Tourists and Travellers

Starting an article with "this modern world of cheap and safe flights" now seems like ancient history.

It's possible to fuse the tourist and traveller categories quickly with conscious effort and emotional intelligence. I've been an expat, temp resident and migrant in Spain, Catalunya, Italy and Latvia. I’ve tried to learn some of the language everywhere I go, even if it's Kiswahili in Kenya and Tanzania. Being shameless about error helps.

In Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in 1989 I used a dictionary and phrase book to learn a few hundred words in a couple of weeks, though I found out late that I was telling every Thai I was a woman through incorrect verb conjugations. No wonder they were all smiling.

Asking a middle-aged woman for directions in Thai in Bangkok, she answered in perfect English and asked where I was from and where I'd learned my Thai. She then invited me to the all woman university chemistry class she was teaching in English to introduce me to her students. She had a PhD from Ohio University.

When I took a trek in northern Thailand near the Burmese border with a Lisu tribesman who spoke the four local tribal languages, Thai and a bit of English, we spoke mostly in Thai and taught each other. When we met an old man who looked about 70 babysitting a group of kids in an Akha mountain summit village, I asked my Lisu guide to ask him what it was like when the Japanese (Yipun) occupied Thailand. He responded, "who are they?". A little bit of Thai history through a dictionary and phrase book. A gift no tourist confined to his comfort box is ever given.

Hitchhiking across Germany with conversational, non-grammatical German in 1973 I got a ride from a Lutheran minister of about 50. When I asked where he'd learned such good English, he replied he'd been a prisoner of war in Dallas. He said the day he was captured was the happiest day of his life, including his wedding day, because he knew he would live. Another gift given to travellers through language, but not tourists.