Tourists

I have been able to travel extensively, both on business and pleasure. Our whole family (of 25!) went to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia in the late 1990’s shortly after Cambodia opened its borders. For me, it was inspirational. We were virtually the only guests in a brand new Sofitel hotel and were able to wander freely through the 72 temples stretched over 400 acres. We could touch the temples, walk through them, feel their spirituality, climb the trees that grew through them. Our college-educated, English speaking guide told us the story of his entire family being massacred by the Pol Pot regime. Pol Pot feared intellectuals and our guide’s well-educated family were among the first to be slaughtered. Being in the presence of these mystical temples, listening to his stories about life during Pol Pot, and absorbing everyday life in Cambodia was an incredible learning experience. I remember asking him if the anger at losing his entire family consumed him. He looked at me quizzically.

“Oh, no,” he replied. “I have forgiven them. Our country was pillaged by Pol Pot, all of our teak trees were chopped down and sold, our minerals and jewels gone, all of the valuables that this country possessed have been sold. We have to forgive and move on. It is the Buddhist way. We want to open our country to tourism; Angor Wat is all that we have left. Living in the past just leaves us stuck in the past.”

I never forgot his words.

So, when a friend told me that she was traveling to Angkor Wat, I excitedly told her about how moving the trip was. I extolled its mysticism, the wisdom of the people. I promised her a life changing experience.

It was not even close.

She couldn’t wait to leave Angkor Wat. It was overrun with tourists, all of them jostling for the best position to snap selfies. It was impossible to move without disturbing an Instagram post. Angkor Wat and the other temples were roped off to prevent the mobs of tourists from destroying them. Far from being a spiritual experience, it amounted to seeing structures from a distance and trying not to be run over by the thousands of tourists taking pictures.

And in a nutshell, that describes what has happened to tourism in 20 years.

It is estimated that over 1.4 billion vacationers toured this planet in 2022. The sheer crush of humanity, disrespectful tourists, and fake attractions have destroyed some of my favorite places.

And social media photos have become the prime reason for those under 33 to choose a destination. Over 40% of all vacationers said they would not go to a place where they couldn’t take selfies. Instead of experiencing these sites with all of their senses, they are seeing it through a tiny lens.

Crafty entrepreneurs recognize an opportunity and now there are exotic animals (all abused) to have selfies taken with. Cruel elephant and exotic animal shows and encounters, enclosures where tourists can take selfies with drugged and tortured animals, are the new “tourism.” (In one facility, the trainers tie the elephants’ trunks at night to prevent them from committing suicide.)

Arguably, the worst is unscrupulous voluntourism. “Voluntourists” are individuals, school groups, and faith-based groups who take their vacation time to go to third world countries to help those in need. These exceptionally kind and generous people spend their valuable vacation time and money to “do good,” unaware that their presence can be causing irreparable harm. They may be building structures and providing aid that will go unused or into the pockets of the director. And they become invested and provide a source for future donations as well.

Arguably the most deceitful voluntourism destinations are orphanages, where volunteers arrive to teach and cuddle children while donating large sums of money to the orphanage. Sadly, many orphanages have been built to meet this demand. Save the Children estimates that 80% of children sent to orphanages have at least one parent, who, living in poverty, believe that this is a better opportunity for their children. Indeed, children are actively recruited into orphanages to meet the demand of tourists and donors. The psychological costs are high, attachment disorders are common, and the statistics are crushing: 1 in 3 end up homeless; 1 in 7 turn to prostitution; 1 in 5 commit crimes; and 1 in 10 commit suicide.

Suppose that you are child, and your mother or father abandons you to an orphanage. People who do not speak your language come and visit and hug you and teach you and then in a week or two, donate large sums to the orphanage and leave. Imagine this cycle repeating again and again. After learning the facts, one chastised tourist likened it to treating children like zoo animals.

The numbers are staggering; in Cambodia, the number of orphanages grew 75% in five years despite there being no increase in orphans. It is so problematic that some international travel groups have removed all orphanage visits from their advertised trips. It is now recommended that travel and tourism companies, school groups, faith-based organizations and travelers refrain from visiting, volunteering in, or funding orphanages. Until this ends, children will continue to be abused and separated from their families.

Fragile beaches, landmarks, and structures are being closed or marked off to prevent further damage. Go on YouTube and you will find videos of people destroying thousand-year-old structures, torturing harmless animals, and even one man carrying a dolphin out of the water and placing it on the sand. Recently a tourist apologized for etching his and his girlfriend’s name on the Roman Colosseum, claiming he didn’t know it was so old (his stunt was videoed by another tourist allowing the Italian government to find and prosecute him).

Since I live in two tourist towns, I have experienced tourism as both a tourist and a landowner. St. Michaels is a sedate little tourist town, with lovely hotels, leafy streets, sleepy waterways, nature preserves, a world-class museum, and a minimal night life. While our taxes are high, we benefit from the delicious restaurants, charming shops, and natural surroundings. The vast majority of the tourists are quiet and respectful.

Key West, on the other hand, is a famous international destination and suffers because of it. With multiple cruise ships arriving daily and a reputation for an exciting nightlife, Key West is a target for the wrong kind of tourism. After discovering that cruise ship travelers spend $32 per visit (compared to $550 by other tourists), leave substantial waste, and that the cruise ships are causing environmental damage to the reefs; the residents overwhelmingly (85%) passed a city referendum to prohibit large cruise ships. Even the local merchants campaigned against cruise ships.

But Florida is the land of Ron DeSantis, so the owner of the cruise ship ports donated $1 million to his campaign fund and voila, the next year the legislature passed a law prohibiting local municipalities from banning large cruise ships. So, the reefs and oceans that began to revive during COVID are being destroyed again.

On vacation many tourists leave their inhibitions behind, in Key West that has resulted in killing pelicans, chickens, and other wildlife (because its “fun”) and wandering the streets in rowdy boisterous groups. The worst is spring break, where the hotel rooms are crammed beyond occupancy rates with college students, and the city is inundated with carousing, carefree young people driving drunk on mopeds, having sex on the beaches, building fires, while consuming mass quantities of alcohol and drugs. The next day, Key West dusts off the remnants of the nights while city workers clean up the broken beer bottles, used condoms, and litter on the beaches. While each hotel has room occupancy limits, many look the other way, and the beaches, bars, and restaurants are filled with people who have left their sensibilities home. I saw a tourist in his 50’s throwing empty bottles at our chickens and extolling his pals to do the same, smiling and saying “Hey, it’s Key West, anything goes here.” Well, not exactly.

Duval Street is known for its colorful history and its pub crawl, which could include up to 43 bars, although the traditional pub crawl is fewer than 10 in a single night. Needless to say, this does not produce the most respectful guest. Most permanent residents live far away from the bacchanal on Duval.

So, what’s a tourist to do? Well, definitely not stop. Tourism accounts for one in nine jobs globally. And developing countries depend on tourism revenues.

But we now need to do our own research before we travel. If you are one of those amazingly generous individuals who wants to do voluntourism, do your research. Make sure that you are working with an organization that has a stellar record. Verify that the money is going to the residents and not some unscrupulous tour operator. If you are traveling to a developing country, make sure that you are leaving your money with the locals. Today, many tourist locations have open markets where the money goes to the makers. Locals rarely benefit from the money spent by cruise ship travelers. Cruise ships direct tourists to vendors from whom they get a percentage of the sales.

And do your research about when to go. My daughter and I assumed (and you know what assume means…) that September would be the best time to visit Rome, thinking that the children would be in school. Research would have made us aware that it is the most popular time to visit. The crunch of tourists made it difficult for us to spend meaningful time in the places that we planned to see.

And please remember, you are visiting is someone’s home…please be a respectful guest.

Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.

I was raised to be a racist, by kind, generous, well-meaning parents who didn’t know any better. When the schools were integrated in my 5^th grade year, it took less than a year to realize that everything that I had been taught was a lie. My parents had been taught the same lies. But exposure made the walls tumble down.

I cannot fathom the bravery and courage it took for those black students and teachers to move to the oppressor’s school. But their presence caused most white students to wake up to how we had been indoctrinated and misled. Yet, some of our parents tried to keep those walls up; even protesting (wait for it) the school electing a black homecoming queen. Parents demanded that the homecoming queen be white, so for several years, we had the ridiculous solution of separate black and white homecoming queens.

The segregationists got it right, race mixing is thriving. And now, I see more and more different colors in America. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the 4^th of July!

But I never heard my parents’ views on homosexuality. Our family had no “funny” uncles or spinster aunts. Our large family was pure cis (for those who don’t know what cis means, it is a person whose gender identity aligns with the sex at birth).

I was a bookish, introverted, scared teenager. I was afraid of the opposite sex and concerned about not fitting in, especially not dating. I never learned the language of extended eye gazes, winks, smiles, and flirtatious body movements. I didn’t even know that I was pretty until my college roommate informed me of it. I believed that she was an idiot, but I wasn’t going to dispel her of her uninformed opinion.

To deal with my insecurities, I mostly “dated” gay teenagers who were also hiding. It was a perfect solution for both of us, no pressure for sex, just two people having a good time, serving as each other’s beard. One summer I went away to an advanced Spanish program at the University of Kansas. I immediately latched onto my gay “boyfriend.” We enjoyed each other’s company so much and developed such a trust that he took me to an illegal gay bar. In the 1960s, surreptitious illegal bars catering to gays and lesbians were known among the LBGTQ+ community. The police knew about them too and periodically raided them, arresting the patrons and printing the names of arrestees in the newspaper. The famous Stonewall uprising that occurred on June 28, 1969, in Greenwich Village served as a turning point for those mass arrests. The LBGTQ+ population fought back, and the world was never the same again.

Going to that illegal bar was a life-changing experience. In my wide-eyed naivete, I must have insulted them in every way possible. But they were gracious, and each told me their stories. I kept saying (cringeworthy, I know), “But you look so regular!”

Fortunately, they were entertained by my innocence and acceptance and a maybe a little proud that they were able to conceal their identities so well. Many were middle-aged men and women; couples getting the chance to go out and enjoy themselves. I talked to a schoolteacher and librarian lesbian couple, who smiled at my naïve questions about how they could live their lives in such secrecy. A group of men proclaimed that I was going to make my “boyfriend” heterosexual. We all laughed at that. (That was back in the days of “the love of a good woman…”) Everyone insisted on buying me a drink (yes, I was underage, but that was the least of their fears). I left a convert. I adored them. I admired them. Exposure.

But what I didn’t see was the price that these wonderful people were paying. While I was enjoying myself, expanding my world, they were hiding theirs. If there was a police raid on the bar, they would have been arrested, their names displayed in the paper. They would have lost their jobs, their families, and some of their friends and colleagues if their secret was exposed. So, they had to live pretend lives. Lives that I found so charming were actually desperate attempts to “fit” into a society that painted them as evil.

Several years ago, I watched a play about Casa Susanna. American Experience recently released a documentary about this unique 1960s motel. Casa Susanna consisted of a series of bungalows owned by Marie and Tito (Susanna) Valenti in the Catskills. It was a place where crossdressing men, their wives, and transgender women came to spend a glorious weekend out of the shadows. They dressed in typical 1960s housewife attire and even put on some shows.

Casa Susanna was run by a husband and wife team. Susanna (Tito) married a progressive woman who wanted to help this community. They met while he was trying on wigs in her wig shop.

In the documentary about Casa Susanna, American Experience profiled two transgender women and relatives of men (including Susanna/Tito) who were crossdressers.

In that happy place, the lies, the sadness, the feelings of not fitting in didn’t check in. In Casa Susanna they could bask in acceptance; something that we take for granted. But after they left Casa Susanna, they had to live their lies, not lives, in the shame of not being “normal.” And those lies created a profound darkness that constantly shrouded their lives. Living in the shadows.

The documentary was meant to be upbeat; celebrating a place where people got to be themselves for a weekend. But the pain of their ostracism was ever present. Two transgender women spoke of trying to make their early marriages work (their wives married them knowing their secret). The cost of living the lives that God gave them was heartbreak. One transgender woman was never able to have children. The other had three children during her first marriage, but two refuse any contact with her. In the 60’s, it was achingly hard to live in the shadows.

Not all cross dressers became women, some feared the painful and expensive operations. Others preferred to be men in a binary world. But trying to assimilate in a world that punished them for who they were came at a high cost. One man hated himself so much that his daughter reported that he was a moody, self-loathing, cruel father and husband.

Today, some people are trying to bring back those times; banning books, protesting a male library clerk wearing makeup, putting in anti-LBGTQ+ laws, allowing shops to discriminate, and boycotting businesses that feature an LBGTQ+ character in their advertising. To date, there are over 650 new proposed laws that qualify as anti-LBGTQ+, many target transgender youths. In 19 states there are bans on trans youths participating in school sports. In 7 states, trans students are not allowed to use bathrooms that match their gender identity.

Why? Because these people don’t want their children exposed to them, or maybe they are even afraid of the LGBTQ+ community. They learned the lessons of integration. Exposure = acceptance.

Netflix has a series called Glamorous. The lead character, Marco, wears makeup, earrings, crop tops, jeans, and heels. It is a story of how he learns to negotiate the world and maintain his identity. In the beginning, I found his appearance a little unsettling. But by the middle of the series, when he stopped wearing makeup to appease his boyfriend, I began thinking how he didn’t look as cute without his makeup and heels. I wanted him to return to his style. That is what exposure does. (Note: the actor, Miss Benny, has since come out as a transgender woman.)

Some of the opponents of the LBGTQ+ community are Christian fundamentalists. As a Christian myself, it frustrates me when people use Christianity to punish people who are different. The Bible has over 50 references admonishing adultery, even banning adultery in the commandments. Yet, there are only 7 references to homosexuality. Which does the Bible think is more important?

Let’s face it, for all of us (myself included), the Bible is a “pick and choose” document. It tells stories of rape, slavery, polygamy, animal sacrifice, stealing a brother’s birthright, very restrictive dietary laws—and these are the good guys. Those behaviors are not acceptable today. So why decide that homosexuality is worse than say, adultery?

We know why. Adultery is something that we can relate to. We see someone who commits adultery as a good person who made a mistake (love the sinner, hate the sin). We know these people.

However, if these anti-LBGQ+ groups can keep a distance from the LGBTQ+ community, they can be comfortable legislating against them, and condemning their “sins” because they are “other.” Imagine if we had the same laws for adulterers that we are proposing against the LGBTQ+ community?

As a mother, I also understand. Some parents are convinced that these differences are a choice and are concerned that their sexually insecure teens might be influenced by exposure to the LBGTQ+ community. Science and personal histories prove that this is NOT a choice. We also have an example in our recent history that negates that hypothesis. I remember when gays and lesbians were banned from teaching; based on the fear that they would influence their students to become homosexual. That fear turned out to be just that, a completely groundless fear.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the Kinsey Institute revealed that sexuality is not as set as some members of society want it to be. In fact, sexuality is fluid for a large number of people: many are interested only in the opposite sex, others are only attracted to their own sex, many are interested in both sexes, and some are born questioning their gender identity. The only thing that has changed since that time appears to be the ability to bring it out in the open.

And listening to the stories of those transgender women made me realize how overwhelming the trans urge was and how painful it was to keep it closeted. Those transgender women had to be willing to give up everything to live their lives without torment. And despite all of their losses, they knew that they didn’t really have a choice, at all, they were women.

Hearing their stories made it abundantly clear that if we continue down this path of putting people back in the closet, a lot of people will suffer.

Let’s not go back there.

Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.