Travel has become commonplace in our globalized world. All it takes is a few hundred dollars and a person can buy a plane ticket to just about anywhere on the planet and stomp around to their heart’s content. Just because someone has the money to purchase a ticket and visit someone else’s country doesn’t automatically give them class. And just because a person can stomp around someone else’s sacred ground doesn’t mean they should.

One of my pet peeves is when some overpriveleged white kid says in an offhand way, “Oh yeah, I just did Belize,” or “Have you done India yet?” Countries and cultures are not things to be conquered, like a frat boy does a kegstand. I don’t think that people who view travel in these terms are necessarily evil, I just think that words are powerful and that having the mindset of trampling your way across a place circumvents possible chances for experiencing a place fully and honoring it’s people and culture.

When I think of people who do a place, I can’t help but think of anything more than khaki and mud and litter. When I think, however, of experiencing a destination, instead of mental images, I get the inexhaustible feelings of expanding my awareness. These two concepts are very different. Go, though, do your guided tours while flaunting your khaki shorts, leave your Coke cans behind in a trail of mud from your boots, just do one thing for me please, be respectful to the local people, so that I can come in and actually get to know a few of them and maybe experience some things that would never be revealed on a pre-packaged tour with a gaggle of sight-seers.