I don't mean to go to a tourist trap and get scammed, but just enjoy your city a little more and do some things that usually only tourists do.
For example, despite living most of my life in London, I've never been to the Tower of London. Why would I? It's for tourists. Except it's probably quite fascinating, especially for a local.
We live in a beautiful city that people come from all over to see and there are good reasons for that. I’ll also offer to take pictures of families taking their photos with the sea lions (which I also always stop to watch) and chat them up a bit. Fun times.
"Tower Hamlets residents visit for just £1
Local residents within the borough of Tower Hamlets can visit the Tower of London for only £1.00."
It's worth a visit being a tourist or a local.
Why wouldn't you?
Note: It's great, you should go.
The thing that locals do know a lot of the time, is the spots that are actually great but not hyped up by influencers/social media, the cool spots that are often good by virtue of not being well known, etc. And no one is arguing that the locals know all the best cultural attractions, the point of asking locals for advice is to understand what they see in their own city.
This is where platforms like Couchers.org or whatever come up, where you want to actually understand the locals, more than just see the hyped up touristy stuff (which often can also be phenomenal!).
The advice isn't to literally live a life in the day of a local, it's to ask the locals what the interesting things to do are. Nobody is actually suggesting that you go hang out at an office for 8 hours, stop by an affordable grocery store and then watch Netflix.
E.G. People in Seattle will not tell you to go to the space needle or to Pike Place Market (at best you might hear that you should go at least once). They will tell you to ride a bike from Lake Union to the Locks on a sunny day, and you will have more fun and see more than fighting the crowds at Pike Place.
My daily routines are of no interest to tourist. They are probably similar to their own routines at home anyway. When I got out on the weekends it can get wild though and I'd wager it's exactly what many tourists are looking for.
The current issues with tourism are significantly more to do with "influencers" and social media. Many places are overrun by people that are just there to get their photos and have zero interest in engaging with the culture or treating locals with respect.
Its shocking how different some places have gotten due to "influencers". Last year I was in Kuala Lumpur for a few days and took the person I was with to a bunch of the places I had visited when I was there a decade ago. It struck me when walking around a couple places that there are photos I took during my first trip that would simply be impossible to get today because of the number of people in the way.
I enjoy having a vast variety of restaurants and activities that I otherwise would not have in a small town in the Midwest. The roads are well maintained, we have more parks than we otherwise would, there are trails, rivers, and tons of activities. We don't spend all our time partaking of the tourist activities, but we abso-freaking-lutely spend some time enjoying what the town has to offer.
I then moved abroad to Bangkok, working an office job. Although BKK is great for consumerism and convenience, especially with cheap labor available for almost anything, you can get quite lazy. The bad traffic, non-pedestrian friendly (non existent) city planning and little nature left also makes it a bit cumbersome to find nature nearby. This made me appreciate nature, hiking and nice scenery. (Of course Thailand has lots of beautiful nature and scenery, but not so much of an active outdoor scene)
Coming back to Switzerland after 6 years, I became the biggest tourist, going hiking every weekend, spending time at our tourist destinations, but also all the second tier ("unseen") places only locals know. I tried so much stuff that in the past I thought is tourist stuff, and most of it is simply great.
I also became much more understanding, open and helpful to expats, foreigners and tourists in my country.
That is an amazing revelation to me.
In my country I can't visit some of the hiking trails I crossed as a child because they've become overcrowded since.
When I went to Switzerland for a contract the first thing I did when I had a free weekend was to go to the peak of the tallest mountain I could find.
I thought it was more of a thing in Switzerland.
One of the reasons the shopping center did so well in the first place, was that they could charge lower rents for shops which bring more value to the center than they capture themselves (such as cafes) and higher rents to shops which make money but whose social contribution is low or negative (like betting shops or tourist tat shops).
This is both easier and harder with smartphones and GPS. Harder because, well, you know exactly where you are and have to actively ignore the phone. Easier because when you're ready to be done, you know exactly where you are!
I can say I've had good and bad - I've wondered through cities with no direction and found -- nothing, two that come to mind are Paris and Barcelona. I'm sure there is interesting stuff to be found here and there but mostly, outside of the main attractions, I found the rest not much more interesting than American suburbia. Yes, I'm glad I saw it to basically see that "life is life". There's the interesting coast, or the restaurant row that's already on the tourist map, then there's the living areas where every block or two there's a convenience store, another non-descript cafe, a hair salon, etc... Maybe once in a while something sticks out but mostly not.
To be clear, I found both cities amazing. But, the "this city is amazing" parts are the parts listed as must visit. The "get lost parts" less so, with a few exceptions.
I've had more luck doing things further down the list. On 3rd or 4th visit, I'm not doing the top 10 most popular things. I'm down on 40th or 50th or 100th.
So, do the local thing with tourists and retain a focus on a combination of showing off the best elements of being a local; with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the tourist. As a blow-in to NY, I'd like others to appreciate it too.
Do what the tourists do, but with the locals. Do what the locals do, but with the tourists.
Well I passed though said district and saw some pretty drab houses and some bars with TVs (not my thing). Went to Temple Bar: It was vivid, with live music and many cheerful people on the street.
So in short: I concur with the author.
It implies seeking the experiences and places that are popular with the locals and not popular with the tourists. It means finding a killer teriyaki or pho place in Seattle and avoiding the space needle, even if an average Seattle resident goes to neither type of place every day.
It means avoiding Times Square and instead wandering the other streets of Manhattan.
The locals do know. Maybe each individual local only visits once a month, but the aggregate knowledge of the locals knows. Great hole in the wall places are known by locals.
The “do what the locals do” tip is almost like a form social pressure to resist doing what you actually want to do with your time as a traveler.
Doing something “touristy” is considered tacky or low brow.
You’re doing this right now, if you think about it. Why are you telling us to avoid the space needle? What if my whole goal is to see it even if it sucks?
Following local tastes is also something that’s sometimes impractical or undesirable as far as the “infrastructure” of tourism goes.
Let’s say I do this in Japan, and I’m doing what the locals do. Well, now maybe I’ve ended up at restaurant where nobody speaks a word of English and everyone doesn’t want me there. I might not be allowed in at all.
Or, perhaps local customs and culture just isn’t something I’m comfortable with at all. For example, I’m not interested in ever being in a sauna despite it being a very common activity in Finland. I just don’t like it at all.
These are just a couple of random examples. Obviously, yes, it is a good idea to seek out good experiences that locals enjoy. But in the age of the Internet is anyone really having any difficulty doing that?
Heck, just walking around Harlem will give you an amazing day with 20% or less of the tourists.
One thing I've read years ago about tourist traps is that one shouldn't be actively trying to avoid them, especially if they come from a country with higher purchasing power.
Some of these "tourist trap" activities are locals trying to make an honest living doing what they can. It should be fine to take a tuk tuk, or to buy paintings and souvenirs from people off the street.
Everyone should avoid getting ripped off, but what's 0.1% of a month's wages to a tourist could pay for an entire day's meals for a local.
If you visit Sweden, don't buy ice cream in the historic area of Stockholm ("gamla stan").
As an American you might think "$10 for a single scoop of vanilla, that's nothing. A minimum wage worker packing groceries earn twice that in an hour back home". But you are not helping a starving ice cream labourer with your purchase, you are simply being taken for a ride. Walk a couple of blocks more and check the signs, and you can buy it at half price from a respectable establishment instead. Most likely the ice cream will be better at the next place as well.
Is this a joke? $10 for a single scoop of ice cream in the US is a lot of money and also the US minimum wage is only $7.25/hour. You can barely feed yourself with the US minimum wage and you definitely can't pay for shelter or healthcare or anything else you would need to survive here, but that's a story for another time.
People naturally romanticize food of foreign cultures, but I can't help but giggle at the crazy hype given to Japanese food in particular. Especially considering how 'bland' the food is (at least, how bland it is to the American sensibility).
These days, I direct touristing friends towards foreigner-friendly restaurants that promise some sort of food "experience" (at the prices you'd expect)...while I mosey over to the nearest salaryman friendly hole-in-the-wall for some plain zaru soba or udon. One part because I'm eternally broke, and another because I genuinely like it more than the ungodly katsu-don concoctions larger than the standard birth weight.
Not that there isn't interesting 名物 depending on the region (although naturally the 名物 of Tokyo might as well be Taco Bell), but I've always found my friends to be disappointed by "real" Japanese food...even from the Yatai of my local Fukuoka (which is pretty darn good, as far as I'm concerned!) Let alone from places like rural Tohoku (the village a friend resided in had a specialty of whole-salamander tempura...bluegh).
Maybe I want to know a decent place I can get a cheap hot meal too, but I'm not interested in fancy meals or nice restaurants. I want the workaday egg salad from the tiny deli in New York that costs 4.99 and comes with a pickle. I want the simple pho that's the only thing on the menu. I want the tamales sold from a cooler in the Home Depot parking lot.
I wish there was a better way to signal that's what i want to find than, "Whats a good place to eat?"
As for actual restaurants, I think the mistake tourists make is trying to find the best ramen or whatever, but the best isn’t going to be that much better than the average joint catering to locals. So in other words, spend less time thinking about where to go and just explore and pick a random place that you like the vibe of, that’s what I do and I’ve never been disappointed here.
I don’t really have time to say all that to every tourists that asks though lol.
Also I’m literally writing this from a random ramen place I walked into, and it was delicious!
Well, that's only true if you also observe what Japanese customers are buying and do your best to mimic their habits.
You could go into any Italian supermarket and fill your cart with weißwurst, avocados, and Camembert cheese - and they're all right there in the meat, fruit, and dairy areas respectively, not in an 'ethnic' corner - but it would be hardly a good representation of what the locals typically eat.
Unironically this is the experience I’m often looking for in another country. I want touristy days, but I also want to see their supermarkets. Their stores. Walk through a local park. Sit in a coffee shop and read a book. One of my favorite things to do is try foreign food in another country, because Chinese and Japanese and Mexican food is different as it’s adapted to different counties tastes.
To paraphrase the philosopher Vincent Vega, it’s the little differences.
Quotation marks because there's always a (not exactly obvious) Italian twist to these places.
The quirkiest example of this would be a small chain of restaurants named "America Graffiti" (yeah). Overall theme is a 60s diner. It's not present anymore in Bologna, but there are several in neighbouring towns.
This has strong implicit assumptions on the kind of visitors that you have: for example, some people don't particularly like
* watching sports
* playing video games
* ...
but are fine to do this when visitors come and would love to do that.
Historically, that's what the locals did. This is 'do what the locals do' always referred to. Other comments call out entities like Bourdain who pushed 'do what the locals do' into popularization, but even he spent his time talking to the locals. That was his whole schtick.
It may be fair to say that in the modern age locals no longer talk to each other. Perhaps that is the source of disconnect we're now seeing?
The grass is sometimes truly greener.
When I returned I looked at my home with the eyes of a tourist and went everywhere I could.
I have since traveled elsewhere. Some places are much better not to return to or even remain in.
Reality is thousands of white-collar workers (including me), normal locals and many tourists of all ages. Small number of homeless. But no more dangerous than any other city (and a lot safer during the day and early evening )
as a local, there was a lot of places that are "visible to foreigners but invisible to locals" -- cafes/view spots/hipster-places that only advertises to foreigners (they didn't even have signboards) I learnt about those places when some foreign friends took me there
> P.S. if you are a local, you can do all of this too.
Last year, after spending a bunch of money putting in a fence, and having a puppy that didn't travel well, we decided that we were just going to take a week off and be tourists at home. We visited the museums we've driven by daily for eight years, and had a blast.
And, living in a touristy area, I want to point out that "do what the locals do" is excellent advice. I'll tell you all about where to get great food, great hikes, and not-too-crowded beaches. (Except the residents-only beach. We reserve that for us.)
This year just called defeat and I'm moving out to the countryside, hopefully. My city had almost no tourist three years ago and now I had to shout twice to a tourist guide for using a very loud speaker in the very street I live in.
Just today I saw a 1 start review in a place I really like, by a german lady that was baffled waiters didn't even try to speak english to her.
It's just impossible to fight this. Guess we'll have to make our nice place elsewhere until tourists find out.
As for touristy things here in Zurich - it's not really a tourist city. When we have guests from overseas we do have a set of activities to bring them on. When I've offered to bring them in the forest to find mushrooms/berries/etc they're usually not so interested.
They're using Finland of all places as an example of somewhere with a reputation of being happy all the time?
This is bizarre to me. As a Scandinavian, the thing Finland is known for is being unusually depressed and alcoholic...
> Finland is also famous for coming top of happiness surveys all the time
"And Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer"
Tourist traps, at least as I see it, are places or activities that are more expensive than they should be.
For example, a tourist trap in Tokyo is going to the top of SkyTree. It's not something locals can really reasonably afford doing more than once, because it's really expensive. The price is such that basically only tourists would do it.
Things I'd like to try -
* Visiting the tank stream (I believe there are tours)
* The Greater Sydney Bike Trail
* Walking from Manly to Bondi (80km along the harbour)
Things I've done but recommend if you visit -
* Walking the bridge (free)
* Catching a ferry to Manly or Taronga
* Climbing the bridge (expensive!)
* Centrepoint tower (since renamed to Sydney Eye Tower)
* The botanic gardens
* Any beach (I prefer the harbour beaches, there's dozens to choose from)
Edit: Sorry I cannot get the formatting correct
Random blog with photos https://www.walkmyworld.com/posts/wentworth-pass
Rent bikes and cruise the Olympic site. Or cut through briefly to the Cooks River and ride to the beach.
Walk through the glow worm tunnel in the mountains or find someone to take you canyoning. Eeevblog has a video. (Not public transport friendly)
Walk through the the coal terminal at Balls Head.
Walk the start of the Great North walk. Or the length of the Royal national Park (Bundeena to Otford).
Bike/walk the Seven Bridges loop.
Go snorkelling / swim the various rock pools.
Swim at the North Sydney Olympic Pool (if they finish it).
Visit Cockatoo Island / picnic on some of the small islands in the harbour.
Go up the pylon on the bridge.
Lots of tour operators doing it, deals on BookMe and Groupon.
Except that I was in a cabin, on an island, in a foreign country. And the reason I was absolutely undistracted from my book, is that I'd turned my phone off before crossing the border. And I left it off, all week.
The isolation and quiet surroundings made the "week off" truly off. Nobody could reach me if they tried. Whatever calamity befell my boss, he'd just have to wait.
That's so much better than I'd normally do at home on a week off, and it was 100% worth the travel to achieve it.
That should be enough motivation to start where you're already standing. Build up from there. Figure out if you want to see more mountains, more ocean, whatever. It's a great eye-opener.
I wonder when I’ll ever “become a local”!?
I have no idea. I don't go as a tourist. I go to live in my family's home town for 6 or 7 weeks and not think about work. I don't have any recommendations for a checklist. I avoid the touristy places if I can.
I then turn it around on them. If someone was visiting Canada for 2 or 3 days, where do you tell them to go? I dunno.
When I travelled Japan specifically, maps didn't tell you much at all. It might look like a residential deadzone from high up, but be bustling with cool stuff to do when you walk through.
The average person may not be an interesting model for getting the most out of life in a short time in any particular place, but the top 0.1% of people measured by the texture, quality and interesting-ness of their lives exceeds any metric of "noteworthy events per hour" by a factor of 100.
- your means of transportation
- how wealthy you are
- who you're with
- whether it's a special occasion or just a random Tuesday
Check the lists of tourist traps, see what interests you and fill your day there with whatever excites you.
You asking them for advice or for them to show you around might push them to do something fun themselves, which they haven’t done in a while. But they have a lot more local context about what _might_ be good to explore or not.
They also know people - they themselves might have average days, but everyone knows that fun person that is the social glue that does all the fun stuff they can direct you - 7 degrees of separation and all that.
And lastly sure - treat the locals ideas with a grain of salt - I never do _exactly_ what the locals tell me, but it is another data point to make your own plans.
When I travel I like to make huge holes in my plans - uncharted time for me to fill in when I’m at location - from local sources or just doing the research then and there. It has always been more natural and interesting to do the sight seeing planing at location, so you can adjust and correct anyway. I guess have adopted the startup mentality of start small and iterate even for my travel experiences :)
This is an idiosyncratic and gratuitously contrarian take on what the actual advice means. If you go to New York, you're more likely to have a good time at a random neighborhood bar that the locals frequent than at a bar in Times Square. If you're in a small town, at least some of the locals probably know about a good hike 20 minutes out of town with a great view that would be hard to find otherwise. Don't overthink it.
I regret reading and commenting, but hopefully save someone else.
First line: "My best piece of travel advice is to avoid doing what the locals do."
The writer seems incapable of distinguishing between the special, cool local things the locals KNOW about, and which a tourist might well benefit from trying, and the things locals DO because they don't do those special, cool things every day. Instead locals are usually doing similar things to what we normally do.
Which renders this article rather pointless.
Asks me what cool things to do nearby on the spot and I'll probably draw a blank. But say what you are doing instead and I'll probably go "oh yeah! That's brilliant! I love thing X".
I do know where good dog walking spots just outside Edinburgh are though, and I'm still regularly discovering more because I'm effectively a tourist ;).
Going to the festival (and the book festival, back when that was in Charlotte Square) is improved by leaning into your local status and knowing how to duck in and out. And ideally knowing someone with a lanyard who can get you into the media bar: it's not cooler and more happening in there, it's actually quieter.
There's a vennel route across the city. It's an odd experience going through a deserted and mildly unpleasant alley, stepping out into a shuffling horde of tourists, cutting sideways across their paths, and ducking behind some bins into another quiet path. Like walking from the wings of the stage across it.
But yes, ask the locals.
When I was an expat, there was a subtle kind of experience in settling into buying groceries and getting haircuts from the local providers. Or shopping for furniture for our own apartment, or hiring someone to do remodeling on a house...
But, I'm the type who also finds enjoyment in the same scenic trails and camping areas visited hundreds of times in my life in different seasons, etc. I don't need to try to see everything once in a superficial, whirlwind of a tour...
Melbourne has spent a lot on extensive bike pathways and new train stops, and recently made some tram travel free [ as a crowd-pleaser to counter petrol price hikes ], so its quite a pretty city to explore on foot or bike.
Bangkok and Danang have some great cafes .. the best seem to be when you wander a few sois away from the main shopping zones.
I especially like seeing the old wooden elevated Thai houses, which are becoming rare. Another way to find hidden gems, is walk along the banks of a klong - you get to see the underbelly of the city, without the makeup.
The locals in Bangkok tend to love the new shiny hypermalls and pristine train stations that segway into them. The air-con is nice after an hour of roadside bargain hunting.
In BKK, if you like bargains on clothing or bricabrac, I _highly_ recommend going to the top floor of the Pantip building across and west down the road from the shiny upgraded 'The Mall' Ngamwongwan. The weekend indoor market is crazy busy with affordable bargain stalls with the cheapest jeans, tees etc. Smaller but more enjoyable than the massive and more famous Chatuchak. If by chance you need alterations, there are a couple of great shops on the 5th floor, iirc - 60 baht hems, wow. The 4th? floor foodcourt is quieter than most. There is a whole floor of Thai buddhist good luck charm amulets. You'll have to run the gamut of outdoor stalls to get into the place, but that can be fun. There is also an incredible coffee shop down soi 27, called "High Coffee Roaster". I was stranded looking for my airbnb, and a local came out of a shop and asked me if I was lost .. then recommended a local cafe I could wait at until checkin. The cafe staff caught me smelling my coffee, as it was so good, and then gifted me a tiny dish of ground coffee specifically to smell .. incredible coffee and superb service.
