Do Walkabout!
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Do Walkabout! |
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It does not matter who you or what your circumstances are, the only way to get the best out of Bali and Thailand is to do walkabout. Whether you get off the plane and then set off without prior hotel reservations, or whether you show a little initiative and research / book away from the main mass tourism areas of Bali and Thailand, you will get so much more for so much less if you do walkabout. Do not believe the expensive brochures and self-serving corporate tourism PR; get yourself and your family out and amongst the real Bali and Thailand and you will never, ever regret it. Go on, try walkabout! Walkabout allows you to avoid; 1) Mass tourism hotels owned by some of the nastiest people in the country, whose high room prices are all based on hype, whose food is so bland they pile in the nerve agent MSG (monosodium glutamate), whose main guests come in groups who smoke at breakfast, reserve pool loungers with towels all day long, take photos of their breakfast omelettes and buy cheap tacky souvenirs to take home. Remember, 5 Stars equals an often useless feature tick list; it is not a statement of quality or that any of those features actually work well or at all. 2) Tourism areas geared up to rip you off; taxis / tuk tuks that charge 20 times the real rate, shops that sell cheap mass produced items 5 times the cost that the locals pay a few kilometers away, fake antiques (which if they were genuine, you would be committing a crime by taking them home without an export license), areas patrolled by drug dealers and sex industry workers, high population density areas where unsanitary conditions increase the risk of disease, the crime (including from hotel staff) and terrorism that focuses on the mass tourism areas, pirate DVD's and CD's that do not work and where the profits go to international crime syndicates and terrorists, pirate software with nasty viruses, counterfeit goods which look as ugly as the people who wear them. 3) Drab, oppressive concrete, aggressive sellers, polluted sea and "river" water. Walkabouts generally mean; 1) A look more quality and authenticity for your tourist dollars. 2) More of your tourist dollars end up with the everyday people of Bali and Thailand, less with the people who do nothing more than employ them at 3rd world minimum wage rates and quite often abuse them. 3) Staying at hotels where everyone is genuinely friendly and helpful, where the staff are known to each other and the village (reducing the risk of crime). 4) Authentic food, rich in taste, high in quality. Authentic arts and crafts. People who smile not try to sell you fake watches or rent you a woman. Authentic cultural performances, sometimes (if you want) where you may find yourselves the only foreigners. 5) The chance of getting to know the Balinese and Thais on their home ground. 6) Unspoiled natural beauty. Think about it, you know it is right, do walkabout! Either take the plunge and just turn up at the hotels you fancy the look of from your research, or book in advance but away from the large resorts / mass tourism areas. Other related pages: The
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