Travel Distractions

When I travel I like to observe more than the native people, place and things of the unfamiliar region. I also observe the tourists who are there too. One thing I notice is they carry their technology everywhere, particularly cameras. While it may or may not be a cliché' that every Japanese tourist has a camera transplanted around his or her neck, most tourists carry and use cameras allot/too much. But why?

Can a person really see a new culture if bending and stretching behind a camera constantly? Don't people miss too much when spending so much time taking pictures of things they never completely observe while ensconced behind their technology? When one travels, a decision should be made to either constantly take pictures for the picture's sake or to enjoy oneself in the new place with cameras only used sparingly.

Both picture taking obsession and travel can rarely be done at the same time. A few pictures are nice remembrances. Many pictures are just images that are often looked at briefly then hidden away in a folder and eventually forgotten. If accidentally finding the folder many years thereafter, the discoverer usually says, "I look old" or My clothes are embarrassing"...and back into the folder go the pictures.

Besides too many cameras I see many tourists playing with their cell phones too much. Isn't the idea of travel to escape the old environment (cell phones included) for awhile? Yet many tourists chatter away constantly to the people they wanted to get away from in the first place. They say that "I have to be in touch", which means they know nothing both about travel and about communication. I think when away in travel those types probably eat the same fast food they eat in their home town instead of the local foods they could try as part of the travel experience.

Maybe the worst addicted to technology are the travelers who bring and use a lap top computer or use a computer in a hotel or internet cafe. It makes me suspect that their real home isn't the country they left or even the country they are seeing for the first time. Rather, it is inside their computer. Bringing a computer on a pleasure vacation is like wearing old and dirty sneakers with the new suit just purchased.

And the ipod and game addicts, they insult the country to which they travel by tuning it out completely......I guess most people today are just prisoners of their technology and the art of travel a dying one.