Foreigner and Exile: the two aren't often distinguished, or not by most, and i think in today's world it's a difficult distinction to mark. It helps, perhaps, to consider all of the people who move: travellers, tourists, foreigners, and exiles. Although i'm strange that way, i always find the old, simple, "this and not that" way of speaking to be most helpful, and in this case it goes:

A traveller is not necessarily a foreigner, rarely an exile, and never a tourist, while a tourist is always a traveller, always a foreigner and never an exile. In contrast, a foreigner is sometimes an exile, sometimes a traveller, while an exile is often a traveller and usually a foreigner.

But i can understand how that might be a bit confusing.

Another way of saying the same thing is through stereotypes: a traveller can be a Gypsy or Badouin (neither of which are exiles) or a backpacker partying at Goa, but never Ma and Pa Jones (or Britney Paris and her Beau) out on vacation at Biarritz, or Acapulco: those are strictly tourists (although a lot of the backpacker's at Goa do aspire to the Hilton illusion of affluence, and so merit the name of tourists). Meanwhile, officers at the U.S. Embassy are always Foreigners but never exiles, while people like me -- who wander, and wind up living in a foreign place, or dividing our time between ye olde homelande and ye newe outelande -- we are exiles.

Rather great differences, and so i think it givees the name of the blog a rather broad arena to play in.

Personally, i've never had any use for tourists; they come and go, spend their money, take away little more than pictures and leave behind little besides their cash and their trash. I know most folks would love to travel more, but the tourist mode of travel i find unbearable and i can't find strong enough words by which to discourage it. Tourism is defined by its comfort: tourists travel to foreign countries not with the goal of interacting and experiencing a new, different world, but rather with a determination to remain comfortable and secure even as they are led through unfamiliar and misuderstood terrain. The whole setup is basically an illusion: the tourist looks out from their window at the hot desert surrounding, but remains inside where the air-conditioning keeps their climate at a steady 25.5 degrees.

Travellers, however, don't always sleep in the best possible hotel. They follow their nose -- not comfort -- and adventure -- not security -- and while they sometimes leave behind a mess, they can just as possibly leave behind fine memories and kind gifts. But to be a traveller, one must be willing to suffer the thousands of little things that can go wrong: dysentery, bedbugs, skipping meals, unpleasant delays, and the unpleasant people one is bound to eventually be bullied by, or the unpleasant misunderstandings which one is bound to eventually exacerbate. Travelling requires a thick skin and the will to submit to unpleasant distractions beyond one's control, and in our modern world there are few professionals who would consider travel an entertainment. More than that, travelling demands the ability to take one's personal faults without any of the disguising rationalizations we all use in our everyday life. Travelling is, then, quite the opposite of touring.