I spent six-seven fantastic months in Southeast Asia — this has added up to what could be the best of my life, for now. Having gone through various different of the kind experiences and having tried so many new things, I learnt some life-enhancing lessons that I’d like to share with you:
- Do not overthink – just do it: “Someday my ship will come in” – many people seem to have a strange and an unhealthy understanding of what their luck truly is. They tend to act effortlessly believing that things will eventually fall into place for them at the mercy of strangers or karma or their lucky shoe or lottery. This is a misunderstanding of how the nature of the world actually works. I have to be honest – there is no magic or fairy tales involved. The thumb of rule is as simple as that: get off your ass and do something tangible. Too many people presume that when they have that one thing (which most of the time is money) they can work towards for years then “everything will be alright”. This is delusional. When you get it, there’ll be something else missing in your life.
So if you are the one with the itching feet loosing passion and a zest for the world and wanting to leave the comforts of your home to roam around the world, work towards it and stop deferring your happiness to the future. As Buddha once said: “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” Keep in mind that things are much easier, safer and far less complicated than your mind can make up. Stop over-thinking so much and start acting! Long-term travelers are the ones that stop making excuses and start saving money and begin searching the world map right away.
- You don’t need to be rich to travel the world. A lot of people kept asking me how I managed to fund my long-term travels – did I won lottery or am I being funded by my rich parents? Not at all! When I tell people how often I travel, I frequently am met with the famous “oh gosh, you are so lucky!” comment.
With this kind of mindset, there is no wonder why so many people think extended overseas travels are an exclusive thing. Holding onto time and money – that’s what keeps people in a stubborn position. In reality – long-term travel has nothing to do with money! Our limitations are not set by how much money we have, how old we are right now, what we did before or other things that you can claim are your stamp of failure for life. Even if you have a limit of your budget, there are so many unbelievable ways of how we can save up money on the road as well as how we can fund our budgets while travelling. Sometimes it’s just a smile that leads to extraordinary conversations with ordinary people who then turn to become your couch-surfers and life-long friends. Also, creativity is vital on road: go to the restaurant in any of SE Asia bar and you would not believe how many translation mistakes their menu holds… You will be surely feeded in exchange of your translation services. That’s just an example. I can assure you the experience you will get away from the materialistic pressure of the west will be the ones hard-to-forget.
I often say that the whole point of long-term travel is having the time to walk through the world in a more deliberate way. Instead of thinking of long term travel as a force to become a student trying to find the balance between poverty and his budget, try to think of the travel as a way to a be a student of a daily life of your own choice. Try to live a modest, simple life on the road. Sometimes the simplicity, poverty and purity of other human being and other cultures you meet while travelling seem so intriguing and so close to what you are trying to seek as a traveler that it becomes a new exotic ideal.
- Travel differently: you better learn to forget the plan and stay away of any kind of schedule. Just book a one-way ticket and “go with a flow”. Everything will evolve on the road. The whole concept of my trip was to get rid of any type of schedules, detailed plans, deadlines or other stuff that is associated with routine life… Forcing myself to slow down and improvise my way through each new day on the road was the best way to break out of the habits of home and start the amazing possibilities a journey promises. I always travel anywhere that sounds wacky or beautiful or interesting. Or anywhere that’s been recommended by an influential acquaintance met on the road. Of course, it’s wise to make an outline but not a rigid plan. There are always things I want to see and do, but the last thing I want is to be a slave to a schedule. Make your trip elastic. See what you want to see but leave lots of time to drift. Live in the now, all while enjoying the progress and changes of your own.
Communicate with locals. Do not just consume experiences and move on from one place to another without engaging with the local culture. Talk with people: as simple as that. Every person on the road has his/her story to tell. Seek out people with different beliefs and views of the world to yours and get to know their side of the story. The world is much more fun with people of varying interests and beliefs. In my travel, I have hung out with homeless people, very religious folks, scientists and engineers, writers, singers, fisherman and many others. And that has made the whole experience more fulfilling, more vivid and colorful.
When you begin to travel and open up your eyes, you’ll start to see many things that conflict with your own cultural norms and the way you have been brought up. You are then forced to re-address your values, look at things or experiences without judging and change your perspective to the world. Open up yourself for every opportunity, various cultures and environments, loose up your home cultural baggage, loose up your home identity and fill with more colorful content. Leave ignorant stereotypes aside and you will be surprised how different nations can come up with totally different face. Take random experiences. Some of the greatest life’s achievements happen not when you are actively engaged in trying to make things happen, but when we are simply open to what may possibly happen to us.
- “Same same but different”: we human beings all of us on this earth are same same but different. We all breathe air, eat food, and drink water. We all smile when we are happy and cry when we’re sad, and we all crave for happiness. Everyone just wants love, security, enjoyment and hopes for a better future. The way they verbalize this and work towards it is where things split off, but we all have the same basic desires. You can relate to everyone in the world if you look past the superficial things that separate you.
The last, but not least: take a slightly different look at the same things at home. You wouldn’t believe it, but out of all challenges that wait on the road, the most difficult can be the act of coming home. Not because it signals the end of all the fun and freedom, but because returning home after such a vivid experience overseas can be just weird and unsettling. Every aspect of home will look more or less like it did when you left, but it will feel completely different. That’s what happened for me. I started to notice many things that I ignored before here in Lithuania.
Really interesting thing is that once you go on the road you start observing yourself, your actions and reactions, start recovering and/ or discovering different parts of yourself, but once you come back home same process starts again…
Sandra