Uniformity in Tourist Towns

These are the photos of the tourist bar streets of Paphos as well as some of the photos of the beach. The beach in the photos are the Alykes beach from Kato Paphos, this part of the city is crowded by a lot of European owned bars and restaurants as well as a lot of European tourists. The general atmosphere certainly was one of Chaos and defamiliarization, as myself and two more friends remarked about how this part of town feels very much out of place. The Paphos 2017 project is nowhere to be seen, heard, or thought about.

But do you notice something in the photos above, does it feel wrong yet familiar somehow? The photos above are not, actually, all from Kato Paphos but some are from the tourist towns of Pattaya and Phuket in Thailand. These were the only things I could think of as I was walking around the Alykes Beach. Maybe you can decipher between all of these different photos and their places of origin, or maybe you would agree with me on the point that tourist towns generally look the same.

Or do they? I specifically chose these few towns for obvious demographic similarities on the part of the tourists. These towns have tourist identities that are not quite complete without Russian underground/suspicious involvements in properties and local politics and British owned bars and restaurants set up to attract Europeans. What if we were to look at tourist destinations that attract a very different group of tourists? A quick search on China’s Silver Beach showed Tex-Mex restaurants as well as western themed bars within the first few findings.