Good Travel, Bad Travel

Hey out there,

I'm prepping for a trip to Bangkok in almost a week's time. I'll continue my writing while abroad, I hope, but should the Jet Lag get to me and it gets quite over here don't hesitate to send a note to check up on me. I’m laying out the details and thinking about what I can get done on the flight, aside from binging movies from an old hard drive...

There are two types of ways to travel, either you go along with it, you see the sites, you let others dictate the where-to’s and you follow.

Or you engage in the trip. You excavate it for gold.

The latter is a completely different experience. What I mean is that there have been trips in the past wherein allowing everyone else to do the planning, in saying yes to whatever goes along I felt like I was just still me, doing me, but in a new location. It was fairly boring if I’m honest. Because if you just want to continue with your life but in another location, it’s going to be worse.

All of your comforts are gone and it’s much harder to fire up Netflix or get a good wifi signal.

So what’s the difference between a trip rich with adventure and one that makes you feel like a stranger who’s just floating along?

The depth in which you actively are on a pursuit of some kind.

So for me, it’s all about the details. It’s all about finding the spark of what you’re trying to glean from this trip. Do you want to set it up to immerse yourself in the history, drafting a list of books, blogs, and papers to use as a researcher on your journey?

Do you want to use the trip for a culinary experience, not only taking cooking classes while abroad but also keeping a list of all of the meals and ranking them in order?

From my purview, there are two ways to travel, good and bad. And bad is to hit the sites for the picture and check a box. Good is to use it for growth, personal, spiritual, or what have you.

You want it defined, even if that definition is to have everything unplanned, which is to say the purpose is to get lost and see what happens.

This is how adventure starts. Remember all the great adventurers had a purpose...

So it turns out you get out of travel what you put in.

These locations are full of rich history, culture and gems that do not simply boil down to the few common landmarks. You need to excavate them in your own way to pick up the gold.

I’d rather travel like Anthony Bourdain.

No, actually like Anthony Bourdain, with a film crew and TV show gathering stories sharing them with the world.

xx David