How to stay at home, despite having to travel

I know many people who dream about traveling, meeting new people, learning about new cultures and customs, who are curious and have an unsatisfied passion for learning the world. The passion that they can't realize for various reasons: work, family, health, money. They usually ask themselves a question: How to go somewhere without leaving home? They find an answer in grabbing a good book, reading National Geographic or watching exotic places on TV.

On the other side there are some privileged people who do travel, but the same question has an opposite and opaque meaning when applied to them: How to stay at home despite having to travel? They go somewhere, but seemingly would prefer not too. I don't know what made these people travel. Maybe it is a trend, something that improves your coolness factor, something to impress your mates. Thankfully the modern technology and globalization made it possible.

During my last trip to China several times I stayed in popular Lonely Planet-recommended youth hostels, full of young westerners. These hostels offer one great service, that wasn't provided even in the 5 star hotel I was staying at in Wulumuchi (or Urumqi). Free access to the Internet: WiFi and several free-to-use PC desktops. Most of people found that very useful and were using it to send a quick email, etc. But it was kinda shocking to see that quite many were spending long hours just browsing the web, looking at new Nike shoes or writing posts on their friends' walls in Facebook. Many of them use trendy iBooks, and never take white headphones out of their ears. I saw two girls who whenever I entered the hostel were glued to computers, and after some time I could tell without even looking that they were using Facebook.

Now, I love the technology, and appreciate the way it changes the world and the value it brings to our lives. But I remember traveling when there were no even mobile phones. And I think it was great. When someone traveled he knew why he was doing it. Great, intelligent, passionate people were trying to meet locals, see as many museums as they could, go to tiny back streets, eat local food, learn the language, etc. They still are doing so. But now there is a growing group that really should better stay at home. Because all they do is changing the decorations. With more or less the same effect as changing the wallpaper in their computers. Which they could do without spending thousands on flights and adding extra pollutions to the atmosphere.

There are of course also upsides to that. Local businesses get a lot of extra income, hostels thrive, travel services gain lots of customers, local restaurants (especially if they sell western food) are making a good profit. So maybe it is not so bad. It is just another face of globalization.

There is one more category of the people who travel. These who travel for fun. They sleep all day and go out to clubs at night. They are usually gathering in big cities. That's an interesting story too, but I will get back to it some other time.