How International Travel Affects Culture

International travel can enable people to exchange ideas, gain valuable life experience and achieve a greater wisdom that can only be obtained in the course of their travel. However, despite the possible benefits of international travel, it can, however, potentially harm the countries that are strongly attached to their own culture. In this case, Brunei Darussalam, as a country strongly emphasise on the Malay Islamic Monarchy philosophy. Because the nation's philosophy plays a vital role in Bruneian lifestyle, the exchange of viewpoints from other countries may pose as a threat to its traditional cultures particularly in areas of language, Malay custom as well as environment.

First of all, with international travel, people inevitably have to use international languages to communicate which affects our mother tongue and second language usage. One of the many threats that arises from international travel came from the need to communicate with foreigners. People inevitably have to make use of international languages and this indirectly affects our mother tongue. Malay has been made the official language in Brunei Darussalam ever since the 1959 Brunei Constitution on 29th September of the same year. Although Malay dominates the neighboring ASEAN countries, it is yet to be recognized in other places. Thus as people rely on foreign languages when going overseas, it opens up an opportunity for them to be bilingual. Learning another language however can cause a problem acknowledged by Wallace Lambert as "subtractive bilingualism". Lambert (1975, 1977, 1981) expressed that while people are achieving a new verbal skill, consequently they failed to maintain their native language and hence the idea of bilingualism is inc...

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... having to prioritise entertainment over greenery. Renowned activist, Beard (1930) describes travel as “more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living”. In brief, the merit efforts in preserving our local values are unable to eliminate the challenges of globalisation. It is however, capable of minimising the impacts international travel posed on our cultures. It is up to our country’s preparedness to overcome the issues and try to acquire as much benefits as possible by incorporating the ideas international travel has bought, onto its national development strategies to satisfy each stakeholders and to elevate Brunei’s condition. Failure to do so not only resulted in Brunei losing their culture but also the future generations will not experience the similar cultures our ancestors had experienced decades ago.