I dont understand why people go out of their homes and cities to unknown destinations taking the risk of flying ? perhaps to impress their friends.
I dont like traveling either. It is so uncomfortable. Imagine the paperwork for visa and their standing in ques, then you pay for the flights and take the attitude of hostesses who wouldnt bother to give you water also. Then whats so great about a hotel room, after all its just a lonely room and could get scary in night when you are placed on 20th floor or something. money flows like water and for god knows what.
you dont know anyone and what if you get in a mess with the cops or goons or something. who will bail you out ? plus if you dont follow the local customs others find it so insulting. you are a complete lonely stranger wherein others would look at you with suspicious eyes. arent you self orphaned? just imagine falling ill there without knowing anyone at all, or what if you lose documents or money or someone dupes you or kidnaps you or just victimizes you, you have to be on your toes. why bother? instead watch a luxury travel documentary or something. it doesnt hurt the wallet and you are safe and smug. I dont know what is the urge to travel. besides I have this problem of motion sickness too. I hate the paperwork, the ques, the fear of unknown, being a total stranger, and most of the time I keep praying to have a safe trip back home. I dont really see the point in going to a new mall or sitting in the bus to visit some ruined castle. and during peak times the rates are prohibitively expensive. And then people are on their business in tourist destinations. They want to loot you literally. there is no help or humanity around just buildings and bags. there is nothing like the bed with a nice fan or ac plus a tv or internet. vicarious travel or virtual couchtraveling is so much a better option. see a nice hd documentary where the host shows you around and sleeps in some grand suite of the best hotel and eating heartily too. there are no headaches involved and no anxiety too plus your wallet is untouched. I tried to initiate conversation with people too in my last solo trip but somehow people get suspicious and cast themselves away. Its an aloof feeling. thats why people endup talking to waiters and bartenders or taxi drivers who are in eternal hurry. And in case you travel with people, you have to submit to their likes and dislikes and keep you mood at bay. Or with a group travel, you have to so punctual that the world would stop if you dont make it on time. All in all, a bad idea. I dont really know go where,see what and talk to whom? I am at a loss to travel. Instead I would honestly feed a hungry beggar a nice burger or something. I would feel more satisfied there.
On any given day, I’m happy at home. But I do experience fairly frequent wanderlust, the desire to see things I’ve never seen before.
My mother retired from working for an airline. My parents travel the world at least twice a year.
My older sister travels for fun.
My younger sister is a VP of travel for a large company and travels the world.
I’m a homebody.
The OP of this thread was actually a post that re-awakened a 10-year-old zombie. In the interest of not having a number of new posters address people who aren’t here any longer, I split the post and subsequent responses off into a new thread. Carry on.
I’ve rarely encountered the problems the OP listed, I really enjoy travels. Yes, there are logistical issues and costs, but the rewards are worth it. Just booked a mountain biking trip to Moab for next spring, we’re working on our winter skiing plans now. More empty airline seats for us!
If Trump saw this post he’d plunk it on the U.S./Mexico border.
Anyway, the only travel of length I’ve ever actually enjoyed was a train ride through parts of Alaska. Planes, to me, are a necessary evil.
mmm
I agree with OP in general. Up until I was 40 I was traveling for business frequently, didn’t mind it that much, but it began to drag on me. Sometimes I’d go on a tour from one client to the next. There was rarely time to do anything else except work on these trips. That was all before 9/11 and air travel is much more of a pain. Now I’d prefer not to travel at all, even the 100 mile round trip to Boston and back to go to my office is a pain since it could easily turn into 5 hours or more on the road in traffic. I’ll stay home now, thank you.
Travelling is less painful than reading a big ol’ wall-o-text. For pity’s sake, please just hit enter every few sentences if you don’t know how to use paragraphs. I couldn’t read it.
Travelling can be a joy. I have the genetic opposite of wanderlust (seriously, my ancestors are traceable to walking-distance locations of where i now live , as far back as I can trace), but travelling means uncovering lovely little surprises at every corner - new things to eat, drink, see, hear; new customs and bits of folklore, new points of view.
Sure, you can sit in an armchair and watch Michael Palin experience them (and that’s great, make no mistake), but there’s something a bit special about feeling like you discovered them for yourself.
**I dont understand why people go out of their homes and cities to unknown destinations taking the risk of flying ? **Because I enjoy traveling.
**perhaps to impress their friends.**I have no idea how this would be a thing, but that’s not why I travel.
**I dont like traveling either. **This much is clear.
**It is so uncomfortable. Imagine the paperwork for visa and their standing in ques, then you pay for the flights and take the attitude of hostesses who wouldnt bother to give you water also. **Generally speaking, this isn’t what travel is like. As for queues, what a hassle to, you know, wait in a check-out line for groceries!
**Then whats so great about a hotel room, after all its just a lonely room and could get scary in night when you are placed on 20th floor or something. **I’m neutral on most hotel rooms, but for most people it’s not scary. Also, it beats walking all night.
**
money flows like water and for god knows what.**I’d rather pay for travel than for movies and popcorn.
you dont know anyone 1) Depends on the travel. That’s a big assumption. 2) You meet people. That’s part of why I travel.
**and what if you get in a mess with the cops or goons or something. who will bail you out ? **A reasonable question, the answer to which is your family or friends, whom you contact if there’s a problem, or the Department of State if you’ve registered an international trip. I have traveled to over 70 countries and my only police encounter has been when a professor who was driving me was stopped for not having a renewal sticker in her window. That said, I acknowledge that I have skin color privilege in many countries.
plus if you dont follow the local customs others find it so insulting. I find that pretty much any effort to learn a few words or find out about and adhere to local behaviors is rewarded with appreciation. It doesn’t take much effort to be generally polite.
**
you are a complete lonely stranger wherein others would look at you with suspicious eyes. arent you self orphaned? I don’t understand. I am not lonely when I travel alone, because I am doing so for some reason(s). Why would people be suspicious? You know that business travelers are frequently alone, right? “Self orphaned”–?? Do you mean “voluntarily alone”? Do you think that when you see someone shopping alone? Walking? Driving?
**
just imagine falling ill there without knowing anyone at all, or what if you lose documents or money or someone dupes you or kidnaps you or just victimizes you, you have to be on your toes. Again: You contact the same people I mentioned already. For many people, the chance that someone like hotel cleaning staff would find you quickly is greater than the chance of this happening at home. Also, when you fall ill while traveling you do the same thing you’d do if you fell ill at the mall–you ask for emergency assistance.
**
why bother? instead watch a luxury travel documentary or something. it doesnt hurt the wallet and you are safe and smug. **“Smug” may be the key word here.
**I dont know what is the urge to travel. And I don’t understand the urge to not travel.
**
besides I have this problem of motion sickness too. So do I. So what?
**I hate the paperwork, the ques, the fear of unknown, being a total stranger, and most of the time I keep praying to have a safe trip back home. ** This much is clear.
**I dont really see the point in going to a new mall or sitting in the bus to visit some ruined castle. **Okay. Do you understand why other people might like to do that?
**and during peak times the rates are prohibitively expensive. ** Then don’t travel at peak times.
**And then people are on their business in tourist destinations. They want to loot you literally. there is no help or humanity around just buildings and bags. ** This is a sad view of other people, and it has not been my experience.
there is nothing like the bed with a nice fan or ac plus a tv or internet. vicarious travel or virtual couchtraveling is so much a better option. see a nice hd documentary where the host shows you around and sleeps in some grand suite of the best hotel and eating heartily too. there are no headaches involved and no anxiety too plus your wallet is untouched. I beg to differ.
**I tried to initiate conversation with people too in my last solo trip but somehow people get suspicious and cast themselves away. Its an aloof feeling. thats why people endup talking to waiters and bartenders or taxi drivers who are in eternal hurry. **I’m sorry you had that experience. That’s not my experience.
**And in case you travel with people, you have to submit to their likes and dislikes and keep you mood at bay. Or with a group travel, you have to so punctual that the world would stop if you dont make it on time. All in all, a bad idea. ** Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
**
I dont really know go where,see what and talk to whom? I am at a loss to travel. Instead I would honestly feed a hungry beggar a nice burger or something. I would feel more satisfied there. **Enjoy!
I’m currently planning a trip to Antarctica without travel companions. Getting there is a schlepp. Good thing I like airports. I’m sure I’ll throw up on the ship, and I’m sure they’ll serve more fish than I like. Internet service will be expensive and sporadic. I can’t imagine that I won’t have a satisfying experience. YMMV.
That’s why they invented hookers.
If you ever re-appear, I’ll touch on some of your other points.
I fell ill traveling alone on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. The hotel folks got me to a hospital the next day, I handled getting checked in and treated (pneumonia) and was discharged in a few days. I walked down the street, hailed a cab, and headed to a new hotel on the beach to relax for a few days before heading home. Not my happiest time but certainly an adventure and fairly easy to deal with.
Fine, don’t travel, then. But you do realize that not everybody has to feel the exact same way about things that you do?
I agree with the OP. I mean, what’s the point of going abroad if you’re just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - “Oh they don’t make it properly here, do they, not like at home” - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney’s Red Barrel and calamari’s and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White’s sun cream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they “overdid it on the first day.”
Travel is a pain in the ass but it’s the only way to go anywhere. If you’re happy sitting at home, the you’re all set. But my town is about one millionth of the habitable earth and I’d like to see more of it.
…because every time I see a city or landmark on TV I can yell out “BEEN THERE”.
I honestly don’t understand how people can NOT enjoy travel. Experiencing new places and having adventures to me makes life worth living.
Thank you for breaking that wall down; it seems clear that our new friend has more than his share of paranoia about new people and places.
I’ll jump in to (I guess) agree with a bit of the OP. But more so, I agree with the posters who said, “hit the enter key every now and then”. I couldn’t keep up with the rambling.
Using Susan’s expertly formatted reply, I’ll still agree with the premise. Many of those situations can be uncomfortable, sure. Sometimes I’ll say to myself, “but I don’t want to sit for 13 hours over the Pacific”. Also, I don’t think you mentioned it, but being away from home can be quite an inconvenience. And my business relationships feel the strain when I’m away. So, I’ll agree that it’s not all rainbows and waterfalls and sometimes I (preliminarily) regret that I have to go.
Yes, travelling takes a lot more effort than sitting on the couch and pressing buttons on the remote. However, “you gets what you paid for” in a way, because you’ve got to invest a little effort to experience the more exciting delicacies on life’s buffet. If you get your recharge from documentaries or romantic comedies, then the yardsticks presented in your OP would be fine tools to use for measuring reward/cost.
However, if you need more than that (as many of us do), the *hassles *of travel are merely tangential to the overall experience. Very rare is the trip that I focus on the uncomfortability of any situation. Those are not the memories that stick with me.
or… what he/she said 
Good Lawd…Mr. Smokestoomuch is that you? Cuz 3 sentences into that run-on travel lament and Eric Idle was all I was hearing.
The OP is absolutely right, all those things are a minor inconvenience. Most of them are unrealized fears, things that could happen to a traveler, but you can be struck by lightning anywhere. The rest are annoyances of the same magnitude as what you experience every day at home.
This summer I was in Hargeisa, a city of a million people in a self-declared republic that has no diplomatic relations with any country. If anything had happened, there is no embassy of any country that recognizes responsibility there. The people were perfectly congenial, and would actually talk to foreign travelers in the street in a civil friendly manner. Taxi drivers honest and helpful. Safe drinking water. I visited people in their homes. Everybody lives by Muslim values. If anything had happened – well, I would have trusted my hosts, complete strangers, to see that I was safe and well cared for.
I’m 77 and blind and I travel alone. You’re young and able-bodied and tethered somehow to the travel industry, what are you afraid of?
I have some sympathy for the OP. I too am over-sensitive and anti-social (although not paranoid), and the hassle of travel can outweigh the charm for me quite quickly if anything goes wrong (losing my luggage, flight cancellation, getting lost, bad food, chapped lips). I also am easily overwhelmed by crowds, traffic, clamor, sightseeing, shopping, cities in general, public transportation . . . I also find things that millions of people have already gazed at amazedly to be somehow too shopworn to really see with any freshness. I loathe traveling in any kind of a group. I don’t seem to be able to take in experiences fully unless I am alone.
The kind of travel I do enjoy mostly involves extended stays, wilderness or rurality (I loved spending time on a Wisconsin dairy farm, and a Canadian sheep ranch, for example, and needed no further source of entertainment than just being there), few people, and staying with friends. Although a half day to spend aimlessly in a charming small town very different than where I live can be delightful.
Summary: everyone’s different. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I CAN enjoy traveling if I stay within my own limits of comfort, which are very different than most people’s. The OP probably could too.