THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT HATING TOURISTS

Great, now we’ve got that out of the way: Happy New Year!! I hope you were able to take some time out and enjoy the festivities! Or at least just take some space for yourself to reflect on your year and eat a couple of mince pies or ten, and enjoy the moment!

Me, I’ve been taking the time to reflect, recover and get ready for an even more exciting year than before! It’s been a weird sort of limbo, but sometimes that’s exactly what we need. To be with our thoughts and decide where we want to go next. Mentally and physically.

But that’s not the post you came for. The dark beauty of the pandemic is that it really put the world on pause. Pause enough for many of us to take a step back and evaluate basically our entire lives. Which includes the way we were travelling.

Many stopped posting travel content altogether, some began the travels at home and others will have different ideas entirely. Me? It’s given me plenty of time to really consider the purpose around my travels and why I was posting what I was to begin with.

In 2021 especially, I became incredibly aware of my fast moving approach to content and it was alarming. Rediscovering photos from 2018 and 2019 especially where I literally had the mentality of not being able to post two weeks after a trip - even if the content was actually good. ‘The moment had passed’. It worried me how engrained the concept of fast content and fast travel had got for even those of us who were trying to step away from that.

It was a fantastic time to reevaluate look at how we now, moving forward, do not want to approach travel (and other aspects of our lives) in 2022. This is not a ‘don’t be a tourist’ post. Really, this is a things to be aware of post:

Travel to places you actually *want* to visit

Not just where looks good on the ‘gram. While some places will of course continue to be popular sites and destinations for visitors, I’d like to think we’re beginning to be aware of our reasons for going to these places after two years of time out.

Do your research

Does a place close for siestas? Is there a dress code for a certain place? Can you take cameras in? Are you or any of your party menstruating (yep! That’s a thing for some temples)?

It’s hard to forget the image of a group of tourists being told to cover up their outfits in order to get into a temple in Bali. Annoyed it would clash with their outfits. But the thing is, they’d have done their research, they could have coordinated ahead of time.

Learn words from the language

Even if it’s a handful of phrases like hello, thank you, please and goodbye or see you later. It looks good to show you’re trying and respecting your environment. We are visitors and guests when we go anywhere outside our own homes and acknowledging that in small ways like this makes a world of difference.

Go local

Where you can. From local cafes to local tour guides to local boutiques, one way we can give back to the places that accommodate us is to ‘buy in’ to the community.

Especially after the last two years we’ve had, these gestures can go a long way in helping us all recover.

Where’s on your travel list for 2022?

Han x