Articles written by: Shadia Garrison
Born in Cairo, Egypt to parents who met as Peace Corps volunteers living in Tunisia, Shadia has since journeyed all over the planet. She has an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology from Indiana University, and spent 1990 living and travelling through Chile, South America. Her blog The Mindful Tourist attempts to write snarkily (new word!) on socially conscious travel.
Mindful Tourist Book Review: The Lost Girls
May 14, 2010 BooksThe book “The Lost Girls” came out yesterday, the same day we finished our advance copy of the 539-page opus. As a reader (and full disclosure, sometimes contributor) of their longstanding blog, we had been looking forward to reading this book detailing three women’s travel together around the globe.
Why it’s okay to watch TV on vacation
June 1, 2009 Cultural, Opinions, Social
Watching Astro TV in Malaysia / Photo by Stephen Chapman
Why spend your valuable time on vacation watching the boob-tube? True, you don’t want television-watching to get in the way of going out, seeing the sights, meeting people, and working on that all-important tan (skin cancer prevention advocates: no emails please).
But when you have some down time, instead of turning on your computer and connecting with the same old people from home, consider turning on the local TV and sit yourself down for a special kind of cultural education.
Television can be a wonderful view into the local culture of your vacation destination. If nothing else, it can offer some hearty laughs – something you can always use more of while traveling. Here’s a personal list of our favorite TV experiences around the world…
Calling Poverty Tourism by its true name
May 11, 2009 Opinions
Photo from The Mindful Tourist
With the popularity of Slumdog Millionaire, we began to see more and more articles about poverty or slum tourism.
Since it left a bad taste in our mouth, we did a little research here and there but couldn’t bring ourselves to write a post about it…until now.
Hannah Rubenstein’s blog on Poverty Tourism (or “poorism,” yuck!) raises many interesting and important questions. Hannah lived in Nicaragua recently and at one point was asked to take a group of American tourists to a nearby village, show them one of the typical houses, while introducing the large family that shared the one-room house to the tourist group. It sounds like it was an awkward few minutes for several reasons…
Continue reading this article @ The Mindful Tourist
Further information:
A Tourist’s role in Archaeological ethics
April 16, 2009 Adventures, History, Social
Our Aymaran pots we bought illegally, unethically, and cluelessly in La Paz / Photo by Shadia Garrison
Remember the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan? This was in spring of 2001, before most people had heard of the Taliban. We remember it well and were horrified watching video of these incredibly amazing and larger-than-life sculptures that had stood for centuries being blown up by tanks and anti-aircraft weapons. This is an extreme example of the unethical treatment of archaeological artifacts that are important pieces of our collective human history and culture.
There are less severe but still serious activities related to antiquities and artifacts that every mindful tourist should be aware of, namely looting and selling.
Book review: Eat, Pray, Love
April 2, 2009 Books, Opinions
If you have been living on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific with no internet, tv, etc. then it’s still unlikely that you haven’t heard of the Eat, Pray, Love phenomenon. If you want a socially conscious travel take on this book, click through. If you’ve heard enough of the book and the author, we feel you and apologize for making you read those three little words yet again.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this memoir after a year-long trip to Italy, India, and Bali. She uses this trip to heal from a crisis period in her life and it works quite well.
Your answer to finding sustainable tourism around the globe
April 1, 2009 Interviews, Opinions, Projects
A new dawn on Aitutaki, Cook Islands / Photo by Stephen Chapman
As you know, our standards are quite high for these companies. We have slammed others for presenting themselves as something they’re not.whl.travel started off as a project working to help small accommodation providers in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to access and leverage the internet to market their properties in order to be competitive with larger chain hotels. Since then, it has become its own company and now operates as a quasi-franchise type model with local partners in the destinations who do all the things best done locally (including working directly with the local accommodation providers and with travelers) and with whl.travel doing the things best done centrally (technology and web marketing).
While we do think the WHL website could be improved (it seems a little confusing and unwieldy sometimes), they are truly doing good work. We recently had the opportunity to interview their CEO, Len Cordiner, based in Sydney, Australia.
