How to Travel Like a Local (Even When You’re Very Obviously a Tourist)

Learning to travel like a local is the best upgrade you can give any trip. You don’t need to speak the language or live there for a month. You just need to step slightly off the tourist trail and go where everyday life happens. These are the habits I swear by.

How to Travel Like a Local

1. Join a workshop that isn’t made for tourists
Skip the “authentic experience” sold at the hotel desk and look for classes locals actually sign up for. A pottery night at a community studio, a weekend cooking class at a neighbourhood centre, a calligraphy session at the library. You’ll learn something real and sit next to people who live there.

2. Visit a prayer house
Temples, mosques, churches, gurdwaras. Places of worship are where communities gather, celebrate and eat together. Dress respectfully, follow the etiquette, and you’ll often be welcomed in (sometimes with food).

3. Visit a local town
Leave the capital and take a day trip to a smaller town nearby. Chances are, everyone there is local. Fewer crowds, cheaper food, and a much clearer picture of how people actually live.

4. Follow the puppies
Go where people walk their dogs. Parks, riverside paths, neighbourhood squares. Dog owners are out every morning and evening, and nothing breaks the ice like asking to pat someone’s puppy.

5. Visit an indie bookshop
Indie bookshops are run by locals, for locals. Ask for a recommendation by a local author, check the community noticeboard for events, and leave with a souvenir that fits in your carry on.

6. Go where locals go on holiday
Every country has its own holiday spots that rarely make the international lists. In Japan, it’s the onsen towns. Find out where locals escape to on long weekends, then go there too.

7. Take the bus
Trains are easy, taxis are comfortable, but buses are where you see the real city. You’ll pass through residential streets, school runs and corner shops that never show up on the tourist map. Plus, it’s cheap.

8. Read local blogs
Big travel sites recommend the same ten places. Local bloggers write about the new café down their street, the noodle shop that changed owners and the market that only runs on Thursdays. Search in the local language and let Google Translate do the rest.

9. Go to McDonald’s
Hear me out. Every country’s McDonald’s has its own local menu, and it tells you a lot about what people like to eat. It’s also where local teenagers hang out after school. Cultural research, with fries.

10. Eat food from your own country
Find your home cuisine in someone else’s city and see how it’s been adapted. I do this with Indonesian food everywhere I go, and it’s one of my favourite ways to meet the diaspora and see how locals have made it their own.

11. Go on a food tour
Pick a small tour run by a local guide, ideally in a neighbourhood rather than a tourist strip. You’ll eat things you’d never order alone, and the guide’s stories are half the fun.

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