Anthony Bourdain said “be a traveler not a tourist.” This is why that distinction matters

The late Anthony Bourdain once said, “Be a traveler, not a tourist.”

The first time I read that line I was fifteen, scrolling a food blog on a dial-up connection, dreaming about kitchens I’d never seen. It sounded romantic then, like a tattoo you’d regret at 40.

Now, after years of flights, sleeper trains, wrong turns, and the small rebellions of eating vegan in steak countries, I know he wasn’t selling romance. He was offering a compass.

Here’s what that compass has meant for me—and why the distinction matters more than ever.

Copies versus context

Tourists chase copies; travelers chase context.

I learned that the hard way in Rome. I had a checklist: Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, gelato, repeat. I ticked the boxes and felt… nothing. The city slid past like I was watching it through a car window.

On my last afternoon, sulking with a sugar headache, I wandered into a tiny bookshop near Campo de’ Fiori. The owner, mid-seventies with a cardigan that could tell stories, asked—in that patient Italian way—what I was looking for. I shrugged: “A book I can only find here.”

He handed me a thin volume of poems by Trilussa and said, “Read on the tram, not in the piazza.” That night I rode circles on the Number 8, reading couplets while an old woman thumped my shoulder and explained the punchlines. Rome snapped into focus. I wasn’t collecting Rome anymore. I was letting it collect me.

The tourist mindset is extraction: you come to take the picture, take the plate, take the deal. The traveler mindset is exchange: you offer attention, time, a question asked in clumsy language, a willingness to be the least competent person in the room. One is a purchase; the other is a conversation.

Expectation versus inquiry

Here’s another way I think about it: tourists expect; travelers inquire.

Expectation says, “This place owes me a perfect afternoon.” Inquiry says, “What’s a good afternoon here, according to the people who live it?” Expectation collapses when the weather turns. Inquiry gets curious and finds the bar the storm blew you toward.

In Oaxaca, I booked a cooking class because—full disclosure—I wanted the Instagram shot of handmade tortillas. Our teacher, Alma, had an agenda that said “mole, tortillas, salsa,” but what she really taught us was etiquette.

Ask before you grind. Taste the cacao like it’s a person you’re getting to know. Don’t bargain with the woman whose hands smell like roasted tomato and smoke; pay her price and ask her how long she’s been standing there.

At the end, she said, “You can photograph everything except someone’s dignity.” I think about that every time I raise a camera. Travelers photograph with; tourists photograph at.

Dwelling beats darting

You can feel the mindset in your feet. Tourists dart; travelers dwell.

In Lisbon, I gave myself a whole afternoon to walk one hill. That was the entire plan: one hill. I watched a woman hang laundry with the precision of a surgeon.

I listened to two old men argue about football in a square the size of a living room. I drank a bica at a counter sticky with sugar and learned the barista’s cousin had moved to Newark for “the weather” (we laughed). I went nowhere, and I went deep. Slowness is a strategy.

Rushing is how you miss the thing you came for.

Safety, time, and money—reframed

“What about safety? What about time? What about money?”—the usual objections.
Here’s the truth: traveling, not touring, doesn’t require more of any of those. It requires different uses of them.

Safety. Travelers learn the choreography of a place. You notice how people cross streets, how late shops stay open, where the kids kick a ball at dusk. You put your phone away because your face is better at reading the room. That attention keeps you safer than clutching your bag like a talisman.

Time. Travelers budget for conversations. Ten minutes with a market vendor who shows you how to pick a melon will change your whole week of breakfasts. Ten minutes with a museum guard will send you to the painting the guidebook ignored. Those minutes pay compound interest.

Money. Travelers spend sideways—less on things you can pack, more on things that pack into you. A cheaper hotel buys you a cooking lesson. Skipping a souvenir buys you a train ticket to a town where nobody has ever tried to sell you a souvenir.

Humility over performance

There’s also the tension Bourdain understood instinctively: humility versus performance.

Tourists perform the trip for people back home. “Look at me, look at this, look at how I’m living.” Travelers perform for the place. “I’m trying not to be in the way. Teach me how to greet. Teach me how to eat. Teach me how to leave a little better than I found.”

In Marrakech, I failed that test and then—thankfully—got a second chance. I bargained too hard for a woven basket because I’d read somewhere that bargaining was “expected.”

The seller’s smile went thin. I won the price and lost the point. Two days later I went back with dates and tea and said, in my hacked-up French, “I was rude. You were kind. I’d like to pay the rest.” He waved me off. I insisted. He taught me a few words in Darija and told me about his brother in Agadir.

We didn’t become lifelong friends. But we both walked away taller. The basket looks better in my apartment because it carries the weight of that lesson.

Eating plant-based sharpened the lens

Being vegan on the road has sharpened these distinctions for me. Tourists ask, “Why don’t they have what I want?” Travelers ask, “What do you love that happens to be plants?”

In Hanoi, a tiny lunchtime canteen served me something like grace: a bowl of fragrant bun cha-style noodles minus the pork, plus herbs I couldn’t name and tofu that tasted like it remembered the soybean field. I didn’t argue the recipe. I learned the word for “delicious” and said it twice.

That exchange does more for cross-cultural understanding than a decade of think pieces.

Practice travel at home

Travelers also let themselves get lost in their own city. That’s not a cute line. It’s practice.

On a random Wednesday in Los Angeles, I rode the bus to a Filipino bakery a friend mentioned in passing. I sat in a bright plastic chair and tried to pronounce “ube ensaymada” correctly.

A teenager tutored me with the patience of a saint. We talked about K-pop and calculus. I took the long way home. Tourism would have called that a waste of time. Travel called it lunch.

Itineraries as hypotheses

Does that mean itineraries are bad? No. It means itineraries are hypotheses, not commandments.

I still plan. I just plan for margin. Two anchors a day, max. A museum or a market, not both. A coffee date with a stranger (ask your barista where they go). I schedule “unstructured neighborhoods” the way I used to schedule meetings. Put your phone on silent and give a street an hour to teach you who it is.

Habits that build the traveler mindset

The traveler–tourist line isn’t moral; it’s mental.
I’ve met gentle, generous tourists and boorish “travelers” who treat locals like props for their authenticity quest. A traveler mindset is just a set of habits you can practice anywhere:

• Learn three phrases beyond hello. “What do you recommend?” “What is this called?” “Thank you for the lesson.”

• Eat with attention. Ask one question about the preparation. Name one flavor out loud.

• Borrow a ritual. A morning walk route, a nightly tea, a bench at sunset. Repetition makes a place feel less like a theme park and more like a neighborhood.

• Pay full price where it matters. Street food that costs a dollar doesn’t need to be 80 cents to validate your bargaining prowess. Tip generously for care.

• Ask for a story instead of a selfie. If you get the selfie, fine. But the story will travel with you when the photo gets buried in your camera roll.

• Leave lighter. Pick up trash at the beach that isn’t yours. Refill your bottle. Respect the “no photos” signs. Your footprint is the only souvenir every place is forced to keep.

Attention is the rarest currency

There’s a quieter reason the distinction matters now: attention is the rarest currency we bring.

Your ability to be somewhere—in full color, without splitting your focus across a dozen apps—is the gift you give a place and the gift you give yourself.

A tourist poses with the view; a traveler learns the light. A tourist checks a box; a traveler checks their assumptions. A tourist consumes; a traveler participates.

A sidewalk tamal lesson

I keep thinking about a night in Mexico City after a gig at a tiny venue in Roma Norte. The band was good in that scruffy way that makes you want to start a band.

The crowd spilled onto the sidewalk, everyone buzzing. A guy selling tamales from a steamer started handing out slices of plantain with cinnamon to people who didn’t look like buyers.

He wasn’t building a brand. He was feeding joy. I bought one, then two. We talked about cumbia and his sister’s new baby. My Spanish was functional at best, but language isn’t the point at midnight.

The point is: for twenty minutes I wasn’t a consumer, I was a neighbor. That’s the traveler mindset. It scales down to a tamal. It scales up to a life.

Bring it home, daily

Bourdain’s line has one more layer I didn’t hear at fifteen. “Be a traveler” is not just about how you move through the world; it’s about how you move through your days.

If you swap expectation for inquiry, speed for presence, judgment for curiosity, your hometown becomes an undiscovered country.

You notice the barista’s new haircut and learn to pronounce her name correctly. You choose a different bench in the park and meet the chess hustler who’s quietly the kindest trash-talker alive. You stop insisting on the version of life you saw in an ad and start living the one that’s making a small theater out of your block.

The distinction that matters

So yes: be a traveler, not a tourist.

Ask better questions. Trade a photo for a recipe. Take the bus. Tip the person who taught you how to say it right. Let a place change your mind.

And when the itinerary blows up—and it will—smile, buy fruit from the person with the smallest stall, and see what the detour wanted you to notice.

You’ll come home with fewer perfect pictures and more imperfect stories—the kind that don’t look like much on a feed but keep working on you in the quiet.

That’s the distinction that matters. Not because it makes you cooler, but because it makes you more alive.