I don’t even know where to start. It’s been a fantastic year, with more memories than I can remember (ironic, isn’t it?) I spent over 95% of that time on my own, which meant a lot of walking through new cities, down random streets with no itinerary or schedule, with nothing but the thoughts in my own head. Some of the insights that I came to about myself and about people in general were both common sense and revelatory at the same time. For example, your comfort zone is a list of all of the things that you’re comfortable doing. Someone else’s comfort zone is the list of things that they’re comfortable doing. There’s probably a good bit of overlap, but there will be some things that you’re comfortable doing that they’re not and vice versa. And what’s outside their comfort zone will strike them as amazing or incredible, but to you, it’s completely normal. For example, I once dated a girl who was amazed that I could go to a restaurant and eat a meal by myself. That was outside of her comfort zone, and she was impressed that I could do that, but to me, it was nothing special. It was what I did when I needed to have dinner and nobody was available to join me. Likewise, traveling the world is outside of some people’s comfort zones. After the past year, it’s normal to me. It’s almost become blase in how unchallenging it is, now that I’ve done it for a year. Don’t get me wrong; I still go into a new city or country with a certain sense of wonder and interest, and I’m still caught by surprise when I see the temples in Thailand or the markets in Marrakesh. But with Google Maps and Google Translate, you can go to a lot of places with a massive safety net that didn’t exist as little as 10 years ago. Even if you don’t know a single word of the local language, many people in bigger cities speak some English, and, failing that, charades is understood around the world, as is a friendly smile and a willingness to try to communicate in any way. While traveling to sub-Saharan Africa or the remote towns of China will still pose a challenge, they’re not as far outside of my comfort zone as they once may have been.
They say that you should do one thing every day that scares you, and that always struck me as a stupid phrase. How am I going to jump out of a plane every day? Or go diving with great white sharks every day? You can’t, and even if you could, you wouldn’t be afraid of that thing for long. But I realized that that’s not what they’re talking about. You should do one thing every day that pushes you a little outside of your comfort zone. That’s a much more practical hurdle to clear. The other morning, I was in the common area of my hostel, hanging out. The hostel had plates of churros and small jars of chocolate set out for breakfast. I watched a guy next to me take a churro, dunk it in the chocolate, bite it, chew, swallow, and then double dip. I wanted to say something since it was a communal jar, but was it really my place to say anything? Should I tell the staff? Should I ignore it and use a different jar? It was my last day at the hostel, so it really wasn’t my problem, was it? But a brief moment of self-reflection suggested that I didn’t want to start the conversation because I didn’t want to deal with the confrontation. It was outside of my comfort zone. So I did the one thing that scared me. I asked him, “Did you just bite that and put it back in the jar?” After a short conversation where I suggested that a better approach might be to break off a bite-size piece, dunk it, and eat that, thus eliminating any potential contamination of the chocolate, he agreed and apologized. I laughed and left the room. Comfort zone extended. It’s not standing up to your middle school bully or telling the Senior Vice President that his idea is stupid (and then explaining why it’s stupid), but it’s a start. It’s just a hair’s breadth outside of my old comfort zone. And that’s growth.
Before I started my trip, when I was living my ‘regular’ life, my calendar was consistently full. I knew what my evening plans were for every night of the week for at least 4 weeks in advance, sometimes as far as 6 or 8 weeks out. It was partly a result of the lifestyle that I’d chosen and a result of having a limited amount of free time. When I started my trip, I had transportation and lodging booked for the first several months, including lists of sights to see in each city, restaurants to go to, areas to avoid, dishes and drinks to try, and everything else. More recently, my travels have been the result of last-minute plans, with many flights booked less than a week in advance and lodging booked just as quickly. As I type this, I’m on a flight from Europe back to the US, and I booked this ticket 2 days ago (thank God for cheap fares purchased with airline miles). There’s a lot of flexibility and freedom that comes with an open itinerary, but it comes with a price as well. Maybe you can’t get a cheap flight to that cool town you just heard about. Maybe you can get there, but all of the decent lodging is taken. Or maybe you’re trying to go at the wrong time of year, and, had you researched it in advance, you would have known to go two weeks ago. But if you take it all with a grain of salt and a flexible attitude, you’ll find that the mediocre hostel you’re staying in actually ends up having a lot of local charm, including a proprietor who claims to smoke hashish for 4 hours every afternoon. Maybe it’s a little hotter than you’d like it to be, but you discover that in the hot season, the locals all take naps and then party until midnight when it’s cooler. You find yourself in new parts of town, talking to new friends, and traveling in a way that can’t be planned for. And you realize that last-minute planning isn’t as bad as you had thought and that you’re resilient enough to overcome any little adversity that you run into.
Remember taking photos on film? Carrying around extra rolls of 35mm film, winding them up and taking them to be developed? You were limited in how many photos you could take because each one cost money, so you limited yourself in the number of photos you took. Those days are long past, but I still find myself with the mentality that I have to be judicious with what photos I take. Over the past year, I’d often see something cool, take a photo, and move on. Later, when looking through my photos, I’d realize that the photo was a little blurry, or poorly framed, or my finger was in it (again), or there was someone in the background who was making a face that threw the entire photo off. It took me months to realize that I could take all of the photos that I wanted, and I’m still trying to engrain that in my head. Take photos. Take more. And then take a few more. What do you have to lose? Maybe you chew up a few extra gig of memory on your phone or your camera’s memory card. But when you get home and you realize that, of the 10 photos you took of that fantastic sunset, #7 is the one that really captures the essence of the scene properly, you can just delete the rest and keep the good ones. You can’t stay on vacation forever, but the photos you take will help you relive those moments for the rest of your life. Good photos lead to good memories, and taking a ton of photos will help you get a few good ones. Learn how to use the burst setting on your phone, too. That can come in handy at times. There was a snake charmer in Marrakesh who I wanted a photo of, but he was charging for photos. So I held my phone at my side and walked past him, with the camera taking burst photos the whole time. When I got to the hostel, I reviewed the 50+ photos that were taken and found the best one. Without burst, I never would have gotten that photo, and it’s a pretty good one. Take more photos.
When I was younger and I first started traveling, I collected shot glasses from each city I visited, both in the US and abroad. The original idea was to get a cool case to display them in. That idea fell by the wayside, and now I have a box full of shot glasses from all over the world that will likely never see the light of day. During my year of travels, I wanted to find a way to remember everyplace I went, but with the constraint that I was living out of a backpack. Then it came to me: Postcards. In every city I went to, I bought a postcard (I think I missed Phnom Penh, though), and I looked for one that had a picture of some of the things that I’d seen. After I left the city, I wrote on it my overall thoughts of my time there, the good, the bad, and the ugly. As I traveled, my stack of postcards grew, but it still took up a small fraction of the space in my bag. When I get home, I may look into getting a large frame to frame them all in as a memento of my year. It’ll be a great conversation piece, and it doesn’t have the same frat-boy vibe as a rack of shot glasses.
Things I’ve gotten good at:
- Washing clothes in the sink so they can dry overnight and be worn the next day
- Ignoring when I smell bad (related to not learining #1 very quickly). I have a small bottle of Febreeze that was a lot more useful than I’d care to admit
- My meditation practice has improved, despite my disasterous performace at the retreat last year. I’m still nowhere near where I want to be, but every day is a small step forward
- Walking for hours. I actually said to myself one day, “That restaurant is only a 45 minute walk away. That’s no problem.” However, all of that walking is probably the only reason why I’m within 10 lbs of my starting weight
Things I still haven’t gotten the hang of:
- Admitting when I don’t understand when people are talking to me in a foreign languge that I’m familiar with. I’m happy to ask for a translation when someone speaks to me in Vietnamese or Arabic, but if someone rattles off a bunch of Spanish at me, I’m just going to smile and nod and act like I knew what was said. Towards the end of my trip, I went to a restaurant in Ronda, Spain and spoke in Spanish to the bartender. He gave me the menu in Spanish, only about 1/2 of which I understood. After I picked a few items, I noticed that other patrons, speaking English, were given menus with English translations. I should have just asked for the English menu, but I was too proud to admit my Spanish wasn’t as good as he thought it was.
- I still can’t convert celsius to farenheit. The math eludes me
Fun things I got to experience:
- La Tomatina, the tomato festival in Bunol, Spain
- Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany
- Songkran in Chiang Mai, Thailand
- Ramadan in Marrakesh, Morocco
- Watching the World Cup at a bar in Barcelona, Spain
Things I’m looking forward to when I get home:
- Spending time with friends and family. I miss having deep and interesting conversations that don’t start with “Where are you from?” or “How long are you in town?”
- Jeans. My travel pants are comfortable, but I miss my denim. It’s a shame that jeans are a terrible choice for long travel (it’s heavy, absorbs moisture and odors, and doesn’t dry quickly), otherwise I would have packed a pair
- Not feeling like I have to do something interesting or see something every day. I’ll still take the occasional day to do nothing, but I don’t think I’ll feel as guilty about it when I do it at home versus when I’m in a cool new city
- Getting back into the gym. I’m only about 10 lbs heavier than when I left, but I lost a lot of muscle mass over the past year, which means I’ve gained a lot of spare tire. That needs to be addressed quickly
Things I can’t wait to not deal with for a while:
- Laundry in the sink
- Trying to find decent wifi so I can email friends or make calls
- Living out of a backpack
- Moving every few days and researching a new town
- Starting conversations at hostels
- Sharing bathrooms in hostels
It’s been a very cool year, with a lot of great experiences. I’m ready to go home and relax with friends for a bit, but I’m sure I’ll get the itch to travel again in the near future. The world is a huge place, and there’s too much cool stuff to see and do. So when that itch strikes, I’ll pack my backpack and be off again.
