The Morality of Tourism

The following is an excerpt from my friend, Erick's, blog entitled "van Til World Tour" which can be accessed through the list of my friends blogs on the left side of this screen. The picture's are also from his blog, taken in Bangkok.

"One more thought: as we have been here, I have been doing a lot of thinking as to the whole morality of tourism. I see a place like this, a beautiful island getaway since tourism has been introduced now the streets are full of sunburned, hung-over tourists and there is a McDonald's and Internet cafes and anything else that might be of interest to a paying traveller. On one hand, the tourism is good. It generates income for the country, it brings infrastructure to faraway places like this that may not have had it otherwise. I haven't seen anyone, Thai or otherwise, who isn't well-fed, well-dressed and taken care of. The Thai people who live and work here have a very high standard of living. But on the other hand, tourism has a dark side to it as well. Probably the most vivid example of this is the sex trade. It is rampant here. I remember in the DR we would catch glimpses of it and you knew that it was going on, but here it is wide open and in your face. Every hotel and restaurant and train and bus and whatever else, almost invariably, has had some white guy with a very young Thai girl on his arm. Part of me would like to pass it off to a lame excuse, like that they are friends or that they have noble intentions, but there is far too much of it to play that game. My heart goes out to these girls and I am scared to know the sequence of events that led to the life that they are now trapped in. The police have little or nothing to do with the trade and so it goes along unchecked. And there is more than just the prostitution. More than a few times I have seen Thai people being bossed around and mistreated by pushy selfish tourists and then I am ashamed for us.

So I guess that you can see that there are good but also bad things that come with tourism. I think that it should happen, that people should be free to travel the world and that they should take advantage of that freedom. But I think that as a traveller you are still an ambassador for your country and that should a country open its doors and allow you to explore what is theirs, it should be enjoyed in such a way that enhances the country and the people in it and does not detract. You owe that to people who let you come and be a guest in their country. I think about what it would be like if masses of cash-strapped Thai people started coming into Canada and pushing around my countrymen and using Canadian girls as prostitutes whenever they pleased and I know that no one would stand for it. So it goes without saying that I am at a loss when I see the way these kind, quiet, and polite people are being taken advantage of. Reslolution? At this point, my resolution is to be the type of traveller that adds to the country he is visiting and gives a positive impression of the country he comes from. Things like leaving tips and thanking people and respecting their customs. Ideally, I would like to boot out every rude and selfish and inconsiderate tourist in the entire country, and give away their money to the Thai people to say sorry for all the terrible things that have happened, but of course this is unrealistic and impossible. I am thinking of the quote that says, 'If a man is to change the world, he is first to start with himself.'"