This may provoke strong reactions among some people but as it is so fundamental to what many of us spend our time doing I felt it a question worth debating. When we purchase our flight or our holiday, do we buy along with that the right to behave with complete abandon wherever we are? Or do we carry with us a responsibility to act in a certain way, abiding by an unwritten code of principles as we enjoy ourselves under someone else's sky?

I started thinking about this after a recent post on this site that asked if budget travel causes more harm than good. The post was discussed on a Lonely Planet forum and one commenter wrote the following:

"When someone pays for the plane ticket with their own money then they have every right to do what they want with their trip."

Other comments suggest his views are certainly not unique. So does he have a point? Or is such an opinion showing a dangerous level of arrogance and ignorance that in the end harms each of us who travel, whether we agree with him or not?

What does our ticket buy us? It buys us passage from A to B of course. It is a contract between us and the airline that we pay to carry us. Thanks to pre-departure checks it also ensures that in most cases we are also allowed access into the country in which we arrive. But what else? 

Does being in a country allow us to bring our own ways, our habits, our values and vices along with us? Do we have a duty to concern ourselves with the local culture, or is an interest in this an optional extra?

Let's take Vang Vieng as an example. For those who are not familiar with this little corner of Laos, it is renowned as a backpacker party town where you can watch endless re-runs of Friends while floating down the river in rubber tubes, swinging in hammocks, drinking happy shakes and vodka buckets. Young twentysomethings stumble along the main street, skimpily dressed in their bikinis and sarongs, and hop in and out of each other's dorm in an all night frenzy of drink, drugs and wild sex. 

I'm sure it's not that exciting, but its reputation saw to it that this pair of fortysomethings chose to bypass it and visit another region of Laos instead. It's just not our scene. 

But what impact does Vang Vieng have on the Lao people who are impacted by it (willingly or otherwise)? What impression does it leave them of how young people are raised in the West? Does it matter to them that many people come here to indulge in cheap drink and drugs and behave in a distinctly 'un-Lao' way? Should we be concerned or is it up to the people themselves to decide whether or not to show tolerance to the excesses of wealthy (relative) backpackers? 

If travel is indeed a privilege, then there appears to be no consequence to abusing it; at least in the short term for today's beneficiaries. For those who venture to foreign lands and re-create a care-free party town that has nothing to do with the native culture but everything to do with their own version of a hedonistic Shangri La, it's easy to conclude that travel is in fact a right that their luck in having been born into the wealthier side of the world's divide has granted them.