ijkh

Certainly after qualified after a full circumnavigation of the globe by a Crystal cruise ship Miami to Miami. The best trip of my life. It was in a penthouse better than any BA World Traveler.

Proudelitist

I tend to think that in the various hemispheres, there is not too much difference. Canada, the US, Australia, Europe..the "Western" hemisphere is largely the same. There are some obvious differences, but mostly cosmetic and superficial. However, the toilets operate the same way. Clothing is roughly the same. Food is roughly the same thanks to common heritage. People are ethnically similar. This is even narrower within the continents...there is very little difference between say, Germany and Denmark, or Canada and the US. The streets look the same, the menus look the same, things work in the same way.

Same for Asia. There are cultural differences, but really, Korea and China are mostly similar, even the language is similar. Thailand and Vietnam are basically similar. The streets are similar, things work the same way etc etc

So, to me, a world traveler is someone who has gotten out of their comfort zone, into an entirely different world. Not only do cars go on the opposite side of the road, there are more mopeds than cars. A woman slaughters a snake in the streets. The toilet is a hole in the ground with moss for clean up. The language is completely alien, including the alphabet. The climate is vastly different, the mode of behavior is entirely different. The architecture..everything.

pinniped

I've lived abroad, worked in about 10 countries, visited about 50, have done *most* of the traditional "bucket list" type touristy spots, ventured well into very foreign (to me) spots across Asia and Africa, and still feel like I have a huge, huge long way to go. I personally know dozens of people who have done way more than me - they're the people from whom I get inspiration for future trips.

I don't look at World Traveler as scoring points and winning a bossfight. There still easily 50 places I've never been and very much want to go. And even as I visit those, I hope there are 50 more I don't know of yet. I'll never be truly "done" until, I guess, I'm physically done and in an urn on my kids' mantle.

Loren Pechtel

I don't think drive side belongs on this list.

I've encountered everything you list other than the moss for cleanup--at least not that I have noticed as any place with hole-in-the-ground toilets I would consider to be bring your own TP anyway.

pinniped

Unless you're driving a stick. Then it counts!!

Exterous

I get that some of these replies are pretty old but I don't quite get the animosity for tours - and the mention about English speaking tours in particular. While I can (and have) done tours in Spanish and German I prefer English if available. Some of that is because I am not a native speaker of either Spanish or German so speed can be an issue causing me to focus more on the speech and less on what I'm supposed to be looking at. There are also language nuances that are not always fully appreciated. For tours in general we've sometimes found them quite useful for getting into places before 'public' opening times, having approved 'tour only' shortcuts and, frankly, some places only let you in via a guided tour. Not a fan of the giant tour bus style tours though.
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In terms of "packaged tours" where do safaris and wine tours rank?

Jeannietx

We are world travellers, by the countries, the continents, and more importantly our frame of mind.

alangore

Russia had tree snakes in Soviet times?

pinniped

I think the main disdain is for the entirely packaged tour - where the whole trip from start to finish is on a bus, traipsing through tourist spots with 50 other people, and only interacting with other tourists and guides throughout your trip.

I hear you on using tour companies for select attractions - to avoid queueing or to otherwise maximize the efficiency of visiting a site. I've also hired a driver and an English-speaking guide in places where that enabled us to cover a lot of ground and access sites that are a little off the beaten track in places where foreigners can't (or really shouldn't) rent cars.

I assume a safari is a thing you can't realistically do on your own. A wine tour has the advantage of not needing a designated driver, although I'd only want to do it in a small group (minivan or limo) that visits wineries that don't get bus traffic.

Exterous

Yeah I kinda figured from the comments that some people were referring to the "give us X dollars and we'll do flight, activities, tour bus and some meals" type of tour. For the safari we could rent our own car and drive off around the massive parks but we chose the more traditional safari route instead. From some reading my understanding is that the guide would know the areas better, including where the animals like to congregate. In addition they are supposedly better at spotting the animals, radio locations to other guides and I can focus on observing rather than driving. Haven't been on one before so not sure how accurate that is.

For the wine tours we've done a couple of small group ones, I think all have been 8 people max, and have always had a good experience. The last one was in Australia in January where I had the distinct pleasure of horrifying the Aussies in our group with how frigid it was at home and explaining what a snowblower is. As an aside I've noticed that English tours are starting to contain fewer and fewer native English speakers, likely due to the rise in how common it is. Our tour of the Grand Ducal Palace in Luxembourg (requires a guide) a few weeks ago was made up of Spaniards, Germans, Dutch, Russians and the two of us.

Badenoch

I've never been on "safari." I have self-drove through Etosha in Namibia several times. Twice with a local friend and a couple of times by myself. Encountered the paid safari crowd at Fort Namutoni looking so lovely in their newly-acquired safari suits, lovely sun bonnets, cameras with long lenses and monstrous binoculars. They didn't see anything we didn't. There isn't that much of a trick to see animals at Etosha. Go in the dry season, park by a waterhole early in the morning and wait.

Proudelitist

It's because with tours there is a degree of being sheltered. YOU don't have to find your way around in a foreign land. YOU don't have to make the actual arrangements, organize your own transport, find your own lunch, or discover things on your own. It is pre-packaged. Other than being present, your need to actually function in the culture is minimal.

What's more, what you see and do is pre-planned. Attractions are fine, but the real value of travel is not in them..it's in taking the subway or bus there and figuring out how to buy a ticket let alone figuring out how to get there yourself. It's in wandering through the streets and seeing the people go about their daily lives, not about yet another reclining Buddha. It's about making YOUR OWN plans, on your own schedule. You can learn more about a culture by taking a public bus than you do by visiting an artifact.

Exterous

There are two different types of "tours" though. There are the fully packaged "We do everything" ones you are talking about but there are also the ones you book yourself and you meet your guide at the site\building\attraction. What I am referring to is the second one and in response to some of the incredibly broad comments of "They book tours with english speaking guides" in the thread. Well, some places only let you in with a tour so why wouldn't I choose one who speaks a language I understand well? This doesn't preclude me from getting culture on the bus (and we are big proponents of mass transit) because I still have to get myself there.

Fraser

Seems fairly representative of cruise travel from what I've learned speaking to many people who enjoy the pursuit.

My wife's grandparents are big cruise people and about 10yrs ago sailed around the world on the Queen Mary 2. They have a map where they plot all of their completed cruise routes and I noticed from it that they'd been to a lot of the same places as me (on non-cruise travel). Although they were gone for months and months it turned out they'd only spend maybe a day or two in most places before moving on to the next place, spending maybe a week at sea in some cases. I'd ask them if they'd been to X place in Cape Town or Y place in Hong Kong (nothing very out of the ordinary, say going up Table Mountain, or heading out to winelands of Franschhoek/Stellenbosch for Cape Town) and they had practically no idea what I was talking about. It seems as though because food, water and lodging are provided on the boat most people don't even eat at restaurants on land either. It boggled my mind that they'd spend tens of thousands of dollars on such a trip but it was akin to doing a drive-by on every place they went to.

From speaking to people who enjoy cruising (and subsequently try to persuade me to go on one!) it seems for the most part they have a very diluted approach to travel, or at least what I consider travel. Not much time is spent on land, and those places that they do go to are attractions catered to a mass market audience because of economies of scale for the cruiseline. Half the fun of a trip for me is planning the trip...figuring out how I fly there, where I stay, where I eat, what I see...

Now I'm not going to claim that my travel is "authentic" by any stretch. I went to Bali last month and stayed in a luxury hotel's villa on the ocean out in one of the provinces a few hours from the airport. That's no way representative of an authentic approach to Balinese life, but the hotel had bicycle tours and one evening I went out on a ride with a couple of other guests and a guide for two hours into local villages, met some schoolchildren who wanted to practice their English and cycled through the rice paddies, learning about how they are run and operated. You won't see that from the window of a cruiseline excursion coach...

pinniped

We've had a few trips where some of our most lasting memories are of figuring out some element of local public transport!

The multiple companies providing interlinked transportation in Tokyo, including maps without English translations. The various buses you can book to get outside of Shanghai to smaller villages popular with local daytrippers. (We did a couple where we were likely the only foreigners.) Mixing trains, buses, and taxis to get where you want to go in Cairo. Using Uber in Hyderabad almost felt like cheating, although I suppose uberMOTO (a ride on the back of a moped) is there for those who want some local flavor. And then there's transport in Hong Kong which really *is* cheating because the system is so good and easy to use for anyone...