The corollary of this is that if you are a local you should do some more touristy things.

I don't mean to go to a tourist trap and get scammed, but just enjoy your city a little more and do some things that usually only tourists do.

For example, despite living most of my life in London, I've never been to the Tower of London. Why would I? It's for tourists. Except it's probably quite fascinating, especially for a local.

The title is a non sequitur from the argument. The point is not to ask for a "bring a non-local to work day" where you tag along to a rando doing their normal routine.

The thing that locals do know a lot of the time, is the spots that are actually great but not hyped up by influencers/social media, the cool spots that are often good by virtue of not being well known, etc. And no one is arguing that the locals know all the best cultural attractions, the point of asking locals for advice is to understand what they see in their own city.

This is where platforms like Couchers.org or whatever come up, where you want to actually understand the locals, more than just see the hyped up touristy stuff (which often can also be phenomenal!).

The locals are living their lives on an organic cadence. They're not maximizing entertainment value or whatever. They will certainly know entertaining things to do, but it's literally not their job to entertain tourists. Maybe seeking out a Disneyland like experience in someone else's home is the problem? Bourdain, Rick Steves, et al. are fun to watch, but I can't help but feel they've actually made the world a worse place by romanticizing tourism. There are many sayings about how travel reduces prejudice... but if you actually look at it at scale, it's almost always a global negative.

It is obvious that "do what the locals do" should not be taken literally, because locals are likely working most of the day. So the authors actual advice seems to be "avoid what the locals do, when they don't want to do anything". Everyone else likely interprets it as "do what the locals do, when they want to have fun" which is good advice.

My daily routines are of no interest to tourist. They are probably similar to their own routines at home anyway. When I got out on the weekends it can get wild though and I'd wager it's exactly what many tourists are looking for.

I live in a tourist town. 3000 residents, 4 million visitors each year. And I'm just fine with the tourists not going to the places I go - we tend to like the quieter, more affordable places vs. the big fancy price-gouging places. But assuming that us "locals" just sit at home and do nothing is such an unfair and inaccurate assessment. Why would I want to live in a town as crazy as this if I did nothing here?

I enjoy having a vast variety of restaurants and activities that I otherwise would not have in a small town in the Midwest. The roads are well maintained, we have more parks than we otherwise would, there are trails, rivers, and tons of activities. We don't spend all our time partaking of the tourist activities, but we abso-freaking-lutely spend some time enjoying what the town has to offer.

I am Swiss and like most 30-40yo from my generation, Hiking in the splendid nature, lakes and mountains, visiting touristy places and the overall scenery was something uncool, for old people. We were forced to do that in school. Nobody in their right mind would do it. :)

I then moved abroad to Bangkok, working an office job. Although BKK is great for consumerism and convenience, especially with cheap labor available for almost anything, you can get quite lazy. The bad traffic, non-pedestrian friendly (non existent) city planning and little nature left also makes it a bit cumbersome to find nature nearby. This made me appreciate nature, hiking and nice scenery. (Of course Thailand has lots of beautiful nature and scenery, but not so much of an active outdoor scene)

Coming back to Switzerland after 6 years, I became the biggest tourist, going hiking every weekend, spending time at our tourist destinations, but also all the second tier ("unseen") places only locals know. I tried so much stuff that in the past I thought is tourist stuff, and most of it is simply great.

I also became much more understanding, open and helpful to expats, foreigners and tourists in my country.

I live in a tourist town (population 45k, with 2M visitors this past season). It's truly lovely. Our museums kick ass, the food and cocktails punch above their weight, and there are countless activities in the off season. Sure, I can get a cheaper burger or pay less rent just a few miles down the road, but instead I stay and benefit from tourists pushing the quality upwards. I often see folks focusing on the low-effort schlock shop, damning all tourists, before heading to one of the 8 local coffee shops (who could never survive on locals alone). The best thing a local can do is to openly give recommendations, helping to hold competition and quality to a high standard.

As a local, one of the funnest things to do is to host out-of-town guests and to just do the touristy things in combination with local knowledge. Bus tours, museums, food, etc. Do it all. For me, it's stuff I'd probably never do unless pressed to provide entertainment for guests I care about.

So, do the local thing with tourists and retain a focus on a combination of showing off the best elements of being a local; with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the tourist. As a blow-in to NY, I'd like others to appreciate it too.

Do what the tourists do, but with the locals. Do what the locals do, but with the tourists.

My best travel advice (for urban areas) is simple: get lost. If you don't know exactly where you are or what's around the corner, you've got to take it as it comes, and that makes it all the more interesting. No FOMO or opportunity cost struggles, just what's in front of you right now.

This is both easier and harder with smartphones and GPS. Harder because, well, you know exactly where you are and have to actively ignore the phone. Easier because when you're ready to be done, you know exactly where you are!

I was once on the bus (in my own home town) with someone from Dublin (which I was visiting in a week back then), he recommended I not go to Temple Bar: "It's just for tourists". So where should I go? "There are some nice bars in ${some District}".

Well I passed though said district and saw some pretty drab houses and some bars with TVs (not my thing). Went to Temple Bar: It was vivid, with live music and many cheerful people on the street.

So in short: I concur with the author.

I think this author misunderstands the intent of the expression "do what the locals do". It does not mean "do what an arbitrary or random local does" or even "do what the median local does".

It implies seeking the experiences and places that are popular with the locals and not popular with the tourists. It means finding a killer teriyaki or pho place in Seattle and avoiding the space needle, even if an average Seattle resident goes to neither type of place every day.

It means avoiding Times Square and instead wandering the other streets of Manhattan.

The locals do know. Maybe each individual local only visits once a month, but the aggregate knowledge of the locals knows. Great hole in the wall places are known by locals.

> I’m skeptical of the term tourist trap (it’s mostly used as a term to place yourself as higher status/taste than other people, and is often used out of insecurity)

One thing I've read years ago about tourist traps is that one shouldn't be actively trying to avoid them, especially if they come from a country with higher purchasing power.

Some of these "tourist trap" activities are locals trying to make an honest living doing what they can. It should be fine to take a tuk tuk, or to buy paintings and souvenirs from people off the street.

Everyone should avoid getting ripped off, but what's 0.1% of a month's wages to a tourist could pay for an entire day's meals for a local.

I work in tourism in Japan and so many tourists ask me what are some good places to eat. It’s such an annoying question because the honest answer is I eat what the locals eat, which is to say the most authentic Japanese cuisine is what you find in a Japanese supermarket. That’s what the people of Japan are actually eating. Of course that’s not really what the question is though, but my point is I’m not a good person to ask because I just eat normal stuff.

Title: "The Locals Don't Know"

First line: "My best piece of travel advice is to avoid doing what the locals do."

The writer seems incapable of distinguishing between the special, cool local things the locals KNOW about, and which a tourist might well benefit from trying, and the things locals DO because they don't do those special, cool things every day. Instead locals are usually doing similar things to what we normally do.

Which renders this article rather pointless.

A less grumpy corollary: do the things in your town that you only do when you have visitors.

> They might grab some mediocre Mexican food on the outskirts of Helsinki because they already eat Finnish food at home and want something different. They might hang out with some friends at the Kaivopuisto park. Maybe they would go on a hike? What I’m getting at here is that, even in the best case, the locals are usually not having very exciting (or very ‘authentic’) days.

Unironically this is the experience I’m often looking for in another country. I want touristy days, but I also want to see their supermarkets. Their stores. Walk through a local park. Sit in a coffee shop and read a book. One of my favorite things to do is try foreign food in another country, because Chinese and Japanese and Mexican food is different as it’s adapted to different counties tastes.

To paraphrase the philosopher Vincent Vega, it’s the little differences.

Better advice isn't 'do what the locals do' or 'avoid what the locals do'. It's to actually talk to people, both locals and other travelers, instead of treating either group as a script to copy from a distance. Have a beer, ask questions, hang out, and see what people are really into.

I try to add some randomness to my travels. Just pick a few random places on a map, research them for a few minutes, and if there is anything remotely interesting there, just go there. If you discover something more interesting on the way and never reach your destination, then you definitively succeeded.

I live in a very touristy area:

> P.S. if you are a local, you can do all of this too.

Last year, after spending a bunch of money putting in a fence, and having a puppy that didn't travel well, we decided that we were just going to take a week off and be tourists at home. We visited the museums we've driven by daily for eight years, and had a blast.

And, living in a touristy area, I want to point out that "do what the locals do" is excellent advice. I'll tell you all about where to get great food, great hikes, and not-too-crowded beaches. (Except the residents-only beach. We reserve that for us.)

That would be lovely but seems people really really want to be in the same places I am.

This year just called defeat and I'm moving out to the countryside, hopefully. My city had almost no tourist three years ago and now I had to shout twice to a tourist guide for using a very loud speaker in the very street I live in.

Just today I saw a 1 start review in a place I really like, by a german lady that was baffled waiters didn't even try to speak english to her.

It's just impossible to fight this. Guess we'll have to make our nice place elsewhere until tourists find out.

Locals trend conservative, always giving the advice "don't do that, you'll definitely die" because they remember one bad incident 10 or 20 years ago and never clock how circumstances have changed. My favorite is the time I was warned over and over by several different people about not going somewhere because I would surely be killed by foreigners or wolves. Dude, what? If there was a major problem with one, it would scare off the other. Are they working together?? lol

I'd take you mushroom hunting (but really just exploring and running around in the forest this time of year), maybe pick up a trout on the way home to grill. That's a few days a week for me (the trout leas though).

As for touristy things here in Zurich - it's not really a tourist city. When we have guests from overseas we do have a set of activities to bring them on. When I've offered to bring them in the forest to find mushrooms/berries/etc they're usually not so interested.

I remember traveling 1000km for work. On the radio I heard of trips to where I lived. They were all prizes for some competition. I realized that my home was someone else's destination and my current place was where people from home's had chosen as a destination.

The grass is sometimes truly greener.

When I returned I looked at my home with the eyes of a tourist and went everywhere I could.

I have since traveled elsewhere. Some places are much better not to return to or even remain in.

Do what you would do at home on a week off.

This advice is so unnecessary to the point that it sounds weird. I lived in a touristy place, and trust me, as a tourist you won't be doing what locals do by default. No special decision, no efforts needed at all.

That was my take, too.

The advice isn't to literally live a life in the day of a local, it's to ask the locals what the interesting things to do are. Nobody is actually suggesting that you go hang out at an office for 8 hours, stop by an affordable grocery store and then watch Netflix.

E.G. People in Seattle will not tell you to go to the space needle or to Pike Place Market (at best you might hear that you should go at least once). They will tell you to ride a bike from Lake Union to the Locks on a sunny day, and you will have more fun and see more than fighting the crowds at Pike Place.

You say that, but I’ve more than a few times found myself scratching my head when a local person has not known basics about where they live - everything from not knowing that there’s a supermarket one block over, to having never heard of the culture whose ruins litter their city.

I think the worst local advice I ever had sent me on a 3000km detour and got me interrogated by the FSB - basically it was “oh don’t go south of the Aral Sea, the road is terrible, you will die” - turns out that the road north of the sea had already been demolished so a new one could be built, and the one south had already been completely rebuilt.

Honestly, most locals don’t know shit about where they live.

There is a reason why touristic spots are touristic spots, even before the rise of social media and influencers. The reason is that they are usually the nicest spot in that zone.

Same reason why rich people buy (and inflate its value) land for holidays homes in certain places and not others. Because those are nicer places, where the landscape is beautiful.

The reason people use "When in Rome..." or "do as the locals do" is because that's how you get an accurate taste of what life in <place> is like. If you don't want to experience a glimpse of life in Paris, then sure go eat at a tourist trap. The quote below from TFA is an inadvertent own goal, I think:

>But today I imagine you visiting my hometown and spending a day with the locals. You’d probably end up watching reality TV, ordering some ‘New American’ food on Doordash (it’s a cheeseburger with Korean Kimchi Glaze™), and sports betting from your phone.

Perhaps TFAuthor hails from a place that isn't interesting enough for tourists to visit. Lots of small towns across the USA and Canada don't offer any compelling reason to visit unless you have relatives there.

There's a reason tourists flock to New York City and not to Schenectady.

The point is that the locals tend to think that spots which are actually generic and uninteresting are great because the mediocre imported cuisine they serve is different from the local food or their friend works there, and that spots full of influencers which are actually great aren't that interesting because they'd personally never consider taking a bus to the centre to queue up with tourists to enjoy a rooftop with a view when they can have coffee with their friends in their own suburb at a chain they've got a loyalty card for. Sometimes seeing what banal stuff people think is amazing and what beautiful stuff they take for granted is educational in its own right, but it's not necessarily a better way to plan a holiday than a guidebook.

> spots that are actually great but not hyped up

One phenomenon I noticed is that unpaid things (even if they're world class museums) often get left in the shadow of others that sell tickets - these get packaged in "city pass" cards, etc. and get more exposure from their selling.

As someone who's traveled quite a bit, I love doing this but I should also warn everyone to make sure they're in a place where it's safe to do so. While most tourist destinations are mostly fine, you don't want to end up in a random shady neighborhood in certain cities - even touristy ones (Barcelona, Paris, etc). It doesn't matter that 20 years ago you did it and it was fine, things have changed.

What are some of your experiences with this?

I can say I've had good and bad - I've wondered through cities with no direction and found -- nothing, two that come to mind are Paris and Barcelona. I'm sure there is interesting stuff to be found here and there but mostly, outside of the main attractions, I found the rest not much more interesting than American suburbia. Yes, I'm glad I saw it to basically see that "life is life". There's the interesting coast, or the restaurant row that's already on the tourist map, then there's the living areas where every block or two there's a convenience store, another non-descript cafe, a hair salon, etc... Maybe once in a while something sticks out but mostly not.

To be clear, I found both cities amazing. But, the "this city is amazing" parts are the parts listed as must visit. The "get lost parts" less so, with a few exceptions.

I've had more luck doing things further down the list. On 3rd or 4th visit, I'm not doing the top 10 most popular things. I'm down on 40th or 50th or 100th.

I did that once about twenty years ago. I was in Seoul for a few days for work, and I had the last day free before my plane out in the evening. Without checking a map or guidebook, I got on the subway, rode a few stops, went up to street level, and wandered around; I repeated this four or five times. Other than one nondescript office district, every area I emerged in was interesting: a wholesale textile market, an upscale residential neighborhood, a lively commercial district. Though I don’t know the names of the places I visited, I still remember them all these years later.

This is one of the only sensible comments in this entire thread. Just go wander, talk to and observe people, etc... I've traveled extensively and all of my best experiences are from this sort of thing.

I don't think people should get ripped off just because they can afford it.

If you visit Sweden, don't buy ice cream in the historic area of Stockholm ("gamla stan").

As an American you might think "$10 for a single scoop of vanilla, that's nothing. A minimum wage worker packing groceries earn twice that in an hour back home". But you are not helping a starving ice cream labourer with your purchase, you are simply being taken for a ride. Walk a couple of blocks more and check the signs, and you can buy it at half price from a respectable establishment instead. Most likely the ice cream will be better at the next place as well.

By my definition "tourist traps" are both low quality and high price... and also fairly easy to avoid. If you can walk three blocks away from a major attraction and find restaurants that are both cheaper and better, then the other ones are tourist traps. If they're decent quality but merely expensive due to their location, then they're charging for convenience and there's nothing much wrong with that.

> Some of these "tourist trap" activities are locals trying to make an honest living doing what they can.

The local working in hospitality is earning minimum wage, the premium you pay goes to the landlord.

As a fellow resident of Japan, I find this sorta question very funny.

People naturally romanticize food of foreign cultures, but I can't help but giggle at the crazy hype given to Japanese food in particular. Especially considering how 'bland' the food is (at least, how bland it is to the American sensibility).

These days, I direct touristing friends towards foreigner-friendly restaurants that promise some sort of food "experience" (at the prices you'd expect)...while I mosey over to the nearest salaryman friendly hole-in-the-wall for some plain zaru soba or udon. One part because I'm eternally broke, and another because I genuinely like it more than the ungodly katsu-don concoctions larger than the standard birth weight.

Not that there isn't interesting 名物 depending on the region (although naturally the 名物 of Tokyo might as well be Taco Bell), but I've always found my friends to be disappointed by "real" Japanese food...even from the Yatai of my local Fukuoka (which is pretty darn good, as far as I'm concerned!) Let alone from places like rural Tohoku (the village a friend resided in had a specialty of whole-salamander tempura...bluegh).

Your answer is the answer I want. Why do you presume it's not valuable to say, "There's a good grocery store over there. I like X brand"?

Maybe I want to know a decent place I can get a cheap hot meal too, but I'm not interested in fancy meals or nice restaurants. I want the workaday egg salad from the tiny deli in New York that costs 4.99 and comes with a pickle. I want the simple pho that's the only thing on the menu. I want the tamales sold from a cooler in the Home Depot parking lot.

I wish there was a better way to signal that's what i want to find than, "Whats a good place to eat?"

> It’s such an annoying question because the honest answer is I eat what the locals eat, which is to say the most authentic Japanese cuisine is what you find in a Japanese supermarket. That’s what the people of Japan are actually eating.

Well, that's only true if you also observe what Japanese customers are buying and do your best to mimic their habits.

You could go into any Italian supermarket and fill your cart with weißwurst, avocados, and Camembert cheese - and they're all right there in the meat, fruit, and dairy areas respectively, not in an 'ethnic' corner - but it would be hardly a good representation of what the locals typically eat.

Speaking as someone from Edinburgh where the locals are notoriously jaded (ask someone that has lived in edi for a few years what festival shows they went to this year): It's more that we _forget_ rather than never knowing.

Asks me what cool things to do nearby on the spot and I'll probably draw a blank. But say what you are doing instead and I'll probably go "oh yeah! That's brilliant! I love thing X".

I do know where good dog walking spots just outside Edinburgh are though, and I'm still regularly discovering more because I'm effectively a tourist ;).

Further, he specifically mentioned Bordain, who focussed predominantly on food, and I think the concept of doing what the locals do is hugely rooted in choosing a restaurant. As in: locals won't eat in overpriced tourist traps, and will have had the chance to try enough local spots to know where's good. So if you want to choose a (e.g.) Chinese restaurant, choose one with lots of Chinese people in. (This applies whether you're in China or elsewhere.)

I don't even know if I accept the premise.

When I was an expat, there was a subtle kind of experience in settling into buying groceries and getting haircuts from the local providers. Or shopping for furniture for our own apartment, or hiring someone to do remodeling on a house...

But, I'm the type who also finds enjoyment in the same scenic trails and camping areas visited hundreds of times in my life in different seasons, etc. I don't need to try to see everything once in a superficial, whirlwind of a tour...

this, you need to find the active locals that care about their community. the curious ones that like to explore and they will tell you. i could show you places in vienna that no tourist has ever seen, right in the center of town. i have gone on a day hike with a family in japan, up the mountain right near where they lived. no idea how well known that place was. same for new zealand and other places. china is touristically well developed. mostly for domestic tourism, so there finding the special spots only the locals know is more difficult. but they do exist. one friend took me eating at a local buddhist temple in the small industrial town where i lived. people taking me to their favorite hangout spots gives me a glimpse of what local life is like.