中文 (香港)
In a world where a plane ticket can come as cheap as a high street shopping spree, it seems that anyone can go anywhere if they just decide they would. The Egyptians considered having a lavish palace with servants attending to them as a life rightly lived, but to us modern human it seems that being widely travel might be the equivalent to having servants attending to us.
Combine this urge with digitalisation, internet and social media that rules almost everybody’s life, it seems that sometimes travel can be turned into a boosting competition. Who has been to where and what they have done. People trying to out-travel one another or brag of some insightful local knowledge the other doesn’t know.
So why did I start a travel blog?
I started a travel blog not because I wanted to brag about my travels, but as a mean to provide information and keep a personal log of the places I have been for recommendation to my friends and for me to look back on. I have come across travel blogs that made me fall in love with places, provide invaluable information and stunning photography, but I also come across posts that are frivolous, without a point and completely void of even the basic information .Labels such as travellers vs tourists are often exploited, so are experiences and adventures that are branded as living like a local, and these are all things that I found superficial and meaningless.
Traveller or Tourists? It doesn’t matter
The truth is we can give as many meanings to these words as we want and we will never reach a consensus or even give them real value. While I don’t adorn the behaviour of people going into a country and completely disregard their customs and social norms, if the visitors want to take photos of the landmark and eat at the well advertise restaurants, I don’t see why we should judge them. There are people who had argued that solo travel is the way to go, and that people should try to experience things the local way.
What really is the local way?
Every local’s life varies vastly from one to another. I am a local in Hong Kong, yet you will never see me on Hong Kong Island on most days because I just don’t venture out due to the distance. I lived in London for four years and love the Sunday markets, but my sister hates it and never goes.
A lot of people complain about the abundance of tourists in certain location, making them lose their old charms, however, they have never considered that if it isn’t for the tourism development they probably would not be able to communicate with the locals at all, or have the bus ride from the town to another.
Why I travel:
-To see the world and learn about different culture and histories first hand
-To marvel at Mother Nature
-Expand your comfort zone and in doing so learn more about yourself
-To see how other people see the world and gain a new prospective
-To realise that there are bigger issues and problems than your own life
-To see how different life is like in another place
-Learn to respect other people’s
