The Price Wasn't $100. It Was $20. The Difference Was Ten Words of Arabic.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Put the Guidebook Down, brought to you by Kultura Travel, with me, Kiara, the creator, as your host. Last episode, we started to dive into this idea of travelers versus tourists. In this week's episode, we're going to break it down even further, to what it means to go beyond the surface level of both terms. And I'm not going to call people out, but I'm also going to call people out. So this is for you: if you are staying in hostels and calling yourself a traveler because you're so cool staying in those hostels, well, guess what, you might just be a tourist in disguise.

In last week's episode we started to talk about those general characteristics that get associated with tourists, such as the Hawaiian shirts, walking around with the cameras on your neck, my personal favorite one that I'm seeing more and more frequently, the iPhone or Android phone strap around your neck. Come on, guys, you're not fooling anyone with those. You might as well just be wearing a label that says tourist on your shirt. Selfie sticks, big group tours, chain restaurants, and a large group of people moving together between the most popular tourist destinations. And I'm not gonna lie, I was a tourist too, sometimes I am a tourist still. No denying that being a tourist is still some part of traveling. However, I have myself begun to shift more into this idea of traveler.

This can be defined by different meanings, going deeper beyond the surface level when it comes to the definition of traveler. But for me, I'm gonna draw it in onto my own experiences from when I moved abroad to teach English with Fulbright in Moldova. This is really when I became more familiar with the idea of being a traveler, because I was literally dropped into living and immersing in the culture of a town where English was literally not spoken. I had, with my assignment, requested to be placed in an area where Russian speakers were more predominant, so I could practice my Russian. Instead I was placed in a Romanian-speaking town. For me this was an exciting challenge, because I have studied linguistics, I love learning languages, and I like to work to overcome language barriers.

For me it became this idea of a traveler, becoming immersed into the community by learning Romanian, taking the time to go to workshops or into different homes to speak with local families, learn their stories, learn their cooking traditions. One of my most favorite memories was in Orhei Vechi at Vila Rose, a famous homestay in the area, cooking with the host, plăcintă, together in the kitchen. For those who don't know, plăcintă is a traditional Moldovan pastry, snack, or meal, depending on how it's prepared and served.

For me, traveler is really someone who wants to learn about the people, area, history, and language of where they're visiting, and take the extra step to make those deeper, long-lasting connections, because they're leaving not just having visited the number-one tourist site or attraction in the area, but leaving with stories, new perspectives, and mindsets. And some might start to question me, saying, hey, why are you talking about this now, everyone always talks about tourists and we still market the whole industry as tourism, is this now like a new marketing scheme, an ego thing, what is it? No. This is genuine people trying to create a genuine movement so that we are traveling more ethically, more meaningfully, and more authentically. And in my opinion, you can be both a tourist and a traveler. I believe it's possible to do them simultaneously. I think it's possible to have your trip be both part traveler, both part tourist. But the idea is that we're getting people to be more interested in pursuing that traveler identity, tipping the scale a little higher toward the traveler side than the tourism side.

And I'm going to be completely honest, I'm not fully innocent of being 100% traveler. I like to think I fall more like 70% traveler, 30% tourist, because I like to learn the language of where I'm visiting, go the extra mile to really talk with the local cab drivers or bus drivers, take public transportation as an alternative to Uber. I like to go into the hole-in-the-wall restaurants where maybe they have no Yelp profile and I just stumbled upon it, and the menu's not even in English, so translation's needed. That's where I like to go. But there are times when safety and comfortability come into consideration, and if you've been planning a dream vacation and there's a Seven Wonders of the World site there, you're still going to want to visit that.

I'll give an example from one of my most recent travels, to Morocco. This trip was a little different in its setup, because I was visiting a friend who did the same English teaching program with Fulbright that I did in Moldova, but they did it in Morocco. So I already had a connection with someone doing that deeper immersion into the local community, life, and language. I had explicitly mentioned beforehand that I wanted to visit some of the major sites considered more on the tourism, checklist-travel side, for example the Merzouga desert experience with Sahara camping. The trip we opted to take, out of convenience for traveling with our group at the time, was more of the authentically curated travel experience: we were literally shuffled around in a bus with a bunch of other tourists, going through a kind of simulation bubble with a set group of fluent English-speaking guides who do this with millions of travelers a year. Nothing completely unique to our travels versus anyone else's. I like to call it cookie-cutter travel. Due to our budget and time in the country, we were aware of this and okay with it. That was the touristy side of our itinerary.

On the other side, we had the more traveler side. I visited during Ramadan, and because I had friends and colleagues with me already living in the communities, one of the more rewarding experiences from my Morocco trip was actually invitations to participate in different iftars with the local communities. I was able to cook some local dishes, meet locals, hear their stories, and help spread the table for the celebration as they broke their fast after sundown. That was an example of a trip with a balance between tourist and traveler experiences. What I want to mention is that this is a case-in-point example of how it leaves a more meaningful memory and impression when you go the more traveler route over the touristy one, making the extra effort for deeper connections. And that doesn't mean you have to completely go out of your way, off the beaten path, to have that experience.

Even if you're in Venice, Italy, it's a very touristy thing to do a gondola ride, but if you're going all that way, you're not going to skip the gondola ride, that would be funny. I don't think I've ever met a person who went to Venice and completely skipped it. An example of taking that touristy experience and making it more of a traveler experience would be to actually chat with your gondola driver, ask them about their family, maybe start such a good conversation you end up going out for an espresso together, maybe you get invited to a family dinner. I know that sounds strange to some people, "whoa, red flag, is that safe?" Always use your intuition and inner feeling to scale out a situation for safety. But these things do happen. I've been in a situation myself where I met someone during an experience, we got to talking about traditions, culture, language, and I ended up going back for their family celebration or birthday. That circles back to the main point: traveler experiences are more meaningful, more memorable, and deeper.

Now, going beyond the traveler-versus-tourist idea, I really want to talk about how this impacts your journey while traveling. Does it really make a difference to learn five or ten phrases in the language when you're abroad only for a short period? I'm sure you've seen the videos on Instagram or TikTok where someone's visiting Egypt, haggling back and forth, the price starting at $100 for a scarf, the conversation going back and forth in English, "this is too high," "this isn't within my budget," "this isn't the fabric I'm looking for." Then when they switch to Arabic, the price suddenly drops to maybe $20, because then it's like, oh, you get it, more of the cultural context, it's more familial, that idea of culture and community. I've seen this myself too, in a market in Moldova, just buying produce, the fact that I could speak Romanian and Russian, vendors would get super excited and end up giving me extra treats or vegetables for free on top of what I was already paying, even though I was insisting, "no, no, no, it's fine, just let me pay for my five tomatoes," and they'd say, "no, here's a treat, because you're learning Romanian." Just stuff like that, uncommon and unexpected, where they have a more open mind and appreciation for your presence in their country.

That kind of exchange makes you take a step back and ask, where does this intentionality play into my regular life and my next travels? How does it help me approach travel in the future now that I've had these experiences? I think it starts to change your mindset and perspective when creating travel plans, and where you might want to go as a destination. I think a big part of it is that you start seeking out more of those unique experiences rather than the cookie-cutter tourism side. That's now always been the case for me in future travels after living abroad in these remote destinations. Going back to my Morocco example, since it's the most recent one, I had the whole checklist of travel-influencer-recommended sites, some I was genuinely curious about, some I wasn't. Within that, I made case-in-points, like, oh, I'd love to learn how to make Moroccan rugs, I'd love to talk with someone from a Berber tradition and learn more about the Berber language. Because I'd had those previous experiences seeing the impact of knowing the local language and asking deeper cultural questions, it made me more eager to find those experiences in my next destination. While in Morocco, I did meet someone from the Berber tribe who spoke Berber and explained their alphabet, pronunciation, and linguistic formation.

This has also come out more in my comfortability as a solo traveler. I know more of what to look for, what not to look for, where my comfortability lies, and that gives me a wider selection of where to travel. Maybe someone newer to travel sticks more to Western Europe because of the higher probability of someone knowing English, and the familiarity of existing tourism infrastructure, better transportation and accommodation options, versus somewhere like Romania, where there's not a lot of information out there, most people just think of București and that's it, but Romania is such a big country, there's so much to explore, and I highly recommend it. That's an example of someone who's traveled more becoming more open to going into the unknown, doing the extra research, being flexible and adaptable.

Which comes to the question, are there places where it's almost impossible to avoid being a tourist? I think this is such a good question, because you think of dream destinations, going to Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower, there are just some bucket-list experiences you go there for, and it's possible you're just going to be a tourist the entire time. Perhaps you go the extra step to do a cultural tour around that iconic landmark to get the history and context of it, and from there you're able to meet some locals if you go to a local event or from that tour group, and have those deeper conversations and connections, then maybe go to a local-recommended cafe or restaurant because you talked to the local tour guide. My biggest recommendation, on that bigger question of whether it's possible to not be a tourist while still going to touristy things, is a hundred percent yes, you just have to be a little more creative in your approach.

If I'm going to break down how you can approach that: number one is to observe. Watch, listen, notice your surroundings, what's going on around you. Once you take a step back, you'll see the tourists stick out like a sore thumb, and then you can decide, am I going to want to be associated with that, am I not, and what do I need to do. The second is to participate: are you going to join the local customs, put more effort into the language, cultural gestures? The third and last point is to learn, and this sounds so simple because it is, and it's one of the most commonly forgotten ones, especially with our checklist travelers and tourism: ask questions. You paid all this money to get to that dream destination, don't you want to learn about the destination you're visiting? If you're at a shop, ask the shopkeeper how to say thank you, how to say hello. If you're at a restaurant, ask how to say "the check" or "the tip." Learn those words. Try new foods. Be open. That's the biggest thing, just be open-minded to new experiences.

And if you're going to ask me the number one thing someone could do to step out of the tourist bubble tomorrow, it's that: it's literally asking a question, being reflective, putting the phone down. Maybe you could Google the information, but there's someone right next to you who's from the area, ask them, you're going to have that communication, that memory, that exchange, and it could lead to a whole new friendship, a whole new experience. You never know, but you gotta try. And because of that, you're going to come back with a very big flex of being a traveler, because you took that extra step of putting the phone down and asking someone a question. This is from my own personal experience: you end up asking a local a question during your guided tour, next thing you're invited to go out for coffee with a couple of the other people in your group who are genuinely interested in the culture and learning the local language, and from there you get invited to a whole other backpacking trip, just because you took the initiative to show that you care. It happens, I promise, and I know several people who've had that experience. That's why I say, why not give it a try, step out of that comfort zone, become uncomfortable, and get comfortable in the uncomfortable.

At the end of the day, it's not just about whether you're a traveler or a tourist. It's about whether you let a place change you and your perspective, or if you just pass through taking photos. Think about it. You never know what may happen when you put that guidebook down. And that's why we are here at Kultura Travel, to help you see and open your eyes to the new side of travel once you go beyond that travel checklist, beyond typical tourism, and you put the guidebook down. Be sure to check out our website and see the different experiences we offer for you to go beyond the expected when it comes to tourism. Thank you so much, guys. Catch you on the next episode.