She sees real positives in what's changed — visitors' sites kept better maintained, and young people forming genuine connections with tourists that open their minds to lives beyond the village. Those relationships have produced good, sometimes unique experiences for the youth involved.
What's struck her most is subtler: watching how foreign men and women interact as equals, moving through the world side by side, and seeing that example ripple into local relationships. Some men here are more involved in housework now than they once were — a shift she traces at least partly to what young people have observed in the visitors passing through.
Our youth wants to speak better English, and improve themselves, learning from the interaction with tourists.
There's something else she finds genuinely notable: seeing tourists of colour arrive from Western countries. For local youth, it's a useful corrective — a reminder that the wider world isn't monochrome the way it might otherwise appear from a distance.
Not everything sits easily with her, though. The market carries more goods now, but many of the new items are out of reach for ordinary families, and even local products have grown pricier. She also finds it hard to accept that tourists are allowed into the forest while locals are barred, on the assumption that locals would damage it.
That is not a very respectful way of treating us.
Water remains a serious concern — already scarce before tourism, and now under more pressure with visitors added to the demand. The waste tourists generate isn't easy for the community to manage either.
Weighed against all of that, she still comes down in favour. “Tourism has opened our eyes,” she says, “and I see that as a very positive thing.”