the narcissism of (sm)all differences

That last post was whiny and inarticulate, so let me try again...

In Korea i feel nothing,
like when you kiss someone and it means nothing
Korea is kissing me
(or I'm kissing it)
and i feel nothing
and it makes me question love [of traveling].

There is i think a very strong connection between these two impossible mysteries of life - love and travel - but it feels like so much more has been written about the former than the later. Or more specifically, I've read about understanding love through its loss, but never about travel in the same way.

What does it mean to 'lose' Travel?
Will I chase Travel as the girlfriend you feel drifting away...
I have been infatuated with girls, only to discover at a kiss that my heart had decided otherwise. but travel has always been purer. Even the insects that tainted egypt did little to dampen the underlying impulse...

Meta-travel writing always seems to focus on the difference between the 'tourist' and the 'traveler'. (a Traveler moves because of passion towards uncomfortability and the Unknown, whereas a tourist moves to justify and reify his pre-existing beliefs, while Relaxing in the process.)

This is easy stuff, and makes for good back-patting and pedantics, but it strikes me as both condescending and juvenile. Like when you're 13 and the world is miserable except for you; because you and you alone know the true meaning of love: Surely those fat complacent yuppies down the street only think they know love - just as the cargo-shorts-wearing tourists only think they've seen Egypt.

But suddenly this all feels besides the point. In this congratulatory dualism each side is defined and appreciated as static and recognizable. (although admitedly it is congratulatory only to the intellecutal half.)
In Korea i am neither tourist nor traveler - I am not sheltered and insular, but nor am I challenged by the Other; the preconceptions I've had to re-exam are called forth by an emptiness that i recognize only through comparisons to other travel experiences; they are internal and epiphenominal.

Is there a dialectic approach to travel? I mean one that addresses the traveler as individual, and not in some Edward Said-ian cultural context? Will someone please write one for me?