There are a lot of names for people who travel the world—backpackers, tourists, explorers, travelers. Labels（标签）are everywhere but seem especially popular among travelers trying to differentiate（区别） their style of travel. For many travelers, these labels make them feel better over another.
Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods once said, "Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things,
meet new people, and look beyond what's right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in. " The idea here is that travelers are better at exploring the world than tourists. They dig deep into the culture, drink it up, and get to know a place while a tourist takes pictures and declares to have "done Paris. "But that's wrong. we are all tourists.
On the road, backpackers love to talk about how real their travels are and how unreal tourists are. "Look at those tourists over there, " they say. They scoff at others who travel too quickly or to places that they think are not well worth visiting. Nevertheless, they do so while eating hamburgers and drinking beers with other travelers.
The only way to really get to know a place deeply is to live there. If you want to live like a local, find an apartment, get a job, go to work, and do the same things as you did back home.
We are all only passing through a culture, getting a small taste before moving on to the next place. Even if we stay weeks or months, we're just getting in touch with the surface. As a matter of fact, we are all really just tourists, or explorers, or travelers. Call yourself whatever you want — it's all the same as we're all trying to do the same thing — see the world.
So don't label anyone and don't let anyone label you. We're all tourists. We're all travelers. What we are all doing is more important than what we call ourselves. Let's just enjoy the fact that we are simply people on the road.
