Travel Let People Be More Understanding Essay Example for Free

Travel Let People Be More Understanding Essay Traveling is an excellent opportunity to go beyond the boundaries of own country. International tourism enables to open new corners of the world and get familiar with unique unknown cultures, which are multiple on the Universe. Yet, what is more important, traveling allows people not to just enlarge the physical limits of regular existence, but it also widens the outlook and even shapes the existing values by showing how others live and perceive the world.   Ã‚   There exist different types of international tourism – leisure tourism, business travel, medical travel, and historical travel. Leisure travel allows people to go to different usually exotic places (Africa, South East Asia etc.) and have a rest there enjoying the seaside, the sun, beautiful beaches. Business travel supposes that a person visits other countries on business trips. Nowadays, medical traveling is becoming more and more popular. People go abroad to cure from certain diseases or simply enhance there health. Finally, the main purpose of historical tourism is to see the historical heritage of the country. Such a trip supposes multiple excursions to different places of interest of the particular country. However, no matter what is the main purpose of traveling abroad, visiting other country opens new boundaries before the person, which reflect in the different things.   Ã‚   First of all, trip abroad enables people to get familiar with new things – geography, culture, history of the visiting place. This upraises the educational level of the person and enhances self-consciousness of him. For example, we all know that Egypt is famous for its pyramids that are thousands years old. Those pyramids are the foremost glory and distinction of the country. However, not all knows how much effort and human lives were put into those constructions. Only seeing those giants own self, it is possible to understand the real value of human life. Seeing those pyramids, one can realize that his life is nothing compared to thousands year old stone. Such important revelation very often makes people reflect on what they do in their life and how much time they have on this world to do something valuable unless they go away. Another relevant example is Turkey. We used to think that Turkey is a great resort with its wonderful beaches and sea. Yet, on coming to Turkey one gets a chance to see exciting historical places, cause Turkey is the place where there are traces of all three major religions – Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Thus, we can see that international tourism helps to raise educational level and the level of self-consciousness of a person.   Ã‚   Secondly, traveling enables to form own objective point of view independent of those, which are based on TV programs, journal and newspaper articles, radio broadcasts etc. For instance, Pico Iyer (2002) assures that Arab population is not as evil as American officials portray it. All the media has been stating and convincing other countries that Arabs are terrorist and Americans have to fear them. Moreover, special campaign was even launch to assure that the war against terrorist was the only mean to save and help the nations where this terrorism originated. Yet, as author tells, he was greatly surprised visiting   Bolivia, Vietnam, India and other countries to hear that the those nations are actually against American’s decision to initiate the war. Being â€Å"locked† within the borders of one territory, it is impossible to get a clear picture and understand how others perceive you nation and your country, cause mass media might interpret the events and the opinions according to its own benefit. Thus, only visiting other countries, it is possible to get an objective panorama of everything that is going on in the world. Giving the example of Iyer, international traveling enables Americans to tell other nations that USA is not an evil.   Ã‚   To the third, traveling enables to get rid of certain prejudices that might exist in society in the form of â€Å"common opinion†. Again, as Iyer (2002) states, when he took his mother to Syria, she was very pleasantly surprised to realize that this country was much friendlier, much cleaner and more well-off that she previously thought of. It happens very often when we derive our opinion from certain common sources and form a stereotype and prejudice concerning the thing. Thus, traveling destroys stereotypes and creates more space for us to let in other opinions, views, thoughts. Ultimately, it helps us to be more receptive, more attentive and more tolerant to other cultures, to other opinions, which can be different from ours.   Ã‚   Finally, traveling influences the behavior of people. When one goes to China or Japan and gets exposed to this unique special culture, get to know the beliefs and habits of those people, there is always a temptation to follow the example. Watching the very ascetic Japanese man who can sleep on the mattress and eat only seafood, the thought about the excessive exuberance and its unimportance arises itself. Thus, the habit of living luxuriously might change into a habit of living according to the need. When observing how brave and enduring the peoples of Latin America are, the desire of being like them, fighting to the last comes instantly. Thus, traveling is able to change the whole behavior of a person.   Ã‚   To   conclude, it is important to say that traveling doesn’t simply allow to go beyond the border of the country of residence, but it also allows to go far beyond the limits of traditional thinking and mind. Exposing one to different cultures, vies, beliefs, traveling changes people’s values, behavior, destroy stereotypes and widens general outlook. The summarized benefits that traveling gives are the following: Deeper and wider outlook – new knowledge, new insights; Possibility to form personal objective rather than subjective opinion concerning different things based on own experience; Destruction of prejudices and ability to become more flexible and receptive; Gain of new patterns of behavior, new personal qualities.       References Butler R. â€Å"Contemporary Issues in Tourism Development† Routledge, London, 1999- Cooper C. â€Å"Tourism at the Age of Globalization† Routledge, London, 2001 Pico Iyer â€Å"The necessity of Travel† 2002. Jan.27, 2007 http://www.tourismofindia.com/misc/newstravelnecessity.htm