Redditors are sharing the things they did as tourists before it was frowned upon, from climbing the pyramids to riding elephants

• Redditors are sharing the things they did as tourists before they were considered unethical.
• Many comments were related to animals, like riding elephants — a practice now frowned upon.

Redditors have begun flooding a post with the travel experiences they had before they were considered unethical — and some are feeling guilty about them now.

The stories came in response to a post in r/travel, a subreddit community centered on travel and exploration. Posted Saturday, the original question asked: "What did you do before it became commonly accepted as unethical?" It had 3,000 upvotes as of Tuesday.

The person who shared the original post divulged their stories, saying that they had run with the bulls, rode an elephant, climbed the pyramids, and "got a piece of the Berlin Wall as a souvenir."

The original poster's stories prompted others — roughly 500 commenters — to share their own. Many of the experiences shared were interactions with animals; similar to the original poster, several expressed guilt over riding elephants, while others shared experiences petting tigers and swimming with dolphins.

The remorseful comments, mainly those surrounding animals, reflect a turning point within the tourism industry that has become more widespread since the mid-2000s. Elephant riding, in particular, has become more frowned upon in recent years, as animal activist groups say the popular tourist activity is bound to result in animal abuse.

"It's important to understand that elephants, unlike horses, are not bred to be ridden," Edwin Wiek, director and founder of the Wildlife Friends Foundation in Thailand, told CNN in March. "They are not domesticated animals and are taken from the wild and kept in awful conditions."

The Wildlife Friends Foundation in Thailand shared photos with CNN of Pai Lin, a 71-year-old elephant with a disfigured spine after decades of carrying people.

Meanwhile, other commenters shared experiences climbing things they shouldn't have, like the pyramids in Egypt and the pyramid at Chichen Itza, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mexico. Tourists were allowed to climb the pyramid until 2008, when the government banned the activity, according to the monument's website.

"There is no question that tourists, climbing the sites, had left their marks in the form of graffiti, and even the stone steps of monuments were already showing heavy signs of rapid erosion," the monument's website reads. "Letting tourists climb up monuments has severely damaged the pyramid and other buildings in Chichen Itza."

As talk about visiting tourist sites while preserving them has ramped up recently, some Reddit commenters advocated for responsible tourism — and learning from past travel mistakes.

"We all did things we aren't proud of," one commenter wrote. "The Important part is recognizing the mistake and learning from it. Responsible tourism is luckily trending in the right direction, so information is getting out there that wasn't as accessible even 10 years ago."