495 Days of FUNemployment.
I traveled 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).
Two months of not traveling made me go completely stir-crazy, so I quit my start job and left Singapore indefinitely for the US and South America. (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 traveling 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 speak from my travel experience before the Internet, and smartphones became affordable and widely accessible. Due to budget or choice, the accommodation was mainly 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 a table.
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 your way to avoid it, you are always forced into a social situation. And when you do go out of your way, which most travellers don’t 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 already made very good friends from all over the world. So when I say “home” I mean being near people you feel completely “at home” with.
There is nothing better than catching up with old friends in their homes 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 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?
Don’t get me wrong, I loved some parts of 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, scuba diving is so much brighter, 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 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.
When you hear the life stories from 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 we have much to learn from each other.
I have met enough people fortunate enough to be in tourism after breaking away from being nameless and faceless factory workers who are making our clothes and growing our food, and it makes you reconsider.
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 than ever. And that’s not including all the plants, 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.
Tourism becomes over-tourism 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 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 traveled 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 a brighter future for that destination.
Don’t quote me on this, but there is a visa stat floating around that 95 of the 100 top travel destinations have remained the same in the last decade. According to the 2022 stats that have been published, international tourism is back to ~65% pre-pandemic, which means that over 700 million people have travelled internationally.
This is a complete oversimplification, but imagine 700 million people dispersed over thousands of destinations instead of being only in the top 100 destinations.
The world that we want to live in…at least 50% of international travelers explore beyond the top 100 travel destinations.
