Tourism in Developing Countries

Personally, I'm not hugely keen on the "tourist Meccas", such as Thailand, Bali, and so on: I've been to Thailand, and while I enjoyed myself, and my trip definitely met my requirement of "being warmer than the 1 degree average temperature with no heating that I had to deal with in China", I found the trip somewhat lacking in general, due to the large number of tourists everywhere. Now, I'm certainly not begrudging the Thai people their tourist industry, and Thailand does certainly have natural beauty and a culture that is worth exploring as a tourist, however when a country is as devoted to tourism as Thailand is, I see two problems.

First of all, when such a large amount of your cultural traditions become intertwined with the tourism industry, it's very easy for the traditions to (at least to an outside observer) appear to be mainly for show. At least in Thailand it's obvious that the people there still embrace much of their traditional culture in their daily lives - I loved seeing people pray at Buddhist shrines, and seeing Elephants walking down the street doing the shopping. Too much commercialisation of a culture, however, serves only to turn those commercialised aspects into a caricature of their former selves. The culture ends up being known and recognised not for its philosophy and literature, but rather for consumer-friendly dances and songs. Now, I was born and raised in a dominant culture, so I can only imagine how those from less dominant cultures must feel, however it seems to me that it would be in many ways demoralising to those from developing, tourist-industry oriented countries to see their remaining culture being seen as a sideshow to those from richer nations who come to visit at their leisure. It's a question that I really should ask some of the locals next time I go to a tourist resort region.

On the Importance of Travelling Companions

As I mentioned in my first post, this summer I went to North Korea. Once I had decided to go, I searched the internet to see which tours were available, searching in both English (my native language, and thus the "easy" option) and Chinese (which I also speak well enough to keep up with my university studies in Chinese). I very quickly found some English-language tours that organised tours that left from Beijing, but with a whopping price tag of $3000. Well, forget that, I thought. I immediately turned my attention to the Chinese-language tours leaving from Dandong, the Chinese border city near North Korea. After contacting one of the companies, I discovered that the price for an Australian citizen to visit North Korea during the Arirang games was 5600RMB - nearly twice the price than that for Chinese citizens, but a 70% discount when compared to the English language tours. Plus, the tour left from Dandong, rather than Beijing, which meant less time in places that I've already visited, and more time in the DPRK. I was sold.

What I wasn't counting on when I chose the Chinese tour was the fact that it gave me a very different set of people to travel with when compared to the English-language tour. Apart from a pair of Hong Kongese, a lone Singaporean and myself, the rest of our group of 30-odd people was from mainland China, and throughout the tour, none of them were afraid to share their opinion on what they saw with the world, and thus give me a new insight into the country.