495 Days of fUNemployment.
I travelled for 495 days straight in 2013 and 2014.
It was an extreme reaction to burning the candle at both ends for too long which ended with me exhausted and all but bedridden for about two months with glandular fever (AKA mono). Personally, two months of not travelling, made me go completely stir-crazy, so I quit my start job and left Singapore for the US and South America indefinitely. (Spoiler alert: I was back in Singapore by the end of 2013, see 3)
This is what I learned while being FUNemployed.
I have never felt less alone than while travelling alone.
Go “home” at least once every three months.
Southeast Asia is my favourite.
We are all interconnected.
Travel can change the world for the better.
One
I HAVE NEVER FELT LESS ALONE THAN WHILE TRAVELLING ALONE.
In other words, when you travel alone, you are rarely alone. I am speaking from my personal travel experience before the internet and smartphones became cheap and widely accessible. Due to budget or choice, the accommodation of choice will most likely be a hostel. $1 a night, sign me up. At hostels, the default mode is to overshare your life story and sniff out where someone came from and where they are going next. Where you sleep has making friends/travel mates built in.
Then you go out to eat. Nothing is more approachable to a traveller than a solo person at a cafe. Especially if the cafe is busy and you need to share table.
And lastly, there are only so many “must dos” so while on side adventures, you are also making more friends on group excursions.
Unless you go out of the way to avoid it, you are always forced into a social situation. And when you go out of the way, where most travellers do not bother, you start to make friends with local people and that is where the real travel starts.
two
Go “home” at least once every three months.
I am fortunate enough to have lived in Australia, Singapore, and California before I started properly backpacking. This meant that I had made very good friends from all over the world. So when I say “home”, what I really mean is being near people you feel completely “at home” with. There is nothing better than catching up with old friends, in their home, when they also know that all you want to do is sit around and do nothing because you have just been going nonstop for months/years.
Even if it is just for the weekend, it hits the reset button so that you have the energy and mental strength to keep going.
Three
Southeast Asia is my favourite.
I had big plans to do all of South and Central America when I left Singapore in 2013. If I was going to be there, I might as well do as much as I could afford to, right? Do not get me wrong, I loved some parts of the South America that I saw, but what I realised was that Southeast Asia has same same but different and some things are just so much better here. The biggest part is that it is safer. Nothing bad ever happened in South America or Southeast Asia except for petty scams or a phone getting stolen, but there is something about the culture of the people in Southeast Asian countries that always makes me feel welcomed.
Secondly, the scuba diving is so much brighter and richer and more diverse in Indonesia to keep me in this region. And lastly, the year-round tropical weather here is much more to my preference as a tropical fish.
Four
We are all interconnected.
When I was travelling full-time, I was very motivated to speak to new people. In those 495 days, I would not be surprised if I met an average of 5 new people a day. And when you hear the life stories of that many people, from all walks of life, from everywhere around the world, patterns and similarities emerge. I have met enough people in hundreds of different places to know that we have so much to learn from each other. I have met enough people lucky enough to be in tourism that escaped being nameless and faceless factory workers who are making our clothes and growing our food, and it makes you reconsider. And I have met so many people to know that at our core, we are all the same in our needs and wants for security, healing, and connection.
We, as a collective species, are more interconnected and interdependent on each other more than ever. And that’s not including all the plants and animals and fungi living on land and under the sea.
I learned a Balinese phrase in 2022 “Tat Twam Asi” which roughly translates to “I am as you are”. There is so much to sit with and think about in those three words.
Five
Travel can change the world for the better.
You know when tourism becomes over tourism is when you see or experience first-hand, the local people in the place that you are visiting scamming each other or fighting each other. I have experienced this by being brought to the wrong hotel on purpose. I have seen this in the surf. And EVERYONE has seen this on arrival at hotspot airports when taxi drivers are shouting over each other for your attention.
HOWEVER, I have been far and wide enough, especially in Southeast Asia, to see tourism change the lives of people in remote communities. When you choose to travel for the people and places you are visiting, rather than just yourself, you are directly contributing to education, healthcare, and brighter future for that destination.
Do not quote me but there is a Visa stat floating around out there that 95 of the 100 top travel destinations have remained the same in the last decade. And with the 2022 stats that have been published, international tourism is back to ~65% pre-pandemic. Which means over 700 million people travelled internationally. This is a complete oversimplification but imagine 700 million people dispersed over thousands of destinations instead of only in the top 100 destinations.
The world that we want to live in…at least 50% of international travellers exploring beyond the top 100 travel destinations.
