Tourism question

I have been thinking about the question presented by Adair about our views of personal experiences while traveling. The first thing that came to mind when reflecting on my desire to explore new places and cultures. For me it has been a desire of mine instilled at an early age, maybe as a result of growing up in Germany and traveling some during those years. I travel for my own reasons, not to add another notch in my travel belt, but I travel because for me there is value in knowing how people live their lives in different parts of the world. I feel that exposing myself to different cultures puts my life in better perspective, when you spend time interacting with poor families in a third world country, it is difficult to complain about poor cell reception or when they shut down the water for a few hours to fix a problem. As I said in class, as long as you are true to yourself and have pure motives as to why you are traveling, I do not see tourism as a bad thing. I do want to point out that I do not like the type of tourism that has a person observing a culture as if they were an animal at a zoo. There must be interaction on a personal level to truly connect and get to know a culture. Also the idea that we travel to experience a place that has not been visited before is a few decades too late. You might be able to find those places if you look hard enough, but to me it seems kind of selfish to want something all to yourself like that.