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Hey everyone you're listening to Coateswich. I'm B.A. Parker.

It's that time of year where travel is on everyone's minds. People are getting ready to visit

family and friends, go home for the holidays, or maybe even take a nice end of your vacation

somewhere warm, and then impulse to leave your surroundings and go explore the world is something

that I really understand.

So I used to collect travel guides, the used ones that would only cost a buck in the back of my local library.

And my mom's house is still filled with all these guides like Frommer's Guide to Ireland.

Lonely planets Botswana and Namibia, the Rough Guide to Thailand.

I would look at a gorgeous evening photo of Wataroon, the Buddhist temple in Bangkok, admiring the sunset and it's lit up praying, imagining

myself in a rented sarong stepping into the ordination hall. And then I'd go, huh, the steps kind of look like Chitanita. The pathway

kind of looks like the National Mall. Those books allowed me to see the world, but they also kind of

flattened it. Everything kind of looked like everything else. And I was

inadvertently being taught that I was meant to consume all of these other culture's beauty,

and that I should be centered in that beauty.

And now I have a passport that's never been stamped,

in an entire world that I'm hesitant to disturb.

Traveling can feel exciting and expansive, but it can also feel arduous and indulgent, and tourism can feel gluttonous.

And so I wanted to talk to someone who was pushing back on this idea that travel is just about the consumption of a country.

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