On being a tourist .... or not

In certain circles being a tourist is almost as bad as stealing candy from a child...
and looking around me those descriptions of the bad tourist hold more than a grain of truth. There are the Italian girls (and women) who see nothing in running around a Muslim town in skimpy tops and miniskirts, there's the British guy who calls the waiter 'hey you', there is the Dutch couple who treats the shopkeeper as a quaint but simple child and on and on it goes. There are dozens of hotels being built right in front of the beaches, with no regard to the culture or the environment. There are hordes of tourists descending on the towns and villages like plagues of locust, bestowing a jovial 'jambo' on everyone without knowing (or caring) that it is only the ignorant tourist version of the proper greeting, complaining about the lack of toilet paper and amenities and not realizing that there a people living here on less a day than the amount they spend on one beer alone.
Yes, all that can be true and yet ... even those of us who are aware of these things and try to avoid being a 'tourist' and some of us would even be offended to be called such... yet here we are: tourists. After all is being said and done, I am one of those great hordes who migrate to far places in search of beauty and adventure.
It is also true that I have spend a lot of time and effort at learning about the local culture and the language, after all it is part of my studies, and one really cannot expect the average tourist to have that kind of in-depth knowledge. And yes, I am not living here in the typical tourist style, not even the low budget 'authentic' backpacker kind. But I am, just like any other tourist here, a guest, perhaps a little more conscious of the fact than most.
So, yes, I like to do tourist stuff. I like to go and gawk at the sights, I like to do things I wouldn't do at home (either because it is not possible there or because you need the certain 'vacation feeling' for it). And sometimes I want to behave like a real tourist, I want to hang out in the Internet Cafés, because they connect me with the people and places that I do miss at odd moments, I like to browse around the shops selling souvenirs, even though they are overpriced and not very 'authentic' (whatever that may be), I like to sit down with other tourists and compare notes and yes, sometimes I even like a little break from all the strange and exciting and new and interesting and culturally valuable and so on things around me .... and just sit down with a package of chocolate chip cookies bought at an outrageous price just because for a moment they make me feel at home...
So go ahead and call me a tourist because that's what I am.
And here is the truth about it: Yes, Tourism sometimes does have a bitter aftertaste to it...and we should do what we can to avoid that, but being a tourist in itself is not a bad thing. It means we are curious about the world around us but at the same time we are very grounded in the things that we know and that make us feel safe and sometimes we might need a little bit of both at the same time.