The proliferation of tourism has brought about the idea that it is essential to adapt all the new customs and traditions during the time tourists vistit to another country. From my perspective, it is important for tourists to understand and appreciate different cultures, but not to completely believe and follow all of them, especially when it comes to more extreme customs.
On the one hand, when tourists know more about the cultures in one specific country, they can get a great chance to update their knowledge about it. Culture is related to the history of establishment, geography, tradition, etc. of civilization, so tourists may get to know more and find out some amazing aspects of that country through lively experiences but not books or movies. Additionally, understanding about the cultures of a country can help tourists to get the respect from the local people. In Thailand, for instance, people generally do not appreciate others touching the top of their heads, so they consider it as a rude action. Therefore, tourists have to learn about these kinds of culture carefully to get the great impression of the local people to their countries, and avoid some unwanted conflicts between the citizens from different cultures.
On the other hand, tourists do not have to fully adapt the customs and traditions from the countries they have been to since there are some extreme aspects of them. In India, for example, the local people often throw corpses into Ganges river, as they strongly believe that this action can help the dead people to purify the soul, or get freedom from the cycle of rebirth. In these cases, cultures can bring about various bad consequences, which can affect the environment, physical health, or ecosystem. Evenworse, some local people can take advantage of tourists by faking the customs and traditions. Some of them can pretend to be religious people, and trick tourists into giving a great amount of money for some fake ceremonies for instance. This will lead to spiritual and material losses of tourists, which nobody wants to have during the time of holiday.
In conclusion, it cannot be denied that getting to know and understand about the cultures when traveling to a new area is very essential for tourists; however, I firmly believe that these positives cannot make up for the extreme customs and fake cultures which tourists may face.