Travel can be a great teacher, full of life lessons that you just can’t get from a book. Even pictures and video fail to educate at the level that can be achieved by experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of a place. In this article, we’ll explore the things travel teaches you, and why travel should be a regular part of your life and continuing education.
1. You don’t know as much as you think you do
Getting out of the bubble of your hometown and your home country really teaches you so much about the world, history, and culture. Facts that you’ve forgotten from history class, will get engraved in your mind forever when you are actually in the place in which history happened. You can see the streets, smell the food, taste the flavors, and feel the history of a place. It’s city has a unique vibe and an unique pulse that you can not understand by reading about it.
To learn more about a place, we love taking tours. It doesn’t matter if it’s one of those free walking tours, a paid museum tour, or a full day tour, we find tour guides are the most entertaining teachers as they really make a city come to life and really enhance your experience of a place. The knowledge these guides share becomes addictive. You wonder, “Well, what else don’t I know?”
We recommend Klook for informative, affordable, and fun tours that will greatly enhance any trip that you will take. We also recommend documenting your journeys thoroughly with travel journals, pictures, and videos. The little details are so easy to forget. You want to document your impressions as they happen so you can take that knowledge home with you.
2.You are Never Really Alone
You will meet so many friends along your journey that even if you are traveling solo you are not really alone. I remember when I took my first solo trip to Guanjanto, Mexico, I was nervous but determined to prove my independence and experience something new. I may have arrived alone, but I didn’t not have to spend my trip alone. I made alliances along the way at my homestay and in the Spanish classes I was taking. I found people to take day-trips with and to go out salsa dancing with.
When our car broke down in Phuket, Thailand, we asked for help and received it. The locals did not let us feel alone in our time of need. They talked to our rental car company for us. They called a taxi for us and waited with us. The taxi driver knew where to take us to buy the necessary car part. We didn’t know how to do any of those things, but luckily we are not alone.
We all belong to the community of human beings and chances are your fellow man will help you, not hurt you wherever you go. When you travel, don’t worry about going alone, because the world is full of friends you have not met yet. They are just waiting on you to arrive.
3.You don’t have to be rich to travel
Flights are getting increasingly cheaper every year and with hotel rooms starting at $20 a night. Travel is truly accessible to the majority of middle class households.
The majority of full-time travellers that we meet are not wealthy. They have simply learned an alternate way to make a living and travel regularly. We’ve met travellers who have saved enough to take a few months off a year to travel. Some find full-time jobs aboard, some work remotely as a digital nomad, or some rent out their property at home and travel full-time from rental income. All of these options are accessible to everyone with a little self-education and a little effort.
Planning a vacation and planning long-term travel are two completely different frames of mind. Vacations are for relaxing so you tend to spend more to pamper yourself. Long-term travel is for experiencing. Booking a fancy hotel is not necessary, because you are there to experience the culture not the hotel amenities.
Finding balance is the most important though. When I first started traveling, I spent a lot because I traveled so rarely that I wanted it to be special. Now, I travel so often that I’m more interested in being thrifty and cost efficient so I can continue to travel for years at a time. You have to decide what type of traveller you want to be and what price range you are comfortable with. Just know that you don’t have to be wealthy to travel long term. You just have to be budget conscious.
4. You get more joy from your experiences than from your stuff.
My travel memories are so much more fulfilling than all the possessions I’ve bought in my lifetime.
For example, we once had a 4 bedroom house full of stuff. We sold it all to take a few years off and travel full-time. We spent a lot of time and money accumulating those possessions and I can honestly say that I don’t miss them. Without those objects, I am able to belong to the world instead of belonging to things that don’t even matter. There’s nothing that I can buy that will give me the same level of joy and wellbeing as travel.
Memories from your travel stay with you a lifetime and make you smile at unexpected moments throughout the day. This is why I’m so cautious now about whether or not I really need a piece of clothing, a pair of shoes, or a new gadget. Will it really enhance my life? Is it really worth taking around the world with me?
Although money is a renewable resource in the sense that you can always earn more money, I still don’t want to spend my whole life working for it. If I spend less, I can experience more and feed my soul with trips that really help me grow into the person I want to become.
5. Every country is different.
One welling meaning friend once told us that all countries in a region are the same and that we should just visit one country and that would give us a feel of what the other countries would be like. I am still blown away by how wrong that was!
Our experiences from country to country in Southeast Asia have been so different. I would daresay each country is night and day different from one another from language, to history, to food, and philosophy of life…nothing was the same.
There are 195 countries in the world. If you go to all 195 countries, you will learn 195 different ways to live. Imagine how flexible you will be after successfully adapting to 195 countries. You will have a wisdom and adaptability that most people will never gain. You will truly be able to think outside the box because you would have spent so much time out of yours.
6.Don’t judge a country by one city.
A common mistake amongst travelers is to feel like they know a whole country after visiting just one city. Nothing could further from the truth!
In my home country of the United States, for example, I can’t imagine anybody judging the whole country from one visit to New York City. The country has many more faces and many more experiences than just that one. This is why I say it’s impossible to judge a country from one city alone. Typically, I like seeing a big city, a cute small town, someplace historic, and a beach town. Three or four cities is a decent sampling to really see what a place is like and understand its unique vibe and history.
7. You are going to make mistakes and it’s okay
When I was new to travel, I tried so hard to plan and prepare so I didn’t make any mistakes when I went aboard. To be honest, I was over planning and taking away a lot of the spontenietiaty out of my travels. The thing is you can not always be perfectly prepared for travel. Hours of operation change, attraction tickets get sold out, special events can close museums you planned on seeing, and a global pandemic and halt you in your tracks. These mistakes can seem disheartening at the time, but they are an unavoidable part of travel.
On your journeys, things won’t always go right afterall you are an outsider in a faraway foreign land. You’re bound to make mistakes with customs and with speaking the local language. It will be hard at first, but you will eventually get comfortable with being wrong and being wrong often. You will learn that there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, as long as you are earner to learn the lessons and improve with each new journey.
8.Flexibility & Adaptability
There’s more than one way to live life. Driving on the left side of the road is just as efficient as driving on the right side of the road. The questions is can you adapt to the change? There are plenty of people who are incapable of adapting, but the more you travel the more you are able to adapt and see from a more worldly perspective.
9. There are many reasons to travel
The most common reasons to travel are to sight see, to shop, and to eat local food, but once you do that it can feel like there’s nothing else to do. However, there are many reasons to travel and if you change your reason to travel you can return to the same destination and have a completely different experience.
We met people who travel for different hiking trails. They could care less about the sights of the city. All they care about is walking down as many beautiful trails as possible.
You can travel to rock climb, to volunteer, to go to music festivals, to learn to cook, to learn a language, or to dance. Traveling this way is enriching because you’re growing your knowledge of a place and your favorite activity at the same time. It also makes making new connections easier because when you travel to do an activity you are guaranteed to be around people who share a similar interest as you which makes it that much easier to make friends.
If you keep changing your reason for travel, you will never run out of destinations.
10. How to Overcome Fear
Travel to a foreign country is scary for the average person because there are so many unknowns. Our friends often tell us, “you guys are fearless,” because it seems like we will do anything and go anywhere but that just is not true. We were scared as well, but because we travel despite our fears, eventually the things that once scared us now seem mundane.
For example, I was once really scared of driving in a foreign country. I really didn’t want to do it, when the covid-19 pandemic stopped tourism, it really limited our modes of transportation. Driving ourselves became the only viable option, so we had to learn to drive on the left and learn to ride a motorbike all at the same time. It took a while to get used to, but it was worth learning.
The truth is that you don’t know what you are capable of until you get out there and challenge yourself. I find that travel is a fun and rewarding challenge that leads to personal growth in knowledge, wellbeing, and happiness. Getting out of your comfortable zone is definitely a fear worth facing.
What about you? What lessons has travel taught you? Share them in the comments below!
