"Why We Travel: It whirls you around, turns you upside down and stands everything you took for granted on its head." by Pico Iyer

"Why We Travel: It whirls you around, turns you upside down and stands everything you took for granted on its head.", by Pico Iyer is a writing about traveling. He brings his ideas and his thoughts about why people travel, how we should travel, and even gives us his own definitions of tourists vs. travelers. Mr. Iyer points out that our everyday lives, and how we live it, from the roads we drive on, to the McDonald's in our neighborhood, are as alien to people in other countries as we, as people, are to them.

I have never really thought about it before, but I have to agree with Pico Iyer when he states, "But more significantly, we carry values and beliefs and news to the places we go, and in many parts of the world, we become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands." If we were to travel to Europe, there aren't that many differences between 0ur daily life, and theirs. However, if we travel to Africa and visit towns there, we bring our entire way of life with them. From the foods we eat, to the clothes we wear, and even the way that we act. Sometimes, as Pico states, we are the only connection to the outside world that these people we interact with. We give them a little taste on what it would be like to be in the outside world.

The only point that I have to disagree with Pico Iyer on is the one where he states that tourists are complainers. He says that tourists complain that this isn't how they live, and therefore are very negative about the situation. It is my belief that tourists are not complainers, for the most part. Tourists are the people that have gone to a country knowing that there are some differences in the way of life that the two have, and are interested in finding out more. It isn't until a tourist is really engulfed in the way that the other society lives that they truly understand the differences that each of the cultures have.