Backpaking lifestyle
come back and it’s just the next day.
For Brendon (Irish, 26), returning home to Dublin was marked by a perceived conflict
between his ‘new values’ and those he saw as representative of his country of origin: ‘I
couldn’t settle at all into the normal routine of life. I was hypercritical about everything back
home. I saw things differently.’ Sussman (2000) identifies this type of reverse culture ‘shock’
amongst international sojourners as resulting from a cultural clash in which a repatriate has
incorporated values and behaviours of a host culture into her/his identity. In the case of
lifestyle travellers, however, adopted sets of values and behaviours arguably derive more from
appropriating elements of backpacker subculture, influenced by time spent in backpacker
enclaves or ‘traveller bubbles’ (Wilson & Richards, 2008), rather than through engagement
with indigenous communities
annaabi.ee 
