Do not leave your homes

It's been a gradual transition, but it's finally happened. Something has replaced The Gap as my vote for the creepiest place on Queen St. W. The glowing white sign with red, plain, sans serif lettering: The Flight Centre.

The office is always brightly lit, the sign with its prices visible to passers-by any time of the day or night. It's hard not to look -- the magic-markered-in numbers could have dropped to a reasonable range, after all. Maybe you could fly into Prague this weekend and surprise your old girlfriend? Or why not check out Bangkok -- it's not too much more. Hey, Tokyo would be awesome, wouldn't it?

As someone who travels a lot, I am not only susceptible to thoughts like these -- I've acted on them plenty. And while I believe that there's many interesting things travel can do to a person, it sort of freaks me out that everyone agrees with that. Everyone from your anarchist trainhopper to your stuffy ol' businessman agrees: travel is a good thing.

What happens when something is universally viewed as good? Well, there's oversimplification going on, by default. It also creates a social pressure to do it -- "doing Europe" is an obligation, an experience without which makes you a less interesting and whole human being.

Travel, the complex and problematic entertainment that it is, is most often split up into backpackers and tourists. Tourists are picked on a lot for their chosen mode of travelling, so I am going to pick on backpackers instead.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The backpacker steps off the bus in a small town in Mexico. He ignores the man who is telling him about a cheap hotel -- the backpacker hates touts. He finds a phone booth and sets down his pack, making sure the Canadian flag stitched on it is facing out. He flips through his Lonely Planet and starts calling the budget hostels and hotels until he finds one with a room. When he gets there, the price is a dollar or two higher than quoted in the book. This bugs him, and he points at it a few times; the lady behind the desk just shrugs. He doesn't want to be ripped off but he wants to be a bigmouthed American type even less, so he takes the room.

The main thing wrong with this is not really what he did, but why he did it. Why does he hate the tout? Not just because they're aggressively offering a service, but because they're proof that what he's not doing anything new -- high in the backpacker's list of pretences is that they're some kind of romantic explorers. Somehow this is maintained even in the face of the ubiquitous travel guide.

Why does he have a Canadian flag sewn to his backpack? To show that he isn't American, despite the fact that he talks, looks and acts like one. All the advantages of the cultural elite but none of the social stigma. He's certainly just as much a missionary of the North American culture, a tangible proof of the word spread by TV and CD: if they can afford to send their kids on two month vacations, they must be doing something right! Maybe if we learn English we can get some of that...

Of course, why we really can afford this leisure is due to us exploiting the labour and resources of developing countries. Which is why our backpacker's dickering over an amount not worth his time back home -- on the basis that it was worth something in Mexico, and worried that the hotel owner was exploiting him -- was especially ironic.

A month later, our backpacker is free of the bag of possessions that laid on his shoulders like a cross, like a kind of obscure penance for being there. He's in a bar in his hometown, talking about Mexico. Talking about how surly they are. How hard it was to eat vegetarian. How that stupid song Livin' the Viva Loca was everywhere. But man, the beer was cheap! And the way of life was totally different, such a rich culture! Did I tell you about the pinyata?

The backpacker is just the frontline in the tourist assault. They go in first and bring back stories that are better than any advertising. They get the natives softened up and used to a tourist-based, emasculating economy.

I'm not trying to convince you that travel sucks -- travel can be everything they say it is, but nothing's without a cost. Why the Flight Centre disturbs me more than The Gap is because at least people acknowledge more of the truth about the sweatshop sweaters, while everything about travel is prozac positive.

Why do you want to travel? Is it because your life is dull? Why not try to change your life and the society around you rather than escaping to a fantasyland? Why not microadventure rather than macroadventure by finding the bizarre worlds under your nose?

While you're answering those questions, I'll be planning my next trip.

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This article originally appeared in The New Irregular.