All of them, really.
As a tourist, you don't have to work a regular job there, you don't have to rent an apartment or buy a home there, you don't have to deal with the locals on a day-to-day basis, you're usually not aware of the political issues (esp. at the local level). You just go to some popular tourist destinations, take photos, eat in restaurants, walk around a bit, and go home. Of course you're not going to get a very good idea of what it's really like to live there. You can, however, get a good feel for the place, especially if you step outside the tourist zones more, but it's going to be very incomplete because of the factors above.
this is why, when i go somewhere i prefer to either stay with locals couchsurfing, or when i stay longer, rent a room or an apartment. i don't travel around but stay in the same place, make friends with locals, join their events, etc.
i intentionally don't read about the places before going there, to avoid influencing my experience by the subjective reports of others. especially reports of other foreigners.
i'll never experience the life and struggles as a local, especially not when the culture is very different, or the language or its a developing country. at best i get to experience what living in that place as a european, an expat, is like.
but, where i am able to make friends or become part of a local family, i still get way more insights than any tourist would.
while traveling in japan (where i was couchsurfing) i met a young european who claimed to have learned things about japanese culture that generally no foreigner ever finds out and his japanese friends would always be surprised when he told them about some of the things he learned. i could not verify his claim of course, but it was interesting nonetheless.
That's true but it's not like I don't need to feel with those types of issues back at home. Like, how much different is renting an apartment between Paris and London? Once you get into the groove of actually living somewhere, don't you just realize it's the same as everywhere else? It's the special stuff that makes a difference.
>Like, how much different is renting an apartment between Paris and London?
I don't know, but from personal experience, renting and living in an apartment in Tokyo is very, very different from renting an apartment in America.
>Once you get into the groove of actually living somewhere, don't you just realize it's the same as everywhere else?
No, not at all. Different places are extremely different. There's a reason people move emigrate to other countries. I don't know how you got this idea unless you've never even traveled anywhere else. Maybe I don't understand you correctly.
Anyway, if you're just a tourist somewhere, you might not even care what it's like to live in a place; that's probably not why you're there. But it does mean you have a very different experience there than you would as a long-term resident, and it's quite likely very, very different from your experience as a resident back home.
I can't do France and the UK, but I can do Germany and the UK. There's definitely similarities, but there's a lot of differences as well, and the differences are often important. For example, the longer I rent in Germany, the safer I am against being forced out or having my rent arbitrarily raised. That is not true in the UK, where there is very little protection for renters. The types of apartment one can get in the UK and in Germany differ significantly, in everything from the quality of materials to the design of the neighbourhood.
This means that things that will be a significant issue for a tenant in one location will be irrelevant in another location and vice versa. Understanding the issues on the ground usually requires living in that place for a significant amount of time.
My favorite theory about Cambodia is that they subtlely threaten any tourist to post positive feedback about the country otherwise they get the Pol Pot treatment lol
