Maya Angelou could not have been more correct -- though we all come from different places, we still have many things in common. During my trip to the Dominican Republic I was fortunate enough to not only interact with the locals but also to befriend them. Despite a language barrier and cultural differences, we managed to communicate and laugh together, just as Maya Angelou described.
Here are some pictures of the friends I was fortunate enough to make in the Dominican Republic:
(Pictures by Sapna Patel)
My opinion stems from more than just one trip though. This summer I was also fortunate enough to travel to Fiji. I stayed in Suva for three days and lived with locals. The next three days I stayed at a resort in Nadi where the only locals to be found were the ones who worked at the resort. Though it was a beautiful place, I saw more Americans and Australians than I did Fijians.
Though resorts are a beautiful getaway, they keep you from making important connections with the locals. They place you in an ideal world away from the reality and history of the country that you're visiting.
The travel industry plays a large part in the way people view travel. The industry paints an ideal picture of the developing countries in order to generate revenue from tourism. And it works. People travel to developing countries for the picturesque scenery which has simply been created for foreigners.
But in the end, what is the point of traveling all the way to a foreign country just to hang out with other Americans?
People don't want to learn about the country--they just want to get away from theirs. What they don't realize is if they took the time to really understand a country and its hardships, then maybe they would begin to understand and appreciate their own country better. I complain about Americans all the time and about America policy in general. But after the DR with you and the other volunteers and hearing about how corrupt the Dominican elections are, well, I still know our system isn't perfect--but it is better off than theirs is right now. I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you learn about another persons home, you also learn a lot about yours. To make it fair, I also learned in the DR that we need to take a chill pill and JUST RELAX sometimes. I'm still struggling with that though!
ReplyDeleteThere is no point, in my opinion. I think a lot of tourists don't realize that travelling to a foreign country and staying in a resort is exactly what you describe it to be--a waste of time and money. People of developed nations often take their circumstances for granted and are quite ignorant of the conditions that people in developing nations live under. As someone who used to live in Venezuela, I find it fascinating when I walk into a travel agency and Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela is advertised as a hot tourist destination. This is an idealized image of a country that experience will only prove to be nothing like the carefully selected photos of pristine aquatic landscapes framed on agency walls. As a customer, what I don't see hanging on the walls is the polluted, poverty-poverty stricken, war-torn landscape that sits just next to those pristine waters. The only way to separate the two realities is to isolate oneself in a beach resort with a view of only the "pretty" stuff.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I feel as if I have gone off on a tangent, however. To answer your question most directly, I believe what I am trying to say is that it is not that tourists choose to travel abroad only to stay in a very similar environment to their home country, but that the travel industry has guided customers' accommodation decisions to best cater to their comfort zones. This is likely out of fear of placing a customer in an uncomfortable position that can lead to bad business in the future. As an avid traveler, my advice is to jump out of your comfort zone, and the best approach to doing so is to contact a travel agency abroad. Just my two cents...
i feel like the industry definitely plays a part in the way that people travel. Staying in a resort is the way some people prefer to travel while other people want to be thrown in to a foreign place and really travel the place. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteI think that staying in a resort is the "safe" route for many americans. We hear so many horror stories of abductions, shootings and riots in foreign countries that out idea of travel is demented. We are so paranoid as a country that we want to live as an american when we are not in america. Because americans spend so much money on travel and we being a lot of commerce to foreign countries, these countries want to accommodate Americans and as a result we have been labeled "tourists," because of the fact that we are so oblivious to our surroundings and the culture that we are missing out on.
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