I thought an interesting way to introduce myself and my travel blog would be to discuss everything I learnt from my most recent and longest journey, about myself and life in general. I recently returned from a 6 month adventure around South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It’s safe to say I experienced so much that it was impossible to come back the same person. It’s a fairly long one today but I promise some of my posts will be shorter and there will be a lot of fun listicles as well as videos and features. The point of this blog is to give prospective travellers as much information and advice as I can to help them prepare. You may also like to read about my experiences purely for entertainment as I’ve had quite an adventure and with that, comes a lot of great stories. Without further ado, here are some of the main things I learnt from my travels!
THINK POSITIVE AT ALL TIMES
Generally, I am a very positive person and if I have something negative on my mind then I will instantly try and distract myself so I can get rid of any negative thoughts. I believe there are soooo many things in life to be happy about, even really tiny things like watching a bright yellow butterfly flutter past on a sunny day, that it’s just such a waste of time being hung up on something. HOWEVER… my best friend and travel buddy, Megan, actually brought a home truth to light while we were away, particularly in New Zealand when we lived out a campervan for a month in extremely close proximity to each other. She made me realise that I wasn’t as happy and positive sometimes as I thought I was.
I was beginning to think I was a generally unlucky person because of small things such as my phone running out at annoying times, things just sometimes not working for me but working fine for Megan, etc. (I know, first world problems, right?) So I eventually voiced my concern to Megan and she told me I was deterministic. I’d never heard of that word, despite having an English language degree! So she explained to me that I needed to stop believing my fate lies in a higher power when it really lies in my own actions! I had to take responsibility for myself and stop blaming luck. She had also noticed that I would get worked up over the tiniest things, like when I’d reach over to get my water bottle out of the cup holder and it would fall on the floor or I’d go to put my jumper on and it would fall onto the muddy grass! She said, “I bet if you start brushing off these little inconveniences and saying to yourself ‘oh well!’ then you will stop noticing things going wrong.” So that’s what I did, and honestly, it took me about two days before I started to feel a lot more positive! It was weird. But fantastic! Luckily the ‘oh well!’s have stuck with me and I no longer get worked up over things – big or small.
HOW GENUINELY KIND THE WORLD IS
Growing up in Britain and knowing lots about USA too, I have always had this opinion that most people would only help others if they could get something out of it. Take Richard Branson at the moment for example. A billionaire has set up a donation page to help raise money for the NHS, as of course they are struggling so badly at the moment. It’s had so many donations but I’ve recently found out that for every £20 donated, Virgin takes 90p. Obviously there are costs of running the website, etc, but 90p for every £20… Surely some of that will be profit. Having the billions of pounds that he does, you’d think he’d just pay the admin costs himself or something to help his country in its hardest time. Anyway (sorry for the rant), meeting so many people from less fortunate countries, I noticed they are absolutely filled with kindness. In the Philippines, every single local would walk past me and smile and say hello. And in all of South East Asia, if anyone sees you struggling with anything, they won’t hesitate to come and help. It’s so nice to see and (get ready for my cliché,) it’s honestly restored my faith in humanity.
HOW LUCKY WE ARE TO LIVE IN A FIRST WORLD COUNTRY
When I tell you I witnessed true poverty, I really did. You probably have too if you’ve explored a third world country. It can be well hidden if you stay in a hotel or near a big town, but in October I stayed at Mad Monkey Hostel on Nacpan Beach, El Nido, Philippines and Megan and I decided to go into the ‘town’ to find some fruit for breakfast one day. I’d never seen anything like it. The photo below shows the biggest and best shop in the town. To get there, we walked through the local neighbourhood, passing all the shelters the locals call their homes. Families were laying on the floor and on benches just waiting for someone like us to come by and purchase a bag of crisps or a cup noodle from their tiny market stalls. Women were washing their clothes in buckets of water outside and children were chasing the chickens around. It truly made me feel so sad, nonetheless every one of them managed to give us a genuine smile and a hello, including the infants.
One night in Moalboal, Philippines, I got chatting to a local boy, 28, called Alex. He works on a boat that takes tourists to the surrounding islands for the day. He told me eventually he wants to make enough money to be able to afford to move to Canada. He has three sisters: two of them have married German men and moved to Germany and the other has married a man from Dubai and moved there. I felt so sorry for Alex and his family for feeling so desperate to escape their home country in order to have a better way of life. It makes you realise how lucky we are to come from a wealthy area of the world, where some days our biggest struggle is getting out of bed in the morning. With this in mind, I have returned home appreciating beautiful England more than ever.
HOW TO BE OKAY WITH DIRT
This is a bit of a funny one as it’s probably not very relatable to lots of you. For some reason I have always been so scared of mud and all things dirty. Even if I walked outside and got dirty feet, I’d have to wash them off immediately. Similarly, if I got some mayo or something (arguably that’s not dirt) on my hand, I’d have to go and wash it before I could carry on eating or doing anything. Staying in hostels for weeks or months on end made me a lot less afraid, because if I worried about every little bit of dirt or sweat on me, then I would’ve just had to live in the shower. I basically had no choice but to embrace it in a way and become a lot more careless. This was such a good change for me because looking back on what I used to be like, I’m thinking is was a bit obsessive.
There you have it – the four main things I learnt about myself and life in general as a result of my recent travels. I learnt so much more like how to drive a moped and an automatic car, how to live a minimalistic lifestyle, and more - but I won’t go into those because I’ll be covering those topics in other posts. Thank you so much for reading my first blog post! Subscribe to receive new posts via email.
Safe travels!
Em Wanders x
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