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!
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.
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.
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.
>>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.
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!"
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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 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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
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 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.
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
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)
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’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
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.
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 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.
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'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.
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!
-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.
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 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.
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.
> 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 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."
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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!