While I was in Viet Nam, I spent a couple of months staying just around the corner from a delicious restaurant – Com Nieu Sai Gon. It felt like our little local discovery, so imagine my shock and horror when I turned on the Travel channel in my hotel room this evening only to see Anthony Bourdain talking about Com Nieu Sai Gon. Yes, the place was absolutely fantastic and certainly deserving of major attention. But it is a bit sad to find that place around the world that felt like my little secret aren’t secret at all. I guess all we travelers have to share all the same magnificent little hide away spots.

The Sears Tower is adding a couple of glass bottomed balconies to its 103rd floor viewing station. I’ve done the whole tall building vertigo thing many time before, but if the mock-up above is anything like reality, this will be quite a different experience and would make a trip to the top of the tower totally different. I might even seek it out next time I’m in Chicago.

These new balconies highlight the value of good design at a tourist destination. It’s important that places don’t take their tourist draw for granted. With some good design – like what’ the Sears Tower is doing – locations can capitalize on what they’ve already got, and give tourists a better experience.

The case where I disagree with this line of thought is when it comes to messing with nature. The Grand Canyon is one of the great wonders of the natural world, yet they’ve recently added well designed glass bottom walkway would milk some more cash from tourists and add to their experience. It’s a relatively tasteful platform, but it feels like it ruins the whole point of a natural wonder: the communion with nature. Also, if you can’t hire a talented designer, you might end up with something really tacky – take the picture below with the giant sign and cement elephants in front of otherwise an otherwise beautiful waterfall in Vietnam.

I thought I had seen just about everything in Viet Nam, but apparently I missed the largest cave in the world. No hard feelings since no one had ever seen it before a group of explorers spelunked it, but it still means that I’ll have to go back.

The new cave would bump the Sarawak Chamber in Malaysia to #2, and the Big Room at Carsbad Caverns in my beloved home state of New Mexico to #3. Though downgraded in the rankings, these are still some damned big caves.

Some of my favourite travels have been in the developing world, so a recent post of Intelligent Travel and longer article on Traveler on poverty tourism gave me pause. Clearly, tourists cruising through slums snapping pictures though the windows of an air conditioned tour bus is exploitative and disturbingly voyeuristic.

As they also mention in the articles, I think that there is a good way for visit developing areas as well. Study abroad programmes, for example, provide a chance to have a true cultural exchange, rather than just cruising though, seeing the sights, and buying the souvenirs. But I’m hesitant to cite my own experience as proof of this because there were certain moments on my study abroad time that I got that sickening feeling of being in a position of power and advantage.

I think you have to let the golden rule be the test. If you’re don’t think you’d be happy in your home country if tourists behaved the way you are behaving, then don’t do it. Thing is, that’s a really hard test to pass. I don’t think I would ever like it if some really rich folks showed up in my life and wanted to see how I lived, then after eating some takeout with me and playing Guitar Hero, hoped in a limo and drove off to box seats at the Chelsea match. Yet that’s not too different from what I’ve done.

It’s tough. It’s obviously very valuable to have the cultural exchange, especially for many people in western countries who have no concept of what life is like in the developing world. So go forth and explore, but remember to try and keep the playing field as level as you can and “do unto others…”.

Image: Me with a family I stayed with for a couple of weeks in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. It was a crazy fun time, I think we both learn lots about each other’s cultures, but in the end, I hoped in a bus and went home.

When I was wrapping up my stay in Viet Nam I about a week to write a research paper. Rather than spending a week cooped up Ho Chi Minh City, I rented a laptop packed up my books and caught a flight to the Con Dao islands off the south coast. I spent my days SCUBA diving and my evenings cranking out the paper. For most of the time I was the only diver, and represented 50% of the western tourists on the islands. The boat in the picture was fishing near our dive site and would swing by in the late morning to sell us some really fresh lunch. It was a perfect last week of my trip.