Along the lines of personality types of travelers, our readings state that in travel geography theory, there are seven types of personality. These personality trates are in reference to how well a person (traveler) adapts to local ways of life such as food, accommodations, and behavior. According to documents from Figure 2 (2a) from our reading, the “explorer tourist” is extremely rare to see among travelers because they, supposedly, fully accept local norms of a given area in which they are traveling. My question about this theory is how can a person measure “full acceptance,” as stated in our reading? Was there some psychological scale in which one can interview a traveler and see if they indeed, feel the feeling of total acceptance toward a culture’s local norms?
Another interesting fact that I have seen simply in personal experience is that the three tourist types at the bottom of the chart (incipient mass tourist, mass tourist, and charter tour tourist) seem to have the hard end of the experience when they go to partly rural areas expecting truly western amenities. For example, I traveled through Thailand for a month (coincidently the hottest month of the year). I went to Thailand armed with a Fodder’s Guide and some documentation I got from the Internet about nice places to sleep. The Fodder’s Guide gave me some pointers on cultural norms like not eating with your right hand or pointing your feet in another’s direction. Other than that, I had no idea what to do or where to go and I was also low on cash. I had no choice but to do as the locals did and eat off street venders, drink communal water and smoke cigarettes with the shopkeepers as my travel companion went shopping. The ironic thing is that my friend, like most, sought out western amenities (bottled water and food from restaurants) and promptly got sick. I saw this in Mexico too. For some reason, to adapt for me is the smartest thing because it is healthy. To seek out “normal” yet foreign food in an exotic destination is asking for something to go wrong.
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