Is globalization making travel boring?

[Nava]

@Ludovic

I am surprised right now to learn that there are rest stops in Ireland, not because of some sense of the traditional countryside, but because you can travel from one end of the island to the other on one tank of gas.

That doesn’t mean you want to, or that you can travel from one end to another on a woman’s or child’s bladder.

[JKellyMap]

@Nava

That doesn’t mean you want to, or that you can travel from one end to another on a woman’s or child’s bladder.

Well put. Happens to be exactly why I visited that rest area (for both woman and child) – the Obama mini-museum was just a happy surprise, along with the French fries in a mild curry sauce! (Another example of local variation on McDonaids-style fast food).

[MrDibble]

@protoboard

Do the crowds of tourists in places like Prague or Paris make for a theme park feeling rather than visiting a “real” place?

Not for me. I mean, at the Eiffel Tower or whatever, you see a lot of people, but there’s a lot of people at the attractions in my home city too, so that’s not offputting or jarring.

[bump]

@faithfool

I’ve never traveled (yet!) outside my home country, the USA, but I can’t imagine it being any less exciting or exotic to me because of the things mentioned throughout the thread. Instead, being inexperienced and a little shy about doing so, I’m sure I’ll be comforted not feeling completely lost and out of place. And just like traveling in America, there’s ways to get around that isn’t the beaten tourist path and easily explored areas just outside the main roads that will give you close enough adventures of interesting things that you crave.

But what do I know? I can still find ways to be awed and entertained just by checking out new stuff locally when the population hasn’t exceeded 5,000 and I’ve been around for over thirty years here. It’s all how you look at it, IMHO.

That’s another thing I was going to point out- even WITHIN one’s own country, tourism can be fun and fascinating, despite everything being 99% “at home”. I mean, I still found places like Boston, NYC and San Francisco to be a whole lot of fun and very interesting, despite being from the US.

[gnoitall]

@Cardigan

It might have been a Larry Niven book, where the protagonist felt the world had become dull once it acquired uniform culture.

That was my thought as well.
[Quote=Ringworld, Chapter 1]
The thought was intolerable. Not new; just intolerable. Louis Wu saw how thoroughly Munich resembled Cairo and Resht…and San Francisco and Topeka and London and Amsterdam. The stores along the slidewalk sold the same products in all the cities of the world. The citizens who passed him tonight looked all alike, dressed all alike. Not Americans or Germans or Egyptians, but mere flatlanders.
[/quote]
We’re definitely not completely there yet, although if you’re not careful about avoiding the most internationalized touristy areas it may certainly seem like it.

ETA: Ninja’d by Andy L, but I think the quote I included is value-added.

[Mangosteen]

@septimus

Villages without electricity were quite common in the mid 1980’s. And I stayed at one backpacker’s beach on the resort island of Phuket circa 1986 where the only electricity was from a gasoline generator run a few hours in evenings. During the late 1980’s electrification was very rapid.

In addition to electrification, villages wanted running water, paved roads, and telephone lines. Most of the villages near me didn’t get running water until well into the 21st century, and flow is still unreliable: we make a point of filling tanks when it is running. Road building and maintenance are major on-going efforts: One of the major tracks into my village was often impassible during rainy season in the mid 1990’s, but dirt roads are the exception now.

My village and its neighbors still lack telephone lines and plans to install them have been abandoned of course — everyone has cell phones!

I stayed a few weeks in Koh Samui in 1976. Power (from a generator) was on 2 hours a night for the evening meal at the place I was staying at. Thirteen years later (1989) there is a frickin’ international airport on the island! I stayed in a 20’ x 20’ hut steps from the water for a dollar a night (with unlimited use of a canoe)! Now rooms at the Four Seasons go for $500. a night.

[Urbanredneck]

@Mangosteen

I stayed a few weeks in Koh Samui in 1976. Power (from a generator) was on 2 hours a night for the evening meal at the place I was staying at. Thirteen years later (1989) there is a frickin’ international airport on the island! I stayed in a 20’ x 20’ hut steps from the water for a dollar a night (with unlimited use of a canoe)! Now rooms at the Four Seasons go for $500. a night.

I think the above post shows there are fewer and fewer places to “get away from it all” anymore especially if such a place is near water.

Like on the US coast. On both sides nearly every mile of coastline has a house or hotel on it now. Same with most lakes they all have big houses and resorts around them.

[Mijin]

@protoboard

I know economic development is good, but it would have been cool to see China for example back when it was still quasi-medieval in parts.

Well there are still vast swathes of rural china where people work, cook and do chores much the way their parents did, and their grandparents before that.

And even here in Shanghai, the culture is so different from the West that it still feels alien to me after 3 years here. And of course learning the language you get much more exposure to that; I could get by with just English, but that, to me, would be boring.

---

Having said all that, I agree that travel is not what it used to be. It’s not just global trade; the Internet too means you can connect with all your friends, read all your local town’s news etc and feel like you never left.

I think the next opportunity to explore entirely distinct and isolated places will be in advanced VR…