I'm not sure what the tipping point is from "touring" or "vacationing" to just "living in a new place for a period of time" but it seems to be about three weeks.
Maybe this is because most people (talking about US workaholics) will only take at max a three week block of time for vacation and the vast majority take 2 weeks or less, but after 3 weeks there is a point when you stop wanting to "tour" or try to "vacation".
During that 4th week the thought of driving, hiring a car, or going on a tour that takes all day just elicits this kind of "ehhh" feeling where intuitively you know it's not really worth it. I mean, what if I want to take a nap 3 hours into the tour? Will they let me just sleep on the bus?
This Tourist persona that puts up with the logistics and hassle in weeks 1-3 in order to see the cool things while on vacation, sort of slips and away and is replaced with the "I'm just living life in a new place" persona that would rather walk to the store, avoid crowds, take naps, eat good food, and sleep early. Oddly enough the living life persona still doesn't want to work a corporate job :).
During the Moonbatz adventure we easily hit the tourist tipping point in about 3 weeks. Luckily we'd planned almost 5 weeks in a single location in Chiang Mai to settle in. What most surprised me was even moving around like we are now to a new country every 1-2 weeks (I'm writing this while transiting from Laos to the Thai Islands) and a new city every 4-7 days, the tourist urge hasn't returned. It's more like a little uptick in excitement gets added to the living life guy with each new place. I'm much more drawn to places with good cafes and dinner spots where I can walk and explore aimlessly for an hour than anything the shows up in the Tripadvisor top list of things to do.
I can see why slow travel is not just really compelling, but is probably the only way to avoid quick travel burnout. Sometimes you just want living life in a new place to be the experience.
Boots and Cats.
