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'Authenticity' in travel


Arkhangel

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No, all Brazilians agree; however there's a lot of people here that go tribal at the thought of a foreigner criticizing Brazil, or Brazil being seeing as "lesser in the international community" if negative points about the country are discussed publicly in other countries, even if it's something everyone agrees on, like recently the mayor of Manaus getting mad that the coach of English Football National Team said the city was too hot in June, even though that's like saying the Sahara has a lot of sand.

This is most likely influence of the nationalistic dictatorships Brazil had in the past, first in the 30's-40's, and later in the 60's-80's.

Interesting enough my brother went down there on vacation and got mugged near his hotel (he was probably walking). I know a lot of coworkers who go down there, and pretty much all of them talk about the security related rules you have to follow in Rio/San Paulo.

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Interesting enough my brother went down there on vacation and got mugged near his hotel (he was probably walking). I know a lot of coworkers who go down there, and pretty much all of them talk about the security related rules you have to follow in Rio/San Paulo.

On the subject I was mentioning before, a Brazilian Cabinet member (who's also a member of Congress for decades) said he got robbed in Paris, but never in Brazil, so this things can happen to anyone anywhere and Brazil's not specifically dangerous or some other non-sense

Apparently it never occurred to him that the reason he's never been mugged here might have something do with the fact he's an important politician who travels with a ton of security guards and quite often has cameras following him around as well.

Anyway, I do know people that have never got mugged or suffered any damage from crime (I got robbed once when I was a kid, although I didn't really had anything of value to be stolen), although foreigners are seen automatically as rich people, even if they're not.

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I have been poor so I have no desire to see poverty. I was raised on a farm so seeing people scrabble in the dirt to make a living has no interest to me either. If you really want to see how people live and understand their lives, go and study their architecture. You cant' fake that. Architecture shows how a culture lives and uses what they have around them and how they solve problems. And then go to a beach since the sound of the waves are soothing to the mind.


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I've posted this story on the board before.



But when I was 7 my Uncle M, my mother's brother, who had lived in Mexico married a Mexican lady and invited us down for the reception. My parents had just gotten divorced and my mother had almost no money. My Uncle M stated that he a wonderful apartment with plenty of room, and that if she could manage plane tickets down, she would have two weeks in Mexico with locals as her guide, and everything else would be free.



To my mother, who is close to her brother, and who wanted her daughters to have a well rounded view of the world enriched by travel, it seemed like a dream. She scrapped together the plane fare, and we where told about all the things we would see in Mexico. We'd visit the pyramids of the Sun and Moon, eat amazing food, have an adventure of a lifetime!



Flash forward. We land in Mexico City, immediately after getting out of the airport my eyes start to burn. I can't figuire out whats going on, and then I realize that the air in the city so populated it actually hurts.



My Uncle M picks us up, and takes us to his great apartment. Which is in the housing projects of Mexico City. It is not his apartment but his new grandmother in laws. We find out that my mother, my sister, my Uncle M, my new aunt, my new aunt's niece, my new aunts grand mother, and myself will be sharing the tiny one bedroom apartment. When I go into the bathroom for the first time I notice that there is an ant hill in the shower. I'm told not to worry about this because these ants don't "sting". The apartment, surprisingly, as it turns out this is not the only thing my uncle has over promised on.



The wonderful Mexican food we have been promised is very authentic. There is literally nothing wasted, and when asked what was floating in my soup I was told "tendon".



Flash forward. My great uncle Lee comes down with my grandmother. My grandmother is also supposed to stay in the apartment, but luckily my uncle Lee decides that is more room in his hotel room for her, then the apartment. He brings my sister and I a huge chocolate bar. This will for the last week of our visit this will become what my sister and my only sustenance.



We spend the next couple of days at the apartment. My Uncle M and new aunt, the only two who speak English disappear for a few days, apparently to get things ready for the reception. My mother is worried for my sister and myself to go outside.We are told constantly that it is dangerous for us out there by my aunt's grandmother, she tells us this in Spanish but we get the point. While my sister had a beautiful ethnically ambiguous look, with beautiful tan skin, brown hair, and blue eyes. I look like the whitest, white kid that ever existed. My skin is so pale at points it is almost translucent. Paired with pale blond hair and light eyes I stick out like a sour thumb. Both my sister and I look very American, and neither of us speaks Spanish, nor does my mother.



We do finally manage to make it to the zoo after 3 days, my Uncle Lee rallies us and through his own broken Spanish manages to get us there. All the animals look sad, and I am sad for them stuck in the stinking burning air.



Another couple days go by like this. Because my uncle had promised that cars would be available no one had rented one. Not shockingly the free cars that where promised never materialized. No one then rented cars, as everyone had kind of come down last minute and was on a budget. This effectively stranded each set of the family that came down in different parts of the city unable to reach one another. We of course where in the best of all locations being stuck in the housing projects. By the end of the week as long as my mother, the grandmother, and her neighbor all come with us we are allowed to do things like tag along and go to the store to buy food.



Finally my Uncle M reappears. We finally go out of the city and visit an uncle's farm. It's beautiful, and right next to a topical rain forest. We are so relived to get out of the city it palpable. I think my sister and just sent the day running and making believe. Always though we where told not to get out site of adults, because "bad things could happen to us". While there my mother, who has been so careful about only drinking water that has been boiled, and my Aunt Amy (my mother's youngest sister) drink some of Uncle Alfonso's instant coffee. Which as it will turn out, was not made with boiled water.



The next night is wedding reception.



It takes places in the hills above Mexico City. It is beautiful, the city with it's stinking, burning air, rats, disgusting (to a 7 year old) food, and constant feeling of danger. Looks like a valley of stars from the top of the hills that surround it at night. The reception is lively and fun. Music and dancing. My uncle makes me dance with a lot of nephews. One of them is a very good dancer, and very sweet. Everyone was having so much fun. My new dancing partner led me outside to the street where another party was going on my uncle decided to go out too, in my mind I was still with an adult and so I was okay. For my mother however it was less fun. As suddenly her daughter seemed to have disappeared. A search party was sent out and I was returned safely. My uncle who was our ride home, had vanished completely into the crowd.



However by that time things had started to turn. Everyone was getting very drunk. The wife of the owner of the hall where the reception came out. She gathered my mom, my sister, and some of the other younger women and took us down stairs. She led us to the basement, and then locked the door and gave my mother the key, in very broken English told her "only key".



There was a futon mattress in the back corner of the room and my sister both laid down and went to sleep pretty quickly. Later, I have no idea how much later. I remember being awoken because there where men banging on the door to the basement. They where yelling and demanding "Chicas". The other young women, and my mother, all came and huddled around my sister and I. At some point again I fell asleep.



In the early morning, my mother either stole or borrowed my uncle's car (I've heard different versions). Then loading us inside the car some how got us back to the apartment, to put this in perspective I have been with my mother when she gets lost coming home from the part of town she works in. How she managed to navigate Mexico City I have no idea. I slept through this part of the story, but my sister assures me it was an adventure.



But the trouble was just starting. My Uncle M made his way back to the apartment later that day, By that time my mother had started to get sick. She was throwing up and had diarrhea. My Uncle M called a doctor, apparently there where still doctors who made house calls then. He gave her some charcoal tablets to take and told her drink a lot of fluids. My Uncle Lee came by to check us, my Aunt Amy (my mother's youngest sister who had also had the coffee), was very ill and had been taken to the hospital, and my Uncle Lee was worried about us. He took on look at my mother, who was dripping with sweat and white as a ghost and made the decision to take her to the hospital as well. My uncle M at that point didn't think it was necessary but agreed to drive her.



I would find out later that my Uncle Lee ended up bribing the admitting department of hospital to get my mother admitted. She spent the night in large one room Emergency Room. She swears that the man next to her, who had been attacked by someone with a machete, died screaming.



At the apartment. Two more uncles or cousins came to stay with us. They brought chickens, into the apartment. My sister and I where booted off the bed and slept on the floor. I remember that night I had a dream that my mother died, and my father didn't know where we where. We stuck in Mexico forever. It was the first and only time in my life I woke up crying. Upon waking up I could just make out that the chickens appeared to be fighting rats in the corner next to where we slept.



With my mother gone, and more adults in the apartment my sister and I where booted outside. I am not sure if the grandmother was just sick of us at that point, but her previous concern that bad things might happen to us appeared to vanish. We where told not to leave the grounds of the housing project. But not to come back inside until dark.



I remember my sister and I found this really beautiful butterfly. Then a large Mexican girl came and stomped on it right in front us. Saying it had no eyes. My Uncle Lee came to check on us. He was staying with my mom in the hospital. He bought us some cards, and some bottled coke. By this point both my sister and I had stopped eating the food. We where rationing the large chocolate bar that he'd given us at the beginning of the trip.



My Uncle Lee talked with my Uncle M, and we where allowed to say on the stair landing and play cards instead of being forced into more common, and unsupervised grounds.



Back at the hospital my mother was not doing well. She says she had a near death experience, where she could feel herself floating over her body, at peace with the fact that she was about to die. Over the next day however with a lot of IV fluids, and finally being taken out of the main entrance room, she started to recover. After two days in the hospital she was released.



With my mom doing better. My Uncle Lee and my grandmother came and pick up my sister and I. The took us to one of the main squares and markets in the city. I remember he took us to a famous church, and walking in every thing was so clean, and beautiful. I think there was air conditioning to because I remember it felt different and wonderful. I remember thinking "why can't I just stay here". As far as I was concerned it was heaven.



When my mom got back to the apartment she demanded the bed for her and her daughters. Another day was spent there not doing much. Then we finally got to go home. I remember feeling like I was escaping something, something terrible.



That was the most authentic travel I have ever done, and it did in a fundamental way changed the way I view poverty, and immigration.



As an adult I tend to tread the line. I mostly try to stay in hostels or small family run places. I try to use public transportation. But I don't mind that I am a tourist, and quite frankly I would take the most tourist of all experiences over something that authentic again. :)


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Wow.

On the subject of Mexico City and area, I went to a conference in Cuernavaca an hour or two from the city. It's a sort of bedroom community for rich people, but all that seemed to mean is that all the houses near our B&B had walls, electrified fences, and barbed wire. And our B&B had an electrified fence too, while the conference venue itself was accessible by car via an armed checkpoint.

Otherwise it felt pretty safe wandering around, even on the day that I ditched the conference with a friend to wander around. We certainly did not blend in remotely.

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I suppose one good thing about the "authentic" experiences is that they make MUCH more entertaining stories than just "the champagne in first class was room temperature!" or "the breakfast buffet ran out of bramble jam!" :lol:


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As Seventh Pup told in her story, being poor in a 3rd world country is horrible. I spent 3 years in India, and while there were great parts to the experience, the poverty and how people live is unimaginable to most Americans.



On the flip side though, if you go to some of these 3rd world countries, you can also live like kings. Servants, butlers, cooks, maids, etc for pennies.


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  • 9 months later...

So here's a tale of "authenticity" from my trip to Morocco. On the first day, we stopped off at this old semi-ruined village for some lunch. Walking in, it already seemed to be more like the "real" Morocco than what we'd seen so far - old mud walls, dudes walking round in grubby brown robes instead of jeans and football shirts, some straw and sheepshit on the mud paths... a load of wooden tables and ladders held together with rope, no plastic bags or empty yoghurt pots lying around... a big dung-heap, where... someone had been making the dung into a load of dung-balls? And a cardboard box full of... Roman helmets?



It was a fucking film set. The buildings were real enough, but everything else was just costumes and props for some biblical docudrama that National Geographic were filming ("Killing Jesus", apparently, watch this space! We even ran into Jesus a bit further around). There was even a guy with a bag of straw and sheepshit, deliberately strewing it around over the paths. After that point, "authentic" became quite the running joke for the rest of the trip. :lmao:


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Globalization. The world is changing and the third word isn't the third world any more. It's the developing world now. Three years ago I was in South East Asia and no one had a smart phone, now every single person is rocking a tablet. You want "authentic" ? Go off the grid or do a home stay in a small town. Or walk thru Guatemala City after dark. Central Africa. Or simply change your definition of the word authentic.

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I think it's hard not to fetishize a foreign culture at the beginning. After all, what's the impetus to go if you think they're all the same? But I think the experience of visiting a foreign country is still critical in mapping those cultural expectations and gaining insights into what goes on in that country. It certainly won't fit all your prior expectations, and some of the new discoveries will show the foreign culture in a better light than expected and other discoveries will show it in a poorer light. That's what I would consider "authentic." If you come away from the trip with a deeper understanding of the place, the people, the culture, then that's an authentic trip.

That said, I also don't see a problem with visiting sites just for aesthetic pleasures, either. Like, if I get a chance to visit the volcanoes of the Hawai'i islands, and end up not really exploring the local cultures much, I'd be ok with that because that's a legitimate goal and not belittling or demeaning to the local culture.

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I don't see what's unauthentic about guys in jeans and football shirts, that's the way the dress, so it is authentic. Unless you invent a time machine, I think you're going to have trouble finding the type of authenticy almost everywhere you go, because the world isn't like that anymore.

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The word "authentic" is bullshit, really. Tourism changes the nature any place that gets large amounts of it. I'm currently on a tiny Island in Thailand, and I can imagine how beautiful and unspoiled the beach here in Phi Phi was at night 20 years ago. Now it's a strip of loud clubs and bars and while that makes me sad, I know it's MY problem. The locals are trying to make a buck and cater to the huge influx of visitors. My wishes for it to be like it once was means they return to relative poverty, when most of them want the same comforts and benefits that those visiting have when back home.

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So here's a tale of "authenticity" from my trip to Morocco. On the first day, we stopped off at this old semi-ruined village for some lunch. Walking in, it already seemed to be more like the "real" Morocco than what we'd seen so far - old mud walls, dudes walking round in grubby brown robes instead of jeans and football shirts, some straw and sheepshit on the mud paths... a load of wooden tables and ladders held together with rope, no plastic bags or empty yoghurt pots lying around... a big dung-heap, where... someone had been making the dung into a load of dung-balls? And a cardboard box full of... Roman helmets?

It was a fucking film set. The buildings were real enough, but everything else was just costumes and props for some biblical docudrama that National Geographic were filming ("Killing Jesus", apparently, watch this space! We even ran into Jesus a bit further around). There was even a guy with a bag of straw and sheepshit, deliberately strewing it around over the paths. After that point, "authentic" became quite the running joke for the rest of the trip. :lmao:

I had a different kind of "authentic" experience in Morocco - I stayed with our guide's family for three days in Casablanca. As uncertain as I am about the concept of authenticity in general, I'm also divided in my own mind about whether or not this would be considered "authentic". On the one hand, I got to see small parts of the way people (and definitely not wealthy people) in Casablanca really live. I slept on their couch, I washed with a bucket of cold water in the toilet (which was located in the kitchen), I spent time with the family. On the other hand, we were very much guests. Every meal was lavish (I assume they were getting a shoppinf budget for hosting us), they worked to look after us. On the OTHER other hand (I've got three hands yo) I think we were treated in a similar way that any guests would be, Moroccan or otherwise, and is being treated like a guest an "inauthentic" experience?

So yes, in sum: authenticity is kind of meaningless.

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just my opinion, but using the word 'authentic' to describe my travel experiences seems a little pretentious to me. I love what MinnD said about being respectful of the culture I'm visiting...whether it's northern China, or the world's biggest ball of yarn somewhere in Idaho. I just need to mind my Ps and Qs and be nice.

I've had some of the most amazing travel experiences, and I'm not nearly as well traveled as many of you. But the key to me, was just being grateful for the opportunity to learn about another culture, and being appreciative. Even with a language barrier, my Chinese friends blew me away with their hospitality and kindness. Same in Honduras and Mexico. Awesome people, great food, good times. And I made lifelong friends in these places.

One guy who was in some of the business meetings I attended in China had a terrible attitude about the culture, food, etc. He had a horrible experience, and never realized that he was the problem, not the country and the people. He was an idiot. If you're going to behave like that, why not just stay home and quarantine your crappy attitude?

And as many local people/places as I visited in these countries, I can't say any of them were 'authentic'. I was a guest. In order to get the full experience, I would need to move there, and even then, I'm still an American abroad. Just like none of you will become a Missippian, as much as you yearn to be. :D

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I think it is kinda subjective, like I could understand foreigners in Beijing going to eat peking duck at the touristy places, but quite frankly I find them to be overpriced and would just eat at more local places. Peking duck is a local dish, but quite frankly, alot of the peking duck places are catered to the tourist crowd (for the $$$).



By contrast, I found the areas Gaudi designed in Barcelona, and the Montserrat area to be interesting places to visit, even though they were tourist sites.


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I agree with datepalm, with the added caveat that for me it is important to avoid polluting or supporting businesses that are harmful (an arbitrary definition if there ever was one, I admit), which personally means not flying any more for travels and not spending my money (or lack thereof) in a way that isn't exactly helping out locally. I don't know exactly how this fits in the authentic/inauthentic dichotomy, but I know I didn't practice the abovementioned when I first hit the road and since making a more concious effort to do so, it does feel less intrusive.

I am partially thinking about industries and structures in places like western sahara or tibet where unsuspecting tourists can help enforce and ground businesses by others than locals which I'm ambivalent about.

I'm also really keen on travel as a means of exchange and shedding of barriers so I'm more positive than not of any kind of travel in the end.

I agree with Vrana and The Artist Formerly Known As Datepalm, with the added caveat that I don't agree with the not flying bit. I live on an island in the South Pacific and I don't got no time for no boats. Until The Scientists get my teleporter working properly I'm flying.

But the stuff about travelling in a way which relies the least on any kind of exploitation is bang on.

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