I am planning on traveling in the next two years. I wish to go live abroad instead of merely visiting other places. My plan is to teach somewhere for a year at an international school. This article has really got me excited:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/03/a_slow_boat_to_anywhere.html
Where have you gone? What have you learned? What were your highs and lows? I am especially interested in hearing from those people who have lived abroad and then come back.
I’ve done a decent amount of traveling, although no living abroad. I’ve been to England, France, Italy, Fiji, Peru, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
For me, the main lessons of travel have been:
People are pretty much the same everywhere and, at least in the countries I’ve been, generally friendlier than in the U.S. We’re a lot more fearful and indignant, on average, IMO.
The “feel” of a place that’s significantly different from where you’ve been before stays with you. Sounds, smells, the look of streets and squares. What seemed like unremarkable moments in various trips are still vivid memories.
I’ve learned to roll with the punches more and have gained confidence in my ability to make do with whatever is available.
For me, the best part of going someplace new is not seeing whatever museums or attractions they have (although we do plenty of that), it’s just walking around and soaking up the feel of daily life there.
Damn, now I want to go on a trip!
Not all tourist attractions are safe. Even if they say they are. Whatever you do, DO NOT PET THE LION.
Mostly, that it is not worth the effort.
This is a pet subject of mine. I have travelled a hell of a lot, over many years (though regrettably never in South America or Africa). The global economy notwithstanding, I hope there’s still time for them.
It is without a shadow of a doubt the best thing I ever did, and will hopefully do again. It’s the only thing I truly love.
And it changed me irrevocably, but I am grateful for that. I would say that without the travel I have done, I would not be half the person I am, and twice as ignorant.
I won’t bother with the details of where I went or what I did, but the biggest single thing I ever gained from it was the ability to look at where I was from, with a level of objectivity that I had previously thought I had, but realised eventually was not objective in the least.
The biggest specific things I have gained are the knowledge that:[ul][li]Any or all cultural assumptions I may have had about attitudes and behaviour were almost completely subjective.[]My own culture is as weird as any “exotic” ones - I just didn’t know it until I left.[]People will worship anything given half a chance. This is the primary reason for me going from being an agnostic to becoming a full-blown atheist.[*]There’s as many assholes and nice people everywhere else, as there are where you’re from.[/ul]After my last round-the-worlder in 2005, I wrote this:[/li][quote]
I didn’t think this journey would change me much, since I’d already done it once before - and indeed the first time I went away did cause the largest shift of my perceptions of the world and humanity, and allowed me to glimpse my own culture as an outsider - yet this trip has altered me too.
One thing that this journey has done is made me realise is how tenuous humanity’s grip on survival actually is. We in the west live in our cities and suburbs, but, terrorism notwithstanding, these are only temporary refuges from danger. The majority of the world is clinging on by a thread, and disaster can strike at any time: the Tibetans scratching a meagre living from the desert in the sky; the Vietnamese up to their waists in the paddies; our Thai friends living in the rubble of their destroyed communities; and latterly New Orleans and the Kashmir earthquake. And I can’t help thinking that the past few milennia of development might be a brief interegnum in an otherwise volatile meteorological and seismic status quo. I can’t help thinking that ‘civilisation’ is heading for a fall - whether this will come from the caprice of nature, or at our own hands, I cannot tell.
On the uninhabited islands of the Andaman Sea, tsunamis can come and go over the centuries, and a few weeks later you’d never know they were there: trees get knocked over, monkeys drown, then it regrows. As the Moken legends tell, disasters even greater than what happened on December 26th have happened in human memory. Nature will survive; I think that without us, the dents we have put in it in the last century or two would be absorbed and adapted in its unthinking progress.
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That once you visit a place, it becomes much more real when things happen there long after you’ve left.
Eat as much street food as you can.
Don’t be afraid to go where no ones speaks English, you can generally get by, and you get better communicating non-verbally. Try to learn basic phrases, most people except for Parisians will appreciate it.
People are generally pretty nice, but there are dicks, thieves, and stupid tourists all over the place.
Don’t get blind drunk too often, and read up on all the local scams in your guide book (they’ve happened to me as though they were scripted out of Lonely Planet).
Don’t travel too fast, if you find a great spot, set a while and relax.
Try to go outside your comfort zone every once in a while. Some of my best adventures were the sketchier ones.
Take several backup forms of money. I always travel with at least two debit cards and a credit card, and some travelers checks just for the hell of it.
Drink with the locals. The dingier and more decrepit the bar or shack, the better.
Ride public transportation with the locals as much as possible. Yeah, sometimes it’s sketchy or uncomfortable, but it’ll usually pay off in a more interesting adventure.
People manage to be pretty happy in third world countries without hardly anything. It makes you realize that the materialism here in the USA is pretty shallow.
I learned that a lot of people in the world don’t consider bathing a priority.
Best way to learn about a country is to visit where they shop. Don’t confuse this with where tourists and expats shop for stuff.
We tend to think of places as having a monolithic point of view, and other people see us the same way. A lot of how we are viewed is an output of our international political policies, films and television.
One of the most entertaining things is when someone from another country says something along the lines of “Gee, most Americans are really jerks/fat/stupid etc. I’m glad that you are not like that.”
Prejudice is everywhere and often a lot more obvious than it is in the USA.
Cold drinks don’t need to be consumed with ice.
Once you eat “local” foods, you’ll generally be disappointed in the facsimile of the stuff you get back home. And for most of it you’ll feel like you’re getting ripped off for the price.
In some places you’ll be spoiled by the simplicity of public transport.
Try to shed the inclination to explain how we do it back home and just learn new ways. Ask questions and listen to the answers.
Immerse yourself as much as possible in local language. Avoid expat bars and hangouts except when you really need to for sanity sake and you’ll get a lot more out of the experience.
Oh, forgot to put that some bureaucratic and other experiences will likely drive you absolutely batshit crazy. Try to laugh them off in order to maintain your sanity. You typically can’t fight the system at home and it’s even worse when you’re the road team. Learn how to make the proper offering to grease the skids if that’s what it takes to get stuff done or deal with the bureaucracy or whatever it takes.
I’ve traveled, lived and worked over a good portion of the planet. I’m convinced that it shaped my world view, my political views, and kept me from becoming xenophobic and America-centric. I lived for some years in Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Mali and Uganda; and for shorter periods in Japan, Spain, Guatemala, Egypt and the Virgin Islands. I’ve traveled and worked in nearly all of Eastern and Western Europe, and traveled in several African countries. Cultural education is marvelous, as it frees you from the stereotypes many Americans have about furriners. Architecture, art and history come alive, if you let them.
It does often take a distant second place to things like eating.
Bring your own roll of toilet paper.
Talk to people. A place is defined by the people. Don’t assume that a common language is a common culture.
Relax. Things will not always go as planned. Sometimes they work out better than you planned. Even when they’re worse, you get a story to tell. Related: keep a journal. The things that seemed notable or amusing or curious to you on Day Five in a foreign country might feel totally normal by Day 100.
I spent four months in Ireland and then six in England. I wish it was longer, and it was a tremendous experience. At times it sucked, like when I spent a few days in Ireland trying to get the temp agency to give me an assignment, but they couldn’t because I didn’t have a bank account yet, but I couldn’t open a bank account until I had a pay stub, which I couldn’t get without a bank account. Or like when I found myself in London unable to get money from an ATM because I had a whole four quid in my account. Or when I got kind of drunk in central London one night, then discovered the tube line was closed for repairs, so I ended up not only on the wrong bus home but falling asleep and walking about two miles sometime after midnight, not quite sure where exactly I was and with a dead mobile battery.
The highest point, quite honestly, was just doing it and being there. Even the parts that were scary and sucked were kind of cool in retrospect, because I did them. Getting off that plane in a foreign country, just me and my backpack, was a pretty neat feeling.
I’ve been living abroad for the past few years and have been to about 30 countries, here’s the big lessons I’ve learned:
Geez, I’ve traveled a lot, and I’m not sure I can really boil the lessons down, but here’s a shot:
Never pass a chance to eat a meal, you may get distracted and get hungry and grumpy. Also, if you like a souvenir, buy it right away, or you may regret it.
If you’re white and from a wealthy country, you’re going to be treated differently in many places. You are different. Just don’t take offense nor let it go to your head.
Poverty brings out the best or the worst in people.
Being intimidated by traveling to strange places is a natural reaction. Like asking a girl out on a date, once you get a little experience under your belt, it becomes much easier.
Take pictures.
Read the guidebooks thoroughly. There’s always surprises in there. Like there is only like two ATMs in the entire goddamned country of Zambia that take Mastercard, but Visa works in every one. Yes, I know ATMs probably everywhere else in the world don’t care. But why this important fact was buried in the last few pages of the Lonely Planet I bought, I have no idea.
Offering someone a cigarette is a good way to make a friend, even if you don’t speak the language.
People are have greater differences than you may think, and people are more the same than you think. But the things you think going in are different and the same about people, usually are not the same differences and sameness that you will discover.
Yes, because everybody else in the world lives in a 3rd world country where eating is a problem. Thank you for the lesson, Captain Travel Channel.
Pack your bag with what you think you’ll need, them dump it out and take one quarter or less.
Seriously, if I went back to the places I’ve been, I would take 3 pairs of underwear, 2 T-shirts, a sweatshirt, a pair of Levi’s, a toothbrush and paste, deoderant, a Swiss Army knive with tweezers, my trusty razor and the clothes on my back. All this fits nicely in a Chase-Harper tank bag, with room to bring back local stuff. Probably more than you’ll ever need.
If you let people know that you like the country and are having a good time, that goes a long way.
Be open to eating the food and learning their customs. Most like teaching you – especially if you are American.
Another country can find you quite extraordinary if you go to places that are not frequented by tourists. The feeling was mutual. I was a little off the beaten track in Denmark. I went back to visit at Christmas time. This was during the Vietnam War. On New Year’s Eve, while unknown to me, the USA was bombing North Vietnam, these gentle friends stood and held their glasses high and sang in English, “We Shall Overcome.” They made my heart much bigger that night.
I doubt if I could disagree more with this statement.
I think travel is the best way of learning to understand the world.
To understand people you need to interact with them in their own environment. The behaviour of a Government does not necessarily reflect the behaviour of the people, the way tourists behave is probably not indicative of how the general population behaves at home, and news reports from overseas don’t show average people going about their day to day lives. For instance:
Of course, New Zealanders all do have sex with sheep, but they’re the exception that proves the rule.
My life is so much richer for having travelled extensively. I cannot imagine not taking every opportunity which arises to add to my travelling experiences.