101–110 of 148 posts
>In every culture the native costume is the first thing to go, native architecture is next. Food is one of the last to go, even in modern places where people are wearing blue jeans. So these days I like to go to places where there is still native costume and native architecture. Unfortunately these areas are shrinking. I'm not nostalgic about it; I understand the reasons behind the changes, and it's a net improvement…
(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 d…
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 bei…
My parents were both travelers of this period. I sent them the article. Parent one: This is just the time I was in Indonesia. End of 1971. No guidebooks. No english spoken. A different time. A wonderful time to be travelling. It's so true about the expense of developing pics. Which continued after we had children. Parent two: Great article. I remember those dorms in India and the 6 weeks I spent in Nepal where you wa…
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Yeah this is the elephant in the room that no one talks about. And it’s not just about old guys going over there and picking up prostitutes, young guys will go over there and pick up regular girls on Tinder, just because it’s way easier to get laid there than in the West, for a bunch of controversial reasons that we aren’t allowed to talk about.
Probably because prostitutes are on Tinder now and poverty drives them to such behavior. You will have a tougher time in more economically advanced countries compared to one popular hotspot which you are talking about. Also why fly 4000 miles just to have sex? Why not just pay for a companion here? As an asexual I don't really understand this. My friends are constantly rambling on or making remarks about how so and s…
Or alternatively, imagine you are very very hungry, and a person who doesn't feel hunger doesn't understand why you would go to great lengths to eat food.
Some people also don't feel pain either and don't understand why people go to great lengths to avoid the feeling of pain.
You can make many metaphors for whatever things you desire and avoid on a feeling level and understand how non-asexuals feel.
I was an exchange student in rural Japan in the early 2000’s and I think that was the final moment you could see the world like this. There were no smartphones yet or ubiquitous internet. I had some guide books but they were very general. My host family didn’t speak English at all. Every day was like a puzzle: what does this building do? What are these tickets people have? What is this strange food, is it even food?…
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How did Mongolia compare to other places you have traveled? I have been eyeing going there for awhile now - I was mainly planning to maybe spend a few days in Ulaanbataar since I would need to fly in there and then make my way over to the Altai mountains to do some backpacking and mountaineering.
Not OP, but Ulanbataar is a traffic jam. I guess walking is possible, but not great with all the rustbuckets spewing fumes... Was there in 2019, I'm not sure if I used Google Maps for buses or figured out the paper timetables, in any case there was a lot of waiting for and on the bus (due to the traffic). I think a whole day is enough for UB, maybe 2 days, and that would include a trip to a cashmere factory store (go…
https://www.iqair.com/blog/air-quality/ulaanbaatar-mongolia-...
I was an exchange student in rural Japan in the early 2000’s and I think that was the final moment you could see the world like this. There were no smartphones yet or ubiquitous internet. I had some guide books but they were very general. My host family didn’t speak English at all. Every day was like a puzzle: what does this building do? What are these tickets people have? What is this strange food, is it even food?…
You can still drop your phone if you want to, but if you don't, that implies that your judgment looked over the sum of all things and decided to keep the phone. Or not.
or tickets, payments, menus are on phones now
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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... Nowaday…
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)
>In every culture the native costume is the first thing to go, native architecture is next. Food is one of the last to go, even in modern places where people are wearing blue jeans. So these days I like to go to places where there is still native costume and native architecture. Unfortunately these areas are shrinking. I'm not nostalgic about it; I understand the reasons behind the changes, and it's a net improvement…
So, in which places today do people still wear their native costume in preference to western clothes such as shirts and jeans? I can think of: Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE), Bhutan, Saharan Africa. India/South Asia partially but more so for women.
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In the 70s it was arguably safer to do so in Afghanistan than the US. Now it’s legal some places in the US and Afghanistan has a brutally repressive moralistic government.
The US isn’t brutally repressive yet, but we’re constantly working on it!