tourist or traveller

I once overheard a conversation in a café on the edge of Gunung Leuser National Park in Langkat, North Sumatera that made me laugh out loud. A visitor, who was asked by the café owner how it felt to be a tourist in Indonesia, turned to the owner, indignant and said: “I am not a tourist, I am a traveller!

Traveling is a wonderful thing, regardless of how one chooses to approach this experience. People travel for different reasons. Whether it’s seen as a chance to break away from the daily grind and treat oneself to a holiday in a resort, sipping cocktails by the pool, or the package tour traveler trying to squeeze in as many countries as possible on a 14-day tour, or the backpacker on a quest to find out what’s out there – they are all equally legitimate. As far as I’m concerned, travelling is more educational than any college or university classroom. It offers you insight into other cultures as well as a better understanding of your own, while opening your mind to different perspectives which is the basis for understanding human nature on the whole.

Of course there are those vacation revellers who don’t seem to take advantage of these benefits and are more concerned with drinking themselves silly or getting the souvenirs and photographs of places to check off their list of countries done, than learning anything about the places they’ve visited – or themselves, for that matter. It seems like such a waste.

This having been said, what I find even more ridiculous are the self-proclaimed ‘world travellers – not tourists’. Oh you know the ones I’m talking about. You’ll see them in the backpacker cafés and hostel bars. They tend to seek each other out, comparing stories, trying to outdo each others tales of 18-hour trips in the back of a pick-up they hitched a ride with and shared with 6 other people and 4 goats because it was free, thus making them, presumably, savvy travelers. They wear their experiences of self-flagellation with pride, as if it should merit them some sort of traveller badge of honour instead of the title of village idiot, when for the equivalent of 50 cents, they could have taken a local bus and made the same journey in ‘relative’ comfort in three hours. It’s these same travelers who don a sarong and go into the market on Sunday with the notion that they blend into the landscape.

Should you encounter these savvy sojourners, they will be instantly recognizable by their first words to you in the form of a personal anecdote of their most recent travel hardship they had to overcome, letting you know that you’re dealing with a real traveler, not just a tourist. This is usually followed up with an expectation to ‘top that!’ You’ll also notice they wouldn’t be able to tell you the names or anything about any of the passengers they shared that 18-hour trip with as they were too busy trying to impress their captive audience talking about themselves. You may, however be lucky enough to avoid such an encounter should you not look a seasoned enough traveler to be worthy of comparison, say – for example, if you’ve had a shower and you’re wearing a clean shirt.

Attempts to ‘go local’ by foreigners probably won’t be met by ridicule or disdain, but our traveller often confuses the locals’ peculiar fascination of the novelty of the dread locked, sarong-wearing tourist, with being accepted as an “International citizen” that belongs nowhere and everywhere at the same time. If you are a visitor from another country, you are a tourist – plain and simple. That’s how you are seen by the local population in the place you are visiting. You may disagree with me about there being no difference between a tourist and a traveler, but make no mistake; you are the only one making the distinction between the two.

There is something, however to be said of acceptance. I have lived in Indonesia for the last 13 years. Though my situation is a bit different to that of a person traveling through, I never presumed that I would ever really be able to belong in a society I was not born into. My husband is Balinese. I go to temple and to ceremonies in traditional Balinese dress. I do it out of respect and as they say ‘when in Rome…’, not because I think it will make me any more Balinese. I know I look like a bule going to a costume party and I often used to feel a bit ridiculous. I have fair skin and hair and blue eyes. No matter how well I speak the language and despite my new-found ability to ride side-saddle on a motorbike in a sarong, balancing offerings on my head, I’m simply never going to blend in. When I made the decision to make this island my home, I had to come to terms with the fact that I will be 90 years old walking down the street, having lived here for 60 years and I will undoubtedly get a “Hello, toureeest!”, and that nothing I could ever do would make me seen in their eyes as one of their own. Not that I ever wanted to be Balinese, I am Canadian. It’s part of who I am, but no one wants to be seen as an outsider in their own community. Then a funny thing happened…

Due to work obligations, my husband and I had moved to Southern Bali. On one of our trips to my husband’s village, our neighbour in his village, from across the road asked me “Kapan pulang?”, which means ‘when home?’ I responded: “malam Sabtu” (Friday night), thinking she was asking when I was leaving to go home. She started laughing and said “Inggak! Kapan pulang?” It was then I realized she wasn't asking me when I'm going home, but when I got ‘home’ to the village – my village. It was at that moment I understood that acceptance into a community is achievable and that people will accept you for the person are, not because you’re trying to be someone else.