"demented late-capitalist cousin"

As formerly poor nations become wealthier and grow their respective middle and upper classes, are we entering an age of "overtourism"?  Many cities, and not just popular European ones, seem to think so:

"Locals have, of course, complained about tourists since time immemorial, and the masses have disrespected, thronged, and vandalized wonders natural and fabricated for as long as they have been visiting them. But tourism as we know it was a much more limited affair until recent decades. Through the early 19th century, travel for personal fulfillment was the provenance of 'wealthy nobles and educated professionals' only, people for whom it was a 'demonstrative expression of their social class, which communicated power, status, money and leisure,' as one history of tourism notes. It was only in the 1840s that commercialized mass tourism developed, growing as the middle class grew.

If tourism is a capitalist phenomenon, overtourism is its demented late-capitalist cousin: selfie-stick deaths, all-you-can-eat ships docking at historic ports, stag nights that end in property crimes, the live-streaming of the ruination of fragile natural habitats, et cetera. There are just too many people thronging popular destinations—30 million visitors a year to Barcelona, population 1.6 million; 20 million visitors to Venice, population 50,000. La Rambla and the Piazza San Marco fit only so many people, and the summertime now seems like a test to find out just how many that is."

When I first started out in South Korea ten years ago, I was a pretty die-hard traveler and made it to some amazing places -- India, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand multiple times.

While there are still some places I'd really love to visit (Australia, New Zealand, parts of Japan beyond Tokyo) I have to admit that for me, getting older is really all about being less patient with all the bullshit.  As a single dude who prides himself on traveling light and getting in and out of airports faster than the average bear, I actually think I'm quite good at traveling but I just have a bit less tolerance for airports and bus rides and standing in lines and, ahem, other tourists than I used to.

So not to go all Ralph Waldo Emerson on you, but I think this article does a good job of linking travel with a sort of habit of conspicuous consumption and a (highly imperialist, maybe even racist) notion that travel is the key to self-improvement.  (I mean really, does any place in Asia need another white backpacker, well-intentioned or not?)

So while I'm far from swearing off travel forever (I'll probably visit a good friend in Tokyo after my annual trip home to America in August), I do think I'm a bit more circumspect about the whole affair, a bit more picky to be blunt about it.

I've never had a bad vacation since I came to Korea, but I have had a few where I probably could have just as easily enjoyed myself exploring, say, one of the many smaller cities or rural areas of South Korea that I have yet to encounter.  (While South Korea is certainly close to a lot of great places throughout Asia, it's also a simple fact that all told it's going to be 24 hours leaving the country, and another 24 hours getting back in.)

All of which is to say, travel is great.  I treasure many of the experiences I've had throughout the region.  But it's also one option among many for spending free time.  And you aren't "missing" anything if you can manage to have quality experiences in your own country, while saving a lot of money to boot.

And hey, flying less is also a good thing for the earth anyhow.