Travelling : Seeing vs Knowing

When one travels to a place that one's friends haven't been to, sometimes they feel entitled to spout off information with varying degrees of haughtiness and snobbishness.

You, however, don't have to be.

Ever feel like your more 'well-traveled' friends or maybe even your favourite youtuber sounds like an insufferable know-it-all when it comes to travel destinations? I noticed that travelling can have that effect on people.

It is never pleasant when someone acts condescendingly to us, but when it involves travel, sometimes there's an added note of bitterness to it. Not everyone has the budget to make several international trips to exotic destinations, or even be able to afford to take time off for a short trip to a nearby town. So sometimes it stings just that little bit more to hear travel stories of places that you have always wanted to go to, but may never be able to see.

"Oh, I've been to Paris. You simply must go and see the collection at the Louvre, it's amazing!" sounds well enough; in fact, it might even entice you to make Paris your next holiday destination.

However, "You don't know what art even means unless you've been to the Louvre" sounds impossibly vexing. Based on my observations, such sentences are more likely to be uttered by those who have travelled extensively. The more they have travelled, the more they think they know, and therefore the more they think they're obliged to 'enlighten' those who aren't as fortunate as them.

I recently watched a travel video from a youtuber who lives in America as he travelled to Komodo Island in Indonesia. Komodo Island is home to the Komodo dragons, the largest lizards in the world.

In the video he went on for at least 3 minutes about how lucky he is -and many others, to be living in a first world country, where everything is so much better than in Indonesia. Travelling has opened his eyes to a very different style of living than one that he knows, and this is why people should travel, he said.

I could not express how hard I roll my eyes when I hear such statements. People don't need to travel to know that developing nations are still developing and thus are not as fully developed than first-world countries.

Yes, seeing firsthand how bad things are can be can be shocking, but believe me when I say, witnessing the 'bad' things on sites already geared towards tourism does not make travellers experts in knowing what locals' conditions are like.

Through travels men are exposed to different cultures and as such, different styles of living. This, however, does not mean that they can automatically become an authority figure on the topic.

I think my main point is that travel may allow you to see more, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you know more.

xo,
Maria