PSA: How To Avoid Being A Dumb Tourist

For the most part, humans are pretty great. We’re imaginative, we care about each other, we make love. But when we’re tourists, we go dark.

Something happens when we leave our hometown to explore the big blue marble called Earth. We sometimes slip into a clownish persona where it’s OK to gawk, drink lavishly and bumble down the street, sometimes naked, sometimes breaking things.

We can become maniacs who relish in the excess of travel and live by the idea that whatever happens there, stays there. And unfortunately, it’s true: it stays with the locals.

From Spain to China, governments are taking notice. Beijing threatened to publicly shame China's worst-behaving tourists, and Barcelona's mayor froze hotel construction permits after locals protested. As the New York Times put it, we are loving these places to death.

So in the effort to be more respectful to our host cultures when we pay them a visit, we at The Huffington Post have made this handy guide -- a PSA, if you will -- to show you how to avoid being a dumb tourist.

Behave yourself out there.

Don't let a friend be a bad tourist. If you see yourself or someone you love showing symptoms, show them the video below: