There are effectively two different types of travellers, foundation travellers and transit travellers and who they are represents what kind of sensitivity they will portray.

Foundation travellers are people who live for travel but like to do so slowly by living in countries for an extended period of time and transit travellers are people who only pass through a place, usually for a few days or a week, but not long enough to truly understand the cultural nuances. Unlike the terms expatriate and backpacker these categories include any type of traveller and any reason for travelling.

When you’re the visitor in a country and you’re working directly with locals you can forget it is your behaviour that must be modified to suit the culture you’re in.

I learned a very valuable lesson in the difference between Cambodian (Khmer) and foreign culture when I first arrived here and to this day remained amazed at how I could not know this.
I was co-teaching a grade 5 class and paused the Khmer native English teacher to correct the pronunciation of the ‘th’ sound when I noticed one student was having a hard time. To encourage him I ruffled his hair and coached him to repeat after me. Ordinarily this would not cause a child to cry so you can …