Go See the World — the Real One: How to Bypass Ultra-Processed Tourism and Find the Beating Heart of Culture

Maria, boss grrl of a homestay in Siem Reap, Cambodia. October 2025 Credit: Carol Emert

GLOBAL TOURISM HAS BECOME THE CULTURAL EQUIVALENT OF CHEEZ WHIZ: Fluffy, manufactured ingredients that leave the consumer hungry for the real deal.

On a recent six-month trip across Asia, my goal was to macerate in culture, spend quality time with local people, and come away with a clear, felt sense of each place. Across 11 countries*, I was bummed to learn that almost everything I wanted to do had been packaged into cultural Cheez Whiz. 

It could be difficult to find even basic information for, say, visiting a museum the old-fashioned way - by walking in, buying a ticket, and looking around. Search results were dominated by packages promising to rush you through multiple sites, force-feed you a mediocre buffet lunch, and guarantee the company of people just like yourself. (Also, inevitably: Germans.)

AGI tools like ChatGPT and MindTrip proved useful for high-level itinerary building, but like regular search, they recommend the well-worn path by definition. 

Here are my top strategies for piercing the armor of the tourism industrial complex:

1. Live with Locals

Airbnb hostess Lasti performing morning prayers in the family temple. She rescued me from chokingly touristy “Bali Disneyland”. September 2025. Credit: Carol Emert

Living with locals is far and away the best strategy for travelers to get under the hood of the local culture. 

I enjoyed delightful homestays with families in almost every country I visited. I played “restaurant” with Maria, the cutest, bossiest toddler ever, in Siem Reap, Cambodia; hung out with competitive mahjong players in Penang, Malaysia; and made candles out of local plants with farmers in Tado-Pusut, Indonesia.

Homestay hosts invited me to parties, gave me rides, and engaged in long conversations about family, farming, religion, politics, gender roles, the arts – you name it. Our connections lasted only a few days, but were nevertheless sweet and authentic. These homestays made the difference between a good six months of travel and a deeply rewarding six months of travel.

Bali is a great case in point. Despite a choking level of tourism, it was one of my favorite places in Asia, for one reason only: a soft-spoken, partially blind, observant Hindu woman named Lasti who is also an Airbnb host. Lasti welcomed me to her morning prayers and gave me deep insight into Balinese Hinduism. She took me shopping at a vibrant morning market with no tourists in sight. And we bonded over many deep conversations about our lives and beliefs. 

In just two weeks, my friend Lasti really changed me. I can’t say that about a single hotel stay ever.

My hosts in Penang, Malaysia, part of the ethnic Chinese majority, are serious mahjong players. They gave me rides, treated me to dim sum, and educated me about Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. Credit: Carol Emert

2. Seek Indigenous Experiences

A Vedda man foraging for mushrooms that we later enjoyed in a stew. The Vedda may be the only people I’ve met who don’t seem conditioned to smile for the camera. December 2025. Credit: Carol Emert

Original peoples are, by definition, keepers of cultural authenticity – even as modernity inevitably edges in. Visiting indigenous clans was the best way I found to tap into rich veins of culture outside the mainstream.

Of all of the clans I visited, the Vedda of central Sri Lanka have maintained a way of life that is least changed by modernity. They are direct descendants of Neolithic people, pre-dating the conflict-ridden Sinhalese and Tamils, and remained isolated from outside influence until the 1980s. Their leader, Uruwarige Vannila Attho, the chief and medicine man, is now recognized globally for his work on issues of indigenous rights.

Uruwarige Vannila Attho is a globally respected leader on indigenous rights. I interviewed him in December 2025 in Dambala, Sri Lanka. Credit: Carol Emert

In 1983, the Sri Lankan government converted the Vedda’s homeland into a national park, circumscribing their hunting and foraging area so they could no longer feed themselves from nature. They were forced to supplement their livelihoods through farming and the cultural tourism that I enjoyed for a day. Girls and boys are required to attend a conventional public school, after which some choose to remain in the village while others opt for university or a mainsteam livelihood. They may re-settle in the village if they marry a Vedda, but not if they marry an outsider.

I asked Uruwarige Vannila Attho, as the medicine man, whether people are healthier or less healthy than they were before modern medicine came to the Vedda. He told me that the medicines from the forest had served the Vedda well, but that now they are challenged by diseases from the outside.

I learned later that his wife had died from COVID-19, which she of course would never have contracted if the Sri Lankan government hadn’t forced modernization on the Vedda.

Over the course of a day with the Vedda, I foraged, grated raw coconut, cooked, gathered honey, chewed betel nut (that’s actually a modern habit),and enjoyed re-enactments of a hunting ritual and a PG-rated honeymoon ritual (see photo below). Our hotel provided an interpreter since none of the Vedda speak English, nor even much Sinhala. Vedda remains a language with no written form.

The Vedda performed ritual dances such as a honeymoon reenactment. Light petting and much laughter ensued. December 2015. Credit: Carol Emert

I found the Vedda people just like other people — by turns serious and funny, welcoming, dignified. They lack certain Western conditioning, like smiling for the camera, which I appreciated. I didn’t see a single Vedda woman, who appear to be confined to the huts when a visitor is about. It was unsettling to feel locked out of contact with my sisters. But all in all, my day with the Vedda was extraordinary, shedding light onto both pre-history and timeless humanness.

A Manggarai woman in Tado-Pusut, Flores, Indonesia, makes candles from oily candle nuts and kapok “cotton”. The floor mats are also crafted by hand from foraged fibers. Credit: Carol Emert

The other indigenous clans I visited in Asia — all of them wonderful — are the Ifugao in northern Luzon, Philippines; the Batak of Samosir Island and Tangkahan in northern Sumatra; the Manggarai of Tado-Pusut, Flores, Indonesia; the Bidayah and Penan of Sarawak, Borneo; the Hmong, Tai, and Khmu of Luang Prabang, Laos. 

3. Connect with Other Culture Seekers

Phaeng, a guide in Luang Prabang, Laos, set up lunch with this indigenous rubber farmer, who served tree porcupine and opium poppy salad. January 2026 Credit: Carol Emert

Mainstream tourists rely on top search results; cultural tourists rely on word of mouth. 

Rather late in my travels, I discovered country-specific FaceBook pages where off-the-beaten-track types trade advice. I was frustrated by the unpierce-able packagedness of Luang Prabang, Laos, where every travel company shuffled people through the same over-run indigenous village located conveniently on the way to the big-draw waterfall. 

On a Laos FB page, I found Phaeng, a highly knowledgeable, articulate driver who took me to three villages of Hmong, Khmu and Tai people. It was a day of adventure: tree porcupine for lunch, gangs of village kids to hang out with, and a chance encounter with a man weaving a stool in his yard from foraged rattan.

Private drivers are terrific sources of local insight and don’t always cost more than packaged tours. Conversations can go deep when you’re spending many hours with a person: How are U.S. tariffs affecting you and your community? What does it mean as a practical matter that Laos (or Vietnam) is communist? In Sri Lanka, how does Buddhist faith centered on ego non-attachment jibe with anti-Muslim bias?

My driver in Siem Reap, Mara Chay, became a friend and took me to his family farm for the day. He showed me how to climb a coconut tree without a ladder (key tools: bare feet and spit) and his family served catfish from the rice paddies. Neighborhood children around came to say hello in English and sit on my lap.

Mara demonstrated his climbing skills to pick me a coconut in Siem Reap, Cambodia. November 2025. Credit: Carol Emert

A special day on the family farm of my friend and guide, Mara, in Siem Reap, Cambodia. He, his wife, and the local children gave me a tour of the rice paddies. November 2025 Credit: Marada Chay

So there you have it – the travel tips that brought my six months in Asia to life. Now go see the world – the real one. Happy adventuring.

*The places I visited, in chronological order: Japan, Philippines, Indonesia (Bali, Flores, Komodo, Java, Sumatra), Malaysia (Peninsula and the Bornean states of Sabah and Sarawak) Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong.

Give an Elephant a Bath: Ethical or Exploitative?

At Tangkahan Village, visitors can pay to bathe the elephants.

IN INDONESIA, IF WILD ELEPHANTS make a habit of foraging in a corn field or a palm or rubber plantation, the elephants used to be shot. An alternative is to send them to a jungle community like Tangkahan Village, North Sumatra, Indonesia. 

At Tangkahan, the indigenous Batak people have established an eco-tourism business around their herd of nine Asian elephants. According to my guide, Bim, 80% of the village's income once came from illegal logging, which has now ceased entirely.

The Indonesian government provided the elephants and guide training. It continues to manage the program, including replacing the sole breeding male every couple of years, to support rural development.

Every day, the elephants are led from their corral at 8:30AM for a river bath; tourists pay 150,000 rupiah, about $9, to help scrub. The elephants seem to love it — they lean into the scrub brushes and shift their bodies to allow better access.

The herd then roams the jungle for the day, managed by local guides, and comes out covered in dust. So there's another bath at 3:30PM, then a dinner of leaves and back into the corral for the night.

Hats off to Suri, the matriarch, who is 54 and still calving. The calves nurse til about age 7.

Bim and the stump of a banyan tree that was illegally logged before Tangkahan embraced eco-tourism. “This is a memorial,” he said.

Throughout Southeast Asia, there are wild animal sanctuaries with a wide variety of backstories. I try to weigh the ethical considerations of each one I’m interested in visiting.

My preferred option — habitat protection for species like elephants, orangutans, and proboscis monkeys — doesn’t seem to be on the table. Palm plantations in particular are squeezing these animals out of their forest and mangrove homes. With the Indonesian government mandating an increase in palm-based biodiesel fuel in 2026, the problem is getting worse, not better.

So I visit sanctuaries that, in a fairer world, wouldn’t be needed at all. Bim expressed it well. “The plantations, the farms, they are beneficial. But there could be more balance.”

Given the givens, the scales of justice in my head decided that the benefits of the Tangkahan model outweigh the downsides, which is why I went.

I declined a guide’s offer of a shower by elephant trunk, since I was drawing the line at "animal tricks." But then I couldn't resist getting a kiss. And the guide, a bit of a prankster, had an elephant hose me down anyway. 

I gave that elephant a very hearty nose rub indeed.

A clean and apparently happy elephant with her new human buddy.

While the wee one supplied kisses, the other elephant (the mom?) poked the back of my head.

Mad Computer Skillz and Poison-Tipped Darts: Balancing Technology and Tradition in Rural Borneo

Osen Tuo, a Penan tribe member with a certificate in digital marketing, describes how he uses a blowpipe and poison darts to hunt game.

REGRETTABLY, THE PARK OFFICE informed me, the trained guide for my Sungai Tutoh River tour had fallen ill. Only a local, non-English-speaking boatman was available for the afternoon. 

That was okay by me. I was in Borneo’s Gunung Mulu National Park, famous for jagged limestone peaks and an intricate system of river-carved caves. It was a two-hour flight via turboprop from Kuching, the capital of this province, Sarawak, Malaysia. At the borders of this park were the forests of Brunei. Nature was the only game in town. 

Soon I was motoring down the river in a longboat with two other travelers – Annie from Western Malaysia and a British gentleman named Brennan. The boatman, Osen, ran an outboard motor in the rear and his wife, whose name I regrettably did not learn, navigated from the front.

It was a fortuitous match. I had tried, but failed, to find a homestay with the River Dayek people – a term that applies to a number of tribal groups in Sarawak who live in communal longhouses, fishing, hunting, and foraging along the river. 

Osen, it turned out, is a member of the Penan tribe, formerly forest-dwelling nomads who were forced by the Malaysian government to settle in longhouses generations ago. While 200 to 300 Penan remain nomadic (a difficult proposition due to logging and deforestation in Borneo), Osen has embraced a settled life.

“He showed us what looked like extremely sharp kebab skewers.”

We disembarked at a modern longhouse: a two-story, bright green, city block-long structure that houses about 60 families, all connected by a ground-level porch. A poster with photographs of the community leaders, all Penan, greeted us at the entrance.

“Who’s the guy at the top?” I asked.

It was Osen’s brother, the eldest of his generation. Leadership is passed to the chief’s first-born regardless of gender, Osen said. As the second born, there was no space for Osen on the poster.

Osen’s living room, while otherwise simple, was lined with framed certificates of achievement. He and his wife are the proud parents of five grown children, a couple of them college graduates. “Your children are very accomplished!” I exuded, with Annie interpreting in Malaysian. 

“He says all of these certificates are his,” said Annie.

Wow, what?

Perusing the walls, I could see that Osen had taken many courses offered by rural development programs; Malaysia is encouraging its indigenous folks to offer homestays to eco-tourists. Osen had certificates in subjects like composting with worms and digital marketing. Along with the certificates were photographs of some homestay groups – apparently Malaysian since neither Osen nor his wife speak English.

While I consider the forced settlement of any indigenous group extraordinarily unjust and culturally tragic, it was nonetheless energizing to meet this bright soul, with his keen appetite to find opportunity at the intersection of the very, very old and the very, very new.

“it’s inspiring to watch the human story play out in such different ways among people from wildly diverse backgrounds. ”

When queried about the antlers mounted amongst the certificates, Osen pulled down a bamboo tube hanging from a nail. It was filled with what looked like extremely sharp kebab skewers. 

“This is how he hunts, with poison-tipped darts” blown through a blowpipe, Annie told us. The day before, on a hike, our group had seen a tree with notches in the bark that the guide told us were extraction points for this type of poison, used long ago by local headhunters.  

Osen is still using this poison today. The kebab-type darts kill small game like fish and birds, while a second set that he showed us, with vicious, triangular metal tips, is used for deer and wild boar. The ends of both were coated in a dark grey substance, the tree sap, which kills prey with deadly certainty while leaving the meat edible. “It works the same way with people,” Osen said.

Gulp!

Saying good-bye to the longhouse, our tour moved back to the water, where Osen led us through another few hours of boating, wading, and swimming in a clear, cool stream.

As our group waded upstream, Osen occasionally ventured onto the lush bank and returned with a medicinal plant to show us. One was to relieve back pain, one was for nausea, another to help with nursing. The back pain one, a vine, only works if you boil an odd number of leaves into tea, Osen explained. An even number won’t have any effect.

At dinner time, our boat pulled up to the dock at park HQ. Annie, Brennan, and I thanked Osen and his wife profusely (and a bit financially) for giving us a window into their lives. I made it to the park cafe just as the clouds burst open, throwing down buckets of rain; our guides surely were getting drenched on their way home. 

Over a bowl of laksa, I reflected on the human drive to learn, grow, and find opportunities in this changing world. There’s nothing unusual about that, yet it is so inspiring to watch this human story play out in such different ways among people from wildly diverse backgrounds. 

Certainly it reassures me that, as a species, we have the capacity to do better – to live more in harmony with our planet and with each other, to move forward together instead of at each others’ expense. Like Osen, we can choose to embrace the gifts of modern living while maintaining ways of life that keep us connected to nature, tradition, and each other.

Osen earned this certificate in digital marketing for homestay operators, a program offered by the Malaysian government to support rural development.

Japan v. Oakland: A demoralizing side-by-side view

Workers keeping Japan’s streets and byways tidy. Many streets in Oakland are lined with trash.

Over four days in Tokyo, I came across only one or two apparently homeless people. On day three, my son Nico actually pointed out a  piece of garbage on the street – “Look Mom, garbage!” – as if it were a beached narwal. The plethora of spotless public toilets with squirty water for your nether regions and warm air to dry them, as well as TP though you don’t even need it, struck me as a pinnacle of compassionate social policy. 

A few years ago, I delivered socks and sanitary kits to people living in a downtown Oakland encampment just a couple of miles from my house. It was a dank, cold day just before Christmas. The stench from the tents was as noxious as that of a hog farm near my childhood home in Ohio. There was no heat, no garbage collection, no refrigerator, and certainly no toilet with squirty water and warm air for the nether regions. One man told me that his wife was dying from several treatable conditions and he couldn’t get help for her. “I’m so very sorry you are living like this,” I said as I feebly handed him wool socks and some money.

I began crying as my son and I climbed into our car and drove two miles to our tidy, warm home with the stocked refrigerator, the 5G network, closets overflowing with clothes, and a Japanese-made tankless water heater providing endless hot showers. 

“The good people of the United States will one day have an opportunity to choose the values on which to rebuild our society.”

A truism about the differences between Japan and the U.S. is that the Japanese prioritize the collective good while Americans prize individual liberty. We’ve constructed our societies on top of these values, weaving innumerable decisions by voters, politicians, and administrators in every jurisdiction into the systems we have today. 

And this is the result. One country where the rich aren’t as rich and the poor aren’t as poor. Where a finance executive near retirement can only afford a perhaps 1,200-square-foot house and is still working. (We stayed in two such homes in Japan, one in Tokyo and one in Hiroshima). One country where dirtiness is simply not tolerated and another where putridness and squalor have become, on some level, acceptable. Where the politicians wring their hands and well-meaning Unitarian Universalists distribute socks at Christmastime and cry on the drive home.

I’m not pretending that Japan is perfect, or an easy place to live. Social pressures to conform and perform create pain and desperation. Workplace gender discrimination is rampant. Japan’s suicide rate is among the highest in the world. And Oakland is, of course, part of a much larger, systemic failure of politics and policy.

But when viewed side by side, days apart, the difference between Japan and my beloved Oakland was demoralizing, almost shocking.

Personal liberty is critical when it comes to rights like voting. But how much freedom does that homeless man and his wife enjoy? Or the millions of other Americans living in poverty? Where is my freedom from the moral injury of being part of a society that treats its people worse than animals bred for meat?

The U.S. is well down a dark road of hatred- and greed-dominated politics. When the current regime ends, as I hope it soon will, the good people of the United States will have an opportunity to choose the values on which to rebuild our society. We’ve tried leading with greed. Next time a free and fair election comes around, maybe let’s see what taking care of our neighbors might look like.

The top 5 questions people ask about rafting the Grand Canyon

Photo courtesy John Stanford

I spent an amazing week rafting the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park in May 2024. Since everyone I meet seems to have this item on their bucket list, here’s a quick FAQ to get you going. 

1. Is it worth it? Should I go?

Emphatically YES. The Grand Canyon is one of the Natural Wonders of the World for a reason. I’d seen it from the rim and have spent quality time in other remarkable parks like Zion, Death Valley, and Yosemite. The Grand Canyon is special. Rafting it is something I hope every nature lover gets to do at some point in their lives. 

2. What were the highlights?

1. The natural beauty. The canyon is etched through a dozen geological layers that the river moves through from top to bottom. Dramatic slot canyons, pools, and twisty fault lines are a visual feast. Plus we saw bighorn sheep, lizards, snakes, raptors, and beautiful plant life. 

2. Quality time with people. It was a weeklong, fully immersive, 24/7 bonding experience. 

3. Daily hikes. Gorgeous, interesting, challenging, vertical. Lots of wildflowers and several archeological sites. 

4. No phones to distract us from truly immersing in the place and each other.

5. Helicopter ride out of the Canyon – another bucket list item checked.

3. Did you paddle? How long did it take?

I considered not signing up for this trip when I learned our craft would be motorized. (I was a guest, not the organizer).) I love paddling, and imagined sitting like a lump for a week a la the Love Boat. But the headwinds on the first day were so crazy that paddlers seemed to be fighting for every inch. I suddenly was grateful for our motor. Plus, I found that the challenging daily hikes, making and breaking camp every day, and moving gear on and off the rafts was good exercise.

Our group of 28 guests and four crew was spread across two 30-foot inflated rafts. For me, the biggest advantage of a motorized craft is getting down the canyon in a week, whereas paddlers typically take closer to three. The biggest downside was a cushioned experience of the rapids. It’s easier to feel the ups and downs in a smaller craft.

4. What was the weather like?

Weather varies hugely from month to month in the Canyon. Summers can be almost unbearably hot. Our trip, during the second week of May, was chilly at the put-in at Lees Ferry, but warm at the end, 277 miles downstream. Skies were clear, apart from the one afternoon of wind and another of brief, light rain. The folks sitting in the splashy seats at the front of the rafts got consistently soaked by 50-degree water, which was uncomfortable the first two or three days. Those seats grew more popular as we moved south.

Check out the National Weather Service’s forecast for the Canyon floor.

5. Did you have to book years in advance?

Private groups are the ones on years-long wait lists. We signed up about a year in advance with one of the public outfitters, Arizona River Runners, which was terrific: knowledgeable, fun, hardworking staff and tasty meals.