There’s nothing quite like collective disdain to unite White Lotus viewers, and Mike White’s resort-loving, well-heeled season three characters delivered in spades.
But it wasn’t near-homicidal Duke alum Timothy Ratliff nor resident idiot-in-love Gaitok who made me wince. It was Piper Ratliff: the Goop-y, pseudo-spiritual Buddhism aficionado who was secretly scouting Thailand for a glorified gap year to meditate in the presence of a celebrity monk. (It would have, of course, been buoyed by daddy’s crumbling money laundering scheme.)
Piper might be fictional, but she’s hardly unique. The world is full of her kind: nomadic “soul searchers” who chase far-flung landscapes and exotic experiences. The age-old pilgrimage for many Westerners sits on the belief that, if you go far enough from who you are and where you come from, you might just find yourself there, whether it’s hiking Machu Picchu, meditating in Thailand, at surf school in Mexico or a tea ceremony in Kyoto.
What It’s Really Like to Stay at All Three of the “White Lotus” Resorts
Season three has officially come to a close, but there’s still one way to get your fixThe impulse itself isn’t inherently evil nor even that weird. Travel should encourage you to go beyond the world as you know it, and I find it admirable when comfortable people seek out the full texture of cultures and places. But is it still exploration if a place is reduced to a backdrop in service to your self-actualization?
I feel this tension acutely as someone who lives between New York City and the Philippines. There’s this dreamy surftown just two hours from Manila called Siargao that’s become famous online not just for its rugged islands and upscale dining scene. On Filipino social media, there’s a recurring joke about how it’s now occupied by more white people than locals. I’ve seen TikToks with captions like, “When you feel like a foreigner in your own country” and “Welcome to Siargao, USA” as the video pans to a white, sunburnt man selling barbecue on the street.
Foreigners — digital nomads, surfers, backpackers and expats alike — have flocked to breezy Siargao for its enviably bohemian lifestyle. It’s just one of many places caught in this pastoral fantasy marketed to the West. The usual suspects of Americans, Australians and Europeans have historically romanticized escaping to a “simpler” life, if not permanently then temporarily to “find themselves” (hello, Eat, Pray, Love). The problem isn’t venturing out into the world; it’s pretending that the desire exists in some kind of moral vacuum.
How many times have you traveled to some vulnerable place for a destination wedding or a solo trip and accidentally left a trace you’d rather not admit (or don’t remember)? Trash at the beach, graffiti scrawled “for fun” after one too many drinks, a spontaneous trespass justified with “we didn’t know!” None of it feels catastrophic in the moment, but that’s the point: if you weren’t there in the first place, the local environment wouldn’t have been changed by your mishaps and misjudgment.
Even for the most cautious traveler, the imbalance doesn’t disappear. Self-discovery travel is often packaged under the guise of cultural immersion while brushing past the plight these communities endure. These same destinations iconicized for sunrise yoga and elephant sanctuaries grapple with legacy issues like corruption, illegal logging, overtourism and failing infrastructure. Foreigners (especially from the West) hold an unsurmountable privilege: they can leave when “paradise” buckles, be it a particularly bad storm, water shortage, unlivable wages or gentrification.
It’s a fine line to toe when you’re a well-meaning person with the luxury and desire to experience the world. I’m not arguing against living abroad or seeing the full scope of what’s out there. In fact, moving to New York myself opened up my world in ways that staying put in Asia could never have shaped me. But curiosity and privilege can — and should — coexist with responsibility.
That means traveling with intention, even when it makes your life an inch more difficult. Choose the local surf school instead of one set up by expats, even if it means navigating through a new language. Dine at the mom-and-pop cafeterias instead of retreating to a fast food chain when you’re homesick. Tip graciously, learn local etiquette and dispose of your trash properly. Research first whether riding elephants is even ethical to begin with (spoiler: it’s probably not). The world is yours for the taking, but only if you decenter yourself from it.
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