A dispatch from the end of travel’s brief, troubled golden age (2021) | Hacker News Reader

A dispatch from the end of travel’s brief, troubled golden age (2021)

aeon.co

35 pointsmmastrac22 comments

> but, for curious kids growing up in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the world still seemed a depthless prospect. Borders were impermeable; the nations they concealed were incomprehensibly varied and vast. It was a world that could only be glimpsed and never surveyed, in which encyclopaedias and atlases hinted at a planet still rife with mystery.

Granted, I grew up in the 60s and 70s, but I find it really hard to recognize this take on this world. Maybe I've just forgotten my childhood sense of things, but the world always seemed wide open to me, borders to be (easily crossed), nations known before one even got there (but that would still surprise you).

This seems to be me to be another trivial example of people generalizing from their own experience (I don't doubt that the author felt this way), and projecting it onto their entire generation. Not the worst thing in the world, but something to be careful about.

I was certainly more privileged than most and my parents mostly prioritized foreign travel rather than more "conventional" family vacations. However even in the 60s and 70s, I had very little sense of the world being closed off. In general. Of course, there was the Iron Curtain and other countries like China weren't very accessible to Westerners. But Many places were. And certainly by the 90s, traveling to somewhere like Russia, China, or "adventure travel" generally was very well established.

I suspect yours is maybe a bit more of an American position. In Europe we had borders that were impenetrable everywhere, so we generalized this to the world.

In addition, it’s a question of affluence. We did one big trip (to the United States) as kids, which my parents chose for safety and Disney World. The rest of the world was totally inaccessible to middle class families (not that they would have desired to go).

Certainly places like Burma, Vietnam or Patagonia seemed totally inaccessible to us, so I can emphasize from a German point of view.

I grew up in the UK.

I'd say the golden age of travel (if you mean independent individual adventure travel) was the hippie trail era in the 60s. You could overland through places like Iran and Afghanistan that would be unthinkable today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail

That and mass tourism in general has drastically altered most of the places that remain open.

Why can't you overland in Iran today? Seems to be quite a popular tourist destination with many hardcore traveller types.

I really wanted to visit when I was in the region but it ruins the US ESTA waiver for the rest of your life so puts some people in an annoying situation.

Even worse is Iraq, which despite being a western ally sets off the same loss of waiver. At least Iran makes sense and can accept that.

It depends on your nationality. US, UK, Canada must be part of a approved tour group and accompanied by a guide which by definition isn't independent travel. https://en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Iran

There was a discussion of Kevin Kelly's (the founder of Wired) travels in Asia in the 70's [1]/[2], this part grabbed me:

> I remember taking an overnight bus from India to Kathmandu. That bus was probably not more than $5. I remember that morning, after traveling all night, rolling down the Kathmandu Valley and seeing the Himalayas, and a whole city with zero cars.

Sadly the modern world has infected the whole planet that we can't enjoy places like these any more. Kathmandu is a jungle of concrete buildings and traffic nowadays, as a quick YouTube search shows (is it good or bad that we can just look up on YouTube what a city looks like?)

[1] https://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/1218/kelly.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31518605

The world seems more homogeneous now. When I went to Europe in 1985, it seemed like there were so many differences between life in Europe and in the US. Not major ones, but enough that it was an experience. When I went in 2010, everything was more or less the same. The coffee came from Starbucks. The furniture came from Ikea. The change came on both sides of the Atlantic but there was plenty of convergence.

I think the people in europe are still incredibly varied and colorfully different.

Its just that foreign (US) brands have penetrated everywhere. If you wanted to hangout at McDonalds and Starbucks _you can_ and it will be the same experience (mostly) as anywhere else in the world.

The turist experience has been homogenized for sure. But thats why you just try not to be a tourist. The way I like to travel is to go to a place and work from there for a few weeks from a co-working space. Get to meet the locals, they can show you around where people _actually_ eat, hangout and have fun. It’s a totally different experience that still tickles my wanderlust.

Even several cities in Spain for example can be have incredibly different cultures and customs, it’s just not as obvious as in the 70s.

I’ve tried staying and working from Alicante, Malaga, Valencia and Barcelona and they have all been incredibly unique experiences in their own right.

> I think the people in europe are still incredibly varied and colorfully different.

I think the same is true (even) of the USA. It was certainly when I first visited in 1981, and found myself thinking "there's more difference between a lobster fisherman in Maine and people in LA than there is in all of Europe". I was underselling Europe with that assessment, but having lived here now for 33 years, the variation in the USA still strikes me as enormous.

The problem is that it is harder to see when almost everyone speaks the same language, drives the same cars, eats the same breakfast cereal, references the same cultural elements etc. You might think that this implies a high level of conformity, and I suppose that in some absolute sense that is true. Nevertheless, the vastly differing climates and landscapes across the USA drive what to me still feels like a huge range of difference in lifestyle and attitude.

To me this long rambling blog post smells unfortunately like self-indulgent over-generalisation based on an unscientific sample of one.

I'm afraid there is much truth in the old adage "Travel broadens the mind".

The average American famously provides an example as to why travelling exclusively within the borders of your own country, no matter how expansive it may be and how awesome you feel it will be, will always be no substitute for true cross-border travel.

You can't appreciate other cultures, other cuisines, other ways of thinking simply by reading books or watching YouTube videos about far-off places. The only way you'll ever broaden your mind to truly understand why your fellow humans elsewhere on this planet behave in a manner you perceive so differently to your own is to go there and smell it, hear it and feel it for yourself.

I fully appreciate that frequent and varied cross-border travel is somwhat a luxury, but equally its a case of some is better than none.

I agree. It’s externalizing vague and poorly analyzed discomfort as something happening outside himself.

Golden age of travel is over because countries are opening up and closing down for the foreseeable future. It effects passport holders unequally based on country of origin. Even if your argument is that countries are rarely closing their borders now there is always the risk of becoming trapped.

Also, keeping up with the vaccine schedule (i.e supported vaccines, ability to add them to your existing vaccine card or cert) is difficult. How to get an EU Digital Covid Certificate as an American or other nationality?

1.) No EU country requires vaccination or testing requirements for entry anymore. 2.) It's very easy to get a EU cert from a US one (I did it through Switzerland, took about... 10 minutes?). 3.) Countries have always been able to close their borders, especially if you're from the global south. I don't think this is right, but it's not different.

> It effects passport holders unequally based on country of origin. This has always been the case. Maybe you didn't feel it if you have a US or French passport, but try being Bosnian and visiting NYC. If you're Polish, even until just a few years ago, despite them being in the EU, you needed an embassy in-person appointment, to get a US visa since Polish citizens weren't eligible for ESTA. Thankfully that stupid thing was changed.

> 1.) No EU country requires vaccination or testing requirements for entry anymore.

False. Portugal, Spain, Netherlands:

https://www.government.nl/topics/coronavirus-covid-19/visiti...

> An EU entry ban is in effect for people from countries outside the European Union/Schengen area. There are exemptions to the entry ban, for example for people travelling from a safe country or people with proof of vaccination or proof of recovery. This proof of vaccination or recovery must meet certain requirements. From 23 March 2022 people travelling to the Netherlands no longer need to show a negative test result.

More: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2022/06/08/europe-tr...

> Countries have always been able to close their borders, especially if you're from the global south. I don't think this is right, but it's not different.

You're comparing Covid-19 to business as usual pre-pandemic? You must be joking.

Visa service is way behind.

> 2.) It's very easy to get a EU cert from a US one (I did it through Switzerland, took about... 10 minutes?).

Yeah, but what if I'm not in the US? What if I'm traveling in Latam?

> This has always been the case. Maybe you didn't feel it if you have a US or French passport, but try being Bosnian and visiting NYC.

Portugal opened for US citizens not several South American countries. It has now changed but point remains.

The article sounded like self-indulgent dreck.

I see so much romanticization of travel and “broadening one’s horizons” but most of the time I see that the travelers focused entirely on the surface and missed many truly significant details.

My wife is from Thailand so we travel there often. Every time we go there I am reminded how lucky we are in the US. Not just in the economic sense- that’s more superficiality. Natives of many Asian countries are usually very racist by our standards, and homophobic, and you name it. Not in the trivial “disagree on policy” way that the epithets are thrown around in the west. If you spend a lot of time around people you’ll find that they dislike dark skinned people and favor light skinned people. Gay people are socially held up to ridicule; in popular culture they usually play the role of comic relief.

You can’t go two blocks without seeing a picture of the king. There are propaganda videos playing on displays in the airport extolling his virtues. Again, real propaganda, not just political speech that you might disagree with. Don’t get me started on lese majeste laws; you have to know people really well before they’ll open up to you how they really feel.

I say all this because all I see from these wanderlust expand-your-horizons types is trivial - the beauty of the scenery, how good the authentic food was, how nice the people were (did it ever occur to you that being nice is a strategy to extract money from rich western tourists)?

They never bring home the perspective that things in the west are way better than they are in much of the world because of our values.

> Every time we go there I am reminded how lucky we are in the US. Not just in the economic sense- that’s more superficiality. Natives of many Asian countries are usually very racist by our standards, and homophobic, and you name it. Not in the trivial “disagree on policy” way that the epithets are thrown around in the west. If you spend a lot of time around people you’ll find that they dislike dark skinned people and favor light skinned people. Gay people are socially held up to ridicule; in popular culture they usually play the role of comic relief.

> You can’t go two blocks without seeing a picture of the king. There are propaganda videos playing on displays in the airport extolling his virtues. Again, real propaganda, not just political speech that you might disagree with.

Is that luck or a conscious choice by Americans to evolve our culture?

After all, the territories which ended up forming the United States and the first few presidents to rule it democratically once were themselves ruled by a king and certainly had no free speech.

> Natives of many Asian countries are usually very racist by our standards, and homophobic, and you name it.

I seem to recall there are parts of the US where if you go around waving a rainbow pride flag at best you'll get verbal abuse and at worst you'll get shot.

There is also the sort of thing Trevor Noah highlights on occasion, the veiled racism in the US. (I can't locate in on YouTube but there was a video doing the rounds of him answering a question from a school teacher in the audience on the subject, he cited an example of getting a mortgage for a house).

Racism is everywhere. Sure in some countries it may be more "in your face", but ultimately if you go looking for it you'll find it everywhere.

I think we're starting to see travel fatigue. When the author was backpacking 20 years ago, there was still enough friction in movement and communication that travel had some mystique. You weren't connected to the rest of the world 24/7 through constant internet access on your phone.

Back then, friends' stories from a trips abroad were a bit exotic. Now, we're less impressed by travel. You can get a $300 airfare from the East Coast of the US to Europe, making a trip to Barcelona as easy and cheap as a weekend jaunt to Chicago. We've all seen a million photos of places that you went, in much higher quality via Instagram and YouTube.

Reminds me of this post: https://markmanson.net/the-death-of-tourism

> Trends will move on and the younger generations will one day make fun of their millennial parents/aunts/uncles for wasting their money on trips to Burning Man and Tulum, and the more the tourism industry will suffer. Not to mention the backlash from the environmental/climate/cultural considerations mentioned above. I think Millennials were the “peak travel” generation and we’re going to appear lame and crusty just like our parents’ obsession with McMansions in the suburbs seems lame to us.

Then again, apparently this will be the biggest tourism summer ever (given pent-up demand due to COVID), so what do I know.

>You weren't connected to the rest of the world 24/7 through constant internet access on your phone.

Yeah. It depended where you were of course. But until about at least the late 90s, especially outside of large cities, you were pretty much totally disconnected from friends and family back home. And while you might find out about the most important events, you were mostly pretty cut off from routine news as well.

I was in Thailand for a couple weeks in November 2000. Lots of tourists then.

It does feel different to quit your job and travel for several months. I did that in 2007. Got a big backpack, Nikon D70, first iPhone, Mac Book Pro and started my journey in Guatemala. Spent 3 months learning Spanish in Antigua.

Then I spent 6 more months making my way from hostel to hostel, in shared rooms, down to Buenos Aires.

Spend as long as you want in one place then move on.

Probably better to do when you’re younger but it’s a nice chapter to add to your life at any age.

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