Ah, travelling. Something so many of us want to do but can’t afford to. But regardless of whether you have booked your flights to your dream destination or are currently fantasising through your TikTok feed, buckle up. Because today I want to rant about the difference between travelling and sightseeing. By the end of this piece, you will hopefully be more educated and less likely to waste your time and money overseas.
Traveling in my view should be an enlightening experience. Having travelled, you should feel informed, wiser, and a little more amazed by the complex world we live in. In other words, travelling should be an excuse to broaden your horizons. When you see something, you question why it is the way it is. When you hear something, you seek to better understand the context behind it. Fundamentally, travelling is an opportunity to widen our worldview and challenge our baseline assumptions and ways of thinking. Everything we hear, see, smell, eat, and feel becomes something new to explore. Anyone who travels in this way becomes more open-minded and cosmopolitan.
In contrast, sightseeing in my view is what many of us mistake for travelling. It often involves visiting new places, but is primarily focused on simple viewing. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with sightseeing. Sometimes you just want to enjoy yourself and observe. But sightseeing and travelling need to go hand in hand. When they don’t, you risk doing what I like to call “bad sightseeing”. Examples of bad sightseeing include disrespecting local norms, not making an effort to try new things, and constantly complaining about how underdeveloped a country is because you can’t use a squat toilets. In its extreme form, bad sightseeing can be going to impoverished areas and labelling an entire nation and people as filthy. Or labelling a place as backward because it doesn’t align with your personal moral belief system. More often than not, this type of treatment is unfortunately usually reserved for third-world countries.
Of course, we are all guilty of sightseeing, and no one can be expected to become an expert on a place before they plan to visit. But that’s not what I’m getting at. There is nothing wrong with not knowing, and there is nothing wrong with stepping foot in an unfamiliar culture for the first time. The problem is mindset. There is a difference between going to a new place ready to take things in and going to a place and using one’s ignorance to foster prejudices and assumptions. Travelling should be a chance to become a wiser person, not an opportunity to disregard everything you find different. Anyways, regardless of what I think, I hope my rant has given you something to reflect on. While we’re all guilty of ignorance, if you go to a new place with a leaners mindset, you can’t go wrong. Safe travels.
