Oh hey, so I forgot to tell you something.
So I thought, as you may have, that traveling during the pandemic would, let’s say, “weed out” some of the ridiculous travelers that you usually encounter. You know who I’m talking about – the begpackers and bigots, the willfully uneducated, the ones that might as well have stayed home because all the evidence that they’ve actually learned something from traveling around the world is seriously lacking.
Let’s just say this hasn’t happened.
And yeah, maybe part of it is that I’ve changed; maybe as I continue to decipher exactly the type of traveler I want to be, I become less tolerant of behaviors I was once accepting of. And like, okay. I could see that. But how unaware was I that could have been tolerating some of the behaviors I’ve seen recently?
Look, I get that a lot of folks use travel as some sort of avenue of self discovery, and I get that I was once one of them, and still am in a lot of ways. I’ve always had a particular distaste for Americans abroad, but…everyone?
Because I’m looking around during the pandemic and so many of these people are fucking complete trash.
Okay, yeah, the biggest offenders in this category are still the old standbys: Americans, Brits, and of course, Australians. Seriously, I haven’t met an Australian that wasn’t racist since Jen in DF in 2013. And I’m not saying everyone has to be woke as hell but when you’re traveling, don’t you have a responsibility to…try?
Okay, whatever, I’m headed out of this shit-hole hotel and to Eskesehir today. Wish me luck.
–M