I can’t dance for the life of me. Especially frustrating is the fact that I’m from Puerto Rico and I can’t dance Salsa, or anything else for that matter. I can dance to Smeels Like Teen Spirit though, but that doesn’t really count. You see, there was a pivotal decade where I left Puerto Rico to live in Michigan, and it was during the crucial years of high school and college, where most kids learn to dance. My time in the Midwest was not in vain.  In return I learned to love Bob Dylan, Brooks & Dunn, and Garth Brooks, but I don’t usually admit to it in public.

Having been away for college, I came back to see that all my grade school buddies had turned into America’s Got Talent superstars, so it became increasingly difficult to show my nonexistent moves on the dance floor. Consequently, I’m one of the few people from the Caribbean that, after spending more than a combined 25 years of my life there, can only dance like the typical white man with an overbite.

That’s how I ended up in a Salsa class in Cambodia…

I figured it was far enough from judging eyes, and I may get to meet some locals. I’ll spare you the details on how the teacher wanted to turn over the class to me, once she found out that I was from Puerto Rico, but enough pre-amble, this is not a post on dancing– this was merely the introduction.

Eventually, a group of Chinese travelers joined us, and we had a blast dancing to some Daddy Yankee reggaeton music (it always degrades to reggaeton– everywhere around the world as far as I can see). It was after an hour of this, that a young Chinese man came up to me and said “I am so glad the tuk-tuk driver dropped us off here so we could experience local Cambodian music”. I blinked. “Say what?”. Apparently, they had asked the tuk-tuk driver to take them to experience “real Cambodia music”, and the driver either unknowingly (or all too knowingly), dropped them off at an expat dive bar where the order of the day was “free Salsa lessons”.

This brings me to my actual point.  The world is a small place. A friend of mine recently told me of Kenyan girls in a rural village dancing to a song that had been released a week earlier stateside. The world is very interconnected. Truly off the beaten path places are few and far between, and when they do exist, YOU don’t want to be on them. Heck, most of the time I don’t want to be in them. That’s exactly why I’m in Siem Reap, looking at Angkor Wat, and not in some village fetching water. Nowadays, even being “off the beaten path” is as easy as Googling “off the beaten path Vietnam”. Try it. You’ll get no shortage of suggestions, and I guarantee you, that you won’t be the first one blogging about it.

So stop whining about Angkor Wat being overrun by tourists, and how Thailand is not what it used to be. Stop whining about the crowds to see Michaelangelo’s David, or how hard it is to get an unobstructed view of the Giza pyramids. Yes, there are lots of tourists, but you are one too. I bet no one wants to see your ugly face in their pictures. Enjoy the world, and get over it. You’re a tourist too. If you want real off the beaten path, there are quite a few fascinating people working for NGO’s, the UN, and the World Health Organization, that I could put you in contact with that will take you to places where you can’t charge your camera or get running water, and they’ll gladly accept your time as a volunteer for a year or two.

In the meantime, be a responsible tourist and STFU.

Here are some suggestions:

• Buy local.  Avoid expat stores only benefiting a select few and charging you $2 for M&M’s.  Granted, I’ve been known to cave and buy them… OK, yesterday and today, but I’m trying to quit.
• Don’t outrageously overpay.  Learn to haggle a little.  Paying 10X what things are worth, just inflates the prices for the locals.
• Prefer to see animals in the wild as opposed to riding that 50 year old elephant giving 100 rides a day.
• Eat street noodles, not McDonald’s.
• Avoid disposable plastic when you can.
• Find local entities to help children, as opposed to giving money to con kids on the street.
• Buy your tours abroad, not through some fancy Western company back home which will only benefit a Texan with a big hat.
• Use the same etiquette you have at home for taking pictures of people and things.  Do you take pictures of poor children in <favorite-poor-place-back-home> without asking them first?  Well, don’t do it elsewhere.  Do you take a picture of the toothless redneck buying cigarettes in a 7-11 back home (without asking)?  Don’t do it here!
• For that matter, every once in a while, leave the camera in your room, and see life through 2 very high definition eyes, as opposed to a shitty camera lens to later post on Facebook.
• Talk to the locals; do as the locals!

These are just a few off the top of my head.  I’m sure there are thousands of pages across the net pontificating about sustainable and responsible tourism.  Read a little.

But by all means, if you’re from the Caribbean and can’t dance, come to Cambodia, no one will laugh at you here!

p.s. Be that as it may, there is a trick to seeing the Angkor Wat complex without the tourists. Wake up for the usual “Sunrise at Angkor Wat Tour”, but then DON’T see it. While everyone waits around with selfie sticks for the sun to appear mid-sky, leave as soon as their is a glimmer of light, and start doing the rest of the temples on the circuit. Don’t stay longer than 15 minutes at each one, and you’ll get them all to yourself. Case in point, the above picture. I was the only one in Ta Prohm; a rare sight indeed!