In recent weeks, a video filmed on Bangkok’s metro has circulated around the world: a group of Italian students on vacation, captured as they shout, insult, and mock a local passenger who had simply asked for a little quiet. Among the phrases spoken, one in particular struck more than the others: “I’m sorry I brought money into your country.”
A few words, but capable of summarizing a way of thinking about travel that, unfortunately, is far from an isolated instance. It is the same logic that pushes someone to believe that the price of an airline ticket also grants the right to ignore the rules of the place they chose to visit.
It is not a problem of that specific group, nor of that particular destination. It is a reflection that concerns anyone who travels, and that is why it is worth stopping not so much on the episode itself, but on some broader principles: what it really means to behave well when you are a guest in a place that is not your home.
Here are five that are worth keeping in your travel bag, always.
Being Guests, Not Simply Consumers
Paying for a flight, a hotel room, or a tour does not automatically transform a country into a service at our disposal. It’s a subtle but decisive distinction: the customer demands, the guest adapts. There’s an old way of thinking about tourism, that of the mere consumer who passes through places while deliberately blind to any consequences of their presence; and there’s a newer, more aware approach, one that asks what is left behind beyond the receipt.
Those who travel forgetting this difference end up thinking that local rules are negotiable based on how much they have spent, when in fact the exact opposite is true: the more you are a guest in an unfamiliar context, the more prudence should govern your conduct, not ease.
Observe Before Acting
When we arrive at a new destination, the most useful instinct isn’t to behave as we would at home, but to stop and observe. How do locals speak, how loudly do they raise their voices, how do they move in shared spaces. Each culture has its own unwritten grammar: learning it and respecting it makes us better, more mindful travelers.
Public and Private Are Not the Same Everywhere
What in an Italian square is normal—speaking loudly, gesturing, occupying space—elsewhere can feel out of place or even offensive. The boundaries between what is shared and what is intimate change from culture to culture and must be respected even when their logic isn’t fully understood. It isn’t necessary to share them in order to respect them.
Ask, Not Presume
Photographing a person, entering a place of worship, touching a sacred object: the line between legitimate curiosity and intrusion is often crossed without realizing it. The difference between the two, almost always, lies in asking first and not in an apology asked later. Presuming you have the right to do something simply because “you are traveling” is the most common mistake and the easiest to avoid.
Local Rules Stay Rules, Even on Vacation
Being loud on public transport, the traffic code, quiet hours: none of these norms pause because we are on vacation. The suspension of rules that travelers often grant themselves is a convenient illusion, but its cost—social, cultural, and sometimes economic—will always be borne by others, not by the one who makes the decision.
None of these principles requires particular sacrifices: they simply require attention and a bit of humility. As the writer Cacucci would say, the traveler is someone who can perceive details of people, places, and situations with a sensitive eye of a curious wanderer, not someone who imposes on the territory as if it were their own right.
