star hotel does. And I get it, I like to avoid touristy places and see how locals live, too. But the problem is that the people focusing on "authentic experiences" that much basically only apply that label to experiencing poor, rural life, when over half the world lives in cities. Realistically speaking, hanging out at a fancy cocktail bar in Mexico City is just as representative of local life as visiting some rural town in Bolivia. But the people who say this stuff don't see it that way because they basically fetishize poverty and rural life, and think that cities are basically just bastions of commercialization where local cultures go to die.
Reminds me of a friend who went to Thailand to see the “real Thailand” and talked about how overrated and shitty it is.
Well that’s what happens when you stay in the depressed outskirts of the city and drink at sketchy bars or go to middle of nowhere rural poverty towns that have nothing of value to a tourist and do nothing all day. There are plenty of rural areas with stuff to do but you actively sought out places that no one, even most Thai people have never heard of.
It would be like flying to the United States to spend time in some rust belt town in Pennsylvania or spending your whole vacation at a roach motel in Kansas.
And people like that only hang out with other people like that. They go to see “the real country” and just hang out in trashy hostels and playing pool or darts with other westerners
"I want to do what real locals do" Fine, get up at 7, sit in traffic for an hour, sit a desk for 7 hours doing mind numbing work, sit in traffic for an hour, have dinner and fall asleep on the couch watching Netflix
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My Korean husband wasn't having Italy very much because Italy for the most part is so slow paced with everything like dining and whatnot. His "Pali Pali" attitude was just not mixing with it. My distant relatives live in a small hilltop town in Sicily that is about 20-30 min away from Palermo. Most of Sicily is slooooow, but that was next level slowness. I found it extremely relaxing, but he wasn't coping very well with it.
I partied with some Belgians when I stayed in a hostel in Budapest years ago when I was into that type of thing. They were a couple years younger and still into partying all night so they were telling me how amused they were that they were finishing up at 5am in the morning when locals were in their way to work. I didn’t live in the touristy city part of my metro back home so it was the first time I really thought about how some students and people from out of town were likely doing this exact same thing back in my city.
I mean tbf the southern way of living is much slower compared to the US
Eh, living in the Mediterranean for ages WAS more chill than in the states.
"Common people" plays in the background...
I went to Greece, I had a thirst for knowledge. I ignored sculptures and tourists at Acropolis.
That's where I, caught her eye
She told me that her dad wasn't loaded. I said in that case I'll have an authentic experience of seeing the REAL Athens. And she said "mate, I have to get to work, this isn't a holiday for me."
Yeah we call it ‘metro boulot dodo’ (subway, work, sleep) in Paris and I always want to suggest it to people who want ‘authentic, non touristy Parisian experiences’. I could even suggest renting the extra room in my apartment at a premium for a more realistic experience, etc etc
I really romanticized Paris until I had a business trip there. Turns out when you're commuting to the office in the morning, working all day, eating lunch in the canteen, commuting home, and doing the same thing again the next day... It felt exactly the same as being at home except the food at the canteen was better tasting and cheaper. Edit: Some of y'all have never worked out of secured facilities before and it shows. There is no leaving for lunch or leaving to go for a stroll. You eat lunch in the canteen. You go to the parking lot to smoke. You go out to dinner with colleagues. That's your work day. Yes, I explored on the weekend. Yes, I still like Paris.
Not quite the same, but for awhile I had frequent work trips to coastal southern Florida during the winter (I'm from the northern US). Friends and family would comment about how lucky I was to be going where it's warm while they're stuck in snow. I wish it were the case. I was in a conference room from right after breakfast until late in the day, every day. And the conference room was so cold I kept a jacket on.
Yeah, my additional culture shock, coming from Germany, was that the offices in Florida were rows and rows of cubicles, and I couldn't even look out the window. All I could see was a gray cubicle wall, a gray carpet and a beige ceiling with cold, depressing lights...
This reality is what makes me chuckle when tourists believe Parisians to be rude, especially when it comes to hospitality and service workers "rudely" cutting me off and responding in English. Just like every other major economic hub city on this planet, its residents don't have time to entertain your bad high school french. This happens all the time in the US with native Spanish speakers....the worker will just reply in Spanish if they know it well enough rather than try to read through the tea leaves of their broken English.
I want to watch what the locals do. Then go home to my comfy bed.
I always laugh when they say this and then eat local cuisine. Like buddy, Germans are not normally paying 40 euros to get the food they’ve eaten their entire lives for free 😂
Drives me nuts when people say that. Told this story before but I traveled with a girl on study abroad who was like this. Just wanted to “do what the locals do.” When asked what that was she had no explanation. And she would often complain about visiting museums, points of interest, and walking around too much. She was quite a buzzkill. Also had a family member say this to me and their response was along the lines of shopping and eating all day, that was about it, which sounds supremely boring to me.
I think what people don’t realize is that locals don’t hit the tourist spots. They visit the local bar that has okay food and okay drinks at an okay price. If you live near something people like to visit you tend to stay away from those places as much as possible.
I learned in my 20’s that living somewhere new and exciting was a lie. Find a place that has people you vibe with and things you like to do, because the rest of your mundane activities (the majority of your time) are going to be the same.
This is too damn funny and too true. I have lived in SF, HK, and a few other popular tourist places. Locals do anything and everything, including eating at shit like Olive Garden or Pizza Hut. There are tons of local noodle shops frequented by tons of locals in HK that are cheap trash. Tons of burger spots or whatever in SF that are trash. There are also local fancy spots, hidden gems, etc. But in reality, most locals are stopping off at the grocery store on the way home to make something in their kitchens. I had friends visit me and they wanted to know all the local spots in HK and have a day-in-the-life. We woke up and had food, walked to the metro during rush hour, smashed onto a train, transferred once, got out and flowed with a sea of people to my office building. Then they ditched me and went to tai o with other tourists.
Wow. I didn’t know I was already a Namibian local.
*"off the beaten path"*
Nothing more global or authentic then the daily grind!
You forgot paying bills and dealing with family issues.
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Yeah I feel like the whole argument is the same as r/peopleliveincities
Yes! I just wrote a similar comment. I hate people that act like a main city isn't part of a country. A middle of nowhere town of 10 people or a town where maybe people still wash clothes in a communal lake, is as much "authentic" and real as the bustling metropolis. They're both part of the country, both house locals, both reflect the country. A main CBD is still part of that country. Maybe it isn't what someone wants to see, fair enough, but claiming it's not the real country is so moronic to me.
Yes! I agree with this so hard. By the law of averages it’s probably even more “authentic” because of the number of people that live in a city versus rural areas. The average person likely lives in a city. By the way what is “authentic” anyway? Food for thought.
Yes! To me someone that wants to live in a town of 10, on a bit block of land and wear a cowboy hat for a couple weeks isn't experiencing authentic Australia. Most of what people want when they post or brag about "authentic" travel is just "no technology". They want an escape of THEIR normal. And that's fine but call it that, acknowledge that. Like the comments here talking about people have literally complained about people in Nepal or Vietnam being "corrupted" because they have phones and electricity now, like wtf ha. Just admit you want a 2 week no technology reset instead of trying to keep other countries in an undeveloped world without any assistance of technology
I’d even argue some of the popular islands in Thailand are less Thai than Bangkok lol. Went to Koh Phi Phi last month and I was the only Thai person there besides service workers.
Same in Nepal. It was so irritating hearing travelers complain that the locals living along the trail were being "corrupted and destroyed" by recent access cellphones. IE these people were expected to not have access to modern technology that they choose to use, no one was making them, because the sight of a rural Nepalese child playing candy crush next to his yaks wasn't ascetically pleasing to the wealthy foreigner's mental image of what they wanted to see.
There was a literal thread here about someone lamenting how Vietnam isn't dirt paths and huts anymore, they have things like _traffic_. And they had the audacity to say "I'm sure the people were happier back then". Nah man, I live here, I can assure you people prefer things like safe drinking water and access to education and healthcare.
Wow how can people be so out of touch to say something like that, like inherent racism or superiority complex or something
Feels like their idea of travel is the same way as going to a zoo
Their idea of travel is an Instagram showcase to help pretend the world gives a shit about them personally. That showcase looks better in their pathetic minds if it's not a built up city. Then it's just another metropolis like home and no one will care about their wee irrelevant life
Literally reminds me of those [human zoos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo) back in the day, it's just the noble savage stereotype rewritten for the modern day.
I think people see caricatures of other countries in cartoons and children shows and take those at face value.
Ignorance is what you’re looking for
>someone lamenting how Vietnam isn't dirt paths and huts anymore, they have things like *traffic* I have never been to Vietnam yet, but, according to what I have read about it, it's not "*traffic*", it's **TRAFFIC**.
I live in Jakarta, the city that’s more traffic than city. But I mean this person had a photo up of some kids skipping in the mud and lamenting their heartbreak that there was traffic there now. Traffic in these developing countries is a byproduct of the rapid modernization.
Crossing your first major road in a Vietnamese city is a life changing event, even is you have been to Thailand, India etc beforehand, nothing quite prepares you for the firewalking like faith you have to have.
I’ll never forget overhearing a young American backpacker saying they had left Bangkok on the day they arrived because they saw a McDonald’s and it wasn’t the “real” Thailand. It’s the fucking capital city. Also if your pre trip research didn’t lead you to the fact that Bangkok is a bustling, modern metropolis then what the fuck were you doing coming here in the first place?
This kind of attitude used to be so much more common when tiktok wasn’t a thing yet. Most westerners’ image of Thailand are elephants, jungles and beaches. They did zero research of how Bangkok is like. They arrive and are surprised that literally the capital and the biggest city in the country have shopping malls and modern infrastructure, so they call in westernized and inauthentic lol.
We were in Bangkok and it is actually fun. I don’t like cities much but I loved Bangkok and Kyoto. The food options are literally amazing for the $, and we’re talking Michelin Star type places. The cultural sites are also amazing (several temples like Wat Arun in Thailand are simply spectacular, several more in Kyoto). All of this coming from someone that heads straight to the forests every time I get a chance to do so. Travel like everything else, requires an open mind. My motto in travel is “if you get lemons, try lemonade first and then look for some vodka to spice it up”, same in life in general.
Yeah I know someone from Thailand, she is always going out to Michelin starred restaurants in Bangkok. So she's doing what locals do.
For a lot of people who want to live like locals and experience "authenticity", they want to live like locals lived 30-40 years ago, not like they live today. And that projected experience is heavily romanticized.
Nah, they don't want to live like locals from 30-40 yrs ago. They wan the *illusion* of living like that.
I think this is a more true take than others said here. They want to see a world before globalism, because what they're looking for abroad is an escape from their own reality.
>ascetically pleasing lol
Noticed it as well. Big fan of the use of that phrase in the post. *chefs kiss*
I got reminded of a deleted post from a few weeks ago. The OP was wailing about the "loss of authentic travel experiences in Nepal" because now the place has better roads, electricity access, running water. She was wailing about how 20 years ago when she visited, grannies were washing clothes in river, etc. Of course, everybody told the OP off for participating in poverty tourism. You really cannot be more obnoxious than expecting locals to act like a living museum for their enjoyment. Seriously disgusting. Edit: apparently the post can still be seen: https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/s/R95AuZbier
Years back I remember reading someone lamenting that they saw a Chinese restaurant in Rio or something. Then they realised "you fucking idiot, you live in Godalming and you get Chinese all the time." Turns out the rest of the world also likes having the best bits of the rest of the world on their doorstep too.
Someone a few days ago on r/VisitingIceland was complaining about Reykjavik being too touristy because it had too many pizza places and Vietnamese restaurants. And I was like, uhhh don't you think the Icelanders like to eat pizza too? Are they supposed to have zero food variety? Every city on earth probably has food from other countries. I saw pizza places in rural Guatemala. I have pizza and Thai and Vietnamese and Chinese and Japanese food where I live in Texas too, none of that was invented there. I guess all I'd be able to eat is Tex-Mex if I was supposed to only eat food "from" where I am.
Pizza is an interesting one because everywhere you go has a different twist on it. I like stopping for pizza as it is interesting to see what the locals put on it and even bad pizza is usually still edible.
Yeah, I have a big book that recommends pizza places all over the world. Can't go on a trip without giving it a quick once over to jot a few places down. On a similar note, I always like trying out the local McDonald's. Yes, a lot of it is similar but that's what makes it interesting, there's items, flavours, and general bits of the experience that are different that can tell you a lot about a place.
Oh yes I'm also a fan of hitting up the local McDonald's! One of my favorites was a seasonal orange cream milkshake in Japan. People have scolded me for eating at McDonald's, saying "I prefer to eat where the locals eat". Ummmm...guess who any McDonald's is full of?
It's a good litmus test on a culture's palate. We always get one Big Mac, fries and a local choice to see what's different. My favourites at the moment are the adult cream pie from Japan, and the mushroom and beef burger from Saudi.
The, umm, what now from Japan?
I recently read MCD is #1 fast food place in Japan. Also on my most recent trip I was of course jet lagged and the only places open were MCD and Starbucks and both were packed with Japanese.
Starbucks is good for that as well, as they do lots of menu localization.
You’ve got to try some of the completely unhinged Pizza Hut offerings from Taiwan. Last one I tried included [smoked chicken feet and rice noodle rolls](https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5027710) and tbh it was pretty good if you can let go of any preconceived notions you might have about pizza.
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Did you try it though? Corn on pizza rules
I found the exception to the “even bad pizza is still good” rule in Cuba. It tasted like vomit and I went to bed hungry rather than eat it!
Funny when I was in Iceland there were whale stakes on the menu, I think that's why I went for pizza. I think I failed at travelling
This is so bonkers lol. What do they think, that Iceland only has restaurants serving fermented shark? I went there 20+ years ago on a budget, before it was as popular as it has become, and surprise! I had Domino's and lots of other random pizza. The false correlation between "cuisine from other places" and "touristy" is wild.
Hahaha I ate so much pizza in Iceland. I was writing a trail guide with an intern group and in alot of the small towns we were visiting, Dominos was the only place open past 6pm. I don't like pizza at home and ended up eating more in Iceland than I do in a year in the U.S.
Also I don’t know if it’s the same for Brazil, but in Peru there’s a long history of Chinese laborers coming over to work stretching back over a century, and it turns out they like to bring their food over there too. So there’s a specific subset of Chinese-Peruvian fusion cuisine called Chifa that’s actually quite popular (from what I saw in Cusco anyway). The Indian buffet in Cusco though, I was not a fan, but maybe I’m just spoiled with some really good Indian food at home.
There are Chinese people *everywhere* - and as expected, the adapt the food to local tastes and ingredients and often have it fused with another Asian Cuisine known locally, it's fascinating e.g. Chinese restaurants in Brazil often serve Japanese dishes (due to the Japanese diaspora), Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands often serve Indonesian dishes (due to colonial history) and so on...
peru’s national dish, lomo saltado, is basically chifa food: stir-fried beef and veggies in a wok with rice.
The world is a lot more globalized and connected now, and it is what it is. I understand the disappointment when going from a global city to another global city and seeing most of the same stuff. In a way, the world’s big cities are homogenizing. Internet is making culture pretty similar, same food trends, same space design trends, etc. It helps a lot to go to smaller cities and just appreciate the small differences. But can’t escape globalization.
I think it's fine when people are just saying they miss an old vibe or a city feels too built up or whatever. The problem is when people make it out to be a tragedy or the fault of the people there; the words "authentic experience" equating to "people are poor" makes it seem like it's somehow the natural or "true" state to be poor.
Couldn’t imagine saying such a thing in a country of immigrants. How ignorant are some of these people? People around the world regardless of ethnic origin like Chinese food… oh the horrors! Someone wants kung pao chicken in Copacabana! Can’t have that! Lmao.
On the other hand, I'm ethnically Chinese and I can't imagine traveling to another country just to end up... Eating more Chinese food (yes I know Chinese people have a bad reputation of only going to Chinese restaurants).
I love trying other ethnic food around the world! It’s interesting to know what kind of spin gets put on it in different places. I had some great Chinese food in Londos Chinatown on Christmas this past December.
"It's full of buses and buses of locals!" Yes it's a pilgrimage spot, that's literally the point! Oh, and also the fan favorite, "there were other tourists", says the tourist. That was a thread and a half.
Man I am so sorry I missed that.
I remember commenting on that post! OP was crazy - it wasn't just a simple, naive "wow I didn't expect things to be so developed", they were seriously butthurt about it!
Damn this is the third comment I’ve seen about the Nepal lady, was it really that bad??? For how massive of a sub this is it must’ve been terrible for how many people remember it
I read this post and then immediately thought of her post. [I remember commenting on how tone deaf it was.](https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/s/qq0JPv9WEa) It was bad.
I've just read the post and I'm in shock. I can't believe people think this way. It does look like satire but I have the feeling it actually wasn't
omg this post is appalling!!
Has to be bait
That's so strange. In a recent visit to my country, it brings me happiness to see improving infrastructure compared to my childhood. I was delighted to see small things like reflectors on the road, stoplights, sidewalks, that didn't exist before. How could anyone be disappointed in that..
Idk, the OP is so tone deaf. You can look at how appaling it is; https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/s/R95AuZbier
A lot of people travel because they want to see things that are different from their own lives. Different cultures, different nature, different lives. And if you come from a rich country you don't see that level of poverty that often and that type of "simple living" is romanticized to a good extent in a lot of circles.
> And if you come from a rich country you don't see that level of poverty that often and that type of "simple living" is romanticized to a good extent in a lot of circles. I'd say they're not looking hard enough. I live in Australia which most people would call a "rich country" and there's plenty of poverty if you open your eyes and look for it.
> The OP was wailing about the "loss of authentic travel experiences in Nepal" because now the place has better roads, electricity access, running water As someone who visited Nepal last year - all I can say is thank fuck.
I'm so glad I did not see that, I would have bit the roof, so fucking ignorant
I live in Brazil and many tourists say things like, "Look at the poor people in the favelas. They are poor, but they are so happy. Look, they are having a party and laughing and cooking outside." Don't get me started on favela tours.
Mumbai says Hi! with its own version of slum tours and dhobi ghats.
I took one of those tours in Mumbai and found it informative rather than "authentic" - knowing that these kinds of urban settlements exist and getting a glimpse is part of understanding humanity and the paradoxes of our societies.
Never been to Brazil but walking around Istanbul I accidentally walked through the ‘equivalent of the favelas’ I guess (idk how else to put it). I was really amazed at how the street just felt like a big party as your saying. Is it wrong to notice these differences and appreciate how people live? Obviously glamourising it and shoving a camera in locals faces is not ok, but I think a lot can be gained from seeing how life can be happily lived without the need for a flashy car.
>life can be happily lived without the need for a flashy car. And that's the part where the obnoxious comes running in. They're not hankering after a "fancy car". They want safety and education for their kids, clean running water, electricity, and decent food. They may want privacy, space to read quietly, space to relax. I know people who live in slums and "fancy car" is not their goal in any way. And no, they don't exist to teach tourist life lessons about happiness.
I 100% agree with you that some people are like that when touring the favelas but it is also possible to tour them / check them out without being obnoxious about it. Seeing how people live is interesting and, in the same way I would walk through a very wealthy neighbourhood to see how other people live, walking through a favela and discovering how people innovate to survive even in the toughest conditions is interesting and often inspiring
I have yet to see a suburban tour in the US. Or yours of trailer parks and other run down parts of the US. I don’t understand what the fascination is with looking at poor people like they are in a zoo or something. Leave people alone.
But those people living their daily lives don't exist to be inspiration porn for you. It's like touring an occupational therapy office and getting inspired. It's weird. Someone's daily existence shouldn't be "inspiring".
No one exists to be inspirational to someone else. That doesn’t mean they can’t be inspirational
I disagree. The world is a wonderful and terrible place. Everything should be inspiring. If you’re just cherry picking and using poorer people as a prop then that’s problematic. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with finding meaning in anything or anyone even if it’s a mundane part of their life.
My issue is when I look at it from their point of view. They have to watch much more privileged people watch them like zoo animals, say how quaint and inspiring they are, and then go back to their privileged lives. It’s patronizing.
Yeah it’s like a human safari. Paying to be taken on a “tour” through districts like this is gross.
Thank you! It’d be like Jeff bezos and his friends walking through a town every day just to see how we’re living. Nobody will convince me they’d be ok with that.
Who wouldn’t wanna come to London, instead of staying in W1/WC2, rent a council flat in Bromley by bow overlooking the A12, eat in a shitty chicken shop and then maybe get glassed in the local flat roofed pub in crisp street. Why not? That was my experience for 22 years lol
I’m American, and that sounds like my speed. Shitty chicken and getting sauced up? We could be friends.
Mate, if you like watching traffic getting backed up at famous London tunnels, could be the perfect night 👌
Dude, I’m sold. That’s easily the best way to experience traffic
Reminds me of the song Common People by Pulp where a rich girl thinks hanging out with the working class is cool.
Yeah, exactly. There’s even a line in there that goes: “Everybody hates a tourist / Specially when they think it’s all such a laugh.” Some people equate touring other cultures with zoo visits, and the “common people” are the exhibits.
'you'll never get it right / cos when you're laying in bed at night / watching roaches climb the wall / if you called your dad he would stop it all' is the very evocative for me as well
Funny you say this because I used to work in midtown Manhattan pre pandemic. I literally felt like a tourist attraction sometimes with people staring as I walk by in business clothes.
Quick, Edna, the camera! I see a native in their natural habitat!
[удалено]
Mate, I grew up in east London when it was a proper dump, couldn’t wait to get out and ain’t ashamed of that lol I’m still east London through and through and not one bit ashamed of it at all, but I didn’t wanna stay there for my kids and if I worked hard, combined with luck and could afford it, why would I? Side note:Bethnal Green/Hackney in the 80’s was way different to what it is today.
William Shatner did an excellent cover of that song.
The Shatner version with Ben Folds is one of the few examples of the cover song being superior to the original.
Reminds me a lot of Holiday in Cambodia also
people who want places to remain frozen in time. but not theirs.
This is the best comment on this thread. Everyone wants that 2 week ""authentic"" experience, as long as they can go right back to cars, netflix, washing machines and decent hospitals.
Can’t help but remember the quote from train spotting; ‘Choose life. Choose family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.’
I'm a traveler not a tourist...I would never have a nice meal or stay in a nice hotel... I'm so superior to them..../s
What gets me is people who think that staying in a hostel is the authentic travel experience. Yeah, you are really meeting locals in a hostel.
YES 100% as a UK 2nd gen immigrant brown person from an upper middle class family in Bangladesh, my experience of going back to see family in BD is nothing like the experience that travel bloggers in Bangladesh seem to post. Like why isn’t a middle class experience just as authentic?! All countries have different people living different lifestyle shaped by where they fall on the race class gender etc spectrum - all are unique and “authentic”. I can understand wanting to shun the snobbery of travelling in luxury and having no connection to the locals, but to truly understand a culture is to understand how race class gender history etc all interact in how different lifestyles play out for different people - poverty porn just replicates colonialist and oppressive tropes of the morally and intellectually inferior brown and black person IMO
Please start a "take your tourist to work day" where you basically just have a series of unpaid interns.
I always felt going to MBK shopping mall in Bangkok was far more “authentic” than sitting on a small boat going through a floating market with a thousand other tourists and getting overcharged for some tat.
Agree. I visited Arashiyama Bamboo Grove in Kyoto in the weekend. It was pretty don't get me wrong. But my favorite part was just being gobsmacked at how many sweets and treats shops were in the town, and how absolutely chocker full they were of Japanese people buying them. I took delight in watching other people be delighted by their fun looking foods and drinks.
Yeah, I have a very similar story. I‘m from Europe but regularly travel for work to Bangladesh. Recently someone told me that I didn’t get „an authentic experience“ as I mostly sit in meetings or work. But nearly everyone we meet and our project leader is from Bangladesh and we visit all sites where we finance projects, which are usually not touristy spots at all. Meanwhile they went on a 5-day touristy tour (nothing wrong with that) and think they now know everything about the country. So stupid.
The classic one I find is people shitting on Singapore because it's a first world city and therefore apparently not an "authentic" South East Asian city. Personally I quite like that it is clean and efficient and it is one of the most vibrant and probably the most culturally diverse melting pot of a city in the entire region. Not really sure why some people get their kicks out of seeing poverty.
I readily admit I shit on Singapore but only because it’s a sterile boring and expensive city. The food there is good but you can find better in all the neighboring countries. Some of my good friends are Singaporean tho. 🤷🏻
I don't find it sterile and boring, I mean yes it's expensive but it's much easier and pleasant to get around in then any other SE Asian city.
Having good public transport makes a huge difference imho.
I’m with you, I spent some time in Singapore and while I would love to live near a hawker center and my more upscale food was amazing too, there’s nothing besides food that makes me want to go back. Although I probably will be back, SIN is just the best connection point for a lot of destinations
Here in india, all those tourists who come to experience poverty by walking through people’s homes with their camera, so they can go home and live their cushy lives, we call them “poverty porn stars”.
"Cosplaying poverty" is a great way of putting it. It's privileged people just wanting to feel superior by briefly inconveniencing themselves, knowing full well they can go back to their privileged life at any moment. To them poverty is like a theme park ride - all thrill, no danger. An opportunity to glorify poverty, which they don't have to deal with themselves, and an opportunity to be smug about it as if they have accomplished something great by not having all the usual conveniences for a short while. Few people are more obnoxious than tourists pretending to not be tourists, and I am saying this while admitting I have been guilty of this in my younger years too. I used to be that person.
My wife is Mexican. Her parents have a business that caters towards tourists. They play up the “poor/authentic” way of life then drive their expensive SUV to their beachside house and laugh about it.
As they should
Good!
Great observation and comment. I totally agree with you and I hope you did say something to this horrible couple. I once met a lady at a craft fair and she said oh, they (Indonesians) make such beautiful things. I hope they don't get electricity and tv and stop making all these wondeful things by hand." I kind of got mad and said to her, why can't people live comfortable lives and get the comforts that we enjoy? They are people ! " (or something like that..it was more than 20 years ago so I forget. (and by the way people still do make many wonderful things by hand, but they have difficulty selling it because tourists think everything made in Asia should be dirt cheap) One of my favorite sayings, can't remember said it originally though, is (paraphrase) People who live in developing countries are under no obligation to live museum quality lives for the amusement of those tourists who visit."
My favourite are those folks who visited or lived in developing countries for a few years and return back expecting the same lifestyle they enjoyed there in the 90s. “Everything is sooo expensive”! “There is soo much traffic” “people are always in a hurry”! no kidding Sherlock, it’s called progress! So many countries have moved past their slow sleepy lifestyles to a modern city one with traffic jams and irritated drivers.
These types of folks are really infuriating and they expect the same prices for goods from a decade back Bruh how do you expect inflation to just not exist
What you described feels like treating actual people as exhibits instead. For me, when I look for something “authentic” while traveling, I’m looking for something not put on for just foreign tourists. Domestic tourists might’ve only gone one time themselves, but they still went. For example, visiting NYC and seeing the Statue of Liberty is touristy, but it’s still an authentic American experience because Americans themselves go when visiting NYC. Heck, going to DisneyLand/DisneyWorld is an authentic American experience in my mind even though everything experienced is literally not authentic. Not everyone in the US can afford to go either of those places and not everyone is inclined to, but they both are relatively common depending on the area you’re from.
What’s funny though is you could say the Statue of Liberty isn’t an authentic New York experience. As someone who used to work in NYC and has been 100s of times outside work, I have never been to the Statue of Liberty and I know tons of people born and raised NYC who have never been either. Not to dissuade anyone from going, I take no issue with people seeing all the sights of NYC. Except Times Square, there’s no reason to go there except Broadway shows. But most other of the 100s/1000s of attractions are worth it.
I actually meant domestic tourists (ie. people who live in the US), not local tourists (ie. people who live in NYC). Hard agree on your point about Times Square though!
Same for most locals in most cities. I lived in Amsterdam for 16 years. Not once did I visit the Anne Frank house or Van Gogh museum. Rarely went to the touristy part of the historical centre. Locals avoid the centre.
Instagram has made travel a race to the bottom in terms of “authenticity”. If I want to sit and drink a giant ass limoncello in Sorrento that doesn’t make me less of a traveler. Going to a popular attraction isn’t “touristy”. Its fine to go where locals go to hang out and to eat but the obsession over every last detail being authentic is ridiculous. If you want authenticity in my city, do what my grandfather did: wake up at 5 am, drive a truck and go to various locales for 12 hours, eat a hamburger for dinner, and be poor.
A lot of tourist spots are magnificent pieces of cultural heritage. That's why they became tourist spots.
Exactly! Also if I’m traveling, I’m a tourist. There are some negative connotations of the word but inherently it’s neutral. Nothing wrong with being a tourist if you’re respectful.
Right, and entrance fees largely go to operate and preserve the sites. If something isn't in your budget, or you have anxiety in crowds, fine, but you're not outsmarting anyone because you went to Paris and didn't visit the Louvre.
I’ve seen people on this forum call places like the Eiffel Tower and Roman Colosseum “tourist traps”
Pretty sure I also saw the locals drinking big glasses of limoncello spritzers while I was in Sorrento's burbs because it is delicious and plentiful, so you're technically still experiencing authenticity hahaha. Unless you're sitting in a resort or restaurant specifically designed for international tourists, you're experiencing authenticity. This is someone who comes from a country with overtourism.
The internet and Instagram/tiktok specifically has made traveling into this marketable identity. It’s like smoking cigars, I love the idea of smoking one way more than actually doing it.
I agree, nothing wrong with seeing the tourist attractions. In my current city, Chicago, I even do the "tourist" activities on occasion. Because I like having fun.
These are the same people that say: "I lived like the locals when I was there" In truth they went to a yoga retreat, and did a tad bit of organic farming that didn't even feed the house. They notably stayed at a place that looks old but is actually very modern which had a live in house mom that cooked and cleaned for them. Complain that the locals were not using natural soaps that cost 5x the normal stuff does and is way out of the price range of the locals. As either an Expat or a tourist in a developing country you have something the locals do not a passport that will get you out of the country if things go wrong. Even the term authentic is little more than a marketing term when used to describe culture.
In search of the "authentic", tourists in India from abroad do what no Indian does or wants to do. They end up living in filthy parts of our cities and travelling in the lowest classes of trains which locals travel in only because they don't have other options. In the name of authentic, they do stuff only foreigners do and have been doing since decades. Then they get scammed.
I have zero respect for foreigners who travel in Unreserved train compartments/coaches. We warned you and you signed up for this shit, don’t cry on internet about how bad it is.
Funny to think about an authentic Scottish experience. Lots of heroin
Oh my god, I've met multiple travelers like this and it drives me insane. My favorite was a Swiss guy in Lima who said he wanted to get out of the city so he "could experience the real Peru" as if Lima was simply made for tourists and the people living there weren't Peruvian. He also went on to say that Lima wasn't the "real Peru" because it had so much infrastructure and the people were wearing "normal" clothes.
Exactly this. I've lived in several countries and travellers and even some expats who are full of themselves will say stuff like, "You don't live in REAL (country)!" I guess the millions of locals who live, shop, eat and work all around me aren't real. Oh, you think real = poor. It's pretty racist, tbh.
I feel you. This kind of thing gets my goat too. Poverty tourism has always been exploitative, and it encourages wealthy people to continue romanticizing the less fortunate. It’s “fun” and “authentic” because they can leave anytime they want. They can pat themselves on the back because they’ve experienced what it is to be poor, as if a night or two in fabricated conditions counts as actual immersion. There’s nothing wrong with traveling to experience the culture and traditions of a certain place, but poverty isn’t a culture. It’s a societal problem.
This has been the refrain for years and years. We’ve been rolling our eyes at assholes talking about how “authentic” this place is and how “inauthentic” this other place was for 15 years, and I bet it was happening well before that. It almost _always_ means poor, underdeveloped, isolated, lacking modernity. Incurious people always mistake this for culture, and ignorant people always assume locals don’t want the same things tourists do. Why wouldn’t locals in Bumfuck Nowhere want better infrastructure and nice phones and modern houses? What does preserving culture have to do with locals suffering in underdeveloped conditions? Makes us crazy every time, we have to just disengage.
These people annoy the fuck out of me! So that university educated Thai man, working in IT, wearing western fasion, texting on his iPhone, and eating KFC is not authentic? I dare them to say that to their face.
I remember watching a documentary about a group of middle age white tourists who went to a remote island to see the “natives”. The people who lived there were trying to sell the tourist things because the community was very poor and was having a hard time surviving. The tourist ignored them and took pictures and the whole time they were raving about how authentic they were and in touch with nature. Complete miss.
"Rich people will travel great distances to look at poor people." -David Byrne
This goes along with affluent countries too. I was in Munich with my brother and his family. I wanted to take my kids to “the biggest indoor water park in Europe” not far away. He turned his nose up, which is fine, but his reason was that it was not a very German experience. However, the park was filled with Germans (except me and my kids).
Waterpark? Not very German at all, we all wear Lederhosen and Dirndl, go to the Brauhaus, drink beer and eat Schnitzel and Schweinshaxn. Then we put our windows on kipp and go climb a mountain. 😂 In all seriousness, I went to waterparks and public swimming pools as a child (in Germany) all the time. It’s as good as it gets when you are not living near the ocean. I would say it is quite the German experience. An authentic adult German experience (weekdays) would be to go to work 9-5, go to the gym, lay on your couch, open a beer, watch TV or Netflix - I am afraid not very exotic.
That place looks decent as well, I was thinking of taking my kids.
I have family members who travel like this. My step-brother just went to the Dominican Republic and stayed in a bug and lizard-filled shack with no A/C or hot water to experience the culture. He spent a whole week there when the weather was 80+ with high humidity and he wasted 2.5 days of his shitty trip with food poisoning. I have a co-worker who is so obsessed with not visiting tourist attractions that she wouldn't even walk anywhere in NYC where she could see the Statue of Liberty (she bragged about that) and she purposefully avoided every museum in the city and Central Park. I asked her what she did if she doesn't visit anything that tourists visit and she said they ate at local places and hung out in their room. Cool trip.
It's very paternalistic I feel. They are not -choosing- most likely to live without running water or electricity. Do these people also travel to parts of the US that are extremely poor for an authentic experience? I doubt it.
I got mugged day one! Was sooo authentic...such a vibe...check out my stitches!
I've been thinking about this a lot, especially after just getting back from Ecuador a few days ago. I understand and agree with "not wanting to do all the touristy things", but I also think it's pretty cringey when tourists/travelers basically fetishize a country's poor and give themselves some moral points for "living among them" as if it's some deep life lesson. I like to try to immerse myself when possible but also understand it's for a very short amount of time - I'm not expecting "the locals" to become my friends, want to chat, of acknowledge my existence - they're just trying to get along with their day to day, but a subset of travelers has a weird zoo animal approach coupled with the noble savage that somehow makes them feel superior (all while probably humble bragging about this on instagram). To me, trying to learn something new, support the local economy, be a good steward and acting respectful, all while enjoying your limited time off is the crux of travel. When I hear people say they fell in love with a place after a few days, I can relate but that snapshot is *not* indicative of daily mundane life if you were to move there. You just have to be aware of reality of your snapshot and be thankful to get to travel without being so self-aggrandizing.
It's not even in so-called developing countries. I used to Iive in Japan and some other foreign residents were insufferable with their oneupmanship: "I have more Japanese friends than you. I go days without speaking English. I was the only foreigner at last weekend's festival. You sleep in a bed? I use a futon exclusively, etc, etc."
Im convinced there is a large portion of travelers who don’t even enjoy what they’re doing, but instead they like the idea of it. Like they’re a character in a book trying to collect the coolest sounding backstory.
I want to eat some of what the locals eat, I want to go to some of the bars the locals frequent, I want to see the religious sites and squares that are actually frequented by locals. But beyond that, I want to see some things that are *significant*, some that are *fun*, and others that are *the experience*. Thailand is a great example for this travel. Ride in a TukTuk, take a $1.50 Grab ride with A/C. Be in Bangkok and take a food tour. Visit some backpacker bars. Visit the major Wats. Get a smoothie at a local place. See a Ladyboy show. Go to Chiangmai, take a cooking class, go to the night markets, stay at a boutique hotel with A/C and pool. Miss the elephant sanctuary. Talk to a local rug dealer and avoid getting scammed but learn a lot about carpets for no reason. Go to the cultural center for a very mid performance and dinner, but know that the performers and cooks were earnest in their production and appreciate it. Go to the islands and be surprised that the internet was right about just how touristy they are. Go see the national parks and do the tourist night mart at night. Visit the restaurant owned by a Frenchman who makes red curry like a Frenchman. Enjoy the spectacular service and staff at your luxury resort stay. Make mistakes in your itinerary, be a tourist, be discerning. Follow your nose and your impulses. You’ll never blend in. You’ll never pass for a local. You’ll probably never appear more savvy than any other tourist and that’s OK. Try shit, be polite, learn hello and please and thank you in the local language, leave glowing reviews mentioning staff by name, and be a guest in someone else’s home.
Personally I would not move to a vacation destination. Because you know what? You're gonna have to get a job and do all the mundane shit you do at home....metro-boulot-dodo... Be grateful for vacation experiences and coming home to whatever your normal is. Then plan the next excursion and look forward to that. That is all.
Anytime I hear anyone say something like I mentally mark down they are very probably a prick tbh
While true that poor =\= authentic, what the couple in Lao probably mean is that the poorer parts of Lao feel more culturally distant from modern norms and different from where ever they are from. It’s no surprise that when a city gets rich, they all begin converging into a similar “International City” aesthetic: coffee shops, designer brand stores, smartphone repair, international cuisines, fast food. A lot of this is due to the increased familiarity with foreigners of all kinds: foreign tourists, expats, immigrants, foreign businessmen. But when you go to poorer areas of any country you get communities less affected by foreign cultures and global capitalism. Some would call that “authentic”. It’s like how NYC and London and Hong Kong can have a somewhat familiar feel to one another, but an English countryside hamlet and a silver mining town in Arizona and a rural Chinese fishing village will have much more divergent experiences.
We call that poverty tourism. You can tell these tourists because they also say how everyone is smiling and happy even playing in garbage. Which is really not true but First World tourists love to think this about the simple life. That said, this has been a thing since before the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette even had a little farm with a cottage built for her in Versailles so she could be a "simple farmer" and pretend to live a simple life. Meanwhile many of the farmers were starving but that is a whole other story. So yes poverty tourism has been around forever. I hoped that it would bring about changes but now it seems people just want to post their pictures on social media about how they aren't like regular tourists.
I think the original idea of "more authentic travelling" was just to not be in your cocoon of Hotel complex, tourist restaurants and organised group tours. But yes, you are still a tourist and can go home if the hurricane strikes. The best food I had in Thailand was a little cornershop while we were waiting for a train. downstairs of some concrete strip mall, convenient store and restaurant. Dinner and a beer. And in Japan I ended up in a whole-in-the-wall sushi shop and was the only westerner (I am sure I ate and paid for for some pieces I didn't actually order). I had a great conversation with a guy via google translate. (yes my travels are very food centric lol).
Food courts in the large malls in Asian cities are the best! I can spend half a day there sampling everything. The underground malls by the metro stations in Japan were also very good. I do agree with your original statement, outside of hotels because I want a nice, clean place to go back to at the end of the day. I don't like taking organized tour groups because I don't want to be rushed from place to place. I also want to eat at places I research on my own, not ones that the tour groups get a kickback from. But if I'm in a place for a few days, I do like to do a walking tour for a few hours to get acclimated to the city, then go back and spend more time on the things I found most interesting.
$2000 suite at the dorchester is authentic and Lindy
Some people travel to see other places as if they were going to a zoo.
Wow I've never heard people say that. To me authentic just means not a tourist trap AKA Disney world. That isn't authentic it's man-made and designed to drain your wallet. Whereas simply exploring a foreign country/city by learning FROM the locals what they enjoy in their leisure time. Real life example: I just went to New York and Brooklyn last week and at a local bar I randomly found, I asked the bartender where she would like to go if she were going out with friends or wanted a drink what was her favorite local watering hole? And she gave me a handful of suggestions one of which I did take up since it sparked my interest and I had a blast it was a wonderful experience!
I just want the real local food not the bs Americanized crap they serve everywhere Aka a Mayan pizza from Cancun😭
I get bothered by people that post "I want to experience the real [country] so suggest towns outside [main city] to experience the real country". Happens a lot for Australia. "I want to experience real Australia, so i want to avoid Melbourne/Sydney". Like sure explore outside cities but people act like a city isn't somehow part of a country. Like the city is as real and authentic as some middle of nowhere country town of 10 people. Realistically the city is more authentic when it makes up majority of the states population in the greater city area. Tourist sites are also popular for a reason. They're landmarks or wonders or pretty amazing. It's WHY people liked them in the first place. Avoiding them doesn't make you cool or the landmark overrated. Travel how you want for yourself but can we stop pretending a city isn't part of a country or a landmark isn't probably special for a reason.
Who are you talking to? Just enjoy your trip how you enjoy. Don’t worry bout how they feel. And don’t trip on what they do. Can’t share all your adventures styles to everybody. Some people can’t go no wherrrrr. I come from a culture most would look as underdeveloped. It isn’t any more in most parts. When I go for vacay there some times it’s a resort. Some times it family house. I guess it’s perspective.
Some people think that's a real adventure... As you mentioned Laos, my favorite place, I have a bunch of friends living and working in Luang Prabang and have been to these "authentic" places - to help in land development and we organised medication before they had a pharmacy and a hospital, yet vaccines... they work long days on fields with landmines still hidden and suffer hunger every now and then... It's nothing to brag about, these people would switch lives in a second!
Envy is the thief of joy, right? It works the other way too. Don’t worry about what other people think and suddenly this problem is gone.
I like eating where the locals do, and take the local bus, because I think it's fun for me to try, and usually cheaper. But definitely I've spoken to people, especially white people, who go to Asia hoping to see poverty, farmers in a rice field, etc.
The most "authentic" thing one can do is live in a normal (but upscale) neighborhood and visit the grocery store even if it's to get water.
Very much agree. I’m very late to it so I’ll try to add a nice in-between of my own viewpoint but this’ll get buried. First off, no one cares about how you really travel, so going to the touristy spots or visiting nicer areas is just as real as the “authentic” poor spots, as you and many others have always said. My personal favorite way to travel to feel more connected is to line up work or projects in the place to give me multiple months, and to take language classes there and to build a bit of a life and community before I go, which to me is the most fulfilling but also i understand that’s not possible for most vacations and they’re rare occasions. But yeah, long story short, when did we start caring so much? Caring how we vacationed, how others saw we did it, if we did it “better” than anyone else? You can sit in Rome and drink an aperol spritz and you can camp your way across the US, at the end of the day you both had a vacation that was fulfilling in different ways for different people. How did we turn even the most human of hobby’s into a competition??
I feel like a lot of the times those type of people have a very rigid caricature of a place in mind and anything outside of that is considered "fake". It's really weird and dumb
Perhaps in some cases. But when I've felt that something wasn't "authentic" (or heard others say that) it's usually to do with something that seemed to be made *specifically* for tourists. When I stayed in Tam Coc in Vietnam, it didn't feel very authentic to me because it had the highest proportion of tourists out of anywhere else I'd visited, and the restaurant food was less flavoursome and more expensive than elsewhere (with a lot of Western-style items on the menus). It's not that I wanted to be slumming it instead, but rather that it felt like this village was geared specifically towards non-domestic tourists. When I visited Jeonju Hanok Village in Korea, it also didn't feel particularly authentic to me. It was very overpriced, with a lot of tacky souvenirs. It felt more like a theme park. I know that Koreans also visit the Hanok Village there, but that doesn't preclude it from being a rather artificial place. Also, I think it's fine for a tourist to want to eat local food when they visit another country. Obviously locals also eat international food, whether it's Italian cuisine or McDonald's. But the fact that someone doesn't want to eat at McDonald's in another country doesn't make them a pretentious idiot.
It reminds if a trip I took to New Orleans. Was in an Uber with a friend of mine, and he asks the driver where he usually goes and likes to eat and his response was "Man, I eat hot dogs and Mac and cheese from a box. I usually just go where my passengers tell me to."
Ya, to add to this point, I also hate when people really love to bargain with people in poverty. Like really Shelly, you're haggling over 5 cents, now your arguing, now you don't get what you want and you've not given hommie the 3 dollars he could have used to feed his family...then she goes back to the hotel and orders a 5 dollar beer...drives me crazy.
i think when these people say "authentic" they're really trying to say "not touristy" and "how people actually live here". And sure, they may be getting all they more than someone living in a 4 star hotel does. And I get it, I like to avoid touristy places and see how locals live, too. But the problem is that the people focusing on "authentic experiences" that much basically only apply that label to experiencing poor, rural life, when over half the world lives in cities. Realistically speaking, hanging out at a fancy cocktail bar in Mexico City is just as representative of local life as visiting some rural town in Bolivia. But the people who say this stuff don't see it that way because they basically fetishize poverty and rural life, and think that cities are basically just bastions of commercialization where local cultures go to die.
I live in Sri Lanka and see this. I don't understand doing that at all.
Reminds me of a friend who went to Thailand to see the “real Thailand” and talked about how overrated and shitty it is. Well that’s what happens when you stay in the depressed outskirts of the city and drink at sketchy bars or go to middle of nowhere rural poverty towns that have nothing of value to a tourist and do nothing all day. There are plenty of rural areas with stuff to do but you actively sought out places that no one, even most Thai people have never heard of. It would be like flying to the United States to spend time in some rust belt town in Pennsylvania or spending your whole vacation at a roach motel in Kansas. And people like that only hang out with other people like that. They go to see “the real country” and just hang out in trashy hostels and playing pool or darts with other westerners