I get the urge to dunk on those who are "doing it wrong" (hello Instagrammers blocking the way), but I'd need to have a long conversation with someone before labeling them "unworthy of traveling". And some of my fondest memories are of people and places I wouldn't have met at home - hard to enjoy a sunset next to a gorgeous cathedral on a cliff when your city is 100 years old and flat.

The most obvious example of this in context of travel are these huge cruise ships. No one is really doing anything wrong with that, as such, but craptons of tourists descending on your comparatively little city or town can become quite disruptive (as I've experienced first-hand as a resident).

There's quite a few problems like this, from small to large. Humans don't seem very good at taking "collective responsibility" for these sort of things, "because I'm doing nothing wrong", which is true, but also not.

Certainly, there are many who rely on the "rudeness" of the travelers for their livelihood. New Orleans comes to mind, when I say that people who live there may not appreciate the tourists, but know that many of the things they do appreciate (dining, arts, etc) would not be there, but for the tourist. Luckily, the peak influx can be avoided while enjoying the fruits the rest of the time.

At a higher level I think the issue is overpopulation combined with ease of travel. We cause too much damage.

I saw it stand at 0 (i.e. 1 downvote) shortly after I posted it; I don't know if it went lower than that, but probably not. A single person downvoting something shortly after it was posted can make something appear "as if it's downvoted", but more often than not it's just a single person. I wouldn't put too much stock in it.

I'm just making these numbers up because I don't have a good way to estimate them, could also be ">50%" instead of ">15%". But that's what it comes down to.

I think COVID really highlighted the contrast; first it was a slow increase that you don't really notice directly, then suddenly none, and then suddenly a huge spike again. e.g. Edinburgh roughly doubled the number of tourists from 2012 to 2019[1] which, in spite of being a fairly large change, you probably don't really notice when spread out over a 7 year period.

[1]: visits to Edinburgh castle is probably a reasonable proxy: https://www.statista.com/statistics/586822/edinburgh-castle-...

Because you included the word "egregiously" I suppose technically you are right, but only on a technicality. A small "wrong" at the individual level becomes "egregiously" wrong at the population level.

- one person eating food in the streets in Japan isn't egregious, every tourist doing it is.

- one person being loud in a church in Italy isn't egregious, all of them is.

- one person touching some old Australian rock art isn't, every tourist doing it is.

When you consider your actions as a tourist, you have to consider a million people doing the same. Anything else is being a bad tourist.

For example "eating in the street is rude" is one of those things that's just a foreign concept to many people outside Japan. I just so happen to know about this from a YouTube video I once watched, but if it wasn't for that I could see myself doing it. Hell, even with that I could see myself just forgetting because it's such an alien concept to me that this is considered rude.

But "I'm only a tourist, it's ok" leads to the egregious "tourists are bad" concept.

Even someone who takes a 20 hour flight to take photos for Instagram is having a unique life experience. They are going to have experiences worth telling stories about. Certainly more than the person who doesn't leave the house.

I found myself trying to see their viewpoint, trying to be critical of my own experiences as a traveler and I kept failing to do so. What a horrible narrative they're embracing.

About par for the course for the New Yorker, in my experience

Edit: Lots of coal defenders in here. It is absolutely ridiculous to be burning coal in 2023. But hey, perhaps the US could focus on reducing its own coal usage. Go nuclear! My point is that your trip around the world is a drop in the bucket.

I say this as someone who owns and enjoys my Quest 2 VR headset, in part to watch 3D videos of nature scenes and walks in various places. I just also know it isn’t without an environmental cost of its own.

I've also had the fortune of traveling abroad 3 times in my life, and I do think because those were such unique events, it has changed me to some extent. One example would be seeing the train infrastructure across Europe and then Japan, and realizing how much I enjoyed that experience and how easy it was to traverse the cities themselves. I did also see the Mona Lisa, but quickly went back to just walking the streets of Paris at night, and enjoyed that experience much more!

It's funny that I go out of my way to see art galleries abroad, but haven't seen most of the local ones. That's to say nothing of the recurring events, the rich history, and the millions of people I haven't met yet.

Take this part:

> ” If you think that this doesn’t apply to you—that your own travels are magical and profound, with effects that deepen your values, expand your horizons, render you a true citizen of the globe, and so on—note that this phenomenon can’t be assessed first-personally. Pessoa, Chesterton, Percy, and Emerson were all aware that travellers tell themselves they’ve changed, but you can’t rely on introspection to detect a delusion. So cast your mind, instead, to any friends who are soon to set off on summer adventures. In what condition do you expect to find them when they return? They may speak of their travel as though it were transformative, a “once in a lifetime” experience, but will you be able to notice a difference in their behavior, their beliefs, their moral compass? Will there be any difference at all?”

He puts the positive outcomes of traveling as utopian perspectives, while defining that you can’t disagree, and proposing a test that is obviously designed to fail. “Can you notice a profound transformation in your friends after asking them how the trip went?”. That’s silly.

I noticed profound transformation from traveling in myself and in friends before, but that’s during conversation about other stuff than the trip and that happen along the years, not right after the trip. People talking about their careers, their partners, their family, their expectations, their doubts, and then mentioning something that happened years ago in a touristy trip.

I read this whole text as someone making an effort to prove that they are right at being presumptuous about people who say “I love to travel”.

But the article was a bit more of a thoughtful rant than a capturing the essence of the travel and its trade offs.

Two thoughts it doesn’t capture:

Travel in almost all cases broadens your perspective of what life is (or was) like for others, or could be like for you. The broadening of perspective you get from, say, books, is similar in a way but just… different.

The type and degree of broadening you get can be different depending on duration, how and why you travel (vacation, visiting friends, volunteer work serving others, business) and what you do (touristy, backcountry, live with locals, museum focus, food focus, nightlife focus, outdoor focus, bucketlist focus) etc. Are all those of equal value? Are none of those of any value and they are all just vanity on the way to death?

Second, there is also an aspect of “adventure” to travel. The traveler goes into the unknown in hopes of something and returns. Is adventure good or pointless? Is it true “the journey is the reward” (Steve Jobs quote) or is it all about outcomes as the article author implies?

Anyway it was a good rant but something better could be written on the subject.

For instance, many Americans try to cram all of Europe into their two weeks there. They end up seeing a major capital with centuries of history in 6 hours. Perhaps they'd have a better time strolling around Poznan for two weeks.

I think that travel is a lot more pleasant if you reject the completionist approach and just try to have a good time while expanding your horizons.

Theres probably a name for it. If there isnt there should be. Burberryfication?

A lot of people who do travel I don't think actually enjoy it much but feel compelled to engage in status games.

Meanwhile the upper classes and aspiring upper classes understand that it doesn't give them status any more. This becomes "a lack of meaning" because it's well understood among the upper classes that directly gatekeeping status is vulgar.

I too realized just how pointless signs and driving laws were on my travels.

And then I went there. Nothing could have prepared me for it. Seeing it for yourself is a whole different beast. It puts the whole thing in context.

Reducing a whole culture to a meal in a local approximation of its cuisine? Come on.

Hell, after living in Canada for two decades and consuming American culture ad nauseum, going there for a few days is always a mind trip. The magic happens in the details, not in the broad strokes. I wouldn't pretend to understand America because I ate at a fried chicken place.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"when I was in Abu Dhabi, I went on a guided tour of a falcon hospital. I took a photo with a falcon on my arm. I have no interest in falconry or falcons, and a generalized dislike of encounters with nonhuman animals. But the falcon hospital was one of the answers to the question, “What does one do in Abu Dhabi?” So I went."

I think the author has bigger issues than travel.

I gained a new appreciation that day for what "different culture" truly means, and has made me more tolerant to those who break social rules without malice. I knew all of that before, but that moment really helped me grok the concept.

To put it in algorithmic terms (this is HN after all): one could be stuck in a local maximum and not known it, and making a small jump in a completely random direction might be exactly what's needed to get out of there.

This is _precisely_ why people need to travel: not to learn 5,000 years (good luck) but to appreciate that there's a helluva lot more than to a place.

But I didn’t love Vietnamese food until visiting Vietnam. Having been there, I now seek it out here.

Even though I had it on quite a few occasions as a kid.

So the answer is almost always: certainly. Especially if we talk about Sichuan food - very hard to find the authentic stuff imho.

Last year, for example, I spent about 3h a day walking Nice. I covered most of the tram network on foot because I wanted to see areas well outside the typical tourist areas. I could've done the same length walks at home, but I'd have seen places I've already been many times.

And often even when you go to destinations where your home might well even have superior options sometimes, the point is partly that it's different and new and that in itself has a qualitative difference in how you experience it (try walking down a street you've never walked anymore and be present, and walk down the same street again every day for a week - the experience noticeably changes), but also often simply that it creates an adventure, even if a tiny one, exactly because it's not something you usually do on top of being somewhere you usually aren't.

But my parents are part of that sizable minority of members who never go to these places on their own. So every time I visited home, there would be an appreciable pile of passes and vouchers on the mantelpiece, and Mom and Dad would encourage me to take a friend, or my sister, and have an outing with the free passes, so we could at least use them up.

So this is the case in my family. Now I can see where people who love visiting museums become members in their own towns, get free passes, and visit there often, right in their backyard. I can also see people becoming members because they love entertaining visitors and they can show those visitors a good time if they have a supply of free passes on-hand and ready for when someone new comes around.

I'm not one of those people. I'm a filthy tourist that goes to museums and art galleries and goes home after two weeks happy to be back and I'm okay with that. I also know people that put months or years of their life on hold so they could travel aimlessly with a backpack and they seemed like they had a great time, and would probably argue they feel enlightened and broadened for doing so. So I don't really know who this article is against. There probably are some vapid people who fit whoever this is targeting. Don't know why this is written like it's uncovering some ugly truth about "us" and "we", whoever that is meant to be.

"She likes to drink diet coke" does not carry the same weight as "she likes to drink tea," where the former suggests an impoverished mind and the latter a certain philosophical attitude toward life. Or "she likes to walk everywhere" compared to "she likes to drive everywhere," where walking is "imbued with a vast significance, an aura of virtue," whether in the city, mountains, or woods (but especially in the mountains or woods). "She keeps a diary" sounds profound, but shallower when the diary is digital than when the paper smells of lavender and evokes flowering hills as far as the eye can see.

I like to travel to certain places and at certain times, which makes me a "conditional traveler", and very often I travel alone, which often allows me to get to know the local people and to lose myself, for a few days or weeks, in another world, perhaps in another life. Other people like other ways of traveling, which I may find more or less appealing to myself, but it's the same feeling I get from clothes worn by others: I may not like them on me, but I don't have to wear them.

I do have trouble applying any high virtue to that, though. It's much more selfish than that. Keeping my persective honed and dynamic allows me to function better as a human being, forming better relationships to get what I need, apply different ways of doing things to make my day easier, etc. In a way, sure, I guess that is broadening myself a bit, but I can't see any fault in that.

    To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience, It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.

I've been traveling longer-term for two and half years, staying at each place for at least a month when possible. I'm amazed at how much experience I can pack in a week, time that used to spent commuting.

I'm able to observe a lot of different people going about their lives, people I would've not encountered otherwise. I'm exposed to many ways of doing things and am also able to see great pieces of art and natural wonders on the weekend. These experiences have markedly shifted my general perspective. It just takes being away for longer than a week or two.

Again, previously this time would've just gone towards commuting or watching mediocre stuff on Netflix (which we still do occasionally but not as often).

In contrast, the things I and many of my friends used to do for entertainment when living in the Bay Area were more similar to the examples the author of the article mentioned-novelty for novelty sake and no impact on you as a person.

This description fits almost every New Yorker article. Yet, the headline made you click. It does not matter if you read it, they do not expect you to read it, nor do they need you to - but there need to be some text following the headline.

But overall, traveling is a fun activity with centuries of marketing around adventure that doesn't tend to change people in any manner. It is just very expensive fun, and I can have about as much fun doing things at home. I just can't take photos of it to prove how much disposable income I have.

Then I took an academic job in what later became one of the least affordable areas in the US. Now I think that travel is cheap, fancy tech gadgets are cheap, and living in Helsinki would have been cheap. Doing things at home, on the other hand, is now a way to show off your wealth, because it assumes that you have a larger home than you would strictly need.

That and the feeling of scale; every time I visit Iceland, I find it difficult to describe to others just what about it is so beautiful. The problem is that pictures can’t capture the feeling of scale, and feeling like a small speck on the planet when standing in front of a massive waterfall or inside or on a glacier, etc. That feeling is hard to capture.

But there is beauty in nature everywhere. It is harder to find in populated areas, but it is still there. In some ways, viewing something majestic, while nice and awe-inspiring, is like being smacked in the face with a baseball bat. Do I really need to be awestruck to remember that nature can be beautiful?

As far as cultures, I get it, but I find it uninteresting at this point. These people queue up different. Those people stop and chat different. These other people view time and lateness different. It is mostly surface level stuff you observe when traveling. Like you write, immersion is required to get a real understanding. IMO that's not travel any more, it's living somewhere else for several months and knowing the language. But I'll accept competing definitions of travel, I just don't think it's what people mean when reading an article like this one.

Holy shit is that thing HUGE.

And it's not that it actually does wonders.

Maybe if the next town was interesting, getting on an airplane for 8 hours would be less needed.

One annoying travel thing: people who count numbers of countries they’ve been to. You can hop around so many European countries in a week. But driving around US, you’d see slightly more of the world but only can add one to your count. Needlessly arbitrary.

Most people here should consider themselves lucky how powerful our passports are. Do you know how difficult it is for most of the world to get tourist visas? It’s still in-person at the embassy experience and denials are expensive.

I feel a little pressure to travel sooner these days because the a380 is going to be phased out starting in the 2030s. There’s no drop in replacement for capacity available. Airports aren’t being built. And many people in Asia are joining the international travel economy. They’ll get past that visa hurdle. I think we are headed towards a point where international travel is going to skyrocket in price in the next decade due to capacity hurdles.

Uncalled for

>"you thus have obligations to that society"

And I fulfill said obligations by abiding laws (even though I find many unjust) and by paying taxes. I also try not to interfere with other people and not "trespass" into their space. But I have zero duty to follow demands of prudes, lunatics, "strong hand" wishers etc.

I lived in Poland (Krakow), Croatia (Zagreb), Japan (Tokyo), the USA (L.A. and then a bit more south, Orange County), Spain (Valencia), Belgium (my native country), France (french riviera), nearly settled in Andorra (wonderful tiny country hidden in the mountains) then I now live in Luxemburg. I'll probably move again in a few years.

I've never been a tourist in any of these places. I've always been renting or buying actual places (i.e not an AirBnB).

I do join expat meetups and get to meet like-minded people. They're not tourists.

And tourism in countries where tourism represent too big of a percentage of the GDP is an issue. France is now rethinking its approach to tourism for example: too many people all coming at mostly the same times of the year at the same spot.

You don't get to see a country when you're a tourist: you get to see mostly other tourists (at the hotel, in the streets where the hotels are, in museums, in restaurants for you'll invariably end up on the restaurants where tourists go and not the ones where the locals do go). I don't see the point.

Other than all the inconveniences, travel isn't too bad if you have the time and money.

I have had a few fun times while traveling.

Hanging out behind the hotel with one of the hotel workers, feeding the stray animals that came by and talking about our pets (we both took in rescues and 'un-adoptable' pets).

Chatting with some random salesman in a bar, whose business was in no way related to the convention I was in town for, but he could speak so eloquently and interestingly in a way that just made you feel like you were actually there in his stories. It was like having a conversation with Mark Twain.

Stepping into a local townie bar just to get out of the heat for a few minutes only to find that it wasn't technically open, but nobody really cared because some of the locals would hang out there with the owner even when it was closed and they didn't mind us being there either.

Stopping in with some acquaintances at a run-down grungy dive bar, that just happened to be having trivia/karaoke night with two local teams that had an intense rivalry and we came in as spoilers.

None of that is in any way touristy or any kind of highbrow culture or achievement or profound magical experience. Just those mundane slices of life of being stuck somewhere with strangers for a brief time before you go your separate ways, those were the real fun parts. And you can do that anywhere, right in your own town even, without all the hassle and unpleasantness of travel.

Overall, I tend to find that travel provides a lot of perspective and context. One notable figure which helped me come to this realization was Anthony Bourdain. He used food as a baseline connection and when we as humans share a meal with people, we tend to be more open. He would then progress into talking about more sensitive topics which provided a deeper insight about a place.

The takeaway that I have gotten from most of my travels has been that we are all really the same people. We need a place to sleep, something to eat, some fun and the feeling of safety. Understanding this has allowed me to make deeper connections with people that I've encountered and I'm thankful that experience.

I think it gave a better appreciation for my hometown and country. It taught me that wherever I go there I am and I cannot fix my problems just by leaving (it’s not therapy). It allowed me to make friends. It taught me that this planet is freaking huge and wherever you go there is so much diversity of cultures, languages, and people. It’s exhilarating-if you’re into it.

Could I have achieved the same without shelling thousands of euros? Could I have just read about other people’s experiences? Could I have just admired pictures of national parks, museums and cathedrals instead of visiting them by myself? Sure, but it would not have been the same. You live and learn.

I don’t think travelling makes you better than people who don’t, nor does it necessarily makes you better than your past self.

You gotta have the right expectations. I had the most fun when I was genuinely interested in visiting a place and I didn’t care about a checklist. I was the most miserable when I travelled to escape issues at home or because I was plain bored.

As someone from the former Eastern Block, I may reassure, that first travels abroad, especially if it wasn't mass sea resort, were transformative, mind-changing for us. For some who traveled back in the 90s, they were a shock. So yes, travel does change people. I remember well the English teachers who went on short programs to study abroad, and brought mostly their observations, some random artifacts like tourist brochures, that we, stundents, would look at and read.

Sure, after some trips you get less and less impressions, but... what's the right amount of travel?

Even a 1-2 days trip can boost curiosity. People come to a monument to an unexpected person in unexpected city -- start looking up his bio, start reading history books. Or start studying urban design being impressed with other cities -- I saw this with my eyes.

I can give my own example, that even having a lot of correspondence with people abroad, only after traveling in person I shook some my stereotypes off, for instance to Brazil (I've been to 8 big cities.) Made me learn the language, made write columns and be sort of volunteer journalist for a while. After I was promoting some solutions from other countries, later travels made me notice their drawbacks and be balanced in the views.

I think the author thinks mostly of mass tourism and the type who travel alone but stay in hostels with other tourists, hang out between themselves and just fill their checklists of things to visit. Well, even though this may be true, you can't draw a clear border between superficial and "transformative" travel. (Same goes for museums -- I've heard som art & museums folks both complain that "art" is not popular enough, and despise the selfie-takers who post about exhibitions on instagram.)

And that's bad because hunanity is awesome?

I've travelled a little but never was I interested in people or culture. I liked experiencing natural beauty and land marks. Imagination has nothing on reality.

For example, my favorite part of going to vegas is leaving it during the day to check out nevada,the canyon, utah and east california.

Every single time I went exploring national parks or remote places, I am shocked and in awe more than before.

America is pretty, perhaps these people could use a trip down the pacific highway or a day at yosemite.

If they really did travel then kant,emerson and socrates are fools who in their intellectual pursuit found empty ego boosting thoughts and useless admiration from peope.

And for the record, I love touristy places just fine. I travel for me not to brag about it or for virtue signaling and I hardly think I am a rarity.

When you have a specific reason to travel to a place, that doesn’t involve tourism, you often end up having richer more genuine experiences. The location no longer becomes the focus of your trip, it just becomes a curiosity you happen to observe while you go about your business. You become a legitimate contributor to the surroundings rather than just a visitor taking pictures.

So she fell into a tourist trap. She wouldnt be the first.

Now at the end of the day people have disposable income and have to spend it somewhere, but I don't think travel should be given the special regard that it is currently.

  Without going out of your door
  You can know all things on Earth
  Without looking out of your window
  You could know the ways of Heaven

  The farther one travels
  The less one knows
  The less one really knows

  Arrive without travelling
  See all without looking
  Do all without doing

It is literally a song unlikely to have been written without the act of travel.

It's class entertainment sold as news. It make a certain societal class feel higher class than they actually are.

Opinion pieces, by definition, will be full of the author’s bias based on their experience up until the point when the article was written. We all go through the journey of life at our pace and guided by our own direction (but even that is debatable), and as such, dismissing some work with an ad hominim towards the author instead of the content of the piece is uncharitable.

The problem is that original poster did not provide any actual analysis or reason to support their assertion as this is not a famous or well-known enough person (at least within HN) to know automatically what their other opinions are on other matters. For this reason, I stand by my statement that this is just an attack on the author and not the ideas the author is communicating.

> It's the only possible way to understand an opinion piece.

No, the only way possible to understand an opinion piece is to read the text while keeping in mind what organization decided to publish it.

Let’s be honest here: this statement is just a ex post facto justification for the ad hominem. Perhaps a you’ve heard it’s cousin, the classic “no offense but, <something offensive>,” or even, “I’m not racist, but <something racist>.”

This is not true of anything. There are always multiple perspectives and ways of understanding things. We short-change ourselves and others when we think otherwise.

Some people watch a movie, others go to a museum in a different city.

Additionally, the premise that all travel is meaningless discards what you could experience by spending 5 days in rural Bangladesh after living your whole life in New York. Talk about eye-opening.

That being said, the idea that people don't change when they travel is, I think, wrong. Someone changing fundamentally on a 2 week summer holiday? Unlikely. But I've had friends go off on long solo trips and they almost always come back having learned some pretty significant things about themselves.

I think it's an indirect commentary on how travel no longer confers status: the plebians ruined it.

I don't think you really get any of that. In contrast I've lived, as in picked up my life, moved my things, etc, in different countries (and states) and I feel like that actually has affected me. Just one or two weeks has never been enough for me to settle in, to make life long meaningful connections and friends, and to truly live in a culture.

It's very hard to learn how people in other cultures live without going there and experiencing it. Also, your low-stakes fumbles and challenges will make you a little more resilient, and so much more interesting.

Rich westerners galavanting around poorer countries visiting a rice paddy or temple and doing a cooking lesson with the locals etc. You can be interesting and resilient through other means too. You could be a nurse for example! Or a cop. Or do a survival course down the road from where you live.

> In the many great cities I have actually lived and worked in, I would never consider spending whole days walking.

I do. I walk a LOT in Barcelona. And I've lived here for 6 years. It's a great way to discover really exceptional things and I discovered the area I live right now in this way.

In fact it's much nicer to just walk around and explore than to do all the usual tourist crap things.

> That is, before quickly moving on: apparently, many people spend just fifteen seconds looking at the “Mona Lisa.” It’s locomotion all the way down.

This is because you can't look at it quietly. It's tiny, behind a 10cm thick pane of glass you can't approach closer than 1 metre, and there's a whole queue of impatient visitors behind you. It's ridiculous.

I think the author doesn't really get it. For me travel is important, it teaches me about other cultures. Understanding is important int his connected world. One time I spent an hour talking to an old lady beggar in Bucharest, who told me a surprisingly accurate vision of what is wrong with the world. She was not a druggy but a retired school teacher whose generation has been done a really raw deal by the current government.

I also found the city I love to live in, which really improved my life. I've lived in 4 countries so far in my life and I love it. I don't think I'll ever want to return to my native Netherlands because it's changed so much and become too right-wing and materialistic. When I visit there now I'm anxious to go back because I don't fit there anymore.

If I never would have traveled, why would I ever have considered moving? I'd have been stuck there. I would never have known what I like about different places, what I don't like, what's really "me". Travel has profoundly changed (and arguably improved) me as a person.

So no, while I agree mass-tourism can be a terrible thing (here in Barcelona a typical example is the hen party groups that just come here to get wasted in a different and cheaper place), not all travel and not even all recreational travel is bad.

I'm pretty sure as an old man I will not be wishing I spent more time in life browsing the web, ha ha. (Honestly though, probably regret having not spent more time with the people I love — we can of course have travelled together though!)

People travel for all manner of different reasons. You might not, and that’s fine. Nobody needs to change anyone else’s mind. Neither are right or wrong.

This article couldn't be more insufferable if it tried.

So tourists make the place for to live in for the locals?

There's a hundred reasons why folks dislike travel, many of them EXTREMELY valid to one's lived experiences/circumstances, but this article is the most strawman-ny argument against travel anyone could conjure up.

Lyrics at

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/noel-coward-why-do-wrong-peop...

1. Travel they say improves the mind, An irritating platitude, which frankly, entre nous, Is very far from true. Personally I’ve yet to find that longtitude and latitude can educate those scores of monumental bores Who travel in groups and herds and troupes Of varying breeds and sexes Till the whole world reels to shouts and squeals And the clicking of Roliflexes.

2 Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel When the right people stay back home ? What compulsion compels them and who the hell tells them To drag their cans to Zanzibar, instead of staying quietly in Omaha The Taj Mahal, the Grand Canal and the sunny French Riviera Would be less oppressed if the Middle West Would settle for somewhere rather nearer

3 Please do not think that I criticize or cavel At a genuine urge to roam But why, oh why do the wrong people travel When the right people stay back home ? — And mind their business When the right people stay back home ? — With cinerama [variante : and eat.... doughnuts When the right people stay back home ? — I'm merely asking [variante : I sometimes wonder] Why the right people stay back home ?

4 Just when you think romance is ripe it rather sharply dawns on you That each sweet serenade is for the tourist trade Any attractive native type who resolutely fawns on you Will give as her address American Express There isn’t a rock between Bangkok and the beaches of Hispianola That does not recoil from suntan oil and the gurgle of Coca-Cola

5 Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel When the right people stay back home ? What explains this mass mania to leave Pennsylvania And clack around like flocks of geese Demanding dry martinis on the isles of Greece ? On the smallest street, where the gourmets meet, They invariably fetch up And it’s hard to make them accept a steak that isn’t served rare and smeared with ketchup

6 Millions of tourists are churning up the gravel While they gaze at St. Peter's dome, But why oh why do the wrong people travel When the right people stay back home ? — And eat hot doughnuts When the right people stay back home ? — With all that lettuce When the right people stay back home ? — Won't someone tell me why the right people stay back home ?

7 Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel When the right people stay back home? What peculiar obsessions inspire those processions Of families from Houston Tex With all those cameras around their necks ? They will take a train Or an aeroplane For an hour on the Costa Brava, And they'll see Pompeii On the only day When it's up to its ass in molten lava !

8 It would take years to unravel, ravel, ravel Every impulse that makes them roam But why, oh why do the wrong people travel When the right people stay back home ? — With all their Kleenex When the right people stay back home ? — With all their K... ?? * I sometimes wonder... *

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