I dont mean places that are like ragingly anticommunist (which is most places I think), but they have like appalling social issues. Say like UAE or any of the Gulf states that use slave labor and indentured servitude on a mass scale. Like would you say visiting dubai or doha is morally questionable? A friend is offering to visit Muscat cuz there are cheap flights but I dont know if I should. Or are there ways I can ameliorate my staying there, like maybe giving money to some orgs or something. Idk what do you think

  • rootsbreadandmakka [he/him]
    ·
    11 months ago

    tbh I'd love to go to Muscat

    anyone feel free to criticize me on this, but I sort of feel like it's not really possible to be tourist and not engage in some type of implicit colonialism. Most of my international travel is for educational purposes and visiting friends, which I think is the best way to do it. I think if you are just being a tourist, it's important to engage with the city and its history and really immerse yourself in it. If someone was going abroad to stay in one of those walled off resorts and barely leave their tourist bubble, that would make me raise my eyebrows. But obviously there are levels below that - I don't think there are really that many places I would judge someone for visiting as long as they interact with the place they're visiting. Most of my judgement is reserved for how someone is visiting a place.

    • crispy_lol [he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Something about this strikes me as weird cope (my traveling is ok because it’s educational, when others travel it probably isn’t educational)

      Feel free to elaborate, sincerely, not trying to be an ass I’d genuinely like to be convinced otherwise as a travel cynic

      • rootsbreadandmakka [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        I was referring to traveling for formal education. Study abroad would be one example of this. Any travel can of course be educational, but I was referring to traveling for academic reasons primarily.

      • spectre [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        I'd agree with the OP except it still has a colonial character when I do it, even if I'm doing it "more correctly" than others.

        The only exception to that I think is if you are a party or org member traveling on official business.

    • an_engel_on_earth [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Muscat looks so cool

      And I totally get what you mean, I am not one of those tourists. I seek a cultural experience, I like to take in the sights, the smells, the food, the architecture and interact with locals whenever I overcome my shyness. And Muscat seems like it has a lot of that to offer.

      • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
        ·
        11 months ago

        Muscat looks so cool

        It's actually the hottest inhabited place on the planet

        well 2nd hottest, after all the other cities in Oman

    • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Oman is way more attractive to me as a place I'd like to see than the other Gulf states for the fact that (at least at first glance) its known areas actually retained the appearance of a place where people live in instead of being a bourgeois playground with golden skyscrapers and Lamborghini taxis.

      I lived in Italy, and places like Venice, while pretty, have like a 300:1 tourist to local ratio. It's just a large theme-park at this point.