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.
From that base, you can still do day trips and weekend trips.
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 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.
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.
How did you go about meeting people in the first place?
I know this is HN, but I do have to say: good luck! :-D
Anyhow, good on you for living life :)
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
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.
It's much easier "somewhere else". Whatever stupid thing you do, you won't meet these people again. It's liberating.
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.
I highly recommend you give international travel a try!
Did you speak the local language?
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is nothing that is equal in this world
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 :)
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.