5 ms·

(with the disclaimer that it has been 30 months since travelling widely) It's still possible. 99% of travellers proceed along narrow planks of tourist hotspots

by robga 4y ago

(with the disclaimer that it has been 30 months since travelling widely) It's still possible. 99% of travellers proceed along narrow planks of tourist hotspots that represent 1% of what is interesting in the world. Once it was lonely planet trails, then tripadvisor routes, now instagram pin plots. It's so easy to step off those paths, and doing so is very rewarding. Use those guides as guides as to what what not to do - at least not for long.

chis 4y ago
How do you find things to do then? I’ll share what worked for me: follow a particular interest in depth, that way you can rely on your unique expertise to guide yourself off the tourist track. But that doesn’t always feel sustainable.
- zarzavat 4y ago
  Learn some of the language and talk to people. Or if you are the antisocial type, find a scenic road and drive a motorcycle and around.
netsharc 4y ago
This part grabbed me: > I remember taking an overnight bus from India to Kathmandu. That bus was probably not more than $5. I remember that morning, after traveling all night, rolling down the Kathmandu Valley and seeing the Himalayas, and a whole city with zero cars. Imagine all the cars in a big city in the 70s, with all the inefficient carburetors and the leaded gasoline fumes, and arriving at the above... Nowadays, the not-beaten path probably also has concrete buildings and people on their smartphones. I remember doing a van tour in the steppe of Mongolia, for the last night the driver drove around until we saw someone on a horse. The tour guide asked that man if we could stay in his yurt, and Mongolian hospitality meant of course we could. In the yurt the family had a smartphone, I saw the USB-A plug for the charger, and it amused me that even in the middle of nowhere, Mongolia, people also had to try 3 times to plug in that darned cable...
- MaxLeiter 4y ago
  I was in Myanmar a few years ago as one of the few tourist groups to enter when they (temporarily) re-opened. I saw numerous children, living in huts and on dirt roads, playing Clash of Clans using military-provided electricity and internet (in order to influence votes)
  - wsc981 4y ago
    I live in a pretty remote village in Thailand (actually very close to the border with Myanmar) and our village has an internet café. A lot of (mostly) boys spend time in the internet café after school playing video games. When not in the internet café, many children and young adults play games on their mobile phones. About 2 weeks ago I was in a coffee shop nearby and 3 adolescent boys were playing games there on their mobile phones. They bought a coffee to get access to free Wifi and then spend at least a couple of hours, perhaps all day, playing games.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    I stayed at a mountain “resort” in Sichuan middle of nowhere that was totally off the grid, but they got enough electricity from a water wheel and a near enough cell tower that you still weren’t completely disconnected.
0xRusty 4y ago
Hmmm I'm afraid with my limited vacation time each year I'm now a firm believer in following the well trodden path most of the time. I've had too many trips where you try and do something completely unique like go to an island or a province "tourists never go to"...and then you discover why. There's nothing there. I went to a couple of the Pacific islands in Micronesia which don't get many tourists thinking I was being so adventurous. It was the biggest pain in the ass to get there and it turns out no one goes there it's because it's basically a sulfur mine (1 nice beach though). So call me boring but from now on I'll queue up to see the Taj Mahal with 20,000 other people and enjoy that experience just as much.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  I mean, that's what "adventure travel" is most of the time. If you don't like the journey then you won't enjoy it. My partner and I backpack and bike travel quite a bit, and yeah there's definitely towns you enter that are just... boring towns. Sometimes you end up at a beach you found on the map/saw in the distance and you realize it's cold and rocky. There have also definitely been occasions where we've been quite scared for a variety of reasons. It's fundamentally a bit of a gamble. The folks that keep doing it enjoy the gamble. There are some hills I've crested while bikepacking and some towns I've been through that have been absolutely gorgeous and those certainly help, but everyone I know who enjoys this kind of travel enjoys getting outside and getting a bit rough and dirty. I encourage everyone to travel like this as long as they feel safe (and it's important to remember that different genders, sexual minorities, and ethnicities will feel differing levels of discomfort in different locations so safety should always be top priority.) But if you don't like the gamble, then head to a resort and take a tour bus to the Taj Mahal!
- cedricd 4y ago
  The trick (unfortunately) is to slow down. If you don't have a tight schedule, and can sort of wander, you can start somewhere well known and end up somewhere off the beaten path pretty organically. You'll also meet a network of longer-term travelers who exchange info about where to go (and not go). You don't have to go somewhere that literally no one has been to see something a bit unique, magical, and mostly devoid of casual tourists.
jltsiren 4y ago
Wasn't the Lonely Planet era basically about hordes of Western backpackers going off the beaten path, while Lonely Planet carefully documented all the good things the backpackers found? It made many obscure places famous, but only a few of those famous places became touristy, because the others were too difficult to reach. Consider something like Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal. If you mentioned something about the Trans-Siberian Railway, everyone and their dog would recommend going to Olkhon. Not that many people actually went there, because the island is quite remote.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >Wasn't the Lonely Planet era basically about hordes of Western backpackers going off the beaten path, while Lonely Planet carefully documented all the good things the backpackers found? It was about first generation international travelers showing up with thousands of dollars in electronics in places with much less tolerance for wealth inequality, feeling entitled to selectively decide when to follow local customs. I got the sense it's meant to give you a sanitized experience, so that locals can have their own places, but you don't feel excluded. (I visited Paris and London pre-Instagram, doing about 3 days in each, turning my phone off as much as possible and trying to stick to paper maps)
  - jltsiren 4y ago
    I think you are talking about a later era. For me, the Lonely Planet era was after the overland routes to India closed but before smartphones became popular. Flying started becoming affordable, and infrastructure in the form of backpacker hostels and printed guidebooks largely replaced the word of mouth as a way of sharing information. It became increasingly likely that if you discovered something nice off the beaten path, other backpackers had already been there and documented the place in a guidebook.
    - dontbenebby 4y ago
      > I think you are talking about a later era. Probably right, I didn't leave North America until the twenty aughts. Things changed very rapidly in a short time between that first trip and just a few years later.
dontbenebby 4y ago
>Once it was lonely planet trails, then tripadvisor routes, now instagram pin plots. Or a wikivoyage that tries to get you to drive through the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore XD https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/The_Wire_Tour https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/The_Wire_Tour (Every halfway edgy "tour" I did, I had a guide or was ready to handle things on my own, then did so.)
jasonkester 4y ago
There’s a “revealed preference” thing going on among backpackers these days. Everybody says they want to see the unspoiled remote village, but they actually go to Vang Vieng. The rough and ready backpacker accommodation of the past with a cheap bed and nothing else can’t compete with the place up the road with the pool and air conditioning. There is remarkably little option to travel today like we did in the 90s. Because kids today don’t want that. You can spend £20/night on the place that would have been £20/night back then. But the £5/night place has been torn down and replaced with another £20 one.
- Markoff 4y ago
  To be fair I thought days of Vang Vieng glory are gone with end of tubing or is it back? But I agree Vang Vieng was for me tourist hell, though if you get on motorbike and just ride along those karst mountains through villages and unpaved roads it was much better, the problem was the village itself mostly and tubing, I despise much more Luang Prabang full of retired package tourists everywhere you moved, that was truly much more disgusting than VV.
- mysecretaccount 4y ago
  There are plenty of beds for £5 in (to use your example) Laos. I had a room not too long ago for under $5, on the Mekong. I wasn't around for the 90s, maybe cheap rooms were much easier to come by, but they're not too difficult today in that part of the world.

by robga 4y ago

chis 4y ago

How do you find things to do then? I’ll share what worked for me: follow a particular interest in depth, that way you can rely on your unique expertise to guide yourself off the tourist track. But that doesn’t always feel sustainable.

zarzavat 4y ago
Learn some of the language and talk to people. Or if you are the antisocial type, find a scenic road and drive a motorcycle and around.

netsharc 4y ago

This part grabbed me: > I remember taking an overnight bus from India to Kathmandu. That bus was probably not more than $5. I remember that morning, after traveling all night, rolling down the Kathmandu Valley and seeing the Himalayas, and a whole city with zero cars. Imagine all the cars in a big city in the 70s, with all the inefficient carburetors and the leaded gasoline fumes, and arriving at the above... Nowadays, the not-beaten path probably also has concrete buildings and people on their smartphones. I remember doing a van tour in the steppe of Mongolia, for the last night the driver drove around until we saw someone on a horse. The tour guide asked that man if we could stay in his yurt, and Mongolian hospitality meant of course we could. In the yurt the family had a smartphone, I saw the USB-A plug for the charger, and it amused me that even in the middle of nowhere, Mongolia, people also had to try 3 times to plug in that darned cable...

MaxLeiter 4y ago
I was in Myanmar a few years ago as one of the few tourist groups to enter when they (temporarily) re-opened. I saw numerous children, living in huts and on dirt roads, playing Clash of Clans using military-provided electricity and internet (in order to influence votes)
- wsc981 4y ago
  I live in a pretty remote village in Thailand (actually very close to the border with Myanmar) and our village has an internet café. A lot of (mostly) boys spend time in the internet café after school playing video games. When not in the internet café, many children and young adults play games on their mobile phones. About 2 weeks ago I was in a coffee shop nearby and 3 adolescent boys were playing games there on their mobile phones. They bought a coffee to get access to free Wifi and then spend at least a couple of hours, perhaps all day, playing games.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  I stayed at a mountain “resort” in Sichuan middle of nowhere that was totally off the grid, but they got enough electricity from a water wheel and a near enough cell tower that you still weren’t completely disconnected.

0xRusty 4y ago

Hmmm I'm afraid with my limited vacation time each year I'm now a firm believer in following the well trodden path most of the time. I've had too many trips where you try and do something completely unique like go to an island or a province "tourists never go to"...and then you discover why. There's nothing there. I went to a couple of the Pacific islands in Micronesia which don't get many tourists thinking I was being so adventurous. It was the biggest pain in the ass to get there and it turns out no one goes there it's because it's basically a sulfur mine (1 nice beach though). So call me boring but from now on I'll queue up to see the Taj Mahal with 20,000 other people and enjoy that experience just as much.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
I mean, that's what "adventure travel" is most of the time. If you don't like the journey then you won't enjoy it. My partner and I backpack and bike travel quite a bit, and yeah there's definitely towns you enter that are just... boring towns. Sometimes you end up at a beach you found on the map/saw in the distance and you realize it's cold and rocky. There have also definitely been occasions where we've been quite scared for a variety of reasons. It's fundamentally a bit of a gamble. The folks that keep doing it enjoy the gamble. There are some hills I've crested while bikepacking and some towns I've been through that have been absolutely gorgeous and those certainly help, but everyone I know who enjoys this kind of travel enjoys getting outside and getting a bit rough and dirty. I encourage everyone to travel like this as long as they feel safe (and it's important to remember that different genders, sexual minorities, and ethnicities will feel differing levels of discomfort in different locations so safety should always be top priority.) But if you don't like the gamble, then head to a resort and take a tour bus to the Taj Mahal!
cedricd 4y ago
The trick (unfortunately) is to slow down. If you don't have a tight schedule, and can sort of wander, you can start somewhere well known and end up somewhere off the beaten path pretty organically. You'll also meet a network of longer-term travelers who exchange info about where to go (and not go). You don't have to go somewhere that literally no one has been to see something a bit unique, magical, and mostly devoid of casual tourists.

jltsiren 4y ago

Wasn't the Lonely Planet era basically about hordes of Western backpackers going off the beaten path, while Lonely Planet carefully documented all the good things the backpackers found? It made many obscure places famous, but only a few of those famous places became touristy, because the others were too difficult to reach. Consider something like Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal. If you mentioned something about the Trans-Siberian Railway, everyone and their dog would recommend going to Olkhon. Not that many people actually went there, because the island is quite remote.

dontbenebby 4y ago
>Wasn't the Lonely Planet era basically about hordes of Western backpackers going off the beaten path, while Lonely Planet carefully documented all the good things the backpackers found? It was about first generation international travelers showing up with thousands of dollars in electronics in places with much less tolerance for wealth inequality, feeling entitled to selectively decide when to follow local customs. I got the sense it's meant to give you a sanitized experience, so that locals can have their own places, but you don't feel excluded. (I visited Paris and London pre-Instagram, doing about 3 days in each, turning my phone off as much as possible and trying to stick to paper maps)
- jltsiren 4y ago
  I think you are talking about a later era. For me, the Lonely Planet era was after the overland routes to India closed but before smartphones became popular. Flying started becoming affordable, and infrastructure in the form of backpacker hostels and printed guidebooks largely replaced the word of mouth as a way of sharing information. It became increasingly likely that if you discovered something nice off the beaten path, other backpackers had already been there and documented the place in a guidebook.
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    > I think you are talking about a later era. Probably right, I didn't leave North America until the twenty aughts. Things changed very rapidly in a short time between that first trip and just a few years later.

dontbenebby 4y ago

>Once it was lonely planet trails, then tripadvisor routes, now instagram pin plots. Or a wikivoyage that tries to get you to drive through the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore XD https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/The_Wire_Tour https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/The_Wire_Tour (Every halfway edgy "tour" I did, I had a guide or was ready to handle things on my own, then did so.)

jasonkester 4y ago

There’s a “revealed preference” thing going on among backpackers these days. Everybody says they want to see the unspoiled remote village, but they actually go to Vang Vieng. The rough and ready backpacker accommodation of the past with a cheap bed and nothing else can’t compete with the place up the road with the pool and air conditioning. There is remarkably little option to travel today like we did in the 90s. Because kids today don’t want that. You can spend £20/night on the place that would have been £20/night back then. But the £5/night place has been torn down and replaced with another £20 one.

Markoff 4y ago
To be fair I thought days of Vang Vieng glory are gone with end of tubing or is it back? But I agree Vang Vieng was for me tourist hell, though if you get on motorbike and just ride along those karst mountains through villages and unpaved roads it was much better, the problem was the village itself mostly and tubing, I despise much more Luang Prabang full of retired package tourists everywhere you moved, that was truly much more disgusting than VV.
mysecretaccount 4y ago
There are plenty of beds for £5 in (to use your example) Laos. I had a room not too long ago for under $5, on the Mekong. I wasn't around for the 90s, maybe cheap rooms were much easier to come by, but they're not too difficult today in that part of the world.