Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs to travel the world, how did it go? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs to travel the world, how did it go?

416 pointscercatrova450 comments

In light of the pandemic and countries slowly opening up again, I thought I'd ask this question that appeared back in 2015 [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9439286

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Absolutely worth it, however I'd offer a few short tips:

1. Try to stay in one place for a few months, minimum. If you can stay a year or two, do that. Jumping from city to city every week seems exciting at first, but it quickly makes everywhere feel the same.

2. To quote Lao Tzu, when your work is done, forget it. If you work remotely, actively disconnect at the end of the day. It's too easy to be constantly plugged into the English-speaking media world and ignore what's right in front of you.

3. Try to blend in and adopt local clothing, culture, foods, etc. Read books by local authors, watch local films. A bit obvious, maybe, but I've met many people who insisted on only eating Western food, reading Harry Potter, and watching Netflix while abroad. At that point, why even bother traveling?

1. is a good point, but I wouldn't be too focused on it - just realise that it's ok to do that, so that when you find somewhere you like, or when you're tired from the go go go, you do actually stop and enjoy yourself. Eventually you'll feel like moving on and getting back to it.

I've done three long trips quitting a job first (~20 months, ~12 months, ~6 months) and the first two had several month or more stops, and many week or more stops. A mix is good.

have you found that your life has changed after returning from your travels?

> Try to stay in one place for a few months, minimum.

I second this. 2 months is the minimum amount of time per country, and 2 weeks per city if you expect to get anything more than a handful of good meals and a couple adventures out of a place. My better memories were all from places I stayed for over 2 months, and all have more to do with people I met than the place itself.

> and all have more to do with people I met than the place itself.

Did you speak the local language?

Nope. Until you travel you don't even have the slightest clue what a privilege it is to speak English or be from America. Educated middle/upper class people everywhere except china (where there is almost no english at all) generally speak at the very least broken English, if not fluent english.

That being said:

One of the most interesting people I met was in china, and I'd say complex ideas were 75% communicated in english. Google translate or wechat translate supplemented the conversations.

One of the other people I met was in Korea. His enlgish was probably closer to 50% and complex ideas almost certainly required a translation app. Great memories though.

I would probably have a conversation mediated entirely by google translate once every other week or so, and google translate was generally good enough to get an idea of menu's or communicate to people with absolutely no english ability at all. Nearly all conversations I had in china were translated via WeChat.

Traveling made me regret circumventing the language requirement in college so much.

> Traveling made me regret circumventing the language requirement in college so much.

I can feel this. I did the opposite. Instead of circumventing the requirement, I studied 5 different languages, and then continued 2 on to relative proficiency.

This has been, in my opinion, of tremendous benefit in living on and traveling to multiple continents.

I had an advisor whom I admired who was competent in some 12 or more languages. I was so jealous. I guess I probably still am.

Not to nitpick, please don't use the term "broken English".

You are getting downvoted because it's completely unclear why the term "broken english" is offensive or not fit for use. You also did not propose an alternative.

I promise my use of it was entirely descriptive and not at all a judgement of the person speaking it. I have the utmost respect for anyone who can communicate an idea in another language at any level. I see my self as deficient for not being able to do so and think of myself as lesser and a poor citizen of the world for only speaking english.

The term broken means something was once whole and is no longer. There's plenty of alternatives like non native speaker, beginner speaker, etc. I'm generally extremely non PC but this one is a pet peeve of mine.

As a native English speaker living in Russia, it really made me realize how difficult and nerve racking language learning and speaking is. I don't consider my Russian skills "broken", just very incomplete; a WIP.

Broken in the sense "broken line" (https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=broken+line&ia=web); not "once whole", rather "with breaks (pauses/gaps) in it". Like when a conference breaks for lunch, it doesn't mean the conference was whole and now is inferior.

How could I who learned English after childhood strive for greatness without distinguishing real from broken, i.e with potential for repair?

There is nothing that is equal in this world

That's very interesting. However I am not sure whether being middle/upper class has any association with being able to speak english. Frankly I don't think there is a class distinction in China (despite an economic one maybe).

I would like to point out if helpful that in China our education of the English language is much more geared towards reading rather than speaking. Students are generally equipped with enough to read and understand given adequate time but probably not speaking. However regional difference also may exist (first tier cities vs second, third etc). I used to feel ashamed about our english level in east asia in general. But then again now I think about people in the anglosphere where French and Spanish are largely taught but no one would expect a large proportion will be able to converse in them :)

> Until you travel you don't even have the slightest clue what a privilege it is to speak English

Agreed; almost everywhere, you can find someone who knows some English. The other time I realized who a privilege it is was looking for a second language to learn. There isn't a clear answer if you already know English. The English privilege you might completely miss is that, outside of China, the internet is English-first.

As someone who was on the road for three years, this was my biggest take away. If anything I'd treat one month as an absolute minimum. I'd prefer not to be anywhere less than 3 months. It ends up taking a week just to get truly unpacked.

From that base, you can still do day trips and weekend trips.

The amount of time maybe varies by the location and the visitor, but... how much do you carry that it takes a week to unpack?

Until I started travelling with my wife (and now a child too), one main lesson I learned was "you aren't going to need it" - every time I went travelling it was lighter than the trip before!

I had one carry on for clothing and a backpack for essentials and some electronics.

I guess more accurately it takes a week to get settled in. Most of that time isn't about physically removing the stuff from the bags but more about where you need to put it and what stuff you might need to go rebuy and organize, in the new country.

Sorry, I read that far too literally! Yeah, that's fair enough. I certainly needed large blocks of staying still, but didn't feel the need to stay anywhere as long as three months - month long blocks were more common for me.

Agreed - 3 months minimum, esp if working while traveling.

This allows to alternate between excursion weekends and relaxing weekends.

I also agree with the "1-2 years" content above - I'd really like to see the seasons cycle through in any particular place I stop.

At what point is this not "traveling" but rather "moving frequently".

When traveling is your lifestyle for some amount of time, I don't really think there is much of a difference while you are living that lifestyle.

> My better memories were all from places I stayed for over 2 months, and all have more to do with people I met than the place itself.

How did you go about meeting people in the first place?

Dating apps, couch surfing, and getting out of the house & going where the people are. Expat groups on Facebook and WhatsApp, too.

Yep, dating apps didn't work great for me at all because I have the misfortune of being both unattractive and picky, but couch surfing hangouts work fantastically, especially for meeting local people. Walking around at least puts you in places where people can talk to you, occasionally they do. Wearing unique or attention grabbing things gives people an excuse to talk to you. I always choose trains and buses to travel, conversations are more common there. Hostels are a very easy way meet other travelers and get your social fix when you need it. Often times the staff are friendly enough and if you stay in one hostel long enough or visit with them, the staff might integrate you into their social life. Most hostel staff like to travel, too. Becoming a regular at any kind of place will almost certainly get you conversations with staff. A lot of people you meet in hostels are traveling from the same country or ones you are going to visit, so you meet those people there.

> both unattractive and picky

I know this is HN, but I do have to say: good luck! :-D

Yo forgot the third parameter in the function..

"Know thyself" self-awareness is a strength :)

As someone with mild social anxiety, the thought of doing something like that is utterly alien, even in my own country let alone somewhere else. I don't mean in a "i wouldn't do that" sort of way, but in an "i cannot even imagine/does not compute" sort of way.

Anyhow, good on you for living life :)

I also have/had mild social anxiety. When things open up go stay for a couple days in a hostel somewhere (use hostelworld), make sure to find one with a reasonably large common room and be in it, read a book or do some work. It will probably be therapeutic. Not much is forced and socialness tends to just happen. If someone sits near you or says hi ask "Where are you from? How long are you here? What have you done here?" and roll with it. If you do some research on whats in the area or cool food you want to try, you have an immediate opportunity to invite someone to do an activity. It will feel like sitting on an airplane with the door open to go sky diving to you, exhilirating if you manage to make yourself do it.

A useful psychological hack: you have a bit of a desire to do this, hell, it's scary, right? So invite a friend and make it your goal to plan lots of things - its easier to do do something for others quite a lot of the time. Be explict you are doing this. You'll probably find there are some great bits, some other bits you cant control that are exhausting, etc. Then do another trip. Plan to invite that friend. Plan for the good bits and to avoid the worst bits. Then just go by yourself!

The first run through gives you a motivation to do something challenging and consider what you would think people want to do, even if its awks. The second, you take the learnings and reward yourself

I have mild social anxiety. Maybe more than mild. I have to say sometimes it is easier to be social in another setting. For example, in hostels the expectation is to just start talking for no reason and tell that lone traveler that you are indeed exploring the city and inviting them to join you.

Another thing I've found is taking a class - in my case kickboxing classes led to quite a few new friends.

I don't have as much courage to do that in my home country.

> even in my own country let alone somewhere else

It's much easier "somewhere else". Whatever stupid thing you do, you won't meet these people again. It's liberating.

protip: If the travel nurse during a pandemic from Philadelphia really thinks the riskiest thing she’s done is downloading Hinge, you can do it too.

At least in Europe (can't speak from personal experience elsewhere) you can easily find "Language Exchange" type meetups. Depending on the city, it will be a healthy mix of locals, immigrants, and tourists. If you speak English fluently, you'll typically have a lot of locals eager to talk with you to practice their English, and in turn you can learn/practice the local language in an open environment.

This is lower stress than trying to go to a random bar and strike up a conversation when I don't know the local language very well, and if you're staying long-term, it's a natural way to develop friendships with locals.

How do you avoid getting mugged or murdered from people you couch surf with? Basically avoiding the scammers...? I feel like in Europe, there are so many street scams and that if police aren't even willing to curb that issue, what recourse would you have if someone were to harm you while couch surfing at some random place? The risk feels pretty high to me. I guess you would have to travel really light in these situations?

It's actually very hard to get murdered in Europe if you're actively trying to avoid it. Same for getting scammed. The overwhelming majority of people are decent. The ones who aren't make the news because their behaviour is so unusual.

I highly recommend you give international travel a try!

In civilized parts of the world you don't need to be actively trying to avoid being attacked.

Staying in hostels is great for this purpose. They have private rooms as well, not just shared dorms.

My friend met someone travelling who consciously focussed on creating new and interesting experiences and connections with people, rather than actual places. It led him to some pretty awesome and amazing adventures.

Yes, definitely. I find that around 10 days is needed to feel 'at home' somewhat, know where the market is etc, and 2 or 3 months to feel like you live there, depending on the language. It happens quite quickly. It's very satisfying to have lived in a variety of countries.

How do you manage to stay long-term on a foreign country, immigration-wise?

Depending on your nationality, a lot of countries have flexible tourist visas. For example, Americans can visit Armenia for 6 months, Albania for 12 months, Georgia for 12 months, India for 6 months at a time (up to 10 years), and so on.

In Europe, you also have many countries outside of the Schengen area, meaning that you can do three months in one then hop to another. E.g. spend 3 months in Berlin, then 3 months in Kyiv, then 3 months in Paris, then three months in Belgrade.

I would be careful getting in and out of Schengen. That would probably work a couple of time. But immigration can refuse it without causes, too.

Maybe in the future post-COVID it will be more strict, but my experience has been that it isn’t.

Not being strict makes it harder. You can sometimes get in and out without the proper proof that you actually left (your passport isn't always stamped when you cross the border). Then when you do finally get someone asking questions you can't prove the dates and they won't let you in.

Just make sure you get the right Visa. I have a work Visa for India, but I'm allowed to got to India for work reasons, I'd need a different Visa to be a tourist. Sometimes countries get funny about that.

As long as you don't need to look for employment locally, it's relatively easy and inexpensive to get a long-term (12 months plus) visa. I enquired with immigration lawyers in three different EU countries where this was possible, and ended up obtaining a three-year visa in a fourth country. I would estimate this cost about 500 EUR.

If you have a lot of money (hundreds of thousands up to millions), you can effectively buy residency in most countries around the world.

Other countries allow border-running to renew your visa, some countries issue longer visa's on arrival, etc, etc.

Mostly, this all depends on your financial means, which country you choose to spend a longer time in, your levels of determination, and the skill of the immigration lawyer you choose.

It can be a huge hassle if you are independently employed, even in a country with lax visa requirements.

Talk to other expats who have already stayed long-term in your country of interest. Anybody who has been there for enough time will know their way around the immigration & visa system and people are usually very happy to share what they know.

I agree with your points, just want to add: The best way to connect with the culture and people is to get a local job, or studying at a local university or at least taking courses.

EDIT:

Basically become an immigrant, even if it's only for a couple of months. Ideally don't plan your return, make your journeys open ended!

I have a question to people saying "get a local job"

What kind of jobs do you mean? Doesn't it look suspicious for a middle aged guy who looks from a different part of the world trying to get a job he clearly does not need?

To clarify, I don't feel above any job, when I first emigrated 12 years ago I was cleaning toilets and working construction, but I had no qualifications and I didnt meet anyone fun. I am also a TERRIBLE waiter.

I’m thinking of restaurant work and similar.

I don’t think you need to worry about that, in more exotic locations you will be so out of place anyway and they will have no way to judge if you’re rich or poor. And in any case people generally don’t care that much about others.

And even when they do, just accept it, it’s pretty unlikely anyone will resent you.

> Doesn't it look suspicious for a middle-aged guy who looks to be from a different part of the world trying to get a job he clearly does not need?

Not at all. If you can find a company which needs or wants an employee like you, whether it's due to your language and cultural background, or because of other skills which you possess, generally they'll just be really happy that they found you.

In some countries, such as Costa Rica, you cannot work legally (note: "legally") as a non-resident. They take it pretty seriously there.

isn't it like most countries? there's always some kind of work permit you need to have

Getting an office job in an unknown country for a couple of months sounds so weird and alien and awesome

I wouldn't get an office job, I have worked in restaurants and similar, those colleagues are way more fun. Could be fun to try being a salaryman, but it's probably much harder, need work permits etc.

For that matter, I wouldn't get one here either, if I could earn the same as I do know as a sous chef I'd quit in a heartbeat...

I used to work for a company based outside the US, but with a significant US presence. A colleague embedded in another team in the foreign office for three months and ended extending it to four. Probably the easiest way to do it because the company sorted out visa issues (or if he kept it to 89 days, he'd just be traveling for business), and he had a job on both ends of it.

> A bit obvious, maybe, but I've met many people who insisted on only eating Western food[...] At that point, why even bother traveling?

Whenever I have a guide (either professional or a local friend), this is often strangely a lot of work. Particularly the tour companies I've gone with in China insist on trying to get me a Western breakfast. If I wanted pancakes and sausage I would have just stayed at home and cooked my own! Give me the stuff you like. I may not end up liking it, but there's a pretty decent chance I will.

They are probably used to closed-minded arrogant Westeners whining aloud about not getting their cornflakes. Unfortunately.

I also don't get people who won't at least try local customs like eating cooked fish on rice with green tea in the morning, but there are plenty of them. These people usually don't do well in really different countries and complain and whine and compare to home all the time instead of curious observing / understanding. Real travelling, which is about learning and immersing and broadening your mental horizon, and not about conquering some beach with your ass is just not for them.

I can't imagine a lot of close minded arrogant westerners doing a lot of travel to begin with.

I think it's more likely that they want you to feel more at home. I was visiting an overseas team in Bangalore for a week and the team took me out to ... a steakhouse. Most of the team didn't eat beef but they wanted to take me somewhere they thought I'd like. I was appreciative of their consideration but ended up ordering the chicken, felt weird otherwise.

You’d be surprised.

There was a roaring trade in American coca-cola in Beijing because enough people wanted to avoid the local version. As a non-American, I couldn’t taste the difference, but the imported stuff was 3x the price.

Another phrase I heard often was an irate “This would never happen in America!”

Usually I try to avoid American Coca-Cola and prefer Mexican Coca-Cola. If Mexican Coca-Cola is not available, I prefer not to drink it. While visiting US, I buy the overpriced Mexican version.

And yes, the taste is different, even for Coca-Cola light.

From what I know, this is because the american coca-cola is sweetened with corn syrup, while in other countries it's usually cane sugar.

I'm not sure if the corn syrup thing has changed in recent years or not.

AFAIK the Coca-Cola light doesn't have any sugar, so the usual cane sugar explanation does not apply.

The difference in taste is the glass bottle vs aluminum can or plastic bottle.

> I was visiting an overseas team in Bangalore for a week and the team took me out to ... a steakhouse.

Right, this is exactly the problem I was talking about! And to be fair, there probably are a lot of Americans who would prefer a steakhouse; and many more who want to try "real" Indian food but just aren't ready for how different cultural food tastes actually are.

But when you've eaten chicken feet a dozen times, and incorporated "century egg" into your own personal cooking repertoire, it's a bit frustrating to make your way to a third-tier city in China and be fed breaded deep-fried bits of chicken with a bland sweet-and-sour sauce!

It's not just Americans. Plenty of Korean's can't live without Korean food every meal. Plenty of Japanese can't live without Japanese food every meal. I know Italian friends who say their parents couldn't live without Italian food every meal. I know the first 2 culture sell tour packages where you'll be served Korean or Japanese food for every meal while on your tour abroad

I know Greeks that can't eat without bread and feta any meal

Heh. My office in Boston is right by where Asian package tour companies stop their buses and send their customers out with docents in their language. And yes, they never stop for food even after walking 5 miles through the city, which is for the best, as it would be an awful time to discover that you're lactose intolerant.

It’s not just Americans. My parents used to travel with a mini rice cooker, small bag of rice, and canned Chinese food when they travel. They have lived in Canada since 1990.

They stopped doing that after the Boston Marathon bombing cause of the airport security.

One of the highlights of their trip to France in 2002 was in Nice. Their hotel was near a Chinese Grocery and was able to get BBQ Pork and Soy Chicken.

Five years ago they went for a two week tour of Australia from China (after visiting relatives in China). Every meal on that tour was in a Chinese restaurant.

> They are probably used to closed-minded arrogant Westeners whining aloud about not getting their cornflakes.

Cornflakes are one of the easiest things to find in China. They're sold in local grocery stores from some German brand.

http://globalfoods.rs/hahne-3/

> They are probably used to closed-minded arrogant Westeners whining aloud about not getting their cornflakes. Unfortunately.

Others have pointed out that lots of cultures have this problem: I read a Chinese newspaper article a few years ago about mainland Chinese bring suitcases full of instant noodles to eat when traveling abroad.

But while there are certainly Westerners like that, I don't think they were the cause of my problem. First of all, lunch and dinner on these tours was typically "Chinese" food, but something which was clearly targeted at a Western palate (which was perhaps even more frustrating). I think ironically, it was probably people who did want to try "authentic" cuisine -- or thought they did -- who were causing some of my problems. My guess is that they had people say they wanted "authentic cuisine", but when given actually authentic cuisine, didn't like it -- it didn't taste like the "authentic" cuisine in the Chinese restaurants at home.

Secondly, it probably does help people to deal with the new thing if they have something familiar. If you want to try something new but have never been outside the US, "three genuine Chinese meals a day for two weeks" is really throwing you in in the deep end. "Western breakfast and pseudo-Chinese lunch and dinner" probably is a much better way for those kinds of people to experience something new.

I experienced this when traveling Thailand; it was nearly impossible to get food that was spicy enough to match my Atlanta, Georgia (US) expectations. The staff would snicker as they brought the chili's out.

In many ways it made me realize just how good multiple cultures have combined to make my "home" food good.

Food in Thailand is often not that spicy by default. The condiments on the table are what allow everyone to adjust the spiciness to their preferred level. So, I wouldn't say it's necessarily the staff thinking you can't handle it, it might just be how the dishes are always prepared.

As a Thai person, the cooks know that if they have non Thai guests, especially "Farangs", they need to tone down their spicyness. You have to insist them or bring a local to have them make it hot.

My brother convinced his taxi driver he wanted what the natives ate and got the driver's mother to cook a real meal for him. I was elsewhere that day, and I regret missing it (We were on the same vacation, I signed up for a tour that day because there was a sight I wanted to see that he couldn't afford)

If you can pull that one off you will have got the best and mroe authentic experience.

If possible (they won't always accommodate) ask the desk clerk at your hotel (assuming they're a local, not always the case especially at hostels) what they eat for breakfast/lunch and where you can get that. After a terrible "English breakfast" of undercooked bacon & burned sausage at a tourist restaurant in a small Indian tourist town, I asked the fellow manning the small hotel what he had for breakfast and where I could get it. None of the tourist places served pav bhaji (or "baji pao" as I'd understood him to call it) but when I found the little hole-in-the-wall place he directed me to I was rewarded with a new experience, a dish I hadn't tried before, and one I really enjoyed and continued eating for breakfast during the remainder of my short stay.

It can take some doing in some places to convince people that you (in my case a Westerner) really are interested in their food, culture, etc.. Learning a bit of the language can help. I was happy to be able to memorize "ek paav bhaajee aur ek samosa aur chaay chaahie" and order for myself in Hindi, hoping that if there were any complications the server would speak English as that's as far as I could go. But people appreciate that a lot, even just learning "my name is, what's your name, how are you" etc.

When I said "my name is sequoia, what is your name" to a taxi driver they would sometimes say "You speak hindi?!" incredulously, to which I'd reply "well I wouldn't go that far..."

Your third point is maybe a little narrow minded. People travel for different reasons and long term travel can be stressful and uncomfortable for a lot of people, including myself. If I just spent all day in an unfamiliar country by myself where I know absolutely no one, I don't speak the language, I've been trying new foods for weeks, and I'm exhausted because I did 15 miles and 8 hours of walking today - yeah, maybe I want some comfort food and to watch some Netflix. It doesn't mean I'm not appreciating my travels. If anything it lets me appreciate my traveling more.

> only eating Western food, reading Harry Potter, and watching Netflix while abroad.

I specifically wrote only in my comment.

I'm with you on food, food is universal, but when I read a book or watch a movie I want it to be in a language I'm fully fluent in.

Sorry maybe my sentence structure was confusing there. I meant for only to apply to Netflix and Harry Potter too. As in, it’s okay to watch Netflix on a trip, but not exclusively.

Although this isn't the way I travel, I agree we shouldn't put down other travel styles. For some people the pleasure of travel comes from merely being in a foreign place.

I love watching local TV stations for a bit to get the vibe

> 3. Try to blend in and adopt local clothing, culture, foods, etc. Read books by local authors, watch local films. A bit obvious, maybe, but I've met many people who insisted on only eating Western food, reading Harry Potter, and watching Netflix while abroad. At that point, why even bother traveling?

Depends on the purpose/intentions of the travel.

While I feel similarly about much of my own travel as you do, it's worth recognizing for many people, travel (or at least some of their travel) is not about having some sort of cultural experience or broadening their horizons.

For many people, travel is simply about getting to relax on vacation in a setting they like that they can't get at home.

----------

Your average Brit on vacation in Spain is not there because they have any interest in Spanish culture or Spaniards. They're there because they wanted a warm beach and sun and couldn't get them in their home country.

I'm reluctant to criticize too heavily that not everyone traveling is always doing so out of a desire for cultural enrichment. I certainly am not traveling with any desire for that in mind when I go visit a beach in Florida or a ski area in Colorado as an American.

I agree with your point, but the OP is asking about people who go travel the world, not take two weeks in Torremolinos as a summer break.

This post is specifically about traveling the world while working though, not a relaxing beach holiday - so I think the advice is valid on that basis.

On top of this, I feel that part of traveling is expanding one's awareness and empathy, something the world could use much more of. It really does give perspective to "walk a mile" in someone else's shoes.

Hmm, maybe it's an American thing but when I say 'travel' it really doesn't include a beach holiday. That would be called 'vacation' or 'a trip'. 'Travel', to me at least, implies some sort of cultural/sightseeing intent, even if it's just going to Paris for a visit to the Louvre and a few nice meals but talking to nobody.

In American usage, travel just means changing your longitude and attitude.

It can be just for work, or just to perform an errand for the family.

I'm an American and I make the same distinction. Cultural travel is not on the radar of the typical vacationer, so most people don't make the distinction.

I'd add "tourists" as a third category, ranging from the one week family trip somewhere new to see the sights up to and including those racing city to city, hostel to hostel, site to site, collecting likes on instagram or whatever.

> Try to blend in

I agree whole heartedly. I'd gone one further and add "become a regular". Get coffee/beer/food from the same place every day and consider enrolling in a language/art/something short course. It's amazing who you can meet over the course of a month or two - I met a bunch of interesting people including my wife.

How do I do this? Specifically the clothing part. How can I best plan ahead to not label myself as a clueless tourist? I imagine my American standard of dress is too casual for most places, but beyond generalizations like that, I'm clueless.

You may not be able to do a lot of "planning ahead" but when you're there you can look at how people dress and emulate that. In some places it might mean buying tighter fitting clothes than you might wear in the states (some places in Europe a lot of men wear much tighter clothing & style their hair more than the average heterosexual man would in North America), or getting flipflops instead of sneakers or vice versa, seeing what sort of bags people carry. I wouldn't think of the goal as being looking exactly like a local so much as not wearing things that immediately peg you as an outsider, like if the adult men in that area uniformly use shoulder bags or briefcases & you're carrying around a backpack.

It can also have a lot to do with nonverbal and body language–observe how close people stand to one another, how much eye contact if any, whether people greet strangers & if so how, how people queue, etc.. It took me a while when visiting India to learn that people don't stand on line the same as they do in the USA. I put my bag down in an airport line to get out a document, and as the line moved forward, people just started going around me, because I was not immediately moving forward with the line. In the USA this would be considered very rude, but in India (at least in my limited experience) it was considered typical–the line doesn't wait for you, move it or lose it. I got with the program quickly after I learned that.

And this should go without saying but don't display expensive or flashy things (jewelry, cameras, possibly fancy cell phone etc.) in an environment you're not familiar with.

Nowhere on earth will a nice button up shirt, dark sneakers or leather shoes, simple pants and a one colour sweater not be good

When I quit my job and went travelling I used this framework:

1. Go via land. You see everything in between all the places you should see as a tourist. You immerse yourself in how a place actually feels. You meet people who aren’t just trying to extract money from you. I cycled, because I like cycling, but any form of transport works.

2. My algorithm was something like “Go east. Stay somewhere if it’s interesting, until you get bored. Continue going east.” I didn’t have a fixed itinerary, but I did have some framework.

That was the basis of it, I think. I cycled from London to Italy, stopped for a while in Italy, cycled on to Greece, then fell in love (with the place and somebody in particular). I met some of my best friends, worked on side projects, volunteered for charities, and ended up staying there for several months. I skipped forward to India on a plane, cycled across India, then returned back to Greece.

My partner in Greece wanted to visit the Middle East and Central Asia, but she wasn’t quite as excited about cycling through the desert as I was, so we bought a van and drove — to Central Asia, and everything in between.

My framework worked extraordinarily well. If I have one regret, I think it was not making an effort to interact with more people. You do that a lot more naturally when travelling by land, but you still need to put in effort to make it happen.

For example, I was up late in a bar in an Italian village, and met one of the locals. It was a long cycle ride back to the place I was staying so he offered me his spare room. Turns out he lived with his parents and the next day his elderly Italian mother cooked us pasta for lunch. Possibly one of the best meals of my life.

I wish I had done more of that. Just hanging out in bars and making friends. And not tourist bars — real bars. Knowing the local language better would probably help.

Sounds like an incredible experience. Were you able to transition back into working easily?

One of the side-projects I built on the trip turned into my full-time job. :)

That's awesome.

What languages do you speak?

Great stories btw also, it sounds like you really made the most of traveling and doing so much by bicycle is quite a feat!

Why did I follow him...? I don't know. Why do things happen as they do in dreams? All I know is that, when he beckoned... I had to follow him. From that moment, we traveled together, East. Always... into the East

For those curious, this is a quote from Marius in the game Diablo

Where did you find places to sleep? Hotels are not guaranteed, and camping is not allowed everywhere. Without having a pre-planned journey, it seems a bit risky.

It depends. You can ask permission to pitch up overnight on someone's land, or you can discreetly find a hidden spot.

Most people are friendly and unafraid of strangers.

It was never a problem in 2 years of traveling. My priority order was hostel, Airbnb, camping, hotel. Camping got higher priority if there was good nature or it was expensive.

Airbnbs (the kind where you stay in somebody's spare room, not a whole place to yourself) are plentiful and cheap outside major cities, and mean you get to meet locals. I had so many good experiences doing that. More often than not I would book an Airbnb in the afternoon for that night, when I had figured out how far I would get that day.

Homestays are abundant and cheap in India and other parts of Asia. $10 for dinner/bed/breakfast. I didn't camp in India once because they were so cheap and abundant -- I'd rather eat delicious food and meet a local family.

Wild camping is much more of a normal thing outside of the US, even if it is technically not allowed. You just find somewhere discreet. In Europe, I was discreet but always welcomed if somebody found me. In Asia nobody gives a shit, you can just do what you like.

How old were you when you did the trip? How long was the trip, 3 months/1 year? Did you work before to finance the trip? What was the total cost?

Late 20s. 2 years overall, but that was interspersed with doing work in Athens. I would say maybe 1 year of travel and 1 year of working, overall.

I had spent ~10 years working in tech so I had some savings. Contract work also helped.

Not sure what the total cost was exactly, but the cycling part was cheap. It's ridiculously cheap if you're in Asia or cheaper parts of Europe (Greece, eastern Europe, etc). It got more expensive when I bought a van...

What was it like cycling in India? Did you feel safe? I mean from both the traffic and crime.

I'm thinking about doing this at some point, but I get nervous sometimes when I see the traffic in the cities there. Maybe its not as bad on the roads outside the cities?

The traffic was wild. As you say, the traffic is less bad outside of cities, and if you avoid the busier roads. But even still, lots of trucks barreling down small dirt roads, weaving in and out of cows, and things like that.

I felt very safe in terms of crime. Subjectively I felt safe, but also objectively crime rates are low in India, I think. (Obviously hard to compare crime rates and I forget the exact metric I am basing this off.)

Even though my bike and laptop were probably a year's salary for somebody there, I never felt like it or myself were in danger.

Toward the end of the trip I remember being chased by a scooter honking at me and waving me down. He handed me my wallet. Turned out I had left the zipper on my bag open and my wallet had fallen out. He found it on the ground, saw me in the distance, and chased after me to hand it back. I had maybe $100 in cash in there (which is like $1000 adjusting for purchasing power) and of course it was all there.

Everyone in India is so kind and welcoming. There is no concept of personal space or privacy, but that also means everybody is your friend.

I have spent probably about a year in total in india over various trips, cities and rurally a bit of cycling though usually just for getting around locally. It’s much easier outside big cities, wrt traffic. It seems a bit easier in the south, too. I’ve never felt remotely worried about crime from a personal safety POV, but having something lifted from you on a sleeper train is not that unlikely (those steel-cable net bag things you can padlock to something to contain your bag are handy). It was never an issue in homesteads, and getting your washing done regardless of how sketchy a place you think you’re staying always just seems to work - you always get your clothes back and never anyone else’s. A bit like takuhaibin in Japan - accept it’s magic and just relax and enjoy yourself more.

I've never done a trip this long, but I have to say I like your idea of traveling by land, especially by bicycle. I'm reminded of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and his commentary of "being in the scene" instead of "watching it on the TV that is a car window" (paraphrasing here).

Also going by land is cheaper, and lower impact for those who care about that. It does cut your options, requires more time, and at least in America there's an awful lot of nothing in between even the non-touristy places.

I hiked the Haute Route (Switzerland and France) with my father and his friends in 2019, and while it was only two weeks, it was such a wonderful experience.

That exact same sentiment from ZAMM inspired me too.

I’m glad I did it on a bicycle rather than a motorbike. There’s something more human-scale and less intimidating about it.

Well, in relatively populated places like Europe and India at least. I imagine I might feel differently if I cycled through the empty bits of the US or Kazakhstan.

To get a feel of what it's like to cycle through vast swaths of empty land, I highly suggest "A bivvy, a phone and a drone: cycling home from China." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmdxs_0yYwc

This man literally rode through Eurasia up to the UK, sleeping on the side of the road. I stumbled upon it recently and found it quite endearing.

when travelling i always make it a point to use couchsurfing or similar communities to find hosts to stay with. it's the easiest way to get in touch with locals. and they are expecting you.

similar to your story, one of my most memorable unplanned experiences was missing a train at christmas eve in poland, and then joining christmas dinner with a host i found on short notice.

Did not quit my job, but instead went full remote in 2018 (age 55 at the time).

Still doing it, but the pandemic forced me to stay in one country for just about a year now.

In that year I put down roots, got long term visas and maybe will spend another few years there while we see how things shape out this and next year.

But ya, 2-3 months minimum in a place is what you need, with just a small backpack.

Make local friends.

Don't hang around or go out with other tourists or expats. This is the kiss of death.

Make it a rule to eat only the food of the city or the country that you find yourself in.

Learn a few words of the language "hello", "thank you", "bathroom", "stop", etc.

Don't think people are less than you. They're not. They want the same things as you.

As an introvert, being forced to make friends with people who speak another language and look the opposite of me (black guy in Asia), was exactly the ticket.

Well recommended to do it.

The main thing I would say - is have a mission when you travel. Seeing the sights and drinking the bars and mingling with other tourists and shtupping the local girls is fun, but not a mission.

You will get bored after some time of doing that.

Have some particular work or meaning to each day to keep you grounded, and you can do the moving around for a super-long time.

You will find that you'll set some schedules for work, play and discoveries - regardless of where you are.

Just don't quit your job. Instead go remote (even if you have savings). Ok?

As someone following your footsteps a few decades behind, this is gold, thank you. One question, how do you handle work commitments with the uncertainty of travel? One of my best adventures is being stuck on an island for the night due to unforeseen circumstances, alas without much in the way of network connectivity.

I’ve never really had a problem with internet etc.

On travel days I let people know I’m offline.

I stay in Airbnb’s a lot and find a coffee shop backup nearby usually.

I have local SIM card when generous data plan when I arrive at the airport. This is good tor sharing with my computer in a pinch.

Asia has great internet - better than Europe, Australia or North America so that is rarely a problem.

Transport is generally reliable and effective and on time so one rarely will be away and offline for a while.

Being unavailable is truly not something that comes up on the radar more than a couple times a year.

(Unless you woke up naked in a drug induced stupor in a ladyboy’s room in Pattaya 2 days after an all-nighter) hahaha.

so happy to have more open access to SIM cards and data packages now in case of an emergency when we used to travel. I remember my family used to go no phones just local payphones and maps.

Well that last sentence took quite a turn haha. Thanks for the insights.

Fascinating mind if you share some more details? Do you have kids? How about family? Do you consider a city your anchor or you feel totally like a world citizen

Yes I do have a kid. She will move here with me when she finishes high school (currently lives with her mom).

This kind of life is not really compatible for younger children unless you have the funds to travel with them and can home school them as you go.

I try to maintain at least 3 permanent or semi-permanent bases in 3 countries but that’s now down to 2 because of the pandemic.

Yes, it’s good to have a few anchor cities where you put down some roots and make good local friends - they can help you settle in. A bunch of fellow tourists or expats are not deep in the culture and will not be of great help which is why I don’t pal around with them.

It’s quite easy to start a business in other countries if you have local friends to point you in the right directions and translate for you. Another reason not to hang around other tourists. And that will diversify your income - not every business needs to be online.

No one knows how the world will turn out in the next few years, so I believe in hedging my bets and having options both in income and second and tertiary places to potentially live if needs be.

Sort of like a prepper - but international.

Follow the Nomad Capitalist channel on YouTube. It’s a good resource and has great tips.

Fantastic details and stories, thank you.

fyi your website in your profile is not resolving.

Weird - must have been some temporary dns issues. Thanks.

> Have some particular work or meaning to each day to keep you grounded, and you can do the moving around for a super-long time.

What kind of mission can you suggest someone might have while traveling that will keep them grounded?

I really meant have projects related to work or hobby. Don’t just travel.

Example some people do YouTube channel.

Some do side projects.

Others attend short term language classes in the country they’re visiting.

Some start businesses.

Have a purpose - or you’ll end up drinking and partying every night.

Thanks

I did something similar a few years back. I went fully remote while working at a startup and traveled through Asia. While I agree with many points, my experience was more of a mixed bag.

1. Not every job is suitable to do while traveling. Especially if it's kind of unstable like early stage startups. Putting of fires at work on a flaky internet connection while sweating from heat is not that fun and leaves you quite exhausted. It's also hard to plan for anything more serious, if you have to be available when anything breaks.

2. You really need to stay in one place much longer when having a job (2-3 months), as you will have much less free time to enjoy wherever you are.

3. If you work 5 days a week it will limit you excursions into less developed places (with really bad internet) to only 2 days. Quite often these places are what's the best about area you are in.

4. I think going out with expats is not a complete no, no. Just don't do that exclusively. You can get some great tips and avoid many stupid mistakes thanks to other fellow travelers. Especially when you are in a new place that's really different from what you already know.

5. Try to connect with people as much as possible. At the end of the day, that's what you'll remember and what will affect you the most.

I'm interested in a lot of these responses because they don't reflect my experience - I wonder if that's the result of sampling bias (e.g. people with good travel experiences are drawn to this thread) or if I'm the aberration.

Granted, I didn't quit my job, but after graduate school I moved to Germany from the US and took a job consulting. For three years I lived in places like Berlin, Madrid, Split...etc for 3-9 months at a time. There were enjoyable things about it, sure, but I really underestimated how difficult it was to discard your entire social circle and start over. A few years ago I moved back to the US, in a city where a lot of my friends had moved to, and it was probably the most positive decision I've ever made in my life.

I also feel like my time abroad didn't "broaden my horizons" all that much, and I find myself skeptical about the claims that international travel makes you a better person. I think what you get out of travel is heavily based on how you decide to relate to places and people, and merely leaving your country does not guarantee this will change.

Thanks for providing the opposite perspective, it's important to know that going abroad doesn't make your life magically better.

There's probably a strong interaction effect with charisma. People who have an easy time making friends tend to see extended travel periods as a non-stop adventure of fresh experiences. Whereas if you're more of an introvert who takes a long time to warm to people, it can be a protracted period of crushing isolation.

If you are an introvert traveling, I strongly recommend lots of reading. Bring a nice camp chair (I have tried several, my current favorite is the Helinox Sunset with rockers and a small camp-stool-turned-ottoman) and sit in the shady spots in parks. Find the best library reading rooms, museums, etc. and just read. Draw if you’re into that.

Negotiate this time with your extroverted traveling partners if necessary.

3-9 months seems long for the average American in terms of travel, but it really isn't long enough to gain a social foothold and enough understanding in the local language to feel a certain connectedness to the place. I absolutely think any travel abroad does broaden one's horizons, but perhaps not to the extent that it's touted in pop culture. I served in the US Peace Corps for two years, and the experience utterly shattered the person I was before, and re-formed me into someone far more understanding, compassionate, empathetic, etc. But that type of experience is highly focused with a great emphasis on cultural integration and language-learning.

I definitely agree that 3-9 months (especially at the low end of that range) isn't enough to feel sufficiently rooted somewhere, but one quick thing I would add is that I did all of this while speaking German fluently already, so my time in Germany at least was not consumed by trying to surmount any language barrier. I'm just someone who makes friends through my existing friends (instead of strangers), so starting from zero isn't something I do well.

I am going to put in the most plain brutal way - if you're white (and good looking), you will have the most amazing time traveling internationally.

It is depressing but this is the cold hard truth.

I'd love to hear concretely what you guys who traveled actually gained from traveling the world? Because I always hear that it's really exciting and you get to go to exciting places - but what exactly did you gain in terms of perspectives besides your instagram pictures and cocktail stories? I've never get beyond this superficial in hearing people's travel stories online and IRL.

Maybe it's just me; but the idea of going from one place to another for 2 weeks, to take pictures and get led around by locals tourist industry is the very definition of Western Consumerism. If you want to immersed into a culture, wouldn't you want to commit to learning the language and go to your local city's meetup for that language - instead of going to a foreign country with a phrasebook. If you want to dance, wouldn't you want take a class for salsa, shuffle, tango at your local club instead of a single experience at a beach bar at some exotic locale. If you want to meet new people and break out of your comfort zone, wouldn't you want to make friends locally where you can build up that friendship or relationship consistently by dinners, outings instead of a single chance encounter? Listening to live music at some exotic place vs. going to local musicians jams where you're up on the stage playing, take instagram pictures of Prague vs. urban sketching your local city streetscape… I could keep going.

Maybe I'm wrong. Please tell me know what you've personally gained from traveling the world!

I've been to around 50 countries across 6 continents, hitchhiked tens of thousands of kilometres and never have I even taken a single picture.

These experiences are not for others, they are for yourself and they give you the capacity to understand stories and circumstances that otherwise would be foreign to you.

I take pictures (but relatively few - maybe a couple times in a week-long trip) just to look at them in the future - they're great for bringing out memories of a certain place, situation in life etc.

I take lots of photos, but mostly as part of the experience not being the experience. I'm not gonna waste time setting up for selfies or clearing out people to get a group photo or any nonsense like that - most of my pictures will never have me in it - but they're photos that show my take on the history, culture, scenery and beauty of the area that i'm experiencing and I love to share that with friends/family people who may not be able to do it.

I travel for curiosity - so photography helps me capture it in a way that i can go back and study the history, find other photos, see how its changed, connect the dots, fill in timelines - learn more and discover more that i may not have been able to do with being consumed in being there in the moment.

The only selfie i ever took was me standing on top of a 14er... which was a huge accomplishment for me at the time but i never share that with anyone but my family - otherwise they'd never believe it :)

never understood the fascination with NOT taking photos but also i've never understood those who take photos to make them the center of attention either (the instagrammers)

Do you keep a journal though?

Nobody is talking about quitting their job to travel for 2 weeks. This is about months or years of travel.

You have a very stereotypical view of what "traveling the world" is, so it's not surprising that you're dismissive.

> If you want to immersed into a culture, wouldn't you want to commit to learning the language and go to your local city's meetup for that language - instead of going to a foreign country with a phrasebook.

Meet-ups are not even remotely comparable to actually being there. This is especially true for non-Western countries that haven't been permeated by Starbucks/McDonalds global American culture. The idea that Google Street View and a Wikipedia article can replace real life is absolutely absurd.

Personally, it would take books to write about how living abroad has concretely impacted my life. I don't even know where to start. It has exposed me to ideas and places that I previously had zero knowledge of.

I'll summarize by saying the trajectory of my life has been shifted dramatically by traveling, and this is obvious when I compare myself to the people I grew up around.

So far in some of the comments. I've gotten the same answer, "it changed my life!"; "I heard some new stories from the countries I stayed and it changed my perspective!"; "and I'm different from people back home now!"; and a subtle swipe that OP is dismissive and maybe "small-minded"; and I love it and appreciate your guys feedback!

Allow me to share my experience of being immersed in American culture for 25 years as a Chinese immigrant. It may seem off-topic but if you guys'll bear with me - I have also a lot of Chinese friends, some of whom are graduate students who even stay in US for several years. To them, experiencing America means going to an "American party", maybe go clubbing, going to the Yellowstone Nat'l park, the gun range or the Burning man, and most of all - making an American friend or the ultimate pinnacle getting an American boyfriend or girlfriend! I hope y'all agree with me that American spirit is not encapsulated in just getting an American boyfriend or going to Burning Man! But are my Chinese friends' self-centered efforts to (understandably) efforts to "become more confident", "self-reliant", get "exposed to ideas and places [they] had zero experiences in"; so that when they go back to China and compare themselves to Chinese compatriots, it's "obvious that [their] trajectory has changed compared to other [plebeian folks] back home".

Just my humble opinions, most human beings have remarkably similar values across different culture, we all want paradoxically to belong to the herd and also distinguish ourselves from the herd. And yet 25 years of living in America, I've been so self-centered at my own "culture refinement" all this time that I rarely and truly listened to others around me and their experiences.

I have lived abroad for about 7 years now. It has dramatically changed how I think about the world, what my values are, and what I want in my own future. It is miles beyond "I heard some new stories from the countries I stayed and it changed my perspective!"

I wouldn't consider living abroad for 7 years travelling (unless you change location often?), although I absolutely agree that actually living in some different country for years might deeply change you as a person.

However, I agree with OP that most travel stories (staying a few days to a month in the same place) sound very superficial and I also struggle to figure out why I should be travelling more often.

I moved around quite a bit. Depends on where you draw the line between traveling and living abroad, I suppose.

The OP asked for concrete examples and not vague sweeping statements and here you are doing exactly this. As someone with the same sentiment and question as the OP I'm disappointed.

Vague sweeping statements? I’m literally an entirely different person because I decided to spend years abroad. That isn’t concrete enough for you?

I grew up in a decayed industrial town in the Midwest. My parents didn’t go to college and I had very little interest in traveling or foreign cultures. If you were to predict my life based on my family and socioeconomic background, I’d be still living in the same empty town as everyone else I grew up with.

Instead, I was lucky enough to get a remote job as a customer service agent. At some point after that, I realized I could work from anywhere, so I used it as an opportunity to visit Japan and then Europe.

Now, I’ve lived in / visited over twenty countries, have a deep interest in foreign languages, and am in the process of getting foreign citizenship. It wasn’t a deliberate, “eureka!” moment, but a gradual exposure to new ideas and people. That’s how life works in general IMO.

The world is a big place and people have different values. Traveling is the single easiest way to understand this. It is really that simple.

As an American, I’ve noticed that this attitude of disinterest toward the outside world is common, even encouraged. It’s not a good thing and frankly it’s the source of a lot of problems with the country today.

Ah, so a US citizen living in the middle of nowhere learned something by seeing civilisation. This is an example of why the OP asked for more details. Now I know that your experience isn't applicable to a lot of people who already live in a city, have friends in other countries, have travelled a bit, etc.

Your reply is kind of insulting, honestly. Not appreciated.

As I said, most people (including those that live in a city, or have friends in other countries, etc.) still view the world in their own local way. It has nothing to do with cities or civilization, as the inside of any college classroom would make clear. Actually living in another country and delving into their culture for a sustained period of time is not the same as reading about it in a book.

Perhaps you think you’re already enlightened and already know everything. If that’s the case, there isn’t much I can do.

I agree the GP was cruel and demeaning and at least partly wrong.

But it's been asked for someone to describe the specific changes in their worldview that resulted from living abroad (and specifically the ones that could not have been garnered by other means).

If it's about gaining understanding, what specifically have you come to understand that has been really valuable to you?

Is it like "After seeing first-hand the way asian countries do urban planning and public transportation I have a much better foundation for forming opinions about the way things should be done in the USA"?

Or "After spending a month living and eating as the Italians do, I had an epiphany about how to live a healthy, meaningful life and when I got back to the states I completely rearranged my method going through life, converting to a diet of wine and fish and making lots of new kinds of social connections that I otherwise would not have"?

Those (pretend) experiences sound profound, meaningful, and worthwhile.

It's not totally clear though that the benefits couldn't be had without living abroad by a sufficiently imaginative person with the correct literary diet etc. Then again, it would be the height of arrogance to think oneself so imaginative as to be able to comprehend every important facet of human culture from afar.

Eh, I would say the notion that the benefits of travel can be neatly summarized in a list of Reasons Why It's Worth Your Time is sort of beyond the point. In fact, I'd say that's one of my main takeaways from traveling so much: realizing the limitations of the Western "rationalist" worldview that demands logical reasons for everything, as if Man were a computer program.

It's a bit like asking someone what they've learned about life in the past 5 years. The answer is likely, a lot of things, more than one can conceivably verbalize at the drop of a hat or even verbalize at all. Language is a tool added on top of reality, not reality itself. As I explained above, it's about a much deeper expanding of one's perspectives, which has absolutely nothing to do with education or information. It's about realizing that different cultures have unique starting points as to what they consider valuable or admirable, then experiencing that for yourself.

This, I think, is something really relevant when it comes to the US. Most of us have a hard time divorcing the idea of wealth from excellence. Being rich alone is enough to earn you respect, no matter how vulgar or manipulative the source of wealth. Many other places (say, France or Japan) don't unify the two and the consequences are very observable.

I could say things like, "The public transportation system in Japan is amazing and makes me wish we had it in the US," or "the outdoor heaters in Paris make street culture much richer," but frankly these seem so insignificant that it's almost laughable to use them as a justification for traveling. It's akin to watching a deeply moving film and then suggesting others watch it because "the colors were nice." Not everything requires argumentative justification, nor should it.

"It's not totally clear though that the benefits couldn't be had without living abroad by a sufficiently imaginative person with the correct literary diet etc." -

I see observations like this one as being totally off (and I may have been guilty of having slightly similar, although way more nuanced, views years ago). Can someone playing volleyball and being sufficiently imaginative understand/feel playing football (the European one)? From a theoretical point of view, they may have a sorta intellectual understanding of it. Both sports involve a ball, they are both team sports, there is a referee etc. But until you do it, you have no real understanding of the differences in the practice of the sports. You don't get, in the sense that you don't feel, the positions, the dynamics, the different energetic systems that are taxed.

And it is the same for traveling as described here. Sure, you can have a sorta understanding of Cuba, the mix of poverty and ambition, the political ideas that motivated the revolution and the quite different reality of day-to-day living. Sounds like Detroit, does not it? Maybe. Or you may think, getting back to my previous example, that you don't need to go to Brazil to experience playing football, you can just go to a park in SF, play a pick-up game, and get the same football experience as you would get in Brazil. Intuitively and logically, the answer is no, you cannot. Because it is not just the action, it is the action in a particular context.

When I was in Cuba years ago, I understood much better than I could have imagined, through a mix of observation and participation, the dynamics emerging from the interaction between top-down politics and local (black) markets. I understood much better (through observation!) how romantic relationship develops when people are looking for a way out and have developed quite ingenious ways of tricking "whales". Would have been possible to get the same understanding in my hometown or in the town I have been living in for more than 15 years? I don't think so.

I went to Argentina for some time. I got to know better how different cultures (Italian, Spanish, Native) may get mixed together, but still maintain visible and distinguishable cultural roots. And now I can see the mix and the roots in other situations and in other contexts.

Experiencing different cultures made my life incredibly (with respect to my previous perspective) more profound, interesting, and adventurous.

So your experience invalidates someone else's experience?

It's ironic since what you said invalidates the 90% of "middle america" experience - where they never really leave hone/farm/city and country bumpkin life... doesn't mean it's wrong or write - but one can find enlightenment in travel that you take for granted.

> As an American, I’ve noticed that this attitude of disinterest toward the outside world is common, even encouraged. It’s not a good thing and frankly it’s the source of a lot of problems with the country today.

As an American, I've noticed that self-flagellation of the kind exhibited in this comment is extremely common, as is fetishization of travel/other cultures. This difference in our perspectives may have to do with where we grew up "decayed industrial town in the Midwest" (you) vs. "bastion of liberal globalism" (me).

Anyway, the reason people are pushing back against your comments here is because they have a "I have attained enlightenment and you can too" vibe. I just don't associate enlightenment with hanging around on hackernews arguing about whether traveling has led you to enlightenment.

Anyway, I don't question that seeing the world up close and personal has been important part of your life. I only doubt that it is universalizable. I think your experiences have to do with your unique personality and circumstances and can't be generalized.

You are projecting your own biases and worldview on to my comment, which says more about you than me. Nowhere did I fetishize foreign cultures or put down America in general.

And yes, decaying industrial town is an exact description, not self-flagellation.

> Nowhere did I [...] put down America in general.

In no way does that indicate I’m anti-American or engaging in self-flagellation.

Having a minor criticism of one’s country is a healthy, normal thing.

We've established that you did "put down America in general". We can disagree over whether that constitutes self-flagellation. Moving on, I didn't say you are "anti-American" nor did I say that there's anything wrong with "criticizing one's country". I will say that criticizing a culture is hard because cultures are not uniform, which was my point ("decayed industrial town in the Midwest" and "bastion of liberal globalism" are very different in terms of "disinterest in the outside world").

I don't question your experiences, I only pointed out that they are yours, and I doubt they can be universalized. The kind of meaning that you're talking about just isn't one-size-fits-all.

>Just my humble opinions, most human beings have remarkably similar values across different culture

China, a country that idolises Americanism.

America, a country that is Americanism.

Take this from a New Zealander (a country that has mass immigration from China and a fanciful view of America), if you were to go to South America and stand on the street of a town in say Colombia, you might wonder if we were the same species.

You forgot to add:

America, a country and a people that shits on China. Daily.

Just ask anyone here on HN or Reddit. And Twitter, especially Twitter.

>>Just my humble opinions, most human beings have remarkably similar values across different culture, we all want paradoxically to belong to the herd and also distinguish ourselves from the herd.

We want to be normal but not common.

You may have been immersed in American culture, but has any of it perrmeated you, or have you stayed within a Chinese bubble, in America, as your friends seems to have? I think that's a totally different thing.

I would like to address several of your posts together, using my own experiences.

As a fellow Chinese who lived in Europe for a couple years and lived in several cities across Canada, each a couple years (so not 2 week travels):

1. It forced me to abandon my old friends and make new friends. Is this a good thing? not necessarily. An easy thing? absolutely not. A good thing? I think so. First of all, distance kills friendships. And I'm forced to make new friends when I feel lonely. When I have new friends, I learn about their cultures, about their hobbies. I spent 20+ years in China and never got drawn into bodybuilding, now I do it everyday because my new foreigner friends introduced me to it and it becomes an integrated part of my life and source of happyness. I still keep in touch with a few close close friends remotely, who lives all over the world now.

2. It forced me to do things I normally won't do/step out of my comfort zone. This is related to your comment:

>Which when I thought about it is super ridiculous, why can't I enjoy these things if I was going by myself??? Or put in another way, why can't we see our local city and people in our local community with the same freshness, open-ness and kindness as we'd if we were tourists or backpackers traveling in a distant land?

You certain can, but it's difficult. Human brain is designed to find patterns. We get used to things fast. There's no incentive for us to step out of our comfort zone in familiar environments. Once we know about a shortcut, we'll always take it. It's the not knowing of the shortcuts that forced me to be out of my comfort zone a lot (and back to 1, I wont force myself to make new friends if I dont have to). Things like, I public speak a lot more than before, I try actively making friends, and again I workout daily now.

3. By doing all 1 and 2, I gained new perspectives about myself. About what really makes me happy. If I didn't live abroad, I'll probably anchor my happiness a bit more on the traditional Chinese values such as having a big place in the tier 1 cities in China and having kid(s), and make sure the kid(s) excel in all the stuff, just like my high school classmates are doing right now. Now instead I saw so many different ways of living one's life. So many different ways of finding happyness, I incorpated those into how I define my happiness. I do things that truly make me happy rather than things my peers are doing. On the flip side, I dont give fucks to many things anymore, because I saw ppl who dont give fucks to those and they are fine. I wont know those people in my old city with my old circle, or at least not as many.

4. It satisfied my curiousity. You can know a lot about the world by means other than traveling and experiencing in person. But can you be sure the experience is the same? Different or not, I was curious to know.

5. Lastly, if I can change history about myself, I'd travel sooner in my life. This is probably related to 3. People say traveling broaden's one's perspectives. Concretely I think what that means is it makes you better at problem solving. With more perspectives, you either gain new approaches to solving problems, or some problems become too trivia you give little amount of fucks than you previously would, or some problems become irrelevant to you. One example I think is I'm not as easily influenced by commericals, marketing, or news as much. And many of those are intentionally stress inducing. When I see things that are utterly important in one culture are not important elsewhere, it helped me stop accepting messages that tell me what's important.

I dont have a foreigner partner btw lol.

Traveling abroad was the first time I witnessed absolute poverty in person.

It also let me see for myself some of the obvious shortcomings of countries usually held up as our betters. It was a shock. But, it also let me experience some of the things that really were better. It was both a reminder that home is doing some things right after all- but could do other things better.

(Depending on your politics, you normally tend to see your own country as either entirely behind or entirely the best)

It felt like civic education. Not unlike studying history and government.

Traveled around south america for 2 years. 1 year backpacking thru hostels with 3 months in bolivia studying spanish then one year volunteering as an english teacher.

I'd love to have gone that immersion experience of learning Spanish; and use that language skill to practice and go full circle to be an ESOL teacher (was an ESOL volunteer teacher too)!

You do not seem like you want to change your mind - and that is fine. If you are doing a cost/benefit analysis, then you are doing it wrong. You mock western consumerism but radiate tells of "western overoptimization" attacking everything as a task that can be broken down to individual parts, prioritized and optimized. That is in my opinion a very reductionist way to go about your life.

Traveling the world can open your eyes to other ways of living a life. It can teach you something about yourself if you are open to it. It can teach you to be more confident and self-reliant.

You will likely dismiss this and if I wrote long explanations of what I learned myself you would come up with faster, better or more "local" ways to get the same outcome - and that is fine. You do you. Then I do me.

Thanks for your critique! Your "over-optimization" comment (vs. presumably being more spontaneous and improvising as your travel or just in everyday life) is very valid. I will say that my original feeling is not even "squeezing the most out of the paste-tube" or "maximizing profits" of some objective - it's more about commitment, whether be a subject or to people. Travel to me is like watching TED talks of experienced professors or artists in their field - it makes me feel very smart for 15 minutes listening; but in no way skilled nor committed as a practitioner of that field who dedicate time to their craft everyday over years.

There are tangible benefits to world trip "optimization". We started planning our 1 year, 14-country trip, 1 year in advance.

There are places (some national parks, certain hiking trails) where you need to make reservation well in advance.

It also allows being in countries in their cool, dry or bloom season.

Finally, it allows lower budget for the trip as you can reduce travel time..

There are tangible benefits to world trip "optimization". We started planning our 1 year, 14-country trip, 1 year in advance.

There are places (some national parks, certain hiking trails) where you need to make reservation well in advance.

It also allows being in countries in their cool, dry or bloom season.

Finally, it allows lower budget for the trip as you can reduce travel time..

It taught me that it is ok to not be high on career/income ladder and there many niches outside tech that are worth to be living in and you can easily carve some for yourself.

Thanks for answering! I hope to find that niche (that's outside tech) one day too!

I find travel/experiences is a terrible way to make yourself a more interesting person. Some people can tell a story about a drunken brawl in a foreign country and make it boring. Another person can describe getting coffee in the morning and leave people hanging on their every word.

This. When people talk about break-ups, you learn something about human nature like people's different attachment styles and each person's unique emotional vulnerabilities and their resilience in spite of it. When people talk about their careers and work stories and when you really listen, you learn about what people truly value (getting money vs. an academic pursuit, integrity vs. personal expediency); with travel stories, there is no character arc, more like a pastiche, a camera pan of the landscape they traveled to.

Maybe in this case, you could learn what they considered beauty.

This is so true. There is no preparation for how little people care about your travel experiences.

> I find travel/experiences is a terrible way to make yourself a more interesting person.

Maybe this is not to point of travel :-)

> I've never get beyond this superficial in hearing people's travel stories online and IRL.

I think most people aren't very articulate, they cant express their experiences well. Or maybe don't self reflect well. But anything you experience will leave an effect on you.

Food, locations and just getting dropped into to situations you wouldn't normally be in are the biggest things about traveling. There's a lot of little things that can leave an impact. Some things are just seeing how similar people around the world really are too. I've discovered a lot of new food and learned about food from traveling. A cookbook, youtube and imported ingredients aren't quite the same.(I saw in your other post your a chinese immigrant, do you think I could claim to know about chinese food without visting and eating in china?) I took one off cooking classes in kyoto, bali and morroco and learned a lot about the culture and what i learned left a lasting effect on me. I found I really like indonesian food, mie goreng is a regular weeknight dinner for me now.

There is a lot to write i think what I gained from travel,probabaly to much for a forum post. One other thing i want to mention is seeing nature is impactful. Going to the carribean and seeing dead coral reefs really drives home the damage humans are doing to this planet. You probably won't see that in your suburb, or realize it in a city.

>I found I really like indonesian food, mie goreng is a regular weeknight dinner for me now.

That's awesome. You've inspired me to look up some recipes and try to attempt it (keyword: attempt).

> One other thing i want to mention is seeing nature is impactful. Going to the carribean and seeing dead coral reefs really drives home the damage humans are doing to this planet.

I hear what you're trying to communicate; sometimes experiences are more powerful than its equivalent wiki or statistical infographics format; somethings are meant to be experienced, not a pre-conceived notion transmitted and interpreted secondhand in a book or a documentary or online post.

Firstly: agree that there are some aspects of travelling that will be looked down upon in the future, particularly exploiting the difference in the cost of living. But travelling was massively beneficial for me. I'll focus on the biggest trip, which was a year backpacking.

> what you guys who traveled actually gained from traveling the world?

* I worked and rented in another country. So I had to work out how to do that, and work in a different type of business environment.

* Developed key life skills: organising things, budgeting extremely tightly, Coped with emergencies abroad.

* Building confidence. For example, driving all kinds of vehicle, learning to speak to and bond with anyone at all from a cold start.

* Staying with families in different countries and seeing how they lived, how they treated their kids, and their priorities. This was very formative in deciding how to live my life.

* Understanding the politics of the world better. I spent time with a guy from the Economist who had just spent months sleeping rough in India. I still think about his insights into the way the world works. I played cards with a relative of the president of fiji. Etc.

* Understanding the history of the world better - for example, the origins of the industrial revolution in the USA, or the Ho Chi Minh tunnels, or the fate of aboriginal people in Australia.

* Physical fitness. Learnt to scuba dive, climbed mountains, rock climbed, hiked a gazillion miles, hell just carrying 25kg for the year was a good workout. Some of this could have been done in my own country, but it would have been very different.

* Removing stress and having space. After a while the stresses of travelling become fairly routine and you have a lot of time to relax on journeys and think about what you want to do with your life. That really shaped how I've lived since. Just sitting in a bus on a long road in a very different country you can watch how people live and it gets you thinking. How close are their families? Do I want to live like that? How do informal networks replace more structured western timetables etc.

* Gratitude. Live with a cold bucket of water for a shower for a while. Sleep in a hut full of rats. You'll soon learn to appreciate that hot shower in your bathroom and the comfy bed. Honestly, even now there are few days I forget to appreciate that shower when I step into it. And this trip was over 10 years ago.

* A very Hacker News point for me: I found I really missed computers. I didn't think I'd be a geek for the rest of my life but after that trip I realised how much I just like machines. Being in a different environment brought that into sharp focus, being deprived of it then (as a real example) coming across a Linux box in a hut somewhere. They're so neat and tidy and orderly and enabling, you can be endlessly creative. I only had a burner phone (and that was only for a part of the year) and this was the era of internet cafes, so no nerding for a year.

* Spending quite a while in one place, indeed learning a bit of the language, reading about the culture, and then through local contacts really experiencing ceremonies that were pretty out there by western standards. It helped me understand the diversity of the world, where different cultures were at, and the size of cultural boundaries.

* Friends. Met a lot of travellers. I did hardly any of the "party" backpacking thing but I met people on the way, and one couple I met have become life long friends.

* Seeing the extent of human suffering in the world. I'm not sure I want to say too much about this, but it really hammers home the message - we have a long way to go, and there are many problems to devote your life to.

* Understanding a lot about the universality of the human condition by seeing the same patterns in different places. For example, social drug taking.

* Finding "paradise" in several places, which shall remain nameless, and having that experience of dozing in a hammock on a beautiful beach that isn't on a tourist brochure. It was a beautiful experience but it also made it clear to me that just enjoying life was not enough for me. Have to build something.

Just want to say thank you for this exhaustive list! I really appreciate it! There's many items I can say I appreciate… but I'll pick the one I enjoyed the most:

>After a while the stresses of travelling become fairly routine and you have a lot of time to relax on journeys and think about what you want to do with your life. That really shaped how I've lived since. Just sitting in a bus on a long road in a very different country you can watch how people live and it gets you thinking. How close are their families? Do I want to live like that? How do informal networks replace more structured western timetables etc.

(In contrast to how everyday we just go through life pre-programmed on a commute or an errand out in public, lost in some tape loop of rumination and internal anxieties… or doom-scrolling on our phones… completely filtering out the environment, our fellow human beings around us, and ourselves really; to take time to just think, even just notice your surrounding, acknowledge other people and be grateful… that is already a richer life!)

It's great that you've made friends and stayed in touch after the trip and became life-long friends - it's a testament to you and your friend… I wish I could've the same experience, it's easy to party but very hard to make a friend, I'm very jealous!

> thank you for this exhaustive list! I

Haha, this was by no means exhaustive :-) just what popped into my head over breakfast. I'd have to go through my travel journals to write properly about it.

> it's easy to party but very hard to make a friend, I'm very jealous!

Shared experience. Hike or travel for an extended time with people and some of them at least will become friends.

Thanks for your insightful reply. Could I kindly ask you to elaborate on this point? How did you find families to stay with? Thank you very much!

> Staying with families in different countries and seeing how they lived, how they treated their kids, and their priorities. This was very formative in deciding how to live my life.

Sure. In my case it was friends of family, and family of friends, sometimes a little distant but people were welcoming enough. Those were the best because you could stay a while and they were more relaxed with you, they usually wanted to show you around their town etc.

Also, sometimes I stayed in hostels that were small, family-run, more like a home than a hostel. So you saw the family life there too.

And some families rented out spare rooms. You used to meet people at a train station or other travel hub and size them up (does this happen now?). Sometimes get recommendations from other travellers going in the other direction. Important to note I wouldn't recommend this in general, particularly if you're female or travelling alone. And it requires a good deal of careful judgement and experience. I don't think I'd do this alone.

Maybe Airbnb makes this easier and safer nowadays. I've stayed in a lot of spare rooms in the US via Airbnb and had similar experiences.

You are largely right. Western ideas of tourism feed off this idea "I'm a traveller, everyone else is a tourist sheep." Asian tourists generally don't seem to have the same pretensions and are happy getting coached around.

Walking around busy temples and stuff can be pretty hard because people don't want anyone else in their photo. It has to look like they just chanced upon this ancient temple in the jungle, rather than getting a minibus there with 20 other people.

Sometimes the more savvy local tour companies cotton on to this and market to "travellers", but I liked it when locals just called us all "tourists" because that's really what we are. Yes, it's another form of consumerism.

I spent a year backpacking and it was mostly seeing cool places. I don't think it really changed me, but then I have worked and studied abroad before (there I go, pointing out how I'm not like the others!!). Considering those experiences too, I think there are two main things you're missing:

1) People who genuinely find hostel slogans like "live at the edge of your existence" deeply inspirational are probably late teens/early 20s and so for them it's all wrapped up in being independent, moving out of their childhood home, experimenting etc. Possibly the first time they've been out of their home culture and so even standard, Western backpacker hostels is a big jump.

2) A lot of people really find scary and challenging things you might be more comfortable with. Lots of people live within a few miles of where they grew up. If they go abroad, it's a package holiday on a resort full of people from their home country. Maybe a city break to be adventurous. Even though backpacking in SE Asia etc is heavily commodified, it's still a pretty small fraction of people who would even consider it.

Thank you for your thoughtful response! I think there's 100% value for people in their 20's to take any opportunity to meet new people, go on an adventure and force yourself into (and learn from) uncomfortable and fun situations!

I wish that we could keep and activate this wanderlust, open-ness and spontaneity regardless of what context we're in (why I posed the question, what perspectives people gained from their travel?). I know I had this hold over me, like I'd only enjoy a certain "couples activities" like ice skating, trying out new restaurants or paint nite - based on the context of going on a date. Which when I thought about it is super ridiculous, why can't I enjoy these things if I was going by myself??? Or put in another way, why can't we see our local city and people in our local community with the same freshness, open-ness and kindness as we'd if we were tourists or backpackers traveling in a distant land?

Yes, I hadn't thought of it like that. Travelling is also a time when it's considered normal to be alone and to chat to new people, reinvent yourself if you really want to. For many, that only happens a couple of times in their lives, if at all. (And again, that's why people stay local and don't move countries, because they don't want to do that).

Meetup.com is the closest I've got to what you describe, but not quite the same. It's a pity, I agree.

I can resonate with a lot of this, I have to tell people I’m around after they say something about an area/activity potentially being “too touristy” that “its okay to be a tourist”

yes, travelers are tourists, but catering to this subset can be different and you can capitalize on it

they want certain kinds of cafes, they want less trafficked but still bustling areas, they want furnished rentals

But you don’t know what you want to do, until you experience it. And you experience so many new activities when travelling. Like food. There is so much good in different countries that you will not get at a dozen restaurants of the same country.

People actually treat you differently if your travelling in their country. They are a lot nicer to you, and want to show you around, and include the unique parts of their culture.

It taught me that I never want to leave my home again. I'm happiest sitting in front of my computer.

Feels good to have "been there, done that" so I don't need to worry about what-ifs.

That's funny, I kind of feel the same way.

I've been lucky enough to travel internationally and domestically a fair bit and yeah it's pretty cool, but I truly enjoy being at home coding things, learning things and experimenting with stuff.

This in part is why I don’t mind travelling alone. Everything happens on my terms

> Maybe it's just me; but the idea of going from one place to another for 2 weeks, to take pictures and get led around by locals tourist industry is the very definition of Western Consumerism.

If you're travelling like this, you're doing it wrong. Stay much longer, not with foreigners, learn the language, get a basic job. Live like an immigrant, not a tourist, and definitely not like an American tourist.

To each their own. They’re just different forms of travel.

What exactly is the point of travelling like a stereotypical American tourist? No adventure, no challenges to overcome, no learning. Just to be able to say you've "seen Florence"?

It is absolutely worthwhile doing any of the immersion techniques you mentioned. Volunteer work would probably be the most important thing that you're missing. And I don't mean 'gap year help build a library' kind of volunteering, that stuff is implicitly pre-college, instagram stories and expat heavy. I mean exchanging a few hours of light work for bed and board (the language exchange is free). You can be pretty picky in most countries with sites like workaway or helpx, and probably find a little family to hole up with and do work remotely. And yes, you will find (single) people of all ages doing this.

EDIT: i see I'm supposed to say how traveling changed my life personally. pretty simple if you are me because studying language is my favourite hobby, and, as an amateur linguist, it is essential for my life satisfaction to immerse in something new every couple of years.

I’ve gained perspective that I can get into important rooms because of my background, easier than I can in my own country. It makes considering to fight for inclusion in my home country seem to be a waste of my life and that I can choose causes to spend energy on without feeling like I was neglecting an obligation to my gender or heritage or race/ethnicity.

I’ve gained perspective that there are a mixture of political systems in countries that have redeeming benefits and seem more advanced than my home country. This tells me that I don't have to subscribe to the limiting choices presented to me, by people in my home country. Or perhaps that there might be an opportunity to inspire the people in the future.

I’ve gained in depth knowledge of obscure regulations in obscure autonomous regions that I find useful.

I’ve gained perspective that I can be seen as more desirable in some places for dating, hook ups, I can be accepted by families readily as an individual. In my home country, the go-to is to make this as awkward as possible, and it has been nice and endearing to understand how and why this isn’t the experience everywhere.

It helps me really resonate with the concept of going where you are treated the best, and building a life where that is possible. This has been a overwriting of the indoctrination of tying my identity to my national, even its currency, which is now absurd to me.

Thank you for your honest and personal answers! As an Asian guy living in America and reading between the lines re: your xp dating and how different cultures treat you, I can relate to a lot what you're saying.

>It helps me really resonate with the concept of going where you are treated the best, and building a life where that is possible.

Maybe it's me becoming institutionalized and just used to this by now in America lol; but I have a different perspective on this, oppression is universal (Puritans, Germans, Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews in 1700-1800's) and creativity is driven by constraints (blues/jazz was born on plantations, Cosa Nostras arose out of Italian Americans being shut of WASP society, the humor/hutzpah in spite of overt and covert anti-semitism is seen in Mel Brooks movies).

oppression towards you is not universal, and the constraints you refer to don’t have to be oppression based

there are plenty of art forms and styles born from privilege

but are you an artist? Is this diamond forging pressure even beneficial to you?

to me, I am long past the idea of trying to proselytize or debate about how an advantage in another society could or couldn't work in a much larger less homogenous society, and can simply see how I can choose which one I want to be in when I want to be in it

Personally I learnt to be less judgmental of people. From media you compartmentalize everyone into neat little boxes to make sense of the world. We find other people's values ridiculous when we hear/read about it but only when we go and live with them we find out it makes sense. It may be wrong but it makes sense. And there is a good chance if you were brought up in that same society you may have had the same behavior. I've learned to empathize only when I experienced this first hand.

0. Experience joy. If you haven't you won't get it. The same kind of awe and joy you might have experienced the first time a compiler you wrote finishes without errors and you are able to run the executable.

1. I'd like to think it made me less intense and easier to work with at my (remote) job

2. I became more extroverted

3. I've embraced extreme uncertainty and became much more flexible and creative. Pivoting in life doesn't scare me. I thrive when things are in flux and I have to improvise.

4. It helped me discover my passion for street photography

5. I met amazing people and created a circle of friends

6. I met my wife

7. The pandemic has been a non-event for me

8. I have not experienced winter in 10 years

9. Amazing food. Nothing wrong with food in the US but it's not as good as most people think, especially if you are poor. Unless you live in NYC and you can afford it.

10. When I woke up pre-pandemic on Sat morning I had 100 postcard-worthy places to choose from that most people only dream about visiting in their lifetime. All within a one or two hour flight radius. When most people contemplate driving 4 hours up north to a state park, I was debating if Hong Kong or Bali are worth the extra hours of flight only for the weekend.

To sum it all up, if the thought of getting drunk with random non-English speaking people in a small bar in Tokyo you stumbled upon, or going astray and walking though a field in Myanmar to take you to a small village with no roads and interacting with the people there who are wearing traditional clothing doesn't excite you, than you won't get it. But that's ok, we all enjoy different things.

>I have not experienced winter in 10 years

As someone who travels in order to get more winter, not less, I don't see this one as a benefit! But the rest makes sense.

Well, just rephrase it

> I have not experienced summer in 10 years

That sounds depressing though.

Haha, like I said - to each their own. To be honest I'm starting to miss winter a little bit too.

Thanks for the concrete examples! I love it.

> The pandemic has been a non-event for me

> When I woke up pre-pandemic on Sat morning I had 100 postcard-worthy places to choose from

These statements appear contradictory.

> These statements appear contradictory.

You are right, they appear to be. Professionally, the only change is that now everybody is a little more like me and I'm less of a curiosity. On a personal level, we had a baby when the pandemic broke out last year so we've been more or less grounded because of that.

I thought like you in my early 20s. I remember thinking that travelling was a waste of money. Until my first travel. I visited New York and it completely blew my mind. That was almost 10 years ago and I can still remember the first time I got out of the subway, I was speechless. Sure it looked like all the movies I had seen but being actually there and feeling the life in that city was such a mind blowing experience. It was also my first time in the US. At the end I don't think I really "gained" anything from it, but it allowed me to experience a place that was so different from where I lived all my life.

Obviously each city is a different experience. I visited San Francisco and it was kinda meh. I visited Tokyo and it was dope. You can't really know until you actually go over there. :)

> I visited New York and it completely blew my mind. [...] I visited San Francisco and it was kinda meh.

Haha, my experience was the exact opposite of yours. The first time I visited NYC, I thought it felt dystopian and was glad to leave. Easily the least favorite city I have visited. But my first time visiting the west coast was intoxicating. Growing up I lived in a few different states in the southeastern U.S. and even lived in Paris, France for three years. I traveled Europe extensively both as a child and in my late teens and thought some places were interesting and nice to visit, but the first time I arrived in the Bay Area I thought "What is this place?! I have to move here."

I had traveled there for a Hackathon in 2010, and the first place I visited after leaving the airport was Palo Alto. It just blew my mind to see sunny weather, blue skies, trees with leaves, and green grass in December. And once I saw San Francisco, I was hooked. The beautiful terrain just captivated me. There were giant cliffs, ocean views, rolling hills, and interesting plants everywhere. Plus, I really missed the walkable cities in Europe.

My wife and I just moved away from the Bay Area in October after living there for almost three years to be closer to family, but I miss it everyday and hope to go back at some point. I miss the food and tech scene (although I still have my same job, remotely now), but I think what really captivated me is the climate and terrain. It's just otherworldly compared to what I was used to in the southeast.

> I visited Tokyo and it was dope

Tokyo seems like somewhere that I would really enjoy living, culture-wise (although my impression is that the climate is pretty similar to where I grew up). Hoping to visit after the pandemic. Any tips on where to go? More interested in unique local experiences and maybe taking trains to some other cities than tourist attractions.

Tokyo will probably feel as dystopian as New York. The main areas are extremely densely populated, there are lights, videos, musics and noises everywhere, always hundreds of things happening around you. It's impressive. It's personally what I enjoy but I get why it's not for everyone. But by definition, it's a unique experience and the tourists are completely outnumbered so it feels really local. I was actually surprised each time I saw a tourist in the street. There are also some big parks in Tokyo for when you want to take a break from all the craziness.

About destinations where life goes a bit slower, it's hard to not recommend the classic ones, especially if it's your first time in Japan. 2 days in Kyoto, 2 days in Osaka, 1 day trip in Nara, 1 day trip in Kamakura, 1 night in a onsen… This is the traditional Japan. Since those cities are smaller and all the attractions are listed on every traveling books/sites, you will definitely see a lot of tourists, but you can't go to Japan and not visit those places at least once!

Of everything I learned and experienced in traveling one thing stands out above all the others: "self improvement is the primary good in your life"

Traveling involves a lot of hedonism, and one day while traveling you suddenly realize you are on a hedonic treadmill. The first amazing meal you eat is life changing. The second one is about 50% as novel and good as that. Then you're comparing the next meal to 2 others, and the meal after that to 3 others... The cycle continues until you have consumed the earth and achieved emptiness. What remains is yourself. Once there is nothing left to consume to satisfy yourself you really have to ask whats next. The answer is building, and probably building yourself.

The lessons I learned about myself were some of the most hard:

  - I understood escapism is not the answer
  - I got a realistic set of priorities for my life
  - I challenged and surprised myself socially
  - I learned what really matters and what doesn't

More explicit examples of things I appreciate from having traveled:

  - Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling
  - Visiting Shenzhen made me afraid for America
  - I experienced Hong Kong before china destroyed it.
  - I watched history in real time (NK trump, HK, covid)
  - I saw a Chinese person shrink to 1/4 their size when a conversation got political
  - I see video of foreign countries and I see streets I have literally walked on
  - I experienced being a guest in multiple different cultures and was culture shocked to my core.
  - I saw the insides of homes and buildings in different cultures as well as the different ways things were constructed
  - I experienced the inhumanity that poverty causes
  - I experienced real life poverty and actual real happening today slavery
  - I have seen the costs of not having rule of law
  - I have seen pollution on the scale you cannot even imagine until you experience it
  - I experienced my own privilege in very visceral ways
  - I have experienced cultures without workers rights and its effects
  - I have experienced multiple civil protests in other countries
  - I have seen what its like to be in a functioning democracy
  - I have been in a country where the voting system makes sense
  - I have been around police officers that made me feel more safe instead of less safe
  - I have made multiple friends I still talk to
  - I almost fell in love
  - I visited a major holy site and saw religion being practiced in a way I never had before.
  - I have seen cultures in decline and cultures on the rise and how the people in them act and function
  - I experienced being in cities older than my country
  - I met people from parts of the world I wasn't aware of, with histories I'd never heard of
  - I saw foreign propaganda first hand
  - I found ways of life I liked better (and not) than what I grew up in
  - I saw both how good things can be and how bad things can be
  - I experienced pro-diversity cultures and anti-diversity cultures and their effects
  - I was exposed to multiple different non conventional ways of life
  - I have several outstanding invites and opportunities to visit people I have met who were also traveling.
  - I saved one person's life with some first aid
  - I learned several new skills

Great comment, could you expand on "Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling"?

The thing that most needed explaining to a westerner is the great firewall of china and lack of freedom of speech. The argument that was made was foreign media dominance would result in 1 billion people being too unwieldy to effectively govern. Without it you have literal peasants with no education being directly exposed to potential (and probable) western manipulation. That manipulation could be political (overthrow the government) or economic (buy American goods) and the cost is direct exploitation of Chinese people and a failure of society to operate at scale. Words like century of humiliation, opium, forced open, and the like were used here too. Western exploitation and manipulation of China is not taught or explained in American schools, nor is it really taught that western powers came in and ransacked the country, to what extent they did, nor the mechanisms by which they (we) did it.

The standout paradigm shift for me was the statement "we want to democratize, but we cannot because our public is uneducated, you cannot have democracy without education." After seeing Hong Kong, I decide that I don't really believe china wants to democratize and this was likely a lie the person I talked to believed themselves, but I believe in the second half of the statement. Growing up in America you never really analyze democracy or its properties, you just understand that it's good and the correct way of life as any good indoctrination will do. Live free or die. A pretty important property of democracy to consider is that it will function as well as the half of its most poorly educated people. It doesn't take much observation of how bad faith republicans are to see the consequences of a society dominated by its least educated people. There is a clear tradeoff between individual sacrifices of rights and the well being of society overall that I think can be argued for successfully here even if I disagree with it personally. Not being the dominant culture ups the stakes on loose controls.

The overall idea of protectionism being necessary but unideal was compelling to me. The overall idea of hard limitations on how society can operate based on the properties of that society was compelling to me. There was a mental shift from right and wrong, to pros and cons and tradeoffs, which is much more healthy discussion to be having.

Another key concept that was explained was the idea of planned vs actual corruption. It was explained that there is a planned acceptable level of corruption in China, and that this is mostly seen as lubrication, a guarantee, or a bounty to get stuff done. Unfortunately, rather than corruption growing linearly in a planned way, it was growing exponentially in an unplanned way and this was causing problems.

The IP theft was somewhat of a "your country was built on it, too" thing. There was a bit of "you have so much, you should share." Somewhat similar with the "we were colonized, now we want to colonize" idea. I think there was a bit of "you wield power or it gets wielded against you." I don't agree at all, but returning abuse you've received onto the world is an unfortunately human thing to do.

I would not utter the words Taiwan, Uighur, Tibet, or Falun Gong while in China, because that seems foolish, so I didn't get any kind of satisfying explanation for those, and there probably isn't one that would be acceptable or satisfying. I suspect at best the explanation would be "look what America did to native Americans," or other justification by precedent.

China knows it benefits from outside experts and it has 1000 talents and other things to get Chinese people, especially, back in the country, but with english being nil, and a culture that is fairly anti-foreigner that is an uphill battle, so there was significant worry about the pace of innovation.

There was a bit of reference to the term "locusts" (not by me) and the reputation Chinese tourists have. There was a fair amount of acknowledgement but also explanation of sudden wealth growth and historic lack of education resulting in low class behavior.

Some of the more high profile IP theft cases (vials in bags) were explained by the idea that that behavior had been consistently happening and it was understood by all parties involved that it was happening, until one day feds showed up. I didn't buy that so much.

There was also a fair amount of "we're nobodies, so we're not at risk" talk when it comes to speech, but I can't operate in a society like that because it's far too much exposure to vulnerability.

I got a mild run down of some of the mechanics of corruption, good faith corruption, and bad faith corruption.

I definitely started to get a lot of the understanding that dealing with the incredible amounts of poverty, dealing with large amounts of systemic corruption, dealing with entrenched power structures, and balancing that against hostile foreign super powers that would almost certainly exploit you was a pretty incredible task. As evil as I think china (the government) is for what it is doing, when you look at its struggles it paints a picture you have to respect, it gives a lot of empathy to the struggles of a Chinese well edcuated person, it makes you feel empathy for the average ignorant person.

I think of all the takeaways I had it was just how significant fear was as a primary policy motivator. Generally, unethical behavior is understood to be a product of unchecked ambition and therefore comically evil, but the idea that most of the unethical behavior is motivated out of fear was fairly compelling.

> - I experienced Hong Kong before china destroyed it.

I've just got to inject some skepticism on this point. This is such a knee-jerk opinion that's popular to parrot, because it feels right to say.

Maybe some small degree of it is true -- but you were able to come to this sweeping conclusion for all of Hong Kong, all of its people, based on your visit? I would question how in day to day life of people there (in working, living, buying, commuting, socializing), you came to this opinion. You saw something objectively changed? People upending their lives? How were you able to visit the city then?

Or were you just reading and regurgitating the news and stories told by the headline-grabbing people who thought this?

This is like if someone from Europe visited the US, and made the bold claim of feeling sorry for Americans because life had been fundamentally destroyed by the Trump presidency years.

I just don't buy these dramatic pronouncements. Not that I don't think China has damaged Hong Kong in some respects, but I just am skeptical that a short visit by some tourist can conclude some deep, fundamental change to a city's persona.

Your point about Shenzhen, I do believe though.

> I've just got to inject some skepticism on this point.

I'll answer you, but first I want you to give me a good faith explanation of what I mean when I say "hong kong was destroyed" and a guess of why I might say that or believe it, one that doesn't assume I'm a sheep or manipulated by media.

Sorry, I'm confused, you want me to tell you what you're thinking, based on 4 words you typed?

Sorry, I said good faith explanation, but I meant good faith guess.

I want you to explain what "Hong Kong destroyed" might mean when I say it because if we're not speaking the same language then we can't hope to see eye to eye. Clearly the city is still standing filled with people who aren't dead. Clearly it's not "destroyed" in that way.

I want you to guess why I would say it, which means brainstorming potential ideas. In good faith means taking those potential ideas and evaluating them yourself, if you don't find them remotely compelling, chances are I won't either. To say or think I believe something that isn't at the very least plausible to you is bad faith.

You accused me of potentially "parroting knee jerk opinions," which I interpret as meaning you cannot imagine why a functioning person capable of critical thinking might believe it or say it.

I will start by explaining why I think someone might find the statement "Hong Kong has been destroyed" spurious: Hong Kong is clearly still standing and the day to day life of a person in Hong Kong probably isn't significantly different than it was 2-4 years ago, businesses still function, people can still feed themselves, I doubt there is military in the streets, the average person can probably still say what they want. If the day to day life of a person isn't really that different, then it's kind of hard to argue that there has been a fundamental change, much less a "destruction."

Understood.

Well, you might mean "destroyed" from the point of view of someone who wants to advocate for Hong Kong independence from China.

Or destroyed from the point of view of someone wanting to publish certain news articles criticizing China. Or whether your university/school teachers are allowed to even mention Hong Kong independence.

Or from the point of view of investors worried about the independence of the financial system from interference / controls in the longer term. Or that they might be extradited to China for financial crimes (or even political reasons) that previously weren't a concern.

Obviously, I'm not unaware of those points of view and situations.

On the other hand, for someone running a business in Hong Kong, working a 9-to-5 job, or even at a typical multinational corporation, or growing up going to school, or settling in for retirement, or traveling to/from the city, life shows no hour-by-hour or day-to-day difference for the vast majority of people.

Whether on balance, these factors would lead someone to declare that a city (or the idea of a city) has been "destroyed" overall is I guess what we're debating.

I take the point of view that jumping without further clarification to say that Hong Kong has been destroyed, is just a bit of a fashionable hyperbolic opinion to put out there -- an opinion that heavily overweights the concerns (even legitimate concerns) of a, let's call it 1%, special subset of the population. Are you one of that group / are you from Hong Kong? If not, how did you join the concerns of the group for whom the city appears to have been destroyed, rather than the rest of the city for whom it continues with no perceptible change in daily life?

I come from the direction that a place is most aptly defined by it’s culture. Buildings are inert. Infrastructure isn’t very distinguishable other than good and bad. Businesses are fairly interchangeable. People come and go. If you sum up the entirety of a place's values, interactions, and operations, its very way of life, I would call that culture.

So when I say “Hong Kong was destroyed,” the meaning is that there was a destruction of its culture. The word destruction is emotionally charged because a Chinese person probably doesn’t see what is fundamentally a replacement of Hong Kong culture (pretty western) with Chinese culture as destruction. So what you picked up on and dislike (the difference between explicit reality, and my coloring of it) probably has its heart in this interpretation. If you were a Chinese (nationality) person you might, somewhat rightly, feel insulted or wronged by this interpretation of events. I definitely agree it is somewhat hyperbolic, not because it is "fashionable," but because it's an emotional reaction to an atrocious appearing saga.

My first hand experience in Hong Kong is that it was one of the most open and diversity friendly places in Asia. It felt free. I had political conversations people felt safe having. People were fairly vibrant. It was filled with money and ambitious people. I met more rich people in Hong Kong than anywhere else by far. English was better in Hong Kong than anywhere else in Asia by several orders of magnitude. It was, apparently, a bastion of rule of law, rather than rule by law. It certainly seemed well run. I could use the internet.

My experience in China is that it was the least diversity friendly place in Asia. It's the only place I traveled I experienced direct racism (at me and at others). It did not feel remotely free. I experienced people scared to have political conversations. Some areas felt vibrant, and some areas did not. I have never gotten the sense that china was a place with rule of law. I have heard first hand from one American English teacher arrested for saying the wrong thing, and another who was threatened with it. The internet is restricted and free thought is denied. When I said the wrong thing it was “corrected,” like I can’t have my own opinion or at the very least it's dangerous to.

I talked with a fair number of Hong Kong people while in Hong Kong. China was very much seen as an enemy. They certainly had the opinion that china conducted itself as an oppressing force, forcibly migrating people in, forcibly redistributing resources, forcing political change via edict, gutting of the legal system, corrupting the rule of law, and imposing cultural changes. Hong Kong people I met in other countries shifted from vibrant to discouraged over time. I have not heard any Hong Kong person praise China once.

Add in the very good marketing/propaganda by the protestors and there is a very compelling case to me that china’s goal is not to integrate Hong Kong, but to dominate or extinguish Hong Kong culture entirely, which in my estimation has been successful.

How much grassroots pro china press was there? None, because they had no moral or just claim to do what they did. It was all about power, and china executed its power. I could not imagine myself as a Chinese person at all, but when I was in Hong Kong I felt like a Hong Kong person. I can empathize with the videos I saw. I can empathize with the statements I read. I can empathize with the people I talked to. I can empathize with the outrage that made it to the internet. I cannot see how a good person would find ruling of another people without their consent palatable, much less with their explicit protest.

A free people have been turned into an oppressed people and, to me, that is the destruction of a free culture, a culture tied directly to the city.

> how did you join the concerns of the group for whom the city appears to have been destroyed?

Those are the people I talked to. Those are the stories that made it to media I read. I have never seen, heard, or experienced anything that contradicts my interpretation of the situation except by people exerting power (Chinese government) in a way that made me feel it was bad faith propaganda.

The Hong Kong protests were to some degree freedom porn to Americans. Our indoctrination from birth glorifies exactly what the protestors were doing to the highest most patriotic thing one can do. From the revolution to the civil rights movement, the protests resonate with our curriculum on multiple levels. When comparing our history to what we see, Hong Kong protestors are clearly and unequivocally the good guys.

On related points: The framing that this is a fight that only matters to the 1% is a framing I personally consider to be mostly Chinese propaganda, but I can see why a reasonable person would find it compelling. The framing that this is an American plot to mess with the Chinese government is something I guess there is historical precedent for and certainly alignment for, but it's hard to excuse the authoritarian response. I don't find it even remotely compelling personally.

I spent 3.5 months backpacking in India and Southeast Asia. I saw incredible places and stood in a hundred postcards. For me though, people are what had the most impact.

Tens of thousands of Hindus come to die in Varanasi each year. If you die and are cremated there, you are freed from the cycle of rebirth and can attain salvation. I stood with an Indian friend on the edge of tears as I watched them burn the dead. He asked me why I was sad, and I told him I was sad for the dead. He said do not be sad, this is the way they wanted to die.

We were warned never to get a train ticket on Indian Railways below 2nd class. It wasn't safe. There were only enough 2nd class tickets for my friends, so I went to 3rd class alone, in the middle of the night, and went to sleep in a top bunk, the warnings echoing in my mind. When I awoke my 5 neighbors were speaking softly to each other. They shared food with me they had brought from their homes. We showed each other where we had come from and pictures of our families. I didn't speak the same language.

Cambodia had 25% of its people starved or murdered less than a decade before I was born: Year Zero. Anyone educated was the first to go. We hired a tuk-tuk driver to take us to the temples around Siem Reap. He was the son of farmers. At one temple we came out the entrance and snuck up on him while he waited for us. In his lap he held open a book in English, and tucked into it a smaller book. It was a Khmer-English dictionary.

I had a lot of good times meeting people at hostels and going to bars with other travelers, a few of whom have become dear friends. You could easily stay with tour groups, never leave the westernized areas of anywhere you go, and take lots of selfies in incredible places. It brings money to the local economy.

It's up to you though. If that's not what you want, getting away from it is as simple as walking 2 blocks in any direction.

"Many Hindus come to die in Varanasi." Sorry this is an exaggeration , very few old people mostly around that region , most of them women abandoned by their family .

I updated "many" to "tens of thousands", since the word "many" is too subject to interpretation.

Interesting, although I don't believe there is a 3rd class anymore. That was a British era thing from what I know.

I found that going to new places lights up my brain in a way that doesn't happen otherwise. Going somewhere new is something we are supposed to do I think, there is special machinery that turns on. You step off the plane at midnight in Istanbul, or off the ferry in the Lofoten, or off the shinkansen in Kyoto and everything is different... the quality of the light, the weight of the air, how it smells, sounds, tastes... and you realise how much of your conscious experience is rooted in the ineffable features of your environemnt. You can't get this from moving around in the same city or country even. Your brain does a kind of experiential 'etc etc etc' when it gets used to a place. The times of my life when I traveled for long periods are dense with rich, vivid memories, whereas I can't remember if I had breakfast today.

Well said. It feels as if all your senses are fully open and totally engaged in a foreign place, whereas most are sated and asleep back home.

I think its a matter of taste. I have friends who say what big deal about mountains or beaches ..its the same everywhere.I accept that its their taste , and there nothing to look down upon it. To me every mountain n beach has a beauty to it when you hike them . To me when you travel , there are many aspects which you can experience , the people , the smell , the weather , the noise and chatter on the streets ,the food ( the most important aspect of my travel) . I love to visit offbeat villages and towns , personally that where i experience the feel of travel . These are experiences which IG cannot express

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

I suppose one thing I've brought back is the ability to conceive of travel in a way that doesn't involve Instagram pictures and getting led around by the tourist industry for 2 weeks. Reading your post and suggestions, it sounds as though that's something you might not yet posses.

I'll admit that I do have quite a few good cocktail stories, but very few of them happened anywhere near a major city or tourist destination. Occasionally you may hear me telling an anecdote about briefly intersecting with the Tourist Industry as they were whisked past the interesting thing I was up to on their way to the next photo op, but for the most part the people on that ride are in fact having the experience you describe.

Mostly, the things you take away are experiences so you're also correct that they're not particularly tangible. But they're valuable.

But I suppose if we're forced to provide examples, I can report having collected a wife overseas. A girl I certainly wouldn't have met at a salsa class in the 'states, with a mindset similar to mine that had led her to also be halfway around the world from her home for enough months overlapping for me to wear her down and convince her to bring me home with her.

(I guess that technically makes me her concrete benefit, but close enough).

Give it a try some time (for real, no 2 week package holidays) and I hope you'll find it worthwhile!

I interacted with foreigners in a daily basis for the first time and got to learn how to speak english. Next, I found a remote job as a software engineer for an american company and have been travelling the world since then, for 5 years. I multiplied my earnings by 5x while having 10x more fun in life in a common day. That's a lot of personal gains.

Do you work at top company like faang?

No, I work for a Inc 500 company as a contractor

I just left a lengthy reply to the parent that addresses this.

The main reason is that by seeing how other countries and other cultures live, it challenges your idea that the Western way is the best (and only) way of living.

Why do we need huge houses and big cars and shiny new things? I see people in other countries that are just as happy and their kids are playing with a soccer ball made from old plastic bags. Westerners have so much and yet, really, we're no better off.

If I had to list one thing it would be this:

People everywhere, regardless of their race, religion, politics, or wealth are generally decent and primarily interested in making a better living for themselves and their family.

Some may see this as an obvious fact about human nature. However, for someone like me who grew up viewing the world through the lens of the US media, I used to think otherwise. Travel fundamentally changed my views in this regard.

You're not wrong from a Pareto frontier standpoint. It's certainly the case that many western travelers are engaging in what can pejoratively be called lifestyle consumerism. But I'd caution you against throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And in fact, I'd urge you to look backwards in history to see evidence of the value of this kind of cultural exchange.

Cultural exchange is not a one time thing, but an ongoing process. Perhaps someone goes to Europe for utterly superficial reasons a couple of times and enjoys it. But maybe the next time they do it, they seek to actually set roots in and assimilate into the culture. Nobody really knows when or where the conversion point is; it's somewhat unique and up to the individual. I'll give you an example from my personal experience -- I didn't really get the hubbub and the point of "traveling to Europe" and had skeptically discarded it as something that Americans do in order to pass off a feeling of vague superiority and worldliness.

Even so, it was very challenging for my gruff preconceptions to last very long when I spent a few weeks in Lisbon. My friend and I met some amazing local folks who showed us the Portugal we wouldn't see on the tourist path. I was hooked. My eyes were opened to a "third path" between the grind and hustle of American culture, and the low key daze of bucolic village life. Hitting the dancefloors until 4am paired with spending beautiful afternoons on the waterfront, eating delicious seafood and walking until our feet hurt. It's true that we could do all of this in America, too. But it was just a lot more fun in Lisbon. My eyes were opened to the deep, rich history of cultural exchange with the Moors, and I never got tired of the architecture, the cuisine, and so on.

Had I "really" assimilated into the city? Well, not really. I didn't quite have the guts to go all in, but my friend did, and went on to spend the next 6 months there. And then we visited again next year. And maybe we'll buy property there at some point.

My point is that it's a little reductionist to reduce an extremely broad human interaction (traveling) into a fixed point. It's a beginning, not an end. Just because so many people never get past the beginning doesn't change the fact that much exists beyond it. Almost every major civilization and empire was born from trade routes that existed to serve this exact kind of exchange. Consider the greater Silk Road for one.

It's easy to become cynical about rampant consumerization and the dull, lifeless, almost suburban collapse of what could be such a rich experience into two dimensions and an instagram filter. But that is a loss on the part of the person who lives life that way. It doesn't reduce the potential of the experience itself.

background: culturally mixed , travelled a lot as a kid(20+ countries), speak more than 3 languages

There are many mannerisms of speech that cultures use and you can learn a lot about them by the time/place it is used at.

Food: Ceremonies in preparing food + eating (slurping in Asian cultures normal vs western countries its rude). How many cultures share food for example or the type of food they eat can tell you a lot about the history of the place (ie a place that was a hub of trade back in the day that got exposure to tons of cultures (Philippines) vs western food of meat and potatoes).

I still go do the top 10 touristy things in a city/country but then always try to find what are the normal breakfast/lunch/dinners in the city/country and try them. Sitting down and observing people at a café or restaurant for example how the Greeks have tables looking towards the street, or how literally the country is all out at night.

What we've found is going to a bar and trying to strike some conversations with individuals.

The things that jump out at me:

-Seeing another societal system in practice and realizing that there are things from back home (CA, USA) which I took for granted which actually worked better than anywhere I went. The corollary is things I took for granted that were actually horribly broken and easily done better everywhere else.

-If you're gone long enough, coming back to your own culture can actually give you culture shock, which is about as unique an experience as I've had. It is somewhat related to the above. Hard to put this one in to words... kind of a "dancing about architecture" thing. It's a new set of eyes.

-Perspective broadening interactions around relative wealth, prosperity, historical inertia, and personal responsibility. It became much more clear to me and much less hypothetical how some poverty is legitimately just lazy people and some poverty is circumstantial.

-I'm not ashamed to admit this one even a little: If you managed to extend your comfort zone while traveling, you win dinner party conversations when you return. I climbed big dangerous mountains and traveled to unique place. Nobody cares about the algorithm I worked out on a Thai beach, but everybody wants to know about North Korea.

-You develop the skill of being comfortable inside your own skull. Assuming you are traveling alone, there will be lots of time without a stranger to talk to. That's a lot of down time to spend with yourself and really examine your own thoughts.

-You develop a self reliance related to not needing a lot. Once you realize you are fine just fine with a book and an afternoon and maybe spending the night sleeping in a park (that the locals say is safe!), the world is less menacing.

I have not traveled the "world", but I have been to a few places. I think I know where you are coming from, but your comment about going to a local city's meetup for a language doesn't make sense. As an adult, immersion is often the best way to pick up a new language. How many Americans who learn Spanish can actually speak it? I also deplore the instagram crowd, but perhaps I am extreme, I rarely take photos. At the end of the day, I believe people are the same everywhere, but they are also different. This dichotomy makes traveling interesting - when you figure out for yourself how a different culture is similar or different than your own.

I grew up in Latin America and and moved to the US for university. I have lived and worked in the US my entire adult life (other than a brief stint as a tour guide in Mexico). I'm very pale, so I was often treated with distain growing up because I was assumed to be a rich tourist. Regularly I would be ripped off and lied to because of my skin color.

After working as a tour guide, I realized I hated to be seen as a tourist, because it felt so superficial. Showing people around places I lived in, they missed the most important parts: the people.

Then I realized something very important, travel with another person bonds you together in a unique way.

Sharing a meal with someone builds a little bit of trust between you, it links you together. Travel with another person is that, but 100x stronger. This is why many people break up while traveling, they get to a new level of intimacy very quickly and realize they can't stand each other, they just didn't really know each other before, but it took travel to actually let them see the other person.

Similarly, I met my wife while working as a tour guide. She was a trainee guide, and I was the trainer. Being the only two who spoke the language, we had to rely on each other in very unique ways. When the the whole tour group got sick except for us, we had to take care of them. I got to know this woman in very close proximity and intimacy. We quickly learned that we matched very well together, and 15 years later we still agree getting married was the best decision of our lives.

So travel in my mind is much less about seeing new things, but it's all about seeing new things with another person, and bonding with them, either romantically or platonically. Many of my strongest friends were made traveling, because we shared something together.

When I was a child, everyday so many things were new for me, summer holidays took seemingly forever because there was a small adventure behind every corner. Interactions with people and the nature were very often memorable, instructive, sometimes life-changing. Food was usually some kind of experience, sometimes even frightening. Using different tools and machines for the first time, mindblowing superpowers in my hands. Getting hurt in various ways for the first time. Emotions, learning, surprises, memories, touching and tasting and smelling the wonderful world. That was the childhood.

Then the adulthood arrived - a successful one so far. But during the adulthood, days started to went by noticeably faster. I couldn't tell what I had for lunch two days before, how I spent last Monday or how I felt two months ago. And I started to understand why old people say that life unfolds slowly when you're young and then years pass like weeks. I think this happens to many people once they no longer (or rarely) meet the unexpected, try new things, get kissed/hurt/deceived/smiled at/laughed at/gifted/fed/etc/etc in previously unknown ways in different settings. They start making far fewer memories compared to when they were kids.

When I started traveling to different countries and cultures, I realised that - at least for me - this is bringing back my childhood wonder and the slow passing of time. I can sit a whole day on a pavement in Cambodia and watch the street, or watch the day in life of a Cuban fisherman, or eat fruit or insect that I have never heard of before, feel and hear the morning around a Buddhist temple, then Hindu temple, Confucian temple, learn scuba-diving and see on my own eyes what we've done to the marine world, or spend a night with my wife on a train station in the middle of nowhere, and it all has a profound impact on who I am as a person, a friend, a partner. I cannot tell exactly who I would be if I have spent these days in the small Czech town where I grew up, of course. After having done some 3 years of traveling (backpacking mostly) I am very likely less bored, less scared of the unknown, more curious and definitely feeling very much more alive and appreciative of what the world and especially the natural world really is. This personal experience cannot be substituted by literature, documentaries or local meetup groups. But I understand that for some people these may be enough. I would rather never come back to live in one place than stop traveling entirely.

After we got married back in 2010 my partner Natalie and I quit our jobs with the intent to travel the world for as long as we could get away with.

We ended up starting a startup together in Morocco, applied to YC from Luxor in Egypt, got accepted, moved to Mountain View and spent the next three years running a startup before getting acquired.

It kind of ruined the honeymoon!

Natalie wrote up the full story here: https://blog.natbat.net/post/61658401806/lanyrd-from-idea-to...

What is this startup about? The company page is dead.

Making it easier to print conference badges I think (probably drastically oversimplified).

Looking on Wayback, It's a collaboration system that 'links up' people with similar skills and interests who attend the same events and conferences. Was acquired by Eventbrite.

Lanyrd was a "social conference directory" - it helped people find conferences to go to based on who they followed on Twitter, maintain their own speaker profiles, track the schedule and catch up on slides, notes and videos afterwards.

I traveled for five years or so. I was having great time, but I've probably overdid it for year or two.

What worked well for me was quiting mixing backpacker circus with less known destination. It was fun to sleep at hostels, party with fellow travelers and have fun, but it gets old after while. I split my trips into 3 to 6 months chunks after which I just come back to one of my bases, recharge for a bit and then went to somewhere else. I usually mix things us so after 6 months in SE Asia, I went to Balkans, then Japan and then somewhere more popular with backpackers like Argentina.

It is great experience to have, but I would not put much hope in being truly transformative. Now, almost, 10 years later it just feel like it never happen, memories are fading fast as I went with settled life.

People are often scared about their career outlook or other long term consequences, but I didn't experience any of those.

Yeah, I think going out to find yourself or being transformed is mostly a fools errand.

I also don't regret my travels but didn't find any of that.

I suppose it depends on where you’re starting from. I started traveling at the end of 2019, and I’m still doing it. I’ve matured in all sorts of ways. For me, there was a lot I didn’t like about my life before I left. The problems that were local I left behind, and the problems that followed me I worked on.

Wherever you go, there you are.

At first I just found that line funny, but the more I've traveled, the truer I've found it to be. A change in scenery can be immensely helpful in many ways, but you'll still relate to the world in fundamentally the same way once you're somewhere else.

I love that line, and it captures the nub of something deep about how we do and don't evolve through new experiences.

I do think we underestimate how much impact travel and exposure to other cultures can have, we don't feel "transformed", I like to think of it a bit like having a child, before you do so, it's possible to be completely clueless about a whole bunch of stuff, afterwards, you're still the same person, but there are hundreds of ideas and topics that you are aware of and understand to some level that you didn't before. What's more, you can tell quickly whether another person has similar knowledge. Something like growing older and (hopefully) wiser, but accelerated and pushed in new directions.

Its exploration and finding things you didn't expect that leave an impression on you. The common story is because it happened to people not looking for it.

If you go looking for things to leave an impression on you, it probably wont happen.

You’re in the company of people that comfortably go to Croatia Yacht Week, Ibiza opening parties, Cannes Film Festival etc. Not just wage workers taking an aimless break to say they travelled, or college students on their gap year.

Aye, same. No "regurts" as the bad tattoo says, and glad I did it, but the main takeaway for me was "the grass is greener...". Taught me to appreciate what we have and what we don't.

And I guess we all need to learn that lesson eventually. I just wish I learned that in, say, Los Angeles or Denver or something, and not in a place that gave me bedbugs.

I was in my 20's at the height of the travel bubble running around hostels and such and.. yeah. So many people "looking for themselves" but if you step back and look, it's just hedonism which will never make you happy long term. Partying with other young people who share some parts of your world view and lounging around beautiful places is really really fun for a while, but it's hardly a recipe for a meaningful life. I did certainly gain a lot from those experiences but I also am glad I didn't spend the next 10 years doing the same thing. My current version of it is to move somewhere for 5+ years - really shows you how shallowly you understand anything about a different country while traveling.

> Now, almost, 10 years later it just feel like it never happen, memories are fading fast as I went with settled life.

Dang. As a nerd in his late 20s thinking the same, you make it sound pretty bleak, tbh. I guess it's just time for me to settle down, then go explore the world with my partner because that's what matters EOD.

I'm not OP, but as someone who traveled for a few years without the goal of 'finding myself' i actually found the experience pretty transformative to my character. Yes, Some of the more 'backpacky' memories do fade(might also have to do with the excessive drinking associated with it).

I still found that by immersing yourself in other cultures and ways of living you can gain more perspective about your own goals in life and your personal choices.

My experience has been similar. I found in the short term I too wasn't transformed but after 15 years it is more apparent that the small changes that did take place during my travels have greatly shaped my life. A few things I can think off of the top of my head are: 1) I own few very things 2) I am far more frugal (especially when it comes to food.) 3) I take risk. 4) I value friendships as a great source of happiness. Little of of this was in my upbringing.

Counterpoint here: I travelled for about 8 months about 7 years ago (already? damn!) and it even though it didn't change me directly as a person, it did instill an ever-present hunger to see more of the world. More importantly, it made me marry my foreign travel-partner which has without a doubt been very transformative ;)

Memories of anything fade. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an effect.

I went to a spanish speaking country for eight months, learned Spanish, now still speak Spanish. And also came to know the country well. Still have friends from that time.

That’s absolutely transformative. The further you get from it the less it is relevant to your daily life, but it definitely has an impact.

But it also is no miracle. If you’re an (unhappy?) nerd at home you’ll be the same person abroad. As others mentioned “wherever you go, there you are” is just about the truest line there is relating to travel.

Very insightful point. Your current state depends on your previous state. You don't go through life unfazed. Every experience turns you into what you are the next day, which results in repeated transformations. A small change in your life then, e.g (deciding not to go to a Spanish-speaking country) would result in many changes, including your comment not existing, and me never having written this comment. Then it's funny to consider the chances that I would have gone on to make a life-changing decision because of this thread.

Pretty interesting stuff.

I am not really sentimental person and I refuse to take photos or even think about past much, so it is not bleak at all I just forget things very easily. I was driven by curiosity and after few years I was saturated. I still like to travel, it is just not only thing I am thinking about (and actually doing) day and night.

At that time I was also seeing new generation of wine makers back at my home that started to do things I always wanted to do and I felt that should be me. So I pack my bag, book a ticket and get my hands dirty (literally) by tending vines and making wine.

left my home country to go backpacking in Asia and Australia in the early 90ies.

Had a plan to stay at least 1 year (that's how long I hoped my savings would last before I had to either earn a living or go back home). And I'm still abroad (not Asia) until this day. Another goal I set for myself is try to economically sustain myself in the host country without relying on a pay-check from a foreign company. (this is really hard and I often fail in this)

After a decade in APAC, and having gotten married to a Japanese flight-attendant working for Singapore airlines, a child on our way, we returned to Europe. We kept this life style as a young family and lived in various countries over here (which was as much excitement for my wife as Asia was to me).

We found that most countries are a great adventure for us except our very own home countries. We agreed to never return back to our own country as a couple because it took away the adventure for one of us and made things hard during the early phases when going through "reverse culture shock". We eventually split up after 20 years of traveling together and having raised 2 kids. Both of us still feel at home anywhere and neither would ever return to their home country. My kids are at university now, speak 3 languages on a native level + 3 foreign languages they had picked up along the way. Best thing I ever did was pack that rucksack.

with countries opening up again I hope to go either back to Asia (by myself) or continue my exploration of South Eastern Europe. A challenge I had set for myself after the break-up because my wife would never go to there (it's a lot harder to survive there using the above "rules/philosophy")

> Another goal I set for myself is try to economically sustain myself in the host country without relying on a pay-check from a foreign company. (this is really hard and I often fail in this)

This makes sense but how do you sustain yourself if it's hard and you often fail at it? Living extremely frugally?

I can see the excitement in this but I admit this is not for everyone.

I'd be very interested to know what kind of jobs foreigners land in Eastern Europe. Without knowing the language I'd say almost all professions are unavailable

Work remotely for a US/UK firm, or a the local branch of a multinational, e.g. Microsoft's Serbian Subsidiary.

Lot of IBM jobs in Eastern Europe that require English and the local language. If you've got one and enough of the other to hold a conversation you've got a shot.

Yeah, most lucrative being IT and considering the low cost of living in Eastern Europe it could be quite a deal if one is to have a wild experience as people are friendly and such but local authorities are corrupted.

without the language would be very difficult IMO, also having "gambling" money for your own projects can help. what worked for me was try to bring foreign investors to the economy, make deal with start-up incubators, accelerators, etc. Talk to people who already do business there (expat scene is usually small). Connect with professors at local university, start teaching niche subjects you're an expert in. Ultimate goal isn't to make a boatload of money but to learn, not get ripped off, and hope you can exit the situation/business undamaged.

my experience is that ultimately all opportunities will remain hidden until I actually go there.

> continue my exploration of South Eastern Europe. A challenge I had set for myself after the break-up because my wife would never go to there (it's a lot harder to survive there using the above "rules/philosophy")

I'm not sure I understand this part.

> Another goal I set for myself is try to economically sustain myself in the host country without relying on a pay-check from a foreign company. (this is really hard and I often fail in this)

thanks, yes that's the reasoning. not many jobs there even for the locals

I guess you have to mention where exactly in South Eastern Europe and what you do for a living :-)

But did you ever find Dog?

I loved it, and continue to love it.

After studying Software Engineering then working a couple of years I quit to drive a 4x4 from Alaska to Argentina. That took 2 years through 17 countries, and only cost about $27k[1] ALL IN.

Then I went back to Software to save up enough money to do it all over again. I built a 4x4 Jeep into a house on wheels [2], and then drove it 54k miles all the way around Africa through 35 countries over three years. It was absolutely life changing, and I'll never be the same person.

After a couple more years saving money I'm gearing up to go again on an entirely new continent!

I've slowly been transitioning so this is now my "job". I've published a few books, I write for a handful of magazines, have published a photography book and am growing a YouTube channel about my adventures, and teaching other people how to also follow their dreams.

More than anything else, I learned that time is so, so much more important than money.

I continue to structure my life so I have time to actually enjoy my life. Of course I have less money than I used to, and I'll never have a sports car or a big house, but I'm happier than I ever was going to work 40 hours a week.

[1] theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure

[2] theroadchoseme.com/the-jeep

I did the digital nomad thing shorter term - for a few months. Kinda fun but I still found work even more invasive on my time than at home. Everyone’s having fun and relaxing at the beach while I’m sitting at the reception area trying to connect to the crappy wifi to upload my work or join a call. Or I’m sitting at a hotel room all day/night working because the time difference is weird or just working in a coffee shop every day is not any more fun than at home. It was killing the spontaneous adventures part of travel which is the truly fun part.

Later in my life business travel killed my love of travel to the point I dread getting on a plane and now I just go to nature near wherever I’m living at instead.

This is a cautionary tale... I'm considering doing the same myself, and hopefully can get the most out of it. What would some of you have done differently? Considering mostly East Asia, and will be having a remote full time developer job.

Be careful working remotely in asia if you need to work on US time. I spent two months as a zombie in Tokyo only wandering around by myself at night because of that which was fun but not as glamorous as it seems.

Depends on where you are, but I work remotely on my own during the day and then have a meeting at the end of my day (around 7pm for me) and beginning of their day (9am for them) to touch base. We skip that meeting a lot and just communicate via issue tracker.

You can make it work, but it's important for me to not work "american hours" because I'm asleep by then. Try to focus on the 1 hour of overlap somewhere.

And in my experience potential clients are very weird about the whole travel abroad thing. They think I'm less committed or escaped the zoo or something so I have to show them that I have the same level of commitment remotely as if I'd showed up at their office.

Definitely I should have rented a place with internet after a while of looking for what place feels right and stayed for some months. At least to me being “on the road” and working was really tough. But maybe if you just go to Hanoi for 6 months or something it might be interesting. I also wasn’t on a great contract and was kind of a noob myself so the work wasn’t that fun.

Yes, that is exactly why I wouldn't like to work during travel, it's hard to do both effectively.

I did it back in 2014. I was kind of burned out, I decided to quit, I bought a ticket to New Zealand (going from EU), booked a bed in hostel for 2 nights and thought I'd figure out the rest on the way.

It was an amazing experience, I spent around 11 months traveling, I attended a few conferences and meetups, met tons of people, faced my fears (I am afraid of heights and deep water, so I did bungee jump and picked up scuba diving), made me deal with a lot of uncertainties.

Eventually I got tired of it (I traveled too fast, it was more of backpacking than nomad-ing) and decided to find a job in one of places I visited - I ended up moving to Singapore for 4 years, where I met my current wife.

Overall if I was about to do it again, I'd do it differently, but still it was one of the best decisions I made in my life. I wouldn't say it really changed the way I see the world or something, but it resulted in so many fantastic memories.

I tried this kind of life for a while (about a year, maybe), but did not find it as fulfilling as I had imagined.

I remember the day when I decided to go back home. I met a German guy, in his mid-fifties, who had been living out of his suitcase most of his live. He was extremely talkative and very friendly. We shared some drinks and talked most of the night. Next day, both of us travelled onwards, each towards our own new destination. That is when I realised that I could not keep doing this, I did not want to be like that guy when I was in my mid-fifties. He was happy, but I wouldn’t have been.

All I can say is that I believe the idea of such a life is romantic, but not for everyone. If you try it, and find that you don’t like it, it’s not a failure to come back home and get back to a “normal” life. With that said, the best way to find out if such a life is for you is to try it out.

I finally have a reason to post on HN!

I quit my job after working for 2 years as a software engineer and traveled solo for a year and some change through 30ish countries in Europe, Asia and Oceania. It's without a doubt the best decision I ever made in my life.

When you first start out traveling, you end up moving really fast since there is so much to see. I think it's because that's what you do when you're on a fixed-length vacation. After a month or two of this you get tired and you find yourself staying longer and longer in places you like. For me, that ended up being tropical places where I could scuba dive for cheap.

During a long trip you'll grow a lot as a person. It sounds cliche, but you'll be scared and lonely sometimes, but also super-charged with energy and surrounded by great friends at other times. You may even fall in love (a few times). It's important to realize it goes in waves - I found that every 3 to 4 months I would feel depressed or lonely and think about going home, only to meet some incredible people and realize how cool of a life I was living.

I came back when I ran out of money. I traveled on a "shoe-string" with only a carry on backpack for roughly $24,000 USD. For those interested in traveling like this, check out "How to Travel the World for $50 a Day" by Nomadic Matt.

Coming back and joining the workforce was incredibly hard. I didn't have a laptop with me, so a lot of my technical skills had atrophied and it showed in interviews, leading to me failing every interview from big tech companies. Luckily, after having only a few hundred dollars to my name, I got a dev job and my skills came back rather quickly after that.

In 2019 I went on a solo Biketouring trip spanning across Canada, USA, Peru, NZ and Taiwan lasting 10 months. While obviously the means of transportation was draining both physically and mentally it was amazing to be truly immersed in region I was currently visiting.

In general it was great but if I were to do it again I would go way easier and slower on my bike instead of trying to race it plus I would have shortened the trip to last at most 4 months - after 10th National Park or so I stopped appreciating the location as much because I was comparing it to some other that I saw just a couple of weeks before that and the wow factor was no longer there. Seeing too much on the short span of time is a curse of such a trip imho.

All in all it was great and I’d do it again but slightly differently and definitely not as long.

P.S. (Finding job in covid after the tour was really hard despite my data science/ml engineering profile.)

How many KM did you manage to bike in that time?

In just the very first 30days I went from LA to Seattle through Sierras and Cascades (>3000km & 35000m of elevation) but in total I think it was ~14000km and ~150000m of elevation gain. that’s including taking a 2 months rest for US and Canadian Thanksgiving. Can’t remember the exact general statistics but I believe that whenever I had an active day on my bike I did like 105km and 1200m on average.

Thanks! That's impressive, although I guess 100km per day is actually quite reasonable. For some reason, Los Angeles to Seattle seems a greater distance than 2,000km.

No worries! Yeah I feel the same way. Honestly I was mostly aiming for time not distance, with 4-5h on the bike, because for me it became really painful to go any longer. But that’s super personal and everyone has their own pace. For me it worked, because I could take a 1-2h lunch break, have a dip in a lake or just a chat with the locals. People are super friendly and open no matter if you are in the middle of nowhere States or Peru. Going solo also helped in that matter - I was craving social interactions as you get bored of just your own thoughts. ;) Having other fellow tourers with you is fun but changes the dynamics of the trip and you become less insightful and conscious of the surroundings and you have less interactions with the locals, which I find to be extremely valuable.

I see people nonchalantly saying they've done these cross-country bike touring trips, and I have an ignorant question: how do people feel safe while actually riding on the road?

Riding bikes around neighborhoods I can understand when cars are only going 20-25mph, but to travel between cities you'll certainly have to go on either very fast, very busy, or very fast and very busy roads, right? I'd like to understand this because I imagine long distance biking must feel very freeing and exciting.

Taking a loose definition of "travel the world".

Born and raised in the BA. In my mid 30's I left a FAANG type(specialized, highly compensated) employer, sold my home and bought a sailboat and moved aboard. Over that next year and half I spent it sailing the Pacific then ending up in Southern CA.

I was going through a premature midlife crisis all based on the premise that "humans weren't meant to sit behind a desk all day". I was very well off having an entire career in the BA but my "life" was garbage. I'd work, go home, watch TV or play a video game. Repeat. Not much romantically or no strong friendships.

In that year and half my entire outlook changed. It's been 3-4 years since I've returned and to this day:

* Live a "minimalist" lifestyle. I'm a terrible consumer and love it.

* My mental and physical health has drastically improved.

I didnt realize it but I suffered from anxiety. I was constantly worrying about being the best, having the highest salary, and being able to compete. I intentionally made a career out of seeking tough jobs "moving mountains".

When you're traveling (in my case sailing) the mindset quickly changed from worrying about all the little crap about work, performance, hitting the next goal to "I can do anything today, what do I want that to be?" without worrying about tomorrow. That gave my mind peace, which made me happier, which inspired me to work on myself, which made me even happier.

I'd highly recommend it. For those living in the BA.. its a great place to earn and save money but terrible in every other aspect (and I say that lovingly as someone who still gets very homesick).

If you ever leave, when you come back you'll find there is some stigma around it and especially if its not to the Bay Area.

For example I applied to a local semi-large financial institution asking for Cassandra which I have in-depth experience dealing with at scale. The number of people who have that experience at scale can fit into a large room. I was ghosted after first tech screen after being asked about the gap in resume, I wasn't a model employee. And knowing the area they settled for much less.

Great story - I hope to do something similar someday soon.

Out of curiosity, did you know how to sail before or did you take a crash course just prior to/learn as you went along?

It’s something I always wanted to do. Prior to leaving I spent a few years learning it and sailing SF bay.

Having said that’s it’s not required, plenty of people learn as they go though crossing an ocean isn’t advised as a jumping off point

What's BA?

Sounds to me like it's short-hand for "Bay Area"

Beyond this experience with that financial institution, was it hard to get a job after your travels?

This seems extremely shallow. Yeah if you don’t have to worry about making money to survive obviously life is a lot simpler and less stressful.

You're eluding to a question that no one asked. It can be cheap or as expensive you want. You can buy a boat 5-10 grand that will get you to the Carribean from California, or you can spend 1 million to do the same.

Once you've left your expenses are food and maintenance. There are quite a few sailors living on 10K/y and living comfortably. It's not "cheap" but it doesnt need to be as expensive as people suspect

I cannot answer this question, as I moved abroad for work and my education. However, I do travel a whole lot more, especially during the pandemic with everything being remote.

Most importantly, you only live once: Travel while you still have your health! Travel becomes a lot harder with health problems.

Anyways, if you are an American, you may want to try Croatia, which offers a digital nomad visa for all remote workers worldwide. Croatia allows third country nationals (non-EU/EEA/Swiss citizens) in extremely easily. In fact, if you stay in Croatia for 14 days (with or without the digital nomad visa) you can travel throughout the EU, as long as you follow the pandemic rules. It is a "loophole" for Americans who want to get into the European Union for travel, as Croatia is part of the EU (but not a part of the Schengen zone, so they are allowed to make their own rules for entry a lot easier and without controversy within the EU), but not part of the Schengen zone ("Freedom of Movement zone").

You are also eligible for Croatian national health insurance, which Croatian/EU/EEA/Swiss citizens are likewise eligible for, if you get the Digital Nomad Visa, which is quite a good deal. Croatia costs about the same as the US, worst case scenario, if not less--which is usually the case. The people are extremely friendly and accommodating, too.

Here is some info on the Croatian Digital Nomad Visa: https://www.total-croatia-news.com/news/digital-nomads-in-cr...

This is the website to consult for getting administrative stuff done in Croatia: http://expatincroatia.com/

Changed the trajectory of our lives.

My wife and I quit our jobs to travel Europe and work on farms (helpx.net). I set up a personal blog to write about our experience and realized that, given ample free time, my mind gravitated towards writing, coding, and photography for fun.

When we returned home, I eventually went back to work with my old employer, but with a new perspective. I had already quit, knew what the world looked like outside the office, and was no longer afraid to get fired. Paradoxically, this made me more valuable to the company -- I acted bolder and spoke more truth. I took on a new role, coding again after a hiatus, writing personally and professionally, and started speaking at tech conferences. This mix of activities led me to join Twilio as a developer evangelist in 2014.

When we quit our jobs to travel I was making ~$65k/year. When I joined Twilio a few years later, my starting salary was $120k/year.

I share the professional benefit first because the short-term professional/financial costs are the most concerning when considering extended travel. But, in a way that never would have made sense on paper, that trip catalyzed a trajectory shift that significantly increased my earning potential and professional satisfaction.

There were also a bunch personal benefits. We lived for two weeks with a family that had young kids and realized that we'd probably enjoy being parents. We now have two of our own, and we do. We saw how folks in Barcelona, Paris, and Stuttgart raised families in small apartments and rethought the necessity of the suburban homes we grew up in. We now live in Brooklyn. On a thirty-cow organic dairy farm in the mountains of northern Spain, we drank milk still warm from the udder for breakfast and cooked dinner with ingredients we harvested from the field. We eat differently now. During six weeks in Turkey, we accepted spontaneous invitations for tea in people's homes and offers for rides while walking dirt roads during rainstorms -- hospitality extended to us by Muslim strangers unlike anything we'd experienced before. My wife and I were raised in Evangelical churches.

We saw beautiful sights, experienced new cultures, challenged our perspectives, made lifelong friends, etc. All the cliches you think are going to happen when traveling the world. And we also saw tremendous professional growth, precisely because we took a break from our careers to gave our minds and hearts the space and time to explore.

I quit my job in 2014. I was burnt out, exhausted and not thrilled with my life and the direction I was going. I ended up buying a touring bike (bicycle) and spent the summer riding across Canada. Those 3 months were immensely valuable. I saw the country in minute detail and was floored by the generosity and friendliness of all the people I met along the way. There was a lot of time to think and reflect and it didn't take long for my burnt out attitude to be replaced by inspiration and excitement for what was to come next (although I still had no idea what that was going to be). One I hit the far coast, I ditched the bike and flew to Munich. I spent the next few months loosely based in Germany, visiting friends and doing some short trips out to Austria, Italy and Switzerland. I picked up some contract work that allowed me to work remotely from anywhere with an internet connection. I considered staying in Europe, possibly moving to the Alps in France. But after 8 months away I finally realized that I wanted to go 'home' and, more importantly, I knew where 'home' was for me. I moved back to Canada and now live less than an hour away from where I was before I left. This massive country feels a lot smaller now (in a good way). Contract work keeps flowing in the door and I'm living a lifestyle that is far more suited to my personality and interests. Never been happier.

My girlfriend and I took a 9 months sabbatical back in 2019 so we didn't quit our jobs, but hopefully you'll find this useful anyway.

I bought an used RV and did some modifications ourselves to be truly independent (more water storage, 500w of solar panels, ...) As we didn't want to be constrained to campsites.

It was a glorious experience. Very tempted to do it again to be honest. We traveled in Italy and Spain for 5 months during the cold periods and in summer we roamed through Scandinavia.

Generally speaking, we spent 2 weeks in each spot, but in few 1 or 2 months (San Vito lo Capo in Sicily comes to mind). We both climb and generally speaking are outdoor persons so we opted to stay away from big cities and choose to park in remote areas in the countryside. This let us get to know the local lifestyle and made friends along the way in A way that is impossible in cities (we both speak Italian, Spanish and English). Going to the only bar/restaurant in these towns every day made our faces familiar to the locals and we got invited over for dinner several times (in italy and spain, that didn't happen in Scandinavia at all).

I highly recommend traveling this way. It's fun, economic and if you are with a good partner an endless pool of amazing memories. Also, this made me rearrange my life priorities. Before I had career on top of my list, now, instead, I just want to be relaxed. I don't want a job that keeps me worried after work hours and I want to spend more time with my family!

Happy to answer all your questions!

Sounds like something i'd like to plan :) Career has been all consuming and i've done well for myself, but there isn't a day where I don't think of the trail, camp, hike, climb or being in the mountains or spending more time with family.

Do so! I can't recommend it enough.

The big investment is getting the van ready, but after that everything is relatively cheap. Between van and modifications we spent around 55k USD, but it is quite a luxurious van since we knew we would spend a ton of time in it. You can get away with much less I believe, especially if you are ok with outdoor showers.

And about the being outdoor part I fully understand. Lately we have started doing multi-pitches. It is the best in my opinion as you have everything (hiking for approach/descent, climbing, camping once topped if it's a long way). Also something I highly recommend!

My wife and I rented an RV in Portugal a while ago for only a week -- it was one of the best travel experiences I had!

I'm curious about how you found and prepared the RV, and how was living in it for a few months.

So, we're in Switzerland and finding a used one was not that hard. We decided on few must have things (shower, toilet) as we didn't want to do a substantial overhaul and we visited in person some dealerships. About the modifications, we bought everything from https://autosolar.ch/ and the increased water tank is basically the original one (40L) plus 2 20L containers.

About the living in it for months it takes some getting used to. Especially when the weather is bad. Being confined in 10 sqm with another person is not easy. We didn't jump in this adventure straight away, but we eased into it with long weekend trips and then 1/2 week trips. When everything became second nature we were confident we could do it and started planning the trip.

Lessons learned: 1) get at least 2 compression bags for dirty clothes. No normal bags, but compression ones. And you wash them with the clothes. 2) Buy a small de-humidifier. We had some mold problems when we encountered some long spells of bad weather.

In 2016, I worked remotely from Prague for a few months. When my girlfriend came out to visit, we took 3 weeks to travel around Czech Republic, adding Vienna and Budapest, hitting up museums, charming dinner cruises, trendy cocktail bars, you name it.

I kept track of every koruna, euro, and forint along the way and the total bill for this extravagant trip was around $2,000. Back in San Jose, that wouldn't even pay rent for my 1BR. It felt like I was missing out on a huge opportunity.

The next year I left my job and moved to a town in the Japanese countryside to decompress. Luckily, there were a number of locals with English proficiency who looked out for me, and I ended up doing things I never imagined -- hosting a cookout, participating in a crazy fire festival, teaching kids about finite state machines (via translator), learning how to make gyoza from old ladies, presenting to entrepreneurs about makerspaces, helping a craftsman export his product, meditating with Buddhist monks. I also learned to ride a bike, better late than never.

I still think of these experiences as highlights of my life -- being carefree, the thrill of traveling, and most of all becoming an illiterate and mute witness, being led around by generous people who want to share their culture.

This sounds exactly like what I want to do! Would you mind answering a few questions? How did you find the town in Japan to move to? Also, did you buy/rent an apartment, or was it an Airbnb or something similar? How did you pay for it - savings, or the odd jobs that you talked about?

The opportunity that arose assigned the city (Shingū) to me—it was the sister city of where I was living in the US. My partner taught English and she was given an apartment by the city. Airbnbs are available everywhere though. I used my savings; I don’t know the total cost but it wasn’t too expensive being in a remote area—as long as I resisted buying a pile of snacks from FamilyMart each day.

I quit my job in 2009 and moved from place-to-place for about three years while freelancing. Spent about 6 months each in Austin, Portland, Chicago, and Buenos Aires, with shorter excursions elsewhere (Santiago, Berlin).

By the end of the three years I'd lost the travel bug and longed to be more settled in one location. With about a decade of hindsight now, I can say:

- Those years traveling were a highlight of my life. I often reflect on them and reference them, in a probably-very-annoying-to-my-friends way.

- Traveling gave me a ridiculous amount of self-confidence. Having to land in a new city, make a whole new set of friends, learn the rhythms, (in some cases) learn enough of a new language to get by, was challenging but immensely empowering. Obviously there were deep, lonely periods as well, but the good and the bad go together.

- In a roundabout way, it was a boon for my career. Moving every 6 months in 2010 basically meant I had to freelance, which forced me to learn a whole new skillset of selling, which in turn led me down a path of entrepreneurship. It also led me down some unexpected paths, whether it was folks I met at a coworking space or learning about the Microconf community.

I wouldn't do it now, but I'm so glad I did it back then.

I'm Curious what the reasons you wouldn't do it now are? I'm probably older - i'm in mid 40s and kids are of that age they don't care what I do so i'm looking at possibly just going remote and on the road for 4-6 months - still working the job but curious what it is you value/appreciate now that you maybe didn't have while on the road/traveling.

It's always one of those things I don't want to NOT try it, but i'd rather be grounded in the reality vs think its gonna be all roses :)

Well, I suppose I have to directly contradict myself by saying we moved down to the South for the past couple months to escape the winter, and it's been glorious.

The biggest barrier is my partner's job not being very remote-friendly, so outside of pandemic times, long stretches of digital nomad-ism are probably not realistic for us as a unit. I'm also not sure what traveling as a pair, or as a family, would be like -- I imagine one person's paradise could easily be another person's nightmare.

I also got the impression that it's easier to live the "traveler's" lifestyle when you're younger, in that you've got more folks amenable to meeting you, hanging out, having more free time. That may have changed with increasing digital infrastructure, but things like hostels and couch surfing I found to be very geared towards a younger clientele (even as a mid-20s fellow, I sometimes felt too old!)

That all said, if you're in a place where you can do it, I think you should! 4-6 months is not that long and if you're in a position where you can try it, the worst that happens is you can say you tried it and didn't like it.

I am always wondering how these data nomads are actually sustaining themselves. As a freelancer, I had quite some hard time to find paying gigs, not to mention that most of the time I was asked to work on premise.

This said, I do not claim to be the smartest guy when it comes to business, nor to development…

In my experience most of the "travel blogger" industry is fake in that they project a self-sustainable journey when in reality they have a lot of money to lean on or they peddle "exposure" to smaller establishments that comp their stay.

Very few people actually do the couchsurfing or couponing style because to most people that approach is miserable and/or dangerous.

I have personally met dozens, maybe a hundred, people that have traveled around on a budget. CouchSurfing especially used to be filled with some really interesting people. (No idea if it still is, but my impression is that it's become more of a dating site.)

Not everything is a scam.

They're billing dollars and paying baht or rupiah.

There are plenty of unsexy remote jobs, especially in customer service. You won't make more than $35,000 a year, but that's enough to survive virtually anywhere.

I find people expect to have both a career lifestyle and remote lifestyle at the same time, but it is much easier to find the edge case employers and jobs and expect some level of disconnect from the rat race. That's the whole point right?

There are thousands of small businesses who need a developer/digital rousabout. I am talking 5-20 employees.

You make your life far more complicated if you try to freelance many clients, as it can be difficult to organise everything and be available at all the right times. Possible obviously, but why not save yourself the hassle amd just manage some small businesses ecomm website or something, and go enjoy your time abroad.

remote salary job and "live" in one country collecting that salary while traveling the world.

I tried this out when I took a year break to travel. I got gigs from Upwork easily. I was able to limit myself to 10 hours a week and it paid for my travels. What I found was that there are all kind of companies out there looking for all sorts of helps, you just have to be proactive with outreach.

I could afford it because I had pre-existing relationships with the businesses I worked for (as a writer, not a developer). While technically freelance, I didn’t have to worry about finding work while I travelled.

If you can, it’s probably easier to go remote with an established income than quit and start from scratch while travelling. Otherwise you will spend a lot of time hustling to get clients.

I sort of got stuck in Scandinavia and woke up one morning 20 years later with a wife and 3 kids.

That is some serious ellipse ! Made my morning. Care to tell us more ?

If you have even the inkling that you might want to do this then you absolutely should.

Opportunities and projects and ventures will always be there. Your youth will not.

You can't say that with certainty. The opportunities of today aren't guaranteed to sit there waiting for you, or to be replenished in the future. And while it's true that all of our youths are fleeting, that doesn't mean that chasing a romantic image is a must-do for everyone who's considered the idea.

My thoughts exactly!!

Opportunities change and adapt even as you execute them. To say the same opportunity won't be there in 12 months is a fact, to assume no opportunities will be there is not. So why be attached to an ideal?

Travel when you are young, healthy and have a permissive visa status.

Why does everyone try to travel when they're young? There are things youth helps with but visiting other countries doesn't seem like one of them. Finding a partner and building a family is though and that's very hard when you're always in a different place.

Plenty of people end up traveling more than they want to later in life for business anyway.

Business travel is nothing like personal travel.

Business is all about maximizing the time w/ the client or customer and minimizing the downtime. You catch a 3pm flight, work on the flight, grab a late dinner, get up early, spend all day with the customer or at a conference, then drop.

I can tell you all about convention centers in 10 cities and 2 continents! And my customer's offices in Phoenix.

Heard plenty of stories from friends who worked as a travel agent that told of working with clients for years to plan their dream vacation only to see them or their spouse die before having it realized.

I remember a beautiful sunrise hike up to the Meteora monasteries in Greece... then the swarms of busses filled with elderly retirees coming in after.

Sure, you can visit places when you're older - but it's a vastly different experience.

Why not have both? The world's accessibility has opened up so much in the past couple decades.

Traveling is simply easier when you're young. For example, have you ever wanted to climb Mt. Everest? Guess what, it's going to be a lot easier in your 20s than 60s.

Put it another way, the set of all places you can visit while young is simply bigger than when you're old. Places that require intense physical exertion will be off limits to you.

A lot of people don't want a family and are happy in their twenties without a partner

Quit and sold everything in 2006 and went on a round the world trip (i was 25 back then). Some notes:

1) Absolutely worth it, broadened my horizon

2) Having total freedom (no commitments, bills, job to get back to) was amazing

3) As someone else posted: moving too much / quickly gets boring fast. In travels after i stayed for longer in single places

4) I over planned massively in the beginning

5) After 10 months i was 'done' with travelling and returned home earlier as planned

6) There were some tough times but i grew from them and the potential remorse of not having done the travels would have far outweighed them

But that was before social media, iPhones and plenty of remote work so YMMV

I quit my job writing/debugging code for a SMS/WAP gateway at a generic telecoms company in Ireland back in 2001. My plan was to head towards Asia, and come back via Eastern Europe.

I had a friend in NYC who said "well, naturally if you are doing that you should come to NYC first" which made zero sense, but I did it anyway. I arrived the week after 9/11.

I have been here twenty years and I'd argue I'm still getting to know NYC.

IMHO I'd recommend 20 years per city/country to get a good taste for it.

Oh, but at that rate, how will you ever put down roots? :)

Fair. One day. When it "feels" right.

I kind of did, but the travelling was somewhat hindered by covid. I ended up playing games and doing fun side projects for a lot of the time instead.

The most stressful part was the feeling of lost opportunity cost. Even though my living costs were low, I previously earned around $250k/year, and so for each month I travelled it felt like I was really spending $15k or so (after taxes). It took probably 6 months to fully get over this feeling. I unfortunately didn't anticipate it and it made the start of my mini retirement much more stressful than I thought it would be, and I had 5+ years of living costs saved up.

Would be interested in knowing if anyone else experienced this, and how you dealt with it.

My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I quit our jobs and spent 19 months travelling around Africa.

Upon our return we both "levelled-up" when we found new jobs.

For me, so much so that I was hired into a position I probably wasn't ready for.

I think the fact we'd had to face so much adversity in Africa, with no way to quit or give up - we were faced with situations which were literally figure out a solution or die - meant that we both developed incredible problem solving skills which our interviewers really valued.

We'd also been faced with an incredible number of corrupt police and border officials who were all trying to extract their pound of flesh. We developed really thick skins and were eventually quite adept at negotiating through the situation with our skins and wallets intact - again, very valuable skills in the workplace.

So the net effect was we had some incredible experiences, saw things we will likely never see again, and after all was said and done, came back into higher grade / better paying jobs than we would have if we'd stayed put!

To cap it all off, it just so happened that a large chunk of our trip coincided with the global financial crisis - so while friends of ours were getting laid off back home, we rolled on in our truck oblivious to the drama back home!

I did a small reddit write up on our trip here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/53eqlt/i_quit_my_job_...

I did it for 6 months and it was really great. My main regret was not bringing a friend (or better yet, SO) to do it with. If I were to do it over again, I'd bring someone else with me. You do meet people, but a lot of your relationships are by nature transient, and it can get kind of lonely.

It can get a bit exhausting to live in hotels and small apartments because you rarely have a good work setup.

Most of the time there is no good working desk and chair.

Also, working on a laptop is bad for your posture.

I have yet to try bringing an external monitor while I travel. Maybe that would be a solution. Or renting one where I stay.

Another option is taking a keyboard and mouse with you and elevating the whole laptop as if it were the monitor instead.

Yes. I do that.

But still the desk/chair constellation is usually bad. And the monitor of the laptop is a bit small.

Yep agreed, I have been interested in some of these battery powered travel monitors. They look like a big tablet but are just a screen and battery, like a Surface without the computer.

A portable projector might be a good solution as well.

But you're still left with the bad table an chair.

If you're this guy, not very well: https://www.onceuponasaga.dk/blog

Spent 9 years traveling to every country on earth by land/sea in a single, continuous journey. 6 left to go, and they got stranded in Hong Kong for one year and counting now.

I drove my car from San Francisco to Panama Canal. It took 1.5 years. What I will remember when I am old is fixing my car in beautiful rural Honduras, sleeping in a hammock there and talking to people. Avoid big cities - when we had car problems and had to improvise shorting fuses with a wire that I obtained from our dashcam USB cable with a pocket knife, we came to think of Tegucigalpa as an inaccessible lucrative capital of the world, dreaming and plotting how to get there. That in the retrospect was pure bliss.

I travelled for most of the year, every year, for most of my 30's. It was every bit as good as you would expect.

I'll second the advice I've seen here about moving slowly. Never put dates on your calendar where you need to be somewhere. Certainly don't buy an entire Round-The-World ticket that forces you to commit to a bunch of flights in advance. You'll spend your whole year missing out on cool stuff so that you can rush to the next airport and catch the next flight.

I would typically book a one-way flight to an interesting sounding place, then let my trip evolve from there. So I'd start in, say, Cape Town. That's one end of a big continent, and the plan is vaguely "work my way North". At some point in the next year, I would run out of Money, Motivation or Africa, at which point I'd book a flight home or elsewhere.

As it happened, the thing that always failed first was motivation. I'm a software guy, and my brain starts to get annoyed when it's not thinking. After 9 months of dirtbagging around interesting parts of the world, I'd feel the need to work again, so I'd arrange a contract back in the 'States and book another one-way flight home (or round trip home from wherever I was so that I could pick up again a few months later).

Go slow, stick to public transport, avoid touristy areas. There's a lot of good still out there to be discovered.

Good luck!

I did it for a year in 2016, met my now wife in Croatia. Invited her to go on a road trip in Norway and we've been together since. Before leaving, I was nervous about missing out on a year's worth of income. But in hindsight, those worries seems so trivial now. My advice to those who are traveling solo is to stay in hostels even if you can afford hotels. It's the best way to meet people wherever you are. And pack light!

Haha you get it ;)

While I didn’t meet my wife during travels, I met many women. Before that, I had a hard time finding love. After traveling it was also easier to find love in my own country.

In all fairness, I just came out of high school when I traveled.

Later during shorter travels, I learned about packing light. That made transportation a lot more convenient.

To those that did it how did it affect your career? Obviously you're left with a wealth of life experience but I wonder how difficult it is to reintegrate into a normal 9 to 5?

As someone that's always wanted to travel to my parents home country for a few months but hasn't yet, I wonder about these things. In addition to that what is the tradeoff between being a full time traveler as opposed to working remotely out of another country?

I saved and invested 80-90% of my after tax income (as a pharmacist) for eight years. I planned to just backpack for the rest of my life from age 32 onwards.

After the fifth night of European hostel living and walking around during the day, I was bored. Meeting new people was fun for a bit but after a while it felt the same. A month later I was complaining to my friend that I was bored out of my mind and she got me a job at her hospital. I started working again a few months after that.

Three months into working I wanted to quit again. But I didn't want a repeat of history, so I decided I was going to settle down in Cluj-Napoca Romania, a city I passed through before. Cost of living, safety, English speaking, friendliness of locals, political stability all were considered. Now I've been living here for over a year and living with a girl I met on day three of arriving. We're both learning web dev together.

Many days I still feel meh, but I can't expect life to be endless excitement. Definitely meaningful and emotionally more stable to be in a long term relationship, though.

I’m interested in the financial aspect to these stories. You quit your job to travel the world ... when in your career? How much had you saved? What was left over after traveling? Do you regret now, or think you may regret when you’re 65, the inability to retire?

Or were you just very lucky, and had tons of money thanks to parents or something?

I left Google to spend a year cycling with my partner from Alaska to Argentina, and couldn't recommend it more highly.

I strongly agree with other comments about having some structure/mission to your experience. I'm sure the need for it varies from person to person, but I know that I would have gone crazy or felt guilty for wasting my time if we had just been hanging out and drifting from one tourist hotspot to another, as seems to be popular on e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail.

Having a theme or purpose, even if it's totally arbitrary (like "let's go from the top of the Americas to the bottom, by bike!") was definitely important to me to maintaining a positive mindset and achieving a satisfying experience.

It went alright. Wish I did more research and had a stronger "ground game" when I landed. I did cursory searches and lined up some fiber optic splicing gigs, but things went sideways. I eventually developed that ground game and improvised a lot, but in hindsight I wish I'd done more due diligence.

Hostels get old pretty fast, and hitchhiking is pretty effective (caveat: only in some places). AirBnBs are usually overpriced. Couchsurfing was hit or miss.

I had good experiences looking for "learn X language" classes in big cities, and/or "learn English classes" where I'd show up and help them practice English. Learning some basic local language helped a lot. Just getting a feel for tonal languages and practicing them a little helped considerably.

I did this in 2013. I not only quit my job, but my life. I packed up my entire apartment in a uhaul and dropped it off at goodwill. I packed a backpack and bounced around a handful of pacific countries for a few months (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan). Moved across the country to San Diego after I got back and started from scratch. Then after a year of working I took another 3 months and backpacked around Europe.

It's by far the best decision I've ever made. I had no objective and was completely fulfilled. My subsequent attempts at starting a location-independent business so that I could continue traveling indefinitely failed, or I might still be out there.

I've talked to a lot of people who've done this and have not found a single person who regretted that decision.

Go for it. You only have one life.

Do it, and the younger you are (after college), the better it will be.

If I were to pick one thing, only the most important thing, it would be that self improvement is the only escape from the hedonic treadmill.

As Secondary pieces of advice:

You will find that wherever you go, there you are. Escapism is not a good reason to travel the world unless you need to learn that lesson first hand.

You will find your experience varies greatly with who you are. If you are super social, you will have a better experience. If you are a pretty person, more adventure will just happen to you and opportunities will just appear. If you've spent time learning a language, that is a gateway to all kinds of adventure. Made a lot of money? You won't have to be frugal/you aren't limited by much. The more you've invested into yourself, the more it pays off, especially with travel. You'll find that the people who have traveled the longest are often attractive, social, and have money.

I don't like Tim Ferris one bit, I think he's a snake oil salesman, but 4 hour work week had an amazing thought experiment. "You win the lotto today and never have to work another day in your life, how are you going to spend your time?" I would strongly encourage brainstorming the answer to that question before you travel and figuring out the answer while you travel.

Tips:

  - read the book "vagabonding"
  - you *must* set goals and work towards them
  - It is easy to not have structure to your days. This *will* harm you.
  - You really, really should set up several hours a day to do something "work" like.
  - Hostels are great, even 2 nights in a hostel when you first get to a place will pay off huge
  - 2 weeks is really the minimum amount of time to spend in a (big) city
  - 1 month is the floor minimum amount of time to spend in 1 country (I found 2 optimal).
  - The more poor the country, the more privileged and exploitative you will feel
  - People are generally friendly and forgiving everywhere
  - The world is vastly less dangerous than you might expect, but be on guard
  - America is seen pretty positively in Asia
  - The more off the path you are/The more risks you take, the better things will be
  - Prepare to feel lonely
  - prepare to stretch yourself socially
  - If you travel long enough, you start to treasure companionship above all other things
  - The most beautiful sunset in the world is empty without someone to share it with
  - The more uncomfortable you are, the more you are growing
  - Stuff is a prison. Pack less than you think you need. Then less than that.

The lottery question is a lot more difficult for some than others. I've been asking it of myself my entire life and took a year off working on two separate occasions and never even got close to answering it. Traveling certainly did nothing to help answer it either.

I have not quit my job to travel, so my comment is only partially relevant.

However at the beginning of the pandemic, when the company decided to become fully remote, we terminated our lease and started exploring the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

For last year or so we moved every week around 300 miles to a new city to explore it. If we like it, we stay longer. If we don't, we move faster. We work from the hotel rooms and Airbnbs, which proved to be less challenging we initially thought.

I spent last 15 years mostly in California, so this trip opened my eyes to the "rest" of the country which I greatly underestimated before.

While not exactly the same, I used to travel a lot for work (consulting company).

I think the best advice for traveling I've come up with is: meet locals. Skip the tourist traps, plenty of pictures online.

Have a drink at a bar and strike up a conversation, ask them what they do for fun. While in London, I did this and the guy said him and his gf were going to do swing dancing at another place on a weeknight. The place was a total dive, but had a live jazz band, cigar smoke, and rare whiskey. It was truly one of the coolest experiences I've had.

I didn't want to quit my job entirely, I just wanted to reduce it to part-time and spend the rest of the time writing my book [1]. My plan was to start with a transatlantic cruise from Colombia to Portugal in spring 2020 and then do some digital nomading in southern Spain and Portugal.

The cruise got cancelled and I spent 3/4 of the year stuck at home. I only managed to "escape" to Serbia in summer when the country opened its borders without requiring PCR test.

This year I was waiting to see where I could go. Some balkan countries like Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania opened their borders, again without requiring the PCR test. I went and spent three weeks in Montenegro as pure vacation and after that moved to Albania where I am now. The situation in Montenegro got worse and the country has many restrictions in place now, while Albania remains open, including restaurants.

I am Czech and the situation in the Czech Republic is bad. The restrictions in place prevent anyone from having a normal life...

Now I only work on the book, nomading in Albania. Here in Durrës the life is not only normal, but fairly cheap and with amazing sea food. I pay 90 EUR/week for an apartment and go to have sea food lunch every day for like 5-8 EUR.

[1]: https://efficientdeveloper.com

It was great. I'd do it again. I'm not sure what you're looking for. Is that it?

I almost did this. I sold 90% of what I owned, my house, most of the contents, and my car. I meet the woman of my dreams on the first stop and decided we needed to get married and start a family. I highly recommend reading travel blogs about people who do this. Most people that travel the world live each place for a little while to save for the next place and are not rich, plus this gives you time to live around the world, which is more meaningful.

That’s amazing! Congrats to you two.

I spent six months planning my round-the-world plane ticket, quit my job in March 2015 and got back home in October. Did a Spanish immersion class in Peru, saw my grandmother in another country the week before she died, spent some time reading books at a remote beach resort with no internet in Thailand. I started a new job by the end of the year. I would like to do it again but it’s a little trickier now since I’d want my partner to come too.

You should ask how it went for people who didn't quit their job and travelled 'the world', for a few weeks every year.

You may be surprised to find that that's a far more common and well rounded way of living :)

People who glorify travel don't seem to grasp that everywhere you go, people are living the life you left behind to go travel. They've got jobs, they've got kids, they've got their pub, their netflix, whatever.

The people who comment on here about how much travel has changed them are mostly young. When you're young, anything changes you. You don't need to go half-way across the world, just go volunteer at a homeless shelter, join a martial arts school, whatever. That'll change you too and you're far more likely to meet your wife/friends in your local community, than half-way across the world and have it work out.

Of course you don't get to share cool Instagram pics and get likes when you volunteer at a homeless shelter vs going to Egypt, but that's a whole nother story.

I see a lot of highly upvoted comments that amount to something like: travel won't change you or fix you. In general, I disagree. I think most people don't have the self-awareness to even know when they are being changed. We are all products of our past environment and our current surroundings define our behavior much more strongly than most are even capable of admitting. We're talking deeply-held ego-protective defense mechanisms here. Strong stuff.

To walk outside of your native environment is to walk outside yourself. Do that long enough and often enough and you will become a new self. You can carefully bring along a bubble of your comfort zone while traveling and insulate yourself from change. With the internet that's easier than ever and I have done it. On the other hand, the longer I get immersed, the more reverse culture shock I feel when I get home and that's the feeling of having changed more than you realized.

In December 2019 I set everything up to leave my job with a couple of months notice (I liked my team). The plan was to travel and see if I liked any other cities better than where I was living. But then it was March 2020, so instead I rented a cheaper place closer to home and started a new video series on YouTube about code and sound, in Ruby.

That's an interesting question. I had an interim term between jobs, and travelled around a few countries in Central Europe. It's interesting how many places are somehow connected, whether through train, bus, or cars. You get some sense how geography influenced economic and cultural diffusion, thereby affecting city development.

My main takeaway is that even when you change places, you can't change yourself. I finally acknowledged the issues in my life, and began to address them.

My primary interest shifted from the locations to the location's history. Basically, I wanted to learn how a state formed and left its border and society to this day.

With the pandemic nowadays, I live and work in a small room, but have no urge to go faraway outside. There is much knowledge to grasp to help me understand the human condition.

(I hope to reflect further in my travels and extract more novel insights. That will take time writing, but gotta do it soon before I forget.)

I didn't exactly quit my job. I reduced working on my startup to the absolute minimum, though I had to be as responsive as ever in case anything happens or a client needs something.

I got in a car and drove around Europe. Then I left the car, took one bag with me and got on a flight to Africa. Then South America. Asia. Then I got back to the place I left my car and drove home. After a month, I got in the car again but this time I took my wife with me.

While travelling alone I was moving all the time, rarely staying somewhere longer than a couple of days. I had three stays longer than that (Porto, Buenos Aires, Tokyo).

While travelling with my wife we would stay make longer stays, but never more than a month or two in one place, usually in the countryside. We didn't bother meeting new people.

For personal reasons we had to end the trip and get back home.

I think the most important thing is that the startup waited for me patiently and is doing better than before I left.

My partner and I took a year out for all of 2018 and travelled for 365 days, aged 34. We went to 21 countries during that time, the route:

UK India Hong Kong Vietnam Cambodia Laos Thailand Russia Mongolia China Tibet Japan Malaysia Indonesia Australia New Zealand Fiji Hawaii North America Chile Bolivia Peru Colombia Brazil

We saw many wonders of the world (from various lists) including Taj Mahal, Angkor Wot, Great Barrier Reef, Machu Picchu and Christ the Redeemer.

We drove coast to coast in the US (LA to New York via the South) over a month.

We took the Trans-Siberian Express train across Russia to Beijing (St Petersburg, Moscow, Kazaan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, Ulaanbaatar, deeper into Mongolia and stayed in a Gerr and Beijing).

We also looped around China by train including going to Tibet via Xinning. Tibet is like nowhere else we have been in the world.

We spent a couple of weeks driving around New Zealand South Island in a campervan.

We did the classic backpacker route around South East Asia, traveling overnight on sleeper buses, visiting the tourist destinations, site seeing, going on a booze cruise party island in the middle of a site of natural beauty (Castaways), visiting temples, full moon party. All in all a bit of everything. We were at the absolute age limit of some activities and accomodation, where although they were willing to show some flexibility, you wouldn't want to be much older as the majority of people were about 20. At times we felt old and past it, but we were happy we went ahead and did it.

Whilst a lot of the trip we just planned and booked ourselves, small parts, like Australia, we went on an organised trip. It wasn't one where we follow a tour leader, instead we were given vouchers for accomodation and activities and transport that went from Cairns down to Melbourne and followed it ourselves. It included dolphin feeding, scuba diving at the great barrier reef, driving around Fraser Island on 4x4s and staying a couple of nights, going on a boat tour of the Whitsundays and seeing White Haven beach with the softest sand I have experienced.

We could have done a fraction of the amount of stuff we did, and seen more or each place. We could have recouperated more rather than end up exhausted. But it was one hell of a trip.

I worried about finding work when it was over, but had several job offers before I returned so that turned out to be a false worry!

How do you plan such things and how do you keep your safety? I always wonder how many people get mugged or even dead during such trips?

Although you have to be careful in some places, the world is scarier on TV that in real life.

It took a while to plan, not just the trip stuff but finishing a job, packing up a house, signing cars off the road, cancelling bills etc.

We got a round the world flight ticket, we had to commit to the first six month flight times then half way through commit to the rest. It was possible to change for a fee. But we found the flights gave us a schedule to work around.

Some parts we planned extensively (you can't go to Tibet without being on a tour the whole time you are there, Machu Picchu books up months in advance, etc) other parts (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand) there is somewhat of an established back packer route you can follow and just make sure you get through in time for the next flight.

By far the least safe place was South America, we met many travellers there who had been mugged, beaten up, etc. It was our last destination and we were not very adventurous as we were tired and also just wanted to get to the end without an incident.

Other than that, we generally felt safe, there were one off isolated incidents (drunk Russian man on train trying to make advances on my partner when he thought I was asleep) which were uncomfortable, or going to a train station in Jaipur at 3 in the morning and waiting for a train, with lots of people loitering around and bothering us, and no real security or staff to reassure us, but these were exceptions rather than the norm.

We typically went to places which had a reasonable number of travellers, so it didn't feel too crazy in that sense.

How were you able to fund this? Sure sounds expensive -- can you share a rough estimate of how much it cost you?

Budgeted £42k ended up costing £60k for us both. I know some people which did it for a lot less (like half) but we didn't want to miss out on various things as we went.

We stayed in a lot of hostels, along with some guest houses, Airbnbs, hotels but the majority of the time it was something in the cheaper end of the spectrum.

We initially budgeted £10 food, £5 drink and £5 activities per day, and kept quite a lot of records at time, but ultimately we just ended up feeling "it is what it is". We made the active decision to just make the most of the trip and overspend. For a reasonable number of days we could average out towards our budget but we found fairly regularly there were bigger expenses for activities which would blow the budget and we neither wanted to miss them or do nothing for the next fortnight! Once you have committed so much, it sort of feels like it is better to commit a bit more and make it awesome (£60k spent on awesome seemed better than £42k spent on okay).

Before leaving I ran a couple of companies, one which employed 12 people and another which was contractor based. I wasn't wealthy (at least not by the standards set in the UK if you speak to a financial advisor) and £60k was a large amount of money for me to spend (a very large amount). But all things going well with life, you earn it, you spend it, we decided we wanted to do some of that spending earlier in life whilst we could enjoy it.

Since then... I have had heart ops, a blood clot on the lung, my partner has developed ME/chronic fatigue syndrome... COVID19 has engulfed the world. Needless to say we are glad, thankful and lucky we did what we did when we did!

If anyone is into traveling I highly recommend watching Harald Baldr's videos on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/HaraldBaldr/videos

He usually spends a few months in each location and films a bunch of stuff about what it's like in various countries. If you skim his videos you can quickly point out where he's at based on the titles. There's hundreds of videos and dozens of locations. It gives you a feel of what like it's really like in the places he visits, although he tends to visit a bit more remote places than you might be interested in going to.

IMO his channel is a perfect blend of being informative and funny. He's been traveling the world for like 15-20 years now.

I didn’t travel the world. I traveled around the US. Drove through about 30 something states and visited 17 major cities. I didn’t do this over a long period of time - about 2-3 months. I’d hop from city to city every 2-5 days and try to get a feel of every place. For me, this involved a lot of driving around and visiting neighborhoods. I could get a feel for places pretty well by just driving through - I know people will critique that but it felt true for me. Back then, I was going to a lot of social dances as a way to meet people. I’d visit the local scenes and try to tell people I’m from out of town and I’d like to just kinda explore. It was an easy test to see how friendly various cities were by just seeing how receptive that crowd was. Turns out, most weren’t great. And a lot didn’t have good dancing scenes. Both were dealbreakers as I was visiting all these cities to see if I wanted to live there. (Traveling with intention - I guess. Not relaxation)

Things I took away from my trip: Never do it in the summer. It’s way too fucking hot. My cars AC broke midway and it was grueling going through the south in July/August. Secondly, driving to all these cities to get a feel was a good way to condense some of the experience but it wasn’t great. For my life, I would’ve been better served by being an extended weekend warrior and visiting cities during popular dance events. This wouldn’t give a fair representation of the city but at least I’d see what it could be. Lastly, I found out that almost guaranteed no matter where I was going to live - it was going to be really tough because I had no friends in those cities. And I learned not having friends in cities when you visit them and when you visit them solo is lonely and isolating. You’re constantly putting yourself in a very difficult situation where people who see you as a random person on the street have to suddenly go from 0 to best friend in a matter of minutes for anything meaningful to happen. I found this behavior exceedingly rare from the other side. I’m also not very physically attractive, rich, or some status symbol. So, there was no real reason for established people to interact with me. Only transplants would have an interest and that overall trip just confirmed everything I believed about living in the US.

After it, I still judged people who never left where they grew up or where all their friends were but I understood exactly why they did it. Moving to other places every 2-3 years is absolutely devastating to your social life because after 2-3 years you usually start to feel like you’ve finally made some progress. Just to see it reset to zero again.

I left my last office job in 2017, spent the first year and a half or so traveling, and then started working remotely, making more money than I was at my office job in high cost of living city. Had the time of my life, met a lot of people, learned a lot about the world, myself, etc.

Now living as a digital nomad for over a year now I'm used to it so it's not really a big deal anymore. I care more about the people I surround myself with than the specific location. Once you've been to major cities around the world, the city/country itself stops mattering as much. I'd love to do some more exotic travel, going to really remote locations, but then you don't have usable Wifi, and even if you did the last thing you'd probably want to be doing is sitting in front of your laptop all day.

I could definitely never go back to an office job. My current employer has a small office so I've gone back every now and then for "fun", but after working remotely I don't see how anyone can go back to office life. It's not just that I don't enjoy offices, I don't think they're time efficient since there's no incentive to complete your work faster since you know you have to be there until 5:30pm or however late everyone stays. When I work out of a coffee shop, I want to be as time efficient as possible and finish my work quickly because I want to get the hell out of there and go live life.

The biggest downside of the digital nomad lifestyle I'd say is that loneliness can be a real problem, all the more compounded by government COVID restrictions (eg. limited social gatherings, curfews, etc). That's still something I don't have a great system for. Of course there are language barriers too - I'm currently in a South American country where most people don't speak any English, so as someone with very bad Spanish it's a lot harder to meet people (obviously I knew this flying here, the tradeoff for the perfect weather was worth it for me). And that being said, I definitely don't consider offices as any cure to loneliness, in fact quite the opposite.

I’m sure I’ll get downvoted for saying this but a major theme in this thread is “meeting a girl abroad”.

I did this back in 2014 with my wife-to-be. We traveled through Ireland, England, France, Spain & India.

In order to stretch our travel funds, we took local transport, stayed in hostels and campsites, and ate street food. Somewhat proud of the fact that we lived + traveled on $30-$90/day for more than a year.

For me, the best part was taking the same buses and trains as the locals. It gives you a glimpse into their everyday routine and also makes it easier to start a conversation.

Coming back and restarting income took a while though. Mainly because of personal preferences on the kind of work... ultimately just ended up doing the same kind of work that I left (frontend development).

Thinking of doing it again this year, but too scared to abandon income yet again. Might just try remote work this time.

I travelled the world for 13 months with my partner and our two daughters (4 and 6 when we left) in 2017/2018. We talk about our experiences on that trip all of the time.

We didn't work at that time, unless you count being an amateur travel agent, which actually a lot of work.

We are actively attempting to design our lives in a way that would allow us to do it again.

Needless to say, it was incredible. I would do it again. It cost us a lot (in both money spent and opportunity costs), but I would easily pay 2x (and we certainly could have done it cheaper).

Then, when I got home, I receive multiple job offers (which I mostly avoided). So, it did not harm long-term earning potential (and given how much people admire the story, may have improved it).

I spent 9 months in the Balkans region in my early 20s and later in life I had 5 years of work travel which took me all over the world. Both are some of the best times on my life, and two very different experiences. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I quit a YC-funded start-up based in Shanghai in 2016 to be nomadic for nearly a year. Stayed in 10 countries around the Pacific (Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, US, Canada etc.).

My primary take-away from the the journey is that my wanderlust is finally satisfied. After a year, I stopped moving because, travelling isn't that fun at that point. I want to build large things and have long-term relationships, which is difficult when you are a rolling-stone.

I would certainly encourage my kids to do it when they've got the opportunity. But it's likely that I wouldn't do it myself in at least a decade.

What I learned before there was an Internet. So the web, your ability to brand yourself, create your own YouTube channels, and so on may invalidate the following. Yes, you get to see the world, maybe reduce your expenses, avoid taxes. But you lose any network you've developed in your home country. People forget who you are. It might be harder to find the job you want when you return. So what I would do is make sure I had a presence on the Internet and Facebook. And keep in touch so you don't lose that network of people that know you and your work.

I got rid of everything I owned and spent 1.5 years biking around the US. I lived at a whitewater rafting company for 3 weeks, was hosted at music festivals, taken in by hundreds of people and lived in yellowstone for a month in their hiker/biker campsites for $2/day. I was working part time the whole time for a small mobile hardware startup.

It was amazing!! The toughest part was being alone the whole time, though in solitude I relived my life from the earliest moments, going through each grade in school, unwrapping memories and figuring out the rough bits as I pedaled.

How did you go about asking people to take you in? Surely hundreds of people didn't offer some stranger to stay with them?

Never asked.. people just offered. I attribute this to being on a bicycle, disheveled, loaded with my gear, biking through towns that don't normally see a biker. I would sometimes ask if people knew a nice quiet place to camp, which resulted in either them inviting me over OR the local epic camping spot.

Sometimes my meal was paid for by someone in the cafe. Park Rangers brought me extra food, at campsites fellow campers would invite me over for dinner. One day on the Natchez Trace I got the trifecta: breakfast, lunch + dinner all provided for by people.

When people see someone on an adventure they often want to hear stories. They also want to tell you their stories, and often need someone just to listen to them, be there for a nonjudgemental cry or help navigate a big life decision or just as a sounding board. As a traveller passing through they feel a certain freedom to open up, knowing I'll be gone the next day. One old guy texted me months later saying "2 months not smoking!", another fellow I biked with for a day texted me "my wife is pregnant!" after he talked about whether he wanted kids or not for a day.

Also, everyone has a broken computer at their home or small business, and need help getting something working. So in some cases that was an entry point. I often offered to help them and get things in order, sometimes making lifetime friendships. If I was a musician I would have been busking.

check out adventurecycling.org !!

Any person from a developing or a third world country would never even get the visa to travel so freely as described by so many in this thread.

There is a lot of inherent privilege that enables these kind of life opportunities.

Yes! I am from India and just the immigration paperwork I will have to do to travel round the world fills me with dread.

Travel round the world is a privilege that we don't have

Indeed it is a privileged position to be in, and it's also a waste to not use the privilege that we receive.

I didn't travel the world, but I quit spontaneously to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in 2014. I was sitting in my office thinking about how much I hated my life at the time, and thought "it's trail season now, I haven't been backpacking in years, wish I could do that" when I realized that I had some money saved up for a thing that had recently become a non-issue and the money was now free and I could be. 2 weeks later I was on the trail, 5.5 months later I was at its northern terminus. Best decision I've ever made.

The appalachian trail isn't in this world? Did you go intergalactic?

They're probably working on that extension :) (but of course I meant "I did not travel to many places in the world like I thought the OP was asking, just one tiny part of the U.S.")

I did it over a decade ago, before marriage & kids (responsibility).

Here is what I wrote:

https://breckyunits.com/backpack-the-world-with-zero-plannin...

That post now makes me cringe here and there, but hey I was young. I'd highly recommend doing it, especially when you're young since the value of the experiences will compound. Had a few near death experiences but at least in this universe made it out okay and that has made all the difference.

I tried it, and had a different experience than most I presume, because I got sick pretty much immediately [1].

Overall, I think that it comes down to time management, and expectations. The world is a wonderful place if you are prepared for both its beauty and its uglier sides. You see both while nomading.

[1]: https://medium.com/@_bramses/yes-i-was-a-digital-nomad-no-it...

So you decided to do the nomad thing, arrived in Mexico, got sick, and gave up in 4 days? I don't think that says absolutely anything about traveling the world, except maybe that sometimes you get sick when traveling?

Went great. Met my wife, learned a new language, made a company with my other friends who quit, got much healthier and am enjoying the environment around me much more than when I was living in SF. I lived in a place that never shut down or had mass casualties like the USA did, and despite living in a city I’ve spent the whole last year out and about. And if I hadn’t gone I probably wouldn’t have been able to do most of what I’ve done because of COVID.

I moved to Japan because my wife at the time took a job there. That eventually led me to Germany, France, and now Norway. I think if you enjoy being surrounded by different cultures and ideals it's good. If you are able to immerse yourself in the local culture and habits it's good. If you are too connected to your family and friends back home or too much identifying as your home culture is not so good.

Also what countries are opening back up? Lol.

How about USA road trips? Is it generally safe for foreigners to drive from state to state? Any "deathtraps"? Warnings? Roads to avoid? Advice? Worth it?

US is massive and road trips are boring because you're just in the middle of nowhere for the vast majority of it. But I grew up in the US, so maybe it's less boring for a foreigner.

The entirety of the US is extremely safe. You can probably find trouble in extremely specific neighborhoods of large cities but you'd never find your way to those places as a tourist.

Roads to avoid is a funny question. Country is huge. My general advice is don't drive at night outside of cities. There are deer everywhere and they will total your car, land you in the hospital, and end your trip. I had it happen to me once and now I plan my road trips to never travel at night. Plus it's dark and you can't see anything and you're missing the point of the road trip at that point.

Driving state to state isn't a problem. There's rarely a stop at state borders and when there is they're only there to regulate commercial trucking.

My advice is to pick a few cities and fly between them. Pick cities you can get around in without renting a car. You're not missing much by taking an 7 hour flight instead of a 5 day drive.

It's better to pick a region (or if in the West, maybe a state) and just visit that. Many foreigners don't realize how big the US really is. Doing cross-country roadtrips is a great way to suck up time doing nothing but driving.

Do something like visit New England for a month and stay in a new state each week.

In 2016, I quit my job working at a small software firm in Chicago. I didn't think I would do it, I was afraid I would keep putting it off, so one day in the middle of the workday I just abruptly opened AirBnB and booked an apartment for two months in Paris, just like that, non-refundable, plus a flight, also non-refundable. It was 7 months in advance, to give myself plenty of time, but also to put a definitive date on the matter. I had never been outside the US at the time.

I left at the end of July and spent all of August, September, and October in Europe, living off savings and just enjoying the sights, alone.

I have a mixture of extremely good and sad memories. I do not regret it in any way and am extremely glad I did it.

My place in Paris was lovely, right by Les Gobelins in the heart of the city. The weather was beautiful and I would just spend days walking the streets, visiting every museum and cathedral and café and restaurant. The best thing is that under such circumstances you aren't pressed to fit everything into a few days-- you have the freedom to do something every day or every few days, whatever pace you feel like. So you never end up feeling hassled or pressured.

I would pass whole afternoons sitting in the window of the bookshop across from Notre-Dame Cathedral, listening to the churchbells and reading books. I would spend many evenings walking the river. If I felt like it, I would take a train out of the city to a random village in the countryside and visit castle ruins. I did this many times. It's amazing what you can find sitting around in Europe, hundreds or thousands of years old decaying in a field. So much history there.

I rented a car and drove to Normandy, and to the south, and saw many more things. Eventually I flew to Italy, and then to Croatia. Croatia was the best part of the whole trip-- it's an unbelievably gorgeous country. It's not so well known as Italy and Greece and France, but it's as good or better.

A lot of this time was spent playing video games on my laptop in my airbnb room, being a little sad that I was on my own. That's the other side of it. Some friends flew out and spent time with me there, totalling two weeks, but the other eight weeks was just me in a land where I could only speak the language well enough to get by, but not well enough to get to know anyone meaningfully. It was lonely. And all the while I knew I had to go back and figure out what to do next.

I think it depends. You have to know yourself. Money can take away some causes of unhappiness, but it can't give happiness, only freedom, which isn't the same thing. Purpose is happiness, someone said to me recently, and I agree with them. Traveling on my own, I had freedom, but no purpose beyond seeing beautiful and ancient things that I'd never seen before. It was lovely, and I'll do it again soon. But I wasn't as happy as the times when I knew I was where I was meant to be, with people who needed me there and wanted me there.

I don't have a tidy conclusion. It's just food for thought I guess. My personal answer to OP's question. For what it's worth, the whole 3 months cost me <$6000. Staying in one airbnb for an extended block of time and buying groceries instead of eating out 3x a day makes a big difference, plus the trains are cheap in Europe.

When I traveled, I would talk to everyone on the street just to see if there were people I could make friends with. It’s a bit intense but once you found a few people it’s alright.

I even met a random stranger in Italy that knew a friend of a family member. What’s perhaps more weird is that I figured it out by the way he spoke about Amsterdam (where I live). That guy gave me a first class introduction to Rome.

I quit my job in 2015, rode a tiny motorcycle around South America for 4 months, and then traveled the world for 2.5 more years.

I made a small photo blog about it https://andrew-max.github.io/

I'm now in the process of trying to relocate full time to Colombia.

I also now have an anxiety disorder I didn't start the trip with.

I made a few real friends that I'm in touch with years later.

> I also now have an anxiety disorder I didn't start the trip with.

Out of curiosity, was this from any particular incident, i.e. safety in south america?

Or the converse, adapting back to hecticness of office life?

Or something else, if you don't mind sharing.

Basically being incredibly particular about my physical living environment and having a fear of it getting messed up or having issues with it.

Curious if anyone has pulled this off with kids? I have three kids under 7, and I'd love to do this for a year but wonder about logistics.

There are families living on boats. Some of them blog and vlog. This family has a couple toddlers on a trawler. https://www.bumfuzzle.com/trawler-vs-sail/

Taking small children on a boat hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital is, frankly, a lot more dangerous than people realize. I'm not saying it's not doable, but those people are taking way more risk than I'd be comfortable with.

Yeah, I agree. I'm glad that family switched to a trawler, which rules out ocean crossings. They probably stick close to the coast now; maybe spend some time doing the Great Loop.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while. I appreciate the advise to stay longer, as in months to years. I had been thinking 2-3 weeks, but will reconsider.

My approach was to stay in AirBnbs, in a private room and with hosts that purport to be outgoing. The premise being that they could act as a conduit to local social behaviors and activities.

If you're newer to traveling I think a couple weeks is fine. When you visit enough places you'll figure out where you want to be long term

I travelled a bit before I started working in earnest. Or rather, I lived in Russia, Japan and China for a few years, only travelling a little bit within the countries.

Anyway, it was great, well worth the few years I spent. Learning languages, getting experiences, making friends, these things stay with you forever.

Think about what you really want is something i suggest. Next to staying at least a month at a place i prefer rooms with table and balcony instead of cheaper options. I doubt i would have been that productive in the time would i have opted for hostels or something uncomfortable.

I think in large part it will depend on you.

For me, while I'm glad I went, I'm shy around strangers so it was extremely lonely. If I did it backpacking and staying in hostels I'm sure I'd have met people in the hostels but in my mid-40s, hostels are no longer in my comfort zone.

Further, it was not remotely the same as taking a vacation. On vacation if you're into shopping you can shop. But, traveling the world means you can't really shop because you have to carry everything you own. That might be a good thing but, at least in my experience, shopping is some not insignificant part of vacations for many people and removing that as an activity lowered some of the enjoyment.

Another issue for me was always having to think about where to be next. In other words I'd arrive at some new place and immediately need to book the next place or else I'm homeless in a week or 2 when this place runs out.

Yet another was basically seeing the same things over and over. Every city in Europe has yet another church, another contemporary art museum with the same 15 artists as the last one, etc... Of course most cities have their unique charm and I'm glad I went to every one of them but, ... I did get tired of certain things as they came one after another (churches and museums).

Another other issue is you're unlikely to have friends (or rather I didn't). Your friends are back at the place you used to live and they have their own lives and you're no longer part of that life as much as you might wish you were. Maybe it's better to say you won't have hangout buddies, at least not if you're doing it alone.

After 3 years I got an apartment again and have been in it for 4.5 years. I still take 3-4 vacations/trips a year though (well except not in the last 12 covid months).

I saw some social scientist claimed it's best to take more short vacations than longer ones because after N days where N was less than 7 or so you get used to it. No idea if their research replicates.

Something I'd suggest is looking up meetups and/or hackathons or certain types of other events where you might make new friends. I made a bunch of friends in Berlin by attending "Talk & Play", a game dev event. I've been back 2 more times since then to see the friends I made their. Of course it might be hard to find an English speaking meetup. You can check out Internations.org (not sure if they are good or bad but went to one meetup which was good)

I left my job and decided to travel to China with the intention of staying for a couple of years. I got a job and the stay extended to 10+ years. I got married to a Chinese and now have a 4 year old daughter.

My suggestion - if you are thinking of it, go ahead and do it.

I didn’t quit my job but took a three months leave of absence to travel the work with my SO and our two kids (2 and 4 at the time).

It was great and we had planned to do it again in 2020 then COVID hit.

Now my kids are of compulsory school age so we need to figure out how we will do it.

I wonder how homeschooling would combine with travel?

My dad brought the family with him on a three month business trip to Florida when my brother and I were young. My mother (a former teacher) brought homework along and I remember doing worksheets. It didn’t seem to hurt us any, but I was already way ahead in school.

He almost took us to Greece, but they chickened out at the last minute.

I travelled the world a bit, but I am posting now to just recommend a book about travel that I really enjoyed: Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. I think that if you are on the edge... reading this book might just be what it takes for you to pack your bags.

Ive always wanted to do this, but I don't know what I would do with my stuff? Sell everything seems dramatic because i do have sentimental things. The idea of paying rent for a place in america/california and not using it feels wasteful

storage space

Storage for an home's worth of possessions doesn't cost that much less than rent on an apartment.

Paid ~$5k/m 2br rent in NYC. $225/m 10x10 storage unit to go mobile this year. So quite a bit less in many cases, especially folks living with less in urban environments, but yes, a whole house, vehicles, etc.. will be pricier to store.

Sublet your place.

I’ve used closetbox.com for this in my situation. I’ve had my stuff there for years. They aren’t traditional self storage and keep my stuff in a big wooden box a few floors off the ground in a temperature and humidity controlled warehouse so I don’t worry much about things getting damaged. I have been back several times to drop more things and have verified they take good care of my stuff. Pricing is reasonable. Roughly $200 monthly for a two bedroom apartment worth of stuff in Southern California.

I haven't really travelled the world per se but I got up, travelled Europe and followed opportunities. That was 16 years ago. I am very, very lucky to have a beautiful life doing exactly what I always dreamed about. So, do it.

We took a 3-month trip with my gf to travel though 9 states and 8 national parks. We were maintaining a simple routine: 7 days in each place, then moving to a new place every Monday but not further than 4 hours drive.

I try to find ways to not quit my job and travel as much as possible. For instance transfer every two years to a country in a different part of the world and the travel around the nearby countries.

I quit my job in 2018 and I started travelling in November 2019, so not very well on the travel front but striking out of the 9-5 has been the best thing I have ever done. I doubt I could go back.

Silly question, how do you earn money if you don’t have a 9 to 5?

At first I freelanced, and now I work for a small fully remote digital agency where I just take on projects at the capacity I have at the time and work on them in sprints. There isn't much day to day communication and no one is checking when you're online etc because everyone on the team is in different timezones. It's a dream scenario really, I am very lucky.

There's a lot to learn in this comment ;-) Thanks for sharing!

Fantastic. I bought a boat, and have been sailing the east coast of oz. Wanted to sail the Med and Atlantic, but need to wait until oz opens up.

Set off in December 2019. Was great for a bit, traveled lots of south America but then covid hit.

Came home and started working with a FAANG, that bit was hard.

Planning to quit to the travel after the pandemic ?

Keep your job, move to a different place with high-speed Internet every month, do it for two years. Best time of my life.

Fine, as with anything too much it gets boring. Still, haven't been in an office for nearly 3 years now.

Took 5 years off. Half that time in Tokyo, visited 60+ countries. Best thing I ever did in my entire life.

Sabbatical, 3 months, solo bike ride through Europe. Would do it again with no hesitation.

Doing this since 2012.

Summary: nothing is perfect, but it's wayyyyyy better than having a job.

* if you have enough savings.

Jobless people I know would kill for my stressful 9-5 dev job.

When you don't have money, that becomes your biggest worry.

I did it for two years in remote places of Oceania, best time of my life.

I quit my job at the end of 2014 after five years of saving, then backpacked Asia for two years. Then I returned home and worked for another year and a half, saved harder, then had another year - six months in Asia, six months in South America.

It was absolutely the best thing I've ever done, and despite being hugely expensive I would do it again in a heartbeat. To be honest I now have an eye on setting up a life where I can travel and work long term, given the increased prevalence of remote working opportunities.

For myself, I found that some of the usual clichés rang true:

- the best thing about the whole experience was (unexpectedly for an introvert) meeting so many different people. I stayed mainly in hostels in Asia, and primarily used AirBnB in South America, and 99% of the people I met were wonderful. As someone who had previously been a bit nervous around new people, this experience was a bit like opening Pandora's box and finding it full of kittens. I learned so much from the people I met, and had so many great and often unexpected experiences as a result, not to mention that fellow backpackers often had great tips for other places to visit. Despite being a clear ten years older than a lot of my fellow travellers, I never felt out of place as the majority were mature (well, either that or I'm immature I guess), unpretentious and easy-going.

- I did grow as a person, perhaps less than I would've done had I travelled when I was much younger, but I nonetheless widened my perspective on the world, and in particular came to realise that people everywhere are basically the same in what they want and need, and mostly just trying to make the best life they can for themselves. It's really nice to get away from the small-minded noise of the news media and vacuous TV, and see people as they really are. It was also great therapy - I had built up some stresses in the preceding ten years or so, and the chance to slow down and just exist without any particular demands on my time was enormously beneficial. Some days I visited places, some days I just relaxed.

- there are some places and experiences that are just magical, that you will never find unless you go away from your home - watching condors rise in the morning sun over the Colca Canyon in Peru, the unspeakable beauty of the Taj Mahal, the weird tension and pageantry at the DMZ between North and South Korea - there is a whole world out there waiting to be discovered and it's worth seeing.

I think any kind of travel is a privilege to be enjoyed as often as possible, but the main difference between a two-week holiday and a six-month travel is the total lack of pressure and the increased opportunities to explore that come with the latter. I have come to prefer one four-week trip over four one-week trips - quality over quantity. I agree with others in this thread recommending staying in one place for a while and getting to know it, rather than flitting between destinations, ticking boxes but taking little away from the experience. I also love revisiting a place I've already travelled - it feels like I have a second home, complete with favourite spots and a way of life that I understand, but retaining all the quirks and charms of a different place and culture.

Some other random thoughts:

- working while travelling is a great way to do it, but if you can afford to, taking some time to forget about work and just 'be' can be extremely good for your mental health, and your enjoyment of a place.

- if you're backpacking - everything you take, you have to carry, and most places have access to most things you need that you didn't bring - carrying 25+ kgs is good exercise but it gets tiring! Don't forget you'll pick up souvenirs along the way.

- going off the beaten track is highly recommended, but then again a lot of popular destinations are popular for good reasons - it's nice to have a mixture.

- I never booked travel tickets more than one country ahead, just enough to satisfy the entry requirements of every country I visited, and I really enjoyed that flexibility.

- I also usually knew almost nothing about a country when I arrived there, and relied on serendipity or else started my research when I arrived. I missed some things but I also enjoyed the experience of exploring with no preconceptions, learned to be more comfortable with uncertainty, and got to do some things that weren't in the guidebooks.

- in Asia, not speaking the local language is not generally much of a barrier to getting around, although it helps to learn at least the fundamentals, not to mention that I personally think it's more respectful; in South America, not having Spanish will make life more difficult but fortunately for English speakers, the basics are comparatively easy to pick up (I did some of the Duolingo course before I travelled, in anticipation, then picked up more while I was there).

- if you're nervous about losing your stuff, get a lockable bag - I travelled with a Pacsafe backpack, never worried I would lose anything, and didn't (no affiliation, just a fan). Hostels often have lockers but not always.

- I took somewhere in the region of 30,000 photos over that time - not just the posed Instagram-worthy shots, but photos of lots of other random things. I will probably never show anyone else, but they will augment my memories in years to come.

- try all the food, even the stuff you don't want to try - some things are unexpectedly delicious, and the odd bad experience makes a great story!

Well that's a lot of rambling, but anyway - I did it, totally loved it, and recommend it to anyone who is inclined that way.

I quit my job twice to travel.

First time around in 2008 I was a bit nervous since I was only one year into my career so wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get a job again. But it was a perfect moment, because I was still living at my parents home (planning to move out once back), had zero debt and few expenses and responsibilities to speak off. I worked at a small company and had a good relationship with my boss so I told him about my plans to go backpacking for 6 months in Latin America over a coffee and to my surprise he was very supportive and offered my to keep the job. If I remember correctly I didn’t actually ended up quitting, we just paused the contract.

Key learnings from that trip:

- After the first month, where I went to language school and stayed with a host family, I travelled way too fast. Barely staying more than 1-2 day in a place before moving on. Which is fun at the beginning but it quickly gets old to have the exact same conversations every day with other backpackers doing all the exact same routes. So towards the end I slowed down and e.g. almost stayed a month in Guanaja, a tiny island in the bay of Honduras which made a huge difference in actually experiencing the place.

- Learn as much of the local language as you can. Sure, if you stay on typical lonely planet routes, plenty people will be able to speak some English and these days with smart phones you can use translators, but it makes a world of a difference when interacting with locals, especially if you get out of the tourist/backpacker areas, if you at least try to speak their language.

- The more touristy the place (this includes “secret” tips from books and websites), the more you unfortunately have to deal with people trying to rip you off, pickpocketing etc. No different than in Europe in that regard.

- Don’t be overly paranoid. Yes, all those countries have a significantly higher crime rate than Switzerland where I’m from, but those tend to be focused on certain areas, so if you act sensibly the probability of something happening to you is actually low. Same for food. If you just go for vacation for 2 weeks you want to minimize risk to not ruin it. But for longer term travels I rather be sick for a bit and try things than acting like everything is going to kill me.

- Don’t plan too much ahead. I met people that had exact travel plans fir the entire trip, booking everything ahead of time, knowing which hostal their going to stay in 6 months from now, etc. But in most cases this either just didn’t work out, it robbed them of flexibility, and also a lot of people only realize after starting traveling that it isn’t really for them. So better to stay flexible.

————

The second time for traveling in 2012/2013 it was a bit more complicated, since I now had an apartment full of stuff, various subscriptions, insurances, etc and I planned to travel while working freelance for an unknown amount of time. I quit my job and started freelancing while still staying in Switzerland to build up contacts and starting to organize departure. I travelled for a bit over year in South America, mostly in Colombia and it ended basically by me deciding to just move here.

Learnings from traveling while working:

- Know what you need for working. There is this cliche of digital nomads working at the beach under palm trees, but to be honest it is way too hot/humid for me there to concentrate, and working in an AC’d hotel room is quite silly. So I prefer staying in more temperate climates while working and go to the beach for short trips.

- There is a lot of alcohol, drug use and partying in hostels. Your are not going to work productively if some teenagers are doing cocaine next to you at 10am on Tuesday morning. There are calm and relaxed hostels to be found everywhere, but you might have to look out for them and do a bit of try and error, but I still prefer them over airbnbs most of the time.

- Ergonomics still matter while traveling. While a well equipped co-working space might be less sexy than a hammock, after a while your back and arms will thank you to work more sensibly.

- Use a laptop that you can do basic repairs yourself. I phased out my MacBook because of this. There are more Apple Stores in Zürich than in all of Latin America. And those that can fix it unofficially might still be easily 10+ hours away from where you are.

- Large time zone differences are a curse and blessing. Make sure to align with your clients/employer up front to avoid them insisting calling you at 3am. Better to arrange something were e.g. you do development during their night so they can do testing, presentations, etc. during the day.

In 2018, I left my engineering job at Google, packed a backpack w/ a few sets of clothes, and got on a one-way flight to London. I was born, and educated, and employed within a short drive of my hometown, and gravity was pulling me to get married and buy a house there. After twenty-six years of following the beaten path, my dream was to live like the kid in the Alchemist, without plans and open to whatever seemed promising. I didn't even have a hostel booked on arrival or a jacket for cold London March; that's how little I wanted set in stone.

In the first couple months, I spent a lot of money. My habits were shaped by my cushy job and my friend group's hobby of wining and dining whenever possible. Besides looking at my weekly or monthly spending, my best learning was to measure the "jollies per dollar" of each purchase (as my old coworker would say). A 20 dollar meal doesn't necessarily make me twice as happy as a 10 dollar meal. I still keep that practice in "happiness math" with me today.

After London, I flew to the Netherlands where I met my current girlfriend, who was on a weekend trip from a Germany. The next few months were awesome. She was finishing up her grad studies, and I had nothing better to do but to chase her around different German towns she needed to visit. After she turned in her thesis, we drove through Italy together for a month. We got a lot of jollies out of the cannoli and gelato there... Not sure if it was more than the cost though.

After that, I followed my dream to go to southeast Asia. We parted ways, and I stayed in Thailand and Vietnam for another couple months. By that time, I had lost some steam and was much more introverted and reflective than in Europe. As an aside, an important change for me on the trip was that I stopped my regular habit of heavy drinking. I probably got drunk five times on the whole trip. Anyways, I loved it in SE Asia. The food, culture, and nature were amazing. Driving a scooter through the hills of Northern Thailand is one of the highlights of my life. I almost died a couple times driving a scooter though, so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it.

After returning home for a couple months more, I moved to Berlin to live with my girlfriend. We've been here for two years and are quite happy with our lives at the moment. In all, I'm so grateful that I got the chance to do that trip, to learn that I could live out of a backpack, to meet great people and my amazing partner, and to take control of my life for the better.

But that's just a high level overview. There were some tough parts and there wasn't any enlightenment moment where I realized my true destiny. That's said, I learned a lot about myself and what I'm capable of. I'm a much happier and healthier person today than I was when I left. Happy to share any more details or stories if people are curious!

Has anyone done anything like this with something like celiac disease?

I left my job when I was in my late 20's to make a year-long round-the-world trip. Leading up to it, I was up for a promotion at work and my managers and colleagues were very skeptical about my decision to leave at such a time. I'm so glad I stuck my guns. It was easily one of the best decisions I ever made.

My partner, who I had recently started dating at the time, was unhappy with her job and also decided to take the leap. In 2011, we spent 313 days traveling around the world together. Ten years later, we're still together!

As for trip logistics, very little was planned in advance. We both gave up our apartments and put our belongings in storage with friends and family. We started the trip with one-way tickets from the USA to Asuncion, Paraguay. Not a common first destination on a RTW trip, but we had used miles and the cost was the same price to go to a relatively obscure place rather than a more common one. Paraguay is a fun one if you are vegan/vegetarian, but that's another story.

Prior to the trip I had stockpiled a decent amount of frequent flyer miles. The late 2000's were crazy with respect to mile program promotions, but that's a whole different story! Those miles helped offset most of the long-haul travel costs but on the ground we preferred to travel as cheaply as possible with buses, trains, etc. The main thing the miles enabled was access more remote and uncommon destinations. As an example, one of our travel days took us from Mongolia to Palau. I don't think that's a common origin-destination pair.

I will second what others have posted here about moving slow. The places we have the fondest memories of are the ones where we spent the most time. This cuts both ways though. When you are traveling/living this lifestyle it can take some effort to find that magical mix of affordable housing, good food, and interesting activities. When all those factors align, it's easy to "get stuck" and then later have to cut things from the larger itinerary. Burn out from being on the road is another real factor. We felt it strongly at about the 6 month mark, which, conveniently was timing with a detour back home for my brother's wedding. After that we were eager to get back on the road.

Regarding costs, we found the trip to be quite affordable. Our burn rate over the year averaged out to 1000 USD per month per person, however, we had intentionally avoided the more expensive parts of the world (e.g., Europe, OZ/NZ, etc.). Aside from a few splurges, we chose to stay in budget hotels/guesthouses wherever possible. We had also offset much of our long-haul travel costs with airline points/miles.

I would love to take a trip like this again and I'm glad I didn't save this experience for retirement. I can't speak highly enough of doing something like this if you have the means.

If anyone is interested in more details about the trip, I kept a blog here:

http://www.roamingryan.com/

I took a leave of absence for a year.

I went to India for 3 months in 2016, then Pakistan for another 3 months, followed by Afghanistan for 1 month.

Afghan and Pakistani people are by far the friendliest among any nationality. I ignorantly thought they are intolerant of all non Muslims, but it turns out they could teach us a thing or two in hospitality and kindness.

I learned some Urdu and Hindi along the way.

Pakistani food is some of the most aromatic and tasty food I’ve ever had. The better it tastes, the more it absolutely burns your mouth and wrecks your stomach (no regrets).

In India I went to a massive wedding in Hyderabad. The curries in Hyderabad were just as spicy as Pakistan, although they used nuts quite a bit more.

Once you’ve had a real chai in India, you’ll never drink what they call “chai” in the US ever again.

The main thing I missed was central air conditioning, although I stayed in some places where at least the bedroom had a working air conditioner.

Really cool story. How did you deal with the safety issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Were they a real concern, or is that mostly overblown by the media?

You should not group Afghanistan and Pakistan together. Afghanistan is not a safe place to visit. Pakistan is absolutely safe as long as you don't visit the western tribal region. Land in Lahore, travel to Islamabad and then to Peshawar and northern areas. You will have a good time. Lots of tour companies also arrange the trips. If you're feeling more adventurous, you can visit Multan, Bahawalpur, and Karachi.

Good to know, thanks.

How did you get from India to Pakistan? Did you walk through wagah pass?

You don’t have to quit to travel the world.

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