Adventure is a Mindset
Not every adventure begins with a boarding pass or a backpack. Sometimes, the real journey starts the moment you decide to do things differently—on purpose. With presence. With a little more courage than you had yesterday.
Adventure, in its truest form, is not defined as a faraway mountaintop or a remote dive site. It’s a way of seeing. A lens you wear to meet life—whether that’s crossing your hometown just to try to new cafe or simply in the decision to speak to someone you might otherwise pass by.
It’s the moment you stop rushing from your office to your favourite lunch spot, but instead you take a moment to look up at the blue skies and the clouds moving. It’s in saying yes when you’re nervous and saying no when you’re expected to comply with societal standards. It’s the simple act of breaking your own routine because you’re done robot-ing your way through your day-to-day.
We live in a time when travel is often sold like a product—curated, filtered, packaged, performative. But real travel, the kind that changes you, begins with a mindset that refuses to just consume a destination. It chooses to listen. It puts the phone done to engage—to feel.
Adventure doesn’t need to be loud. It just needs to be yours.
Some of the most pivotal moments in my own life didn’t come from standing at the edge of a cliff. They came in the quiet conversations with strangers-turned-friends-turned travel partnerships, sitting cross-legged on coconut leaf floor mats in unfamiliar homes, asking questions that opened up a whole new way of understanding the world.
I’ve found adventure saying yes to my friends in Singapore wanting to try a new restaurant. I’ve found it in the way someone explains their food, their craft, their connection to place—and in learning to trust the detour more than the plan. I’ve found adventure just by lingering a couple days longer than normal in the middle of nowhere, until even the community members get curious about what I’m doing, and show me things that I could have never found online.
Adventure isn’t about proving anything—chasing photos to post online. It’s about unlearning. And it’s about remembering.
The Art of Travel isn’t found in your itinerary. It’s found in your intention.
When you travel with the mindset of an adventurer—not a consumer—you make different choices.
You choose to support the local homestay over the foreign owned and designed villa. You ask your guide about their life, not just the landmarks you’re visiting. You slow down instead of checking off boxes. You walk instead of ride. You pay a little more for the meal that keeps someone’s heritage alive. You say no to the '“bargain” that costs someone their dignity. You listen to your local guide, instead of what the blog told you.
These are not small decisions. They are radical. They are what make travel transformative—not just for you but for the places and people you encounter.
Adventure isn’t about roughing it. It’s about realness.
At Chicken Feet Travels, we would rather say we’re busy than to comply with customer requests who want to see anything listed on any “must see” list online. We are not in the business of helping people tick imaginary boxes created by Instagram FOMO. We help our customers plan and execute a holiday that live in your bones long after you’ve returned home.
Our approach isn’t for everyone, and that’s the point.
We work with guides who are deeply rooted in place—not just because they’re experts in adventure, but because they’re custodians of culture, of ecology, of story. These are the people who know which mountain paths are safe during rainy season, which villages are ready to receive visitors, which are still holding onto their sacred traditions and need protection more than promotion.
And that has taken us time, and trust, and listening.
The way we design travel is the way we live: with curiosity, respect, and heart. We don’t offer everything. But what we do offer is real.
So what does it take to be an adventurer?
When you travel with us, you don’t need perfect gear, you don’t even need a plan. You just need your passport and an open heart and mind. It takes:
A willingness to meet unknown without needing to conquer it
An openness to be moved by the beauty, even if it’s uncomfortable
A commitment to choose the path the serves more than just yourself.
It is a balance of time, money, and grit. And each of our experience are a careful balance of each.
But mostly? It takes a mindset.
A mindset of adventure believes there is always something to learn. That people are good. That nature heals. That connection is everything. It is also about giving back as much as we inherently take from each of the places we visit.
You don’t need to summit a mountain peak to be on an adventure. Sometimes the greatest adventure is letting go of the idea that you have to be somewhere else to become who you already are.
So if you’re ready to travel different—not just for the gram, not just to tick a box—but to see more clearly, feel more deeply, and come home changed, you’re in the right place.
Because the truth is: adventure lives in the questions you ask, the risks you take to connect and the stories you’ll carry forever.
And that’s the kind of journey we’re here for.
TL;DR: Adventure begins with how you choose to see the world—not with gear or destination checklists. This post reframes adventure as a way of being: showing up with courage, presence, and a willingness to engage with people and place. Real travel is defined not by luxury or hardship, but by listening, learning, and choosing curiosity over comfort. At Chicken Feet Travels, this mindset is the foundation of every trip we design.
