I love the places where the disappearance or death of its inhabitants is the main focus. Other sites include the Parisian catacombs, where the deaths of so many people make taking your photo with thousands of skulls bizarre.

Part of my fascination with those places is the timeline in which they were abandoned. We know that ancient towns such as those covering Greece are obviously abandoned due to time; however, the timeframe for these abandoned places is uncomfortably close to our lifetimes.

This relates to this week’s class because we discuss the multiple different Gaze’s. We look into the many lenses that come from making photographic trends (touristic or institutional) as popular as they are. There is a link from institutional releases (magazines/shows) that make people want to indulge with the wildlife in the area when they are there.

 

The article I choose goes more in depth on the construction and why Leonard Knight made this huge sculpture. But what fascinating to me that was point out in the article is that he originally wanted to make a hot air balloon to have it spread the word of god but then since not everything will work out the way you planned he ended up on making “salvation mountain” in the most desolate and dry are I’ve ever been to. You would think that if you would spend so much time and the purpose of the sculpture your building is to spread a message that you would at least want it to be closer to a town or a city, so that people could travel there with a purpose and the mountain will only be part of the thing they are doing in that area. But the most logical reason why it is located in the armpit of southern California is that the armpit was the only place he could put such a large sculpture (even though San Diego county and inland do hold significance to him).

 

While his message might not have been widespread at first but with the juxtaposition of the photos being taken and shared it allowed for more people to hear about his place and go out of there way to just take a photo there among the colorful mountain surrounded by dirt.

 

Although this article only talks about salvation mountain I did want to point out that inland southern California there are more of this theme of creating colorful sculptures and attractions placed in a desert area just like the crochet museum in Joshua tree or the metal sculptures in Anza Borrego State Park.

Ever since Hillary and Norgay first scaled the mountain in 1953, thousands of tourists have payed to scale the mountain since to also have the glory of reaching the highest point on earth and hundreds of thousands more have traveled to the base camp each year to just be close to it. However, while this travel does bring revenue and jobs to the region, it is quickly devastating the once secluded region and turning it into a very dangerous place to live. With Everest new nickname becoming "the worlds highest garbage pile" tourist are discarding tons of litter at the top of the mountain instead of returning with it, eroding soil, deforesting at alarming rate and poisoning water resources via the watershed. Efforts to curb this include fining travelers 4,000 dollars for not bringing down their trash. 

This rocks me to my core, Mount Everest, one of our planets most inaccesible places has become little more than our rubbish bin. It leaves me speechless and infuriated. I understand that revenue is important for the government and the populace of the country. Yet if this horrible, harmful practice of tourism is left unchecked for much longer, the Pixar movie Walle may not become such a stretch for Everest.

I would have to say this popular tourist attraction relates to this weeks theme of “Dark Tourism” as it turned out to be a structure that could easily be used for suicide attempts. There is really no protection, the railing is so short you can easily climb over and it’s also fairly accessible. Sadly this was not the intention behind the sculpture but the Vessel is trying to figure out a solution to prevent any further suicides. 

It was surprising to read that you can go to North Korea as a tourist. Although they talk about it as not in a “normal” way. There is no normal with regard to North Korea and there are many strict restrictions. But it is possible to visit, even though North Korea remains as one of the least visited countries in the world. 

North Korea is known for being the most extreme communist dictatorship. The democratic people’s republic of Korea banned its citizens from laughing, shopping, drinking and crying out loud if someone passed away in the mourning period by leader Kim Jong-il. If anyone breaks the rule, then they will become arrested. 

This country has a dark reputation. There aren’t a lot of official dark tourist attractions, there’s plenty of weirdness. Not being able to travel by yourself could become one of the examples and it’s all carefully controlled propaganda-based tours.

Some orgs are now doing their projects remotely. HFH had a program where people could “adopt” a habitat build in Vietnam, online. Over 10 weeks people meet weekly to fundraise, learn about Vietnamese culture, get updates from local staff on the build’s progress, and speak with the family whose house is being built. The article says that going forward, it is likely that we will see more hybrid examples of this volunteerism and that we can’t expect to see in-person visits disappear completely.While it has been proven that these trips are not at all necessary for real change abroad, the usual volunteers still lack the awareness of why what they’re doing could be damaging. However, these virtual opportunities still offer a valuable alternative to on the ground voluntourism. 

The amount of visitors noticeably shot up Easter weekend, with a whopping 125,000 day-trippers scavenging the streets. With only 50,000 residents living in the city, this amount of people puts a lot of pressure on natives even trying to go about their daily lives. Through this process, the city is hoping to set a maximum of 40,000 to 50,000 visitors a day and to ensure a “more balanced management of tourism.” Other countries seem to be following in these footsteps after the pandemic as well, such as Thailand, New Zealand, and even Japan who’s borders don’t seem to be opening anytime soon. These countries heavily depend on tourists in order for the economy to succeed so it is interesting to see how, despite this and what their country may need financially, they are still prioritizing the safety of its residents and seemingly finding a “solution” to mass tourism which seems to have been becoming a problem in a lot of these locations in the first place. The pandemic almost seemed to give an excuse to these countries to finally put their foot down and implement some stricter policies in order to be able to regulate tourism more properly.