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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am fascinated by this thread. It is reminding me of my early 20s in DC when I'd bump into the global non-profit / Peace Corps crowd who just LOVED to humblebrag (although we hadn't invented that term then) about their travels, each competing with the other to tell stories of the "real" "authentic" travel they had done. Usually they were wearing some kind of Guatemalan textile while they did it. Dreads optional; makeup not allowed ever.

Anyway, these folks especially loved to point to tourist spots and say "that's not the REAL Mexico/South Africa/India." Woe betide you if you had gone somewhere touristy, even by accident! And then there were gradations of judgment in case you had been to the country they knew the most about. Did you stay in hostels? Ohhh, well THEY had lived with a family / camped in the jungle / squatted in an abandoned building / whatever. Do you speak Spanish? Ohhh, well THEY had gone and married a native speaker and now use all the street slang and innuendo that you will never master. You think you actually KNOW Guatemala! Ha! Not until you've spent a year living in the countryside with no running water can you even PRETEND you know ANYTHING about Guatemala! They, and only they, could be authorities on the country they'd been to.

Oddly, their advice often differed greatly from that of people from the actual country, who (gasp!) sometimes enjoy visiting their own tourist spots themselves, and (double gasp!) would sometimes complain about crime, politics, trash, and other problems.

And FYI I did some pretty adventurous travel myself back then, including riding many second class "chicken" buses in Latin America, but quickly realized that there was no competing with these people in the Authentic Travel Olympics (tm). And it's definitely not good to ask them for travel advice because they will sneer at anyone else who does not meet their exacting standards for Who is the Right Kind of Traveler.

Also, as someone who has worked with asylum-seekers, I find the comments about them upthread to be absolutely abhorrent. First of all, there is no neat divide between "economic migrants" and "refugees." Second, a lot of them are actually reluctant to even share the full details of the horrors they have escaped from. It's much more common for someone to say "I came to the US for a better life" and only later to reveal the fact that they were threatened, raped, had family members killed by gangs, etc. And the lawyers who advocate for these people are required to provide evidence of these threats in immigration court. So yeah, someone who claims to "know" these countries better than anyone else and then who also sneers at anyone who would consider going there for being the "wrong" kind of traveler is just really...special.

[/quote]

Wow. This whole thread is wildly entertaining but this one post is the only thing that is 100% spot on. I feel like this thread is just those same folks from their early 20s who got older. [/quote]

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