Everyone needs their 2-years of fucking around backpacking before they hit 30. I am just coming back from mine; 20 countries in 2 years and stories for a life time. Cost me less than 10k a year to live like that.
Cheers!
I'm curious. 1) Did you bring your own netbook/laptop along and 2) How well are you handling your "re-entry" (e.g. hanging out with friends who knew you pre-travel)?
In countries where I have "based" myself, anything more than 4 weeks; the laptop has been a good useful distraction. When you're shocked by a local culture which you have to deal with for extended survival (anything more substantial than a western-style hotel and continental breakfast) you will end up missing speaking your familiar language, eating familiar foods, or just walking outside without a guide at hand (printed or in-flesh.) Also there is that strong sense of alienation when everybody around you is looking at you, even you have been with them for weeks. In these times, firing up your slackware box and seeing what you used to work on in more homely times is a good psychological aid.
Cameras I didn't like. I hated being looked at and treated as a "foreigner", and I feel like I am doing the same when I point a lens at a "local" person, building or artifact. It felt like I was capturing their soul to take back home with me as a novelty. I have no photos of my travels, but I have friends. Hundreds of good friends from all walks of life; fishermen, priests, pimps, students, political activists, drug traffickers, aid workers, moms, bicycle repairmen, white-house staffers, journalists you name them.
Coming back was hard. I have lost 80lbs and came back with more street-sense than I could imagine. When I landed at Dulles Airport I had $60 to my name and I had the photo of a new girlfriend in my wallet. None of my family or friends had the time to give me a ride home, so I took the bus, for the first time in the U.S. Before then I have taken the bus a few times on nights-out when I knew I wouldn't be fit to drive. This time it was just what I was used to do. My instincts where different; I took a window seat in the way back that was close to an exit door. Something that you do when traveling in dangerous places (you don't sit in the front, or police and bandits will pull over the bus and shake you up for bribes; and you don't sit sandwitched between two locals, unable to escape.)
I also came back with 2pack a day cigarette habit. Hi alcohol tolerance. A very unprofessional appearance. An appetite for anything served to me on a plate. A habit of carrying a bag with basic survival necessities. Indifference to crashing anywhere. Hitching rides with total strangers. And finally, a weird ability to connect with people in the underworld.
My first few gigs have been freelancing gigs doing anything and everything. It took my girlfriend the last few months polishing up back to shape; I don't think I would have come back if it wasn't for her, actually. I have seen many long-time Western expats dying in local hospitals of controllable diseases; the ex-military Americans are most prone to this. Diabetes, high-blood pressure, liver problems; I have pitch in $5 donations to so many expats in hospitals I didn't want to be one of them.
Allot of stuff, most of it unfit to print.
Only boring stuff is unfit to print. You should write a book, or at least a blog. Seriously.
I'm reminded of that Goethe quote about how people's personalities are made up of a desire for a combination of love, adventure, power and fame. Reading this comment makes me feel like the "adventure" component has been neglected in my own life :(
Two gold rings and a necklace, not worn, but secreted in your boots will get you out of allot of trouble, at least until that unexpected national/religious/regional holiday you never expected finishes, or perhaps the riot dies down, and the banks/embassies open. Sometimes government and banking offices will be wide open but you cannot get your paperwork done for DAYS, and you will quickly run out of money, and starve at that shitty border town.
coz o/w it's just an added weight -- well in your case it's maybe for appearance so it's a good investment/insurance
some people do hide gold in their teeth, might be interesting if that's your thing
http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-NOVA-DC/
Get on board if you live in the DC metro area.
You mean to stay you would have stayed abroad? Am little confused as you start talking about expats dying of preventable diseases immediately afterwords
Yyyyyeah, nice try. My new girlfriend with a woman's common-sense was quick to point out to me the danger I was in. I had dabbled in business with the locals and I might have taken a side in a neighborhood civil-war that was going back for decades. It would have taken a $20 bribe from someone to pin some contraband on me and send me off to Hanoi Hilton for good.
etc, etc.
[Edited for better communication]
REPLY: Ah, so then in a sense, it isn't safe. It would be awful to go out the way you did but remain a tourist. :)
Deleted comment
Every job I ever got was because I gate crashed, usually at a pub or cocktail party. Whenever I talk to someone who I feel like we can work together, I just ask them about their business/project and put myself in their shoes. The great majority of the time I would "not hire myself", because I know I am unfit to help them. But if I know I am the one, I usually take charge; I first restate the problem, explain my understanding of where they are and where they need to be, then tell them "what we need to do to get there". This is the same way I recruit friends for other friends as well.
Do not live your life based on the opinions of future employers.
Please, do anything but. There is a large, large world out there that you should do your best to experience.