Travelling the world Vs. Living the other side of the world

For a while now I’ve been wanting to write something a bit different in my blog, actually talking about travelling as opposed to just listing my recent endeavours. I wanted to start off by comparing the difference of actually travelling compared to living somewhere different to home. Some of the points may be pretty obvious, but to people that don’t travel too much (aside from the odd two week holiday here and there) there really is one thing that you don’t realise: The longer you live in that one place, it really isn’t too dissimilar to what you do in your home village/town/city. When I phone home at the moment and people assume that my life must be so exciting and crazy cos I’m living in Australia, I’m sorry to say but at the moment I’m doing the same as you, riding to work every day, gym, food, sleep, and living for the weekend! But there’s surely more to it…..

My biggest problems are, after a (long) while of travelling I kinda can’t wait to get some routine back in my life. When I am in Asia that feeling comes to me a lot lot quicker than when I am in Latin America. I like to know where my supermarket is, I like to sign up to a gym and keep regular exercise and classes going, I like to feel like the local as opposed to another backpacker. But on the flip side, my problems are that I do get bored pretty easily, I really get over doing the same thing day-in day-out, really quickly as well. I have just passed the one year mark since I left England on my second travel stint , with two months of that being in Indonesia, and the rest of that time being here in Brisbane, Australia, and typical me, (as I mentioned in my last post) I had my sponsorship visa approved for Australia (again) at the beginning of May, which allows me to stay in Australia for four years, now don’t get me wrong, I am more than happy to have been granted this visa and it really is the best thing for me to have right now, but pretty much from the moment it was granted the itchy feet started kicking in…..I think I’m just not really ready to settle anywhere just yet. But that aside, aside from the “negatives”’ I wanna dig a bit deeper into the two, but through my eyes:

Travelling the world:

What could be better than travelling all over the world?....A new view from your bedroom windows every other morning, new food, new people, new cultures, maybe even new languages every couple of weeks! I could give the flat out simple answer to that question and say “nothing”, nothings could possibly be better than all that! I mean, even if you get bored of your current surroundings you just pack your (never completely unpacked) backpack and move on to wherever the chicken bus takes you…..?.......surely this is what people mean when they talk about freedom. And I for one truly believe them, both from my own experiences and from hearing other travellers’ stories.

I have been very lucky that I have managed to travel around a large portion of the world. I left England back in September 2010, and between then and April 2013 I managed to visit 22 countries across 4 continuants, very varied amounts of time. And prior to that, I have been on many other holidays/trips. So I feel that I have seen a fair amount of the world, from one extreme to the next! I personally love the thought of constantly moving, as mentioned before, I do get a bit restless a bit easily. But I love the thought of checking out a place for a few days, soaking up the vibe of that place, trying the food, a crazy activity or to do whatever your new/current location has on offer, and then moving on again to a different scenery to do the same again…but different!

Come on, how many travellers watch An Idiot Abroad” with Karl Pilkington as he complains about everything that’s going on, and just think to themselves “holy shit, I’d love to be in his position, get to try all these crazy, new and far out adventures, and to top it all off, SOMEONE ELSE IS PAYING FOR IT” – That’s the dream right!?!

Living the other side of the world:

Again, I have been very fortunate that I have been able to live in several locations scattered all over the world. All the places I have lived have been English speaking, and have been in “the first world”. I am originally from a small town, of about 14,000 people, which is located about 6 miles out of the city of Southampton, in the heart of the south of England. I grew up there, I went to school there, and until I was 24 and left England to travel the world, I have lived there all my life. Since then I have lived in the centre of state capital cities in America and Australia, and small towns in America, New Zealand and Canada…I have also lived and worked up a mountain in New Zealand (I always have to get that one in there). So like I said before, I am very fortunate! There was one exception to all of this, and I have lived on an island resort off of the Island of Lombok, an Indonesian island, and although it was an experience, it really wasn’t as fancy as it initially sounds.

There’s something about living in a completely new location. I love the feeling when I’m no longer “English Mike”, but I am just “Mike” (or “Mikey” as everyone everywhere seems to call me after a short time (no complaints here)) the local. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not tryna distance myself from being English, no no no, I am English through and through, Fee-fi-fo-fum…., but what I mean is when you actually are part of the community! Not only do you get to see that place for what it is, but you feel include. Plus you get to see more of that area, and the surrounding areas, which can usually offer so much, and so much more than any average backpacker will see or experience. Plus you get to be a snob about the area…or you feel you can slate it a bit more! It’s your home, and that’s what you do, but will get on the defence when others slag it off!

Plus the friends I have here (or elsewhere) when I live and stay in a place, they become family. I’m still in contact with my friends from several corners of the world, from areas that I have lived/am living in. And it’s nice to know people are genuinely happy when you’re coming back or staying a little longer, or upset when you’re leaving. I don’t do it to upset you, it’s just nice to know that I will be missed. I don’t say this to brag in anyway (“I have more Facebook friends than you!” etc etc), I just say it, as it’s a positive outlook on looking at being stationary. You have friends through and through, and not just over the excitement as they are travelling too. But on the flip side of that, no matter where I am in the world now, and no matter how happy I am in my current situation, there is always people somewhere else that I am missing.

Travelling the world Vs Living the other side of the world:

In the words of Steve Merchant (not a great travel philosopher, I’ve just been watching a lot of “An idiot abroad” recently) “I myself have travelled and I genuinely believe that travel broadens the mind”’ so overall, gun to my head if I could only do one of the two, I would always have to pick the obvious choice, I would pick to just keep travelling, there’s always more to see, the rest never ends, as whilst I’m stationary I get restless. I love the feeling of wondering around a new town and have no idea where I am, people used to find it funny when I said that I spent my afternoon/morning/day getting lost, and they found it crazy when I told them I intentionally do it, and I know I’m not the only one that finds this to be exciting. I remember when I was in north Chile (just over two years ago), and we were staying in the small town of San Pedro de Atacama, so Claudia, my friend from Switzerland, and I hired bikes and set out to find a lake using an extremely crudely drawn map. The long and short of the story is that we never did find that lake, we got extremely lost looking for it, extremely lost in fact that we ended up in a cactus field, a field that got so dense with cactus before too long that we couldn’t ride through it, we had to walk our bikes through it whilst our legs were getting cuts all over! It might sound strange, “how the hell did you end up in a cactus field!?!?”, but trust me, we had to find our way back to the main road somehow, and we’d got too deep in to it by this point! We did eventually find our way back to the main road (and then from there we eventually ended up back in Atacama), but we sat and had lunch on that road, with the desert around us, and the mountains in the background upon a blue sky canopy, and although I would have obviously loved to have made it to that lake and had a swim, the adventure of finding it and being lost was the real thrill to me! The lakes, or the peaks, or the waterfall bases, are usually the rewards at the end of your adventure. Now for example, here in Brisbane, or back home in Southampton, when I go for a bike ride, I just head from home to work! Exciting, no!

Also, the more I travel the more people I get to meet, and cultures I get to experience. I also get more opportunities to be reunited with friends from all over. Staying stationary means I get to stick with one group of friends, moving around means I get to hang out with all of them!

In the ideal world, I think I would love it if my blog (or some other form of travel writing) was my form of income, I love to write about my travels, but I love doing my travels more, if these two things could somehow be my life…..well, as a “writer” I’d actually be lost for words if that was to be my fate! So this is something that I want to and will pursue more, I’ve had few things come up over the last couple of weeks that having given me more inspiration to try and make this a (hopefully maybe) possible reality. Hopefully more on that to come in the real near future! I really believe that the last 5 years have been the best of my life (so far) the places I’ve explored, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve encountered, and the knowledge gained. I don’t want it to stop really, at least not any time in the foreseeable future. Speak to most travellers, and they will tell you that as soon as they arrive in a new place (or even before that’s happened) they’re already planning the next adventure or 2 or 3 in the back of their minds, and that’s me! But I do love to share my enthusiasm for travel with others, and that’s why I love writing this blog, and why I always get excited when people ask me for advice or help with their future plans…but as always, my main advice for someone considering doing some travel of their own, “Do it!”

Of course there is the third option, Being at home!:

It’s the best place in the world, I love it, I love to complain about it, I love being there, I love to get out of it! It really is as simple/confusing as that! It’s who I am, and why I am the why I am!

I do have to ask a favour from my readers, no pressure here, if there’s anything you do or don’t like about my blog or my writing style/format please feel free to leave a comment, or get in touch with me directly (for those who know who I am) it would be greatly appreciated as I would love to improve the reading experience for you all. I also plan on writing more travel topics like this one, so if you have any topic ideas that you would like me to attempt writing about then please suggest them to me. Thanking you!

And as always, thanks for reading.