The Authenticity Dilemma

What do we mean when we say we want an authentic experience abroad?

Prak’s Story

It’s my first night in Cambodia and I find myself on the rooftop patio at a hostel in Battambang eating dinner with a few other travelers. We are sharing stories about our latest adventures, describing our favorite meals, and talking about our future destinations — the typical backpacker stuff. One guy says that he had gone in search of an ancient form of Cambodian kickboxing, which led him to spend the afternoon with a group of men practicing Bokator in the middle of a field somewhere outside of town. The girls mention that they ended up in someone’s home singing karaoke the previous night after the bar closed. Throughout the conversation, there is a clear demand for exchanging stories about these unique, not-in-the-guide-book, “authentic” experiences. We wonder aloud about what is written in the guide book, how it got there, and how it has changed since its exposure to the backpacker community.

And then Prak, a local tuk-tuk driver, sits down, and I ask him where he has traveled in Cambodia. He says he has never left Battambang.

At this point I turn to face him, offering him my full attention while the others continue talking amongst themselves. Cambodians don’t travel much, he tells me, only the rich ones do, and they are only rich because they take advantage of the poor. A decade ago there was no work. People would work all day in the fields for $1, or go to Thailand illegally and work all day in the fields for $3. Passports cost well over a hundred dollars, enough to prevent a majority of the population from affording one. So thousands of people would sneak into Thailand through the jungle, far from any legitimate border-crossing, just to find some work. Drivers would meet them there and transport a few people at a time to far-flung reaches of Thailand where they knew of jobs. Sometimes people would wait two weeks in the jungle with no food, eating the fruit or leaves they could find growing in the trees. Then, if a driver came for them, they might travel in the back of a truck full of pigs, covered in manure, in order to get past the military checkpoints en route to their new destination on the opposite side of the country. All this for only $2 a day more than they were earning back home.

The situation has improved in the last ten years, so there is some work in Cambodia today but it’s not much better. Now there are more hotels and restaurants in Battambang that are hiring, and it’s easier to borrow money to buy a tuk-tuk or start a business. But even so, the only steady work is during the high season of tourism, lasting five months from December through April. The rest of the year it rains, and most people need to work odd construction jobs here and there just to get by. Many young people still go to Thailand during this time to find work, spending half the year away from their families.

Prak told me all of this when I asked him where else he had been in Cambodia. After listening to his story, the idea that we were traveling around his country in search of authenticity did not sit well with me. We all had our own idea about what authentic Cambodia looked like, while the experience that Prak shared involved working twelve-hour days driving a tuk-tuk and never once leaving Battambang.

Authenticity in travel has confused me for as long as it has intrigued me, and this conversation with Prak motivated me to seek out answers to seemingly impossible questions: Am I ever able to have a truly authentic experience, or to experience life as the locals do, while I am here? Is that an ethical goal? Is my presence here even ethical? Shouldn’t I just be on my couch at home reading about this place instead of contaminating it with my western ideas and ideals? (No, I shouldn’t. Staying home is almost never the better option.)

But before we go any further — what am I doing in Cambodia in the first place?

Backpacking with a Purpose

I work for an organization that teaches social justice through travel abroad. We use travel as a means of activism to promote and practice cross-cultural literacy, environmental awareness, and solidarity with local communities. Basically we are one giant buzzword, more commonly known as Operation Groundswell, and our mission is to change the way the world travels.

When I first started with OG, I thought that what set us apart from other travel organizations was that we could indeed offer a more authentic experience abroad because our friends and partners on the ground allow us to access people and places that most tourists can’t. And that’s certainly true. But my favorite thing about traveling is that I repeatedly get blindsided by new information and ideas, and hearing Prak’s story as I talked with other foreigners about the “real Cambodia” was just the kind of wake-up call I was hoping for. It made me hyper aware of the current state of tourism in Southeast Asia, and it left me all the more curious about what we mean when we say we want authenticity when traveling abroad.

Realities on the Ground

In physics, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observation will make on a phenomenon being observed.

In travel, I call this the authenticity dilemma.

In other words, how does my presence in this foreign country influence the behavior of the local population? Inevitably, as a traveler, I will always be a guest in a place others call home. Therefore, my presence in a foreign country and my observation of local activities fundamentally alters them. But does that make my experience inauthentic?

This feels like a question with no single answer. I find that when I talk about it I usually end up spiraling down a rabbit hole of paradoxes and contradictions. Authentic could mean doing things as the locals naturally do them. It could mean engaging in activities or seeing things that can only be found in that place. And it could mean doing things by the book in order to have an authentic tourist experience.

Let’s look at one of the most basic examples in the search for authenticity: food. When most people go to a new country, they usually want to eat the local food. But, you could go to Thailand and eat Pad Thai for two weeks straight, only to find out that it’s not a traditional Thai dish; rather, it’s a result of globalization.

Or you could search for an authentic meal by dining in someone’s home. But even when arranging meals at a homestay, families will often buy special ingredients to accommodate their foreign guests, so you may not be eating what they eat on a regular basis.

And if you set foot inside a Starbucks in Bangkok, a majority of the customers are Thai. If authentic means doing things the way the locals naturally do them, then shouldn’t you make a point to go to Starbucks if you’re looking for an authentic experience in Thailand? (No. Just, don’t.)

Upon closer inspection, something as simple as food becomes easily entangled in the authenticity dilemma. The rapid pace of globalization and, along with it, an increase in foreign tourism, creates a much more complex landscape to navigate when traveling abroad. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself primarily supporting international businesses that drive up the local cost of living while simultaneously diverting profits away from the local economy and into the pockets of foreign owners. Tourism will inevitably shape the cultural landscape of a location, and it can do so in both beneficial and harmful ways. The question remains, what should we be working towards to ensure our presence as tourists has a positive impact?

Community Based Tourism

One possibility is Community Based Tourism (CBT). A CBT is a community initiative, often in rural areas, where tourists are invited to visit these communities while offering homestays, locally prepared food, and tour guide services to nearby sights like small temples. This entire concept exists in order to cater to travelers’ desire of having a culturally authentic experience while supporting the local economy by allowing the communities the opportunity to directly benefit from tourism to their region.

When communities are well-informed and involved in the decision making process about how a CBT will operate, they are able to take control of their own destiny. Some CBT initiatives in Cambodia have put a cap on the number of tourists they will receive each year in order to preserve some normalcy in their lives. Others have made it illegal for opportunistic foreigners to buy up land in the region and capitalize on tourism booms.

These are some examples, but not all communities take such precautionary measures, or take the time to explain to their guests why a CBT is beneficial. Let’s think for a moment about how something like a CBT, which is designed to directly address the authenticity dilemma, can still fall victim to it.

One example in particular comes to mind:

It was at the end of a great week in a community in rural Cambodia. This particular community was still developing their CBT initiative, so they didn’t have many foreigners passing through; it felt to us like we were one of the only groups that ever stayed there. We were all packed up and ready to leave, and the community leader wanted to share some parting words. He talked about how much they enjoyed sharing their homes with us, and he thanked us for visiting and working alongside them. Then he asked us to share our experience online and with our friends and family back home so they could come have the same experience that we did.

That last part did not sit well with some people in our group. Of course we would share our stories when we got back home, but what did he mean by inviting more people to “have the same experience?” Didn’t we just share something unique together? Why would they want to ruin their beautiful community by exposing it to more foreigners?

Assessing Our Impact

We had talked a lot that week about how our time in that community was was mainly an act of solidarity, focused more on the cultural exchange rather than the little bit of tree planting that we had done. The thought that they wanted to host more groups and replicate that experience with other people was difficult for some of our participants to wrap their minds around, especially considering the connections they had made with their host families.

In that moment, the idea of sharing our experience with other foreigners somehow made it “less authentic.” Which got me thinking that a big piece of our idea of authenticity is tied to intimacy. An intimate experience is something you might try to explain to someone, only to find that words fail you. And that’s an indication of something unique in our lives. Something that cannot be replicated. Something authentic. The minute other people share that experience is the minute we perceive it as less intimate and therefore less authentic. The busiest tourist destinations tend to feel the least culturally authentic, mainly because when you go there you are surrounded by foreigners.

Long story short, we had a conversation as a group to address these uncomfortable truths. We concluded that a CBT is arguably one of the most effective ways to support local economies while traveling to remote parts of the world. So, if supporting local economies is something we care about as travelers, then we must submit to the idea that the intimacy and authenticity of an experience may be compromised by sharing that experience with others. (In the end, the group was on board with this idea. Part of the initial shock was simply that the experience was still very fresh, and, in retrospect, that we as Program Leaders could have done a better job of explaining ahead of time how a CBT initiative works. But that’s not always as easy as it sounds, which is partly why I’m writing this essay in the first place.)

And, of course, there’s a caveat. In order to reach more people, the CBT needs to be marketed and poised for growth. But advertising can set false expectations about what we as foreigners perceive as culturally authentic. It has been known to put communities in a box, restricting their behavior to fit tourists’ preconceived notion about the local culture while stifling any opportunity for change. On the other hand, CBTs can also lead to rapid over-development, reducing the practice of traditions and local customs over time while subsequently reducing the draw for tourism. That means communities need to maintain the perfect balance of access to foreigners and traditional culture in order to stay relevant in the tourism industry. That hardly seems to leave communities in control of their own development.

So, where does this leave us?

What We Can Do

Let’s return to my encounter with Prak. Prak has never studied socio-political systems, but he understands that there is an economic imbalance in the world. He is constantly interacting with a rotating cast of westerners who are spending months on end traveling from country to country for their own pleasure, and he will likely go through life never being able to afford a passport. My passport was stolen last year and I spent $110 from my savings and had another one in three weeks that will last me ten years. Actually, it wasn’t even from my savings. I just always have access to $110.

This economic imbalance creates a responsibility for travelers to do proper research and use their money to support socially ethical tourism when traveling in the majority world. I say we need to collectively shift our mentality away from this far-fetched desire for authenticity, and instead start seeking initiatives that support local economies. Initiatives that are managed by the communities, and that embrace the controlled development and growth of a community. If we truly care about having a positive impact while traveling abroad, then ensuring that we are supporting local communities should take priority over preserving our ideas of “authentic” culture.

Much of the draw for western travelers visiting the majority world involves experiencing a new way of life, but a key piece of cultural understanding can get lost in translation when seeking authenticity. Because sometimes authenticity abroad means eating noodle soup every day for breakfast, sometimes it means mingling with Thai students at a Starbucks, and sometimes it means driving a tuk-tuk for twelve hours a day and earning just enough to cover your basic needs. I trust this is not the authentic experience you had in mind when you set out on your journey.