After 35, you don't like traveling but boy do you like 'Vacationing'.
Author is right, after you travel (and slum it a bit) you realize that after surface level cultural/food/history differences everyone kinda/sorta wants similar things in life and while people's life stories are interesting, you start noticing patterns.
OTOH, (Caveat:I don't have enough money for this) there is nothing that recharges you more than first class tickets somewhere beautiful and getting pampered in a resort. People (esp in their 20's) poo poo this. Rightly so, you should be experiencing the "real culture". But me, I've done that already, I'm gonna sit in the Four Seasons.
P.S: Another thing I'd suggest the author try is fitness trips! Big Hikes, marathons, surfing competitions? Nothing speedruns cultural competency like doing a really difficult thing somewhere new. Get Travel insurance.
Maybe. I’m 35 now and any time I participate in any kind of catered tourism
it turns my stomach. Maybe I was just spoiled on it by reading ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’. Maybe I’ve worked too many service jobs. But regardless, I just can’t put out of my mind how little business I have being there other than that I have some cash to burn. Paying for hospitality is about as appealing as paying for sex. In my mind if I don’t have a single friend who can host me in a city, I just don’t have a reason to go.
Then again I already live in a beautiful place and I’ve always been great at being a tourist in my own city. Ask me again in 10 years and maybe I’ll have your outlook.
This feels like pretty typical millennial sensibilities (including me). We don't like class differences made explicit via performative gestures. The fact that they are happening even if you don't participate is irrelevant.
I like lush beautifully designed resorts, my room cleaned, and top-notch local fare room service, but all the other service song-and-dance, the waiting on you hand and foot (as is typical in some developing nations), I can do without.
the reality is people need to feed themselves, and sometimes a job that feels shitty is better than no job. I’m sure you know that, i just point it out to say “it’s ok”. They signed up for that job because they need it. It’s not slave labor.
If you feel guilty about the class difference, then do what i do, and tip very generously. I like to leave $100 tip on the bed for housekeeping (at fancy hotels) upon checkout. Tip your taxi / uber well. you get the idea.
It's important to recognize other cultures and realize that while Americans enjoy tipping (and often rely on tips as their source of income), not every country, especially in Asia, accepts or appreciates tips, and some treat it as an offense.
Haha yeah, this feels way too real. There's definitely a point where the idea of "discovering yourself" through 4 a.m. bus rides and questionable hostels loses its charm, and a comfy robe, ocean view, and zero responsibilities start sounding like peak enlightenment.
does it? i haven't noticed. how about crossing the border at 3am with young kids and lots of luggage? once you have children the time of zero responsibilities is gone. at least until they are all grown up. i do enjoy a nice hotel only on business trips, because someone else is paying for it...
My wife and I are in our late 30s and did our first all-included resort trip about 2 years ago. It was boring and we went right back to our regular traveling of walking all over new countries to see the different culture and new places. Already planning our next 3 trips, none of them resorts.
I'm also feeling done with traveling. I pre-pandemic traveled a lot for work and they were mostly (not all, but mostly) good experiences that I looked for forward too. After the pandemic the work travel never really re-asserted itself to the same level. On the rarer occasions I do travel now I find the process of it more hassle: fewer or no airline perks, longer lineups and more waiting at airports, entry lineups, and just so much more hassle at every step. The experiences are less enjoyable too as many places just feel more the same as every other place. Yes you can get some amazing food, but you can also pick wrong and getting mediocre or crappy food. Meeting new people when traveling is only getting harder, this is part of the global phone attention problem.
I've also done the resort thing, and its not for me. The luxury and pampering many seem to love just makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. I also don't like the planned outings and such. Even if the thing we're brought to see/experience is objectively amazing, I'm always made to feel like an object being processed by a machine: line up here, get your pass, line up there, look at thing / do thing, move along, NEXT!
I'm finding more contentment just being where I'm at and taking advantage of the things that are close by.
For me, it's not so much the vacationing that I enjoy (I can do a pampered resort for maybe 1 week a year max before it gets really tiring). It's more a combination of already seeing a whole bunch of stuff and getting older (and feeling that older in my body) utterly changes the tradeoffs. Cramming my fat ass into an economy seat on flights longer than 4 hours to save a few thousand on flights 20's me was all over that, 40's me no freaking way. I can either afford the business class tickets or I'm not going at this point. Staying in a hostel/ renting a van and sleeping in the back of it to save a few thousand on hotels? Same deal hells yes for 20's me, PFO for 40's me. Flying in one spot, booking 1 or 2 nights in hostels traveling across the region for three weeks then flying out somewhere else? Big yes in my 20's big nope now. Now I fly in somewhere and spend at least 3 nights in every spot (but often a whole week) and instead of 35k+ steps and 12 hour plus non stop go days to see as much as possible, 10-15k usual, 20k max with some relaxation time planned for every day.
I wouldn’t say sour grapes, just that people have a certain budget. Forgoing Business/First i used to be able to afford more days away, maybe an extra city, etc
As I get older I take business class more, because I prefer the comfort over having a few extra days. Ask younger me and he would have taken the extra holiday days
You can sit in a fancy spa or a luxury hotel anywhere and they share a lot of intentional similarities to cater to the same audience of jetsetting luxury travelers. What does a plane ticket add to the experience over a staycation at the local intercontinental?
That is why it is very common for vacations (of people who stays at Four Seasons) to start or end a business trips: I am already there, might as well get my family to join and try some new foods.
Having just been on safari staying mostly at 4 and 5 star places, I gotta admit that the one night out at a local pub still has its place when traveling.
Haha that's fair. Though I wouldn't say I need to, but I like to. These are the few times I get to work with my hands, and having some accountability of an exchange helps with consistency and discipline. But YMMV of course.
I disagree. I despise pampering in a country where everyone makes a pittance and slaving over some rich American is a more lucrative career than most others. I come from such a country.
It’s possible to have fun very easily, even a very relaxing vacation and not have most of the money siphoned away by some corporation like a giant resort company that plays fast and loose with local resources because the government is desperate for employment
In my case I haven't soured on travel but I have gotten busier.
I’ve narrowed down where I like to live and do that, after having seen what other developed nations have to offer. (There are parts of the developing world I could enjoy but I don’t see myself prioritizing them when I get back into the extended travel circuit.)
I can slum it purely for the social aspect, and then pamper myself at a Four Seasons tier place on the weekend - subsidized largely by credit card rewards points. Nice places are inherently not nearly as social as nice hostels. But I can also fly a paramour in, du jour.
As long as my health stays great my 30s have been a god-tier version of my 20s and I can see my 40s going that way as well. My 20s was mired by chasing rites of passages and learning I didn't like or want that. Doing the power couple thing with a fellow corporate climber, moving in, etc. Classically, I’m fine with the most aimless anti-intellectual and visually attractive partners as soon as I had the option. “Wife changing money” is what they colloquially say.
Film festivals, music festivals, retreats, the “socialite circuit”, living other places for a couple of months… the allure of that hasn't gone away, for me. In the mean time, life is just speeding by working and saving again, staying entertained in my chosen city, until I actually do something entrepreneurial again.
> there is nothing that recharges you more than first class tickets somewhere beautiful and getting pampered in a resort
From first-hand experience, 100% this absolutely. The most relaxed I have ever felt in my life (and with a decrease in my resting heart rate to prove it, thanks Apple Watch) was a nice flight and a week at a high-end all-inclusive with just myself and a spa and pool day every day.
And I totally agree with the realization one can come to about how similar we all are after experiencing what others may call “different” cultures.
Granted I still have the travel itch all the time, it’s difficult to scratch that itch with obligations at home, but you do what you can, and take the passport stamps as they come!
I used to love traveling too. I would go to many places, meet new people, try new foods, and see pretty things. It made me happy and helped me learn a lot.
But then, like you, I stayed home more. I moved to a small town. Life became slow but nice. I made new friends, grew plants, cooked food, and played games. I started to feel happy without going far.
I liked how you said, “the connection to people not being punctuated by an impending departure.” That means a lot. When we stay, we make deep friendships that last.
Maybe one day we will travel again. But right now, this calm, quiet life feels good. Maybe this is a new kind of adventure.
Thank you. You helped me understand my own feelings better.
There’s a weird gap in the modern world when it comes to travel, which is traveling as a group / society. In the distant past it was very common for entire societies to be nomadic. You’d have both your friends and family + movement around the globe.
On the other hand, the solo traveler is a recent phenomenon largely enabled by 20th century technology and political developments.
I know there are programs which travel the world as a group, but they tend to be very ends-focused (“startup travelers”) etc.
So, the era of time when the Earth had open, undefined spaces (“smooth space” as defined by the philosopher Deleuze) seems to be basically over forever, barring an apocalyptic event. We might have to wait for new planets to see nomadic societies existing again.
The idea of "smooth space" being gone is kinda haunting. Everything's mapped, monetized, reviewed on TripAdvisor. There's very little true unknown left to stumble into
While that is definitely true, you can ignore it and choose local options. I often try to ask locals where they go to eat. Most people are excited to share a recommendation or two and why they like it.
Another thing I do, is avoid online menues at least ahead of visiting a spot and make my selections once I arrive. I can't say it's better, but it definitely keeps the serendipitous and suspense that I remember from my younger years before everything was online and had a million reviews.
Deleuze mentioned on HN? I'll have to check my window for aerial pigs come the morning.
> when the Earth had open, undefined spaces
For physical spaces, you're correct, but it is worth noting that other spaces have appeared and thereafter made the same transition. The internet, for example, is a pretty clear-cut case of a striated system today -- it facilitates desires into tightly-controlled pathways and channels by which means value can be extracted. But in its early years, it was almost totally smooth: communities like Geocities and MySpace demonstrate this through their total stylistic incoherency. While it is of course different than actually going to a new place, it's still a rare thing -- to experience a "totally new" place, unblemished and unoccupied.
And it's not impossible for striated spaces to be deterritorialized: as Deleuze points out, this is in fact a natural tendency of striated space, and it takes active effort (e.g. by a capitalist world-system) to maintain the existing striation.
Hah, I think I've mentioned Deleuze a few times on HN over the years.
The early internet definitely was a smooth space and the 90s cyberpunk mood really echoes a lot of Deleuze. Nick Land, the CCRU, and similar thinkers were very influenced by D&G. Great reading, if a bit sad now looking back.
I'm not sure how the Earth itself would be deterritorialized, though, as I feel like you'd need to undo basically everything from property rights to the Westphalian concept of a state. Seems unlikely to me, barring anarchy/apocalypse or some kind of AI god that confiscates all land and enforces a ban on property ownership. Perhaps if the northern European model of free range, open access to lands could be extended over more area.
Marco Polo was uncommon, which is why we remember him today. He also didn’t go entirely alone, and spent years traveling to places that can be reached in hours today. Not the same thing.
I feel similarly about where I live now, but don't come to quite the same feelings about travel, just different feelings than I used to. For me, the grass was literally greener in nearly every different place compared to where I lived until I moved. My hometown was and is truly a shithole, it actively discourages every quality that the author describes and that I get in Vancouver; it's not impossible to develop, but it's rarer than it should be, assuming you'd be willing to put in the same amount of effort and have enough patience anyway. Travel had a different feeling when I felt that people in different places were fundamentally different, which led to a certain kind of extra novelty. Likewise, travel brought different feelings when I was more confused upon landing (which the author eludes to) or couldn't communicate, or could fantasize about one day living in the place as a dream. But.. I did, I moved, and developed a much more interesting and valuable life than I could have otherwise, and now I don't glamorize some of those other places quite like I used to. I have zero interest in moving away from where I do, those other places aren't competitive in the ways they'd need to be for me. That said, I do still value the exploration of discomfort and the adventure it would be to re-establish a third life somewhere new, because I don't really know how it would go, and that's still invigorating in a way that I couldn't have imagined when I was much younger. It's just that nearly none of those places would compete, I already love my day to day environment; that sort of move would be an intimidating leap despite not looking for anything better. That said, I'm fortunate that I've managed to build something for myself in a city that does compete favorably. I go to other "world class" cities, and it's very hard to find better food, better scenery, or really anything else that I don't already have access to. I'd need to go to more low key rural areas, and I'm excited about that.
I’m not sure if it’s Covid or just entering my 30s, but both I and many of my friends have noticed a similar shift. We used to love the idea of traveling the world and meeting new people, and while we still do that to an extent, the excitement of backpacking around the globe and going to off-beat places isn't there anymore.
However, it doesn’t bother me. The idea of constant travel can feel a bit forced, because Western society emphasises it so much as a way to feel fulfilled. But, happiness and fulfillment exists in a thousand other things. Isaac Asimov, for example, spent most of his life in a New York apartment, writing articles, books, and letters. He loved it so much that the first thing he did after coming home from heart surgery was to rush towards his typewriter. He disliked being distracted from writing so much that he wasn't even willing to travel to Hollywood to get his novels adapted.
So, while travelling occasionally is enriching and helps me mentally, I am okay with the idea of just sitting at home and working on my projects, being excited about programming, writing, and learning.
The idea of “traveling the world” when young is a very recent, very privileged and very Western perspective.
Growing up in post-communist Bulgaria during the 1990s and 2000s, I had never been abroad with my family as a child. At an age of 18 years, I started working from home as a PHP programmer for a guy from Switzerland I found online. When he invited me to his place in Basel for a 2-week visit, to me it felt like flying in space. I was valuing every second of my stay there like I am on another planet.
I grew up in a "developing country". Our family travel was limited to around 200km radius. The first time I went somewhere with only a friend that was like 1,000km, I felt the same as you describe! It was like going to another planet. People had very different accents and liked different types of music, different food etc.
In my 20's, though, I managed to migrate to a rich country and started meeting people from all over the world. I met people who spent 6 months in each country, more or less, and had been to like 20 countries in the last few years alone. These were not millionaires, they were young backpackers who did small jobs to pay for their travels. I did not even know that kind of thing was possible at the time. This changed my perspective and after a few years I started doing the same! Went everywhere I could, staying on backpacker hostels. Like many others are saying, it gets tiring after a while. Today, like top commenter, I prefer to stay at the Fours Seasons (or whatever 5-start hotel is available) and just get slightly off the beaten track... but I still want to talk to the locals and try to experience as much as possible the local culture as it is still illuminating to me.
It's not all that recent, the concept of a Grand Tour around Europe's cultural touchstones in order to complete your education was quite common among the rich from the 17th century onwards
I’m completely with you on the forced but. Sometimes it feels like there’s a massive societal push to travel. Yet overall discoveresque time spending is looked down upon. Sorry, nowadays I learn more about the world in my tiny garden than traveling again to see the same patterns over and over. Yet people don’t seem to be excited about my gardening stories and pictures :D
I’ve grown older, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop traveling. There’s something enriching about setting out alone, discovering new places, and connecting with people but not just on the surface. Before I go somewhere, I take the time to learn about its history, its society, its ways. That way, when I meet someone, there’s a chance for real connection, not just polite small talk. Because if you only skim the surface, everything can seem familiar,sometimes even too Westernized once u look closer, the uniqueness reveals itself.
There’s also something powerful in returning to a place after many years. When you see how it’s changed, you might begin to understand how societies grow, shift, and evolve. And in doing so, you also begin to see your own world more clearly how it too has changed, often in ways you might not notice from inside your everyday bubble.
Different societies don’t just look different they understand the world differently. And sometimes that can be painful to confront. In Western cultures, individualism often makes it seem logical to live and work far from family, sometimes because your hometown couldn’t offer things. But maybe that wasn’t a failure of the system, maybe that was the system. One that only works when social bonds are weakened, everyones reflexes on human connection and personal sacrifice (grinding) is normalized.
Now, we live in a world where people struggle to understand how others think, vote, feel. A village in Uzbekistan, a town in Sicily, a city in the Midwest, or a neighborhood in New York they’re worlds apart, thats is very very obvious. I’ve been to many of these places, sometimes twice, and they’re not the same planet. And they’re drifting further apart.
But this isn’t new. The ancient Athenians were explorers, traders, thinkers, learners. They brought ideas home and reshaped their world. Yet, with time, even they began to say, "This is how it’s always been. Things are the same" They were resistant to understand the underlying mechanisms, as the world around them shifted. Their knowledge came through a lens that blinded them to the reasons of transformation. And eventually, their dominance faded suddenly and decisively driven by the same forces they could no longer truly understand.
It’s a pattern worth remembering. Because maybe, just maybe, we’re living through something similar today. Seeling the world is an enabler for effective introspection. I avoid the touristy places though, they feel like crowded movie sets.
I enjoy traveling a lot. Specifically traveling. Not arriving and staying somewhere, not vacationing, not sight seeing. Traveling has always been a fun experience to me. The road trip, the adventure part of a vacation. Spend a day or two to drive as far as possible, stop by places to rest and relax, then get back to it. Find an interesting road, where does that lead? People dismiss the adventure of traveling and just rush to the destination. Like quick travel in a game, if you walk to the destination, sometimes you find cool stuff, sometimes not, and sometimes you distract and detour so hard that you end up with a new destination instead. I don't consider flying to be traveling though, it's just flying to me, a rush of getting to a destination.
Welcome, I hope you have a good time. You don't hear about Kazakhstan here every day, and rarely in a positive light.
If anyone else comes to Kazakhstan and wants to see "the real country", I'd humbly suggest looking outside the two largest cities because they're the only places that have seen any development over the past three decades. My city hasn't changed at all since the end of the 1980s, you look at the photographs from that era and the only difference you see are significantly increased numbers of cars. That's pretty typical.
If you ever wonder why some people have a nostalgia for the Soviet Union — that's why, all significant infrastructure was built back then and hasn't been touched since. The Chinese have been pouring some money into infrastructure for the past few years (mostly power plants and railroads), but the volume is incomparable with ye olde days since they are doing it across the globe and don't have infinite money.
Some of our "patriots" become aggressive when you mention this, so you might want to keep it in mind.
A commenter down below called us "a third-world country", and while that's silly (pretty much only because we're "second world" by definition), it's only fair.
Hi, OP here - your country is amazing and I'd love to visit beyond the major cities.
This was mostly a ski trip and my first time here, so I barely got a chance to get out of town - but I do intend to come back next winter and go visit some friends in the western region :)
Hello! Thank you for your comment! Do you have any thoughts about why the capacity to invest in infrastructure in Kazakhstan seemingly decreased after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
The answer is boring — massive corruption: the country has been making very good money by selling oil and gas to the West (along with some other things like uranium and coal), but most of it goes to vanity projects like building out Astana (hiring famous - and thus expensive - architects from around the world) and buying luxury real estate for the ruling elite in places like London and Dubai.
There's also the brain drain: since 1991, there's been a massive emigration to Russia of all places, which has slowed down a bit since 2022, but it's still going on — we have a negative migration balance with them. That in itself is quite telling.
Some of this is "with age comes wisdom" but some of this is ageless. I travelled extensively for work before covid for over 20 years and thought I'd welcome it back post covid but I now find it a mixed blessing. Perhaps I'm half way down the ladder the OP has climbed off.
I love traveling, but rarely alone, and always with a purpose. I find aimless traveling just for the sake of saying I've been somewhere more exhausting than exhilarating. If I'm going to the Netherlands it's to visit some ancestral villages. If I'm going to Japan it's because I have a deep fascination with Kabuki and Noh. But I too love having a place to call home, with people in my community who are familiar with me.
Tourism has been in an absolute bubble since the 1990s . The social media turbocharged this , creating a literal rat race where travel became almost 'work' in search of the perfect selfie.
Do you think we might be seeing this bubble bursting now ?
It helps to look at where & why the author has settled: thanks to tech like Zoom (that really came into its own around Covid) one can be physically settled in a place and also participate in global markets and global conversations.
Good for fomo and good for anyone looking to design a life; why not live in a place that enriches your body! Wherever you live, you can now find work that connects and enriches your mind. Your designed life provides so much of what you seek from travel but also community: getting to say hello to the same people each day for years.
When you're younger, travel feels like expansion, like leveling up your soul. But over time, especially when you build a life with real depth and connection, the appeal of fleeting experiences starts to fade. You’re not just collecting memories anymore - you're living them.
i went through a similar experience. as a young person i spent all my school and university holidays traveling, only staying a few days in each place. there was no other option really, because i didn't want to outstay my welcome. as i started working i found jobs in remote places and instead of traveling went there to live and work which allowed me to spend more time with the same people and form deeper connections. still fleeting in a way, but less so. when i got married i effectively settled in china where i was able to make much deeper connections. in the meantime thanks to the internet (and in part thanks to covid motivating local groups to have online meetings) i was able to reconnect to old and new friends back home and keep in touch with them as well.
I cannot confirm that. When I was younger I liked traveling to far countries like the US, Australia, New Zealand (living in Europe) To the US I would no longer travel for political reasons, and generally I try not to fly anymore when not necessary to visit relatives. So I travel by Interrail (called Eurail for those outside of Europe) and even there often with a focus on slower trains. At 60 it was the first occasion I got a senior citizen reduction in my life. Even that was a new experience :) And slower trains allow many kinds of new experiences, from the co-passengers and from the places they stop at.
i came to the opposite conclusion. people are vastly different. interestingly initially i was only traveling in western countries and i paid attention to the differences between say europeans and americans, western and eastern europeans, etc. there were plenty of differences, but those differences disappeared when i reached asia. i found a culture and attitude that is vastly different from everything western. while one year in new zealand was enough to learn about it. 15 years in china aren't.
Every year, I go on a long winter solo trip. Some trips were incredible, and others felt exactly like what you describe.
The main reason is that I'm leaving a rich home life and quickly miss my people and the things we do together. Every other night a new place and a new hotel room, and a meal alone in a crowd. It feels weird to leave home specifically to get so uncomfortable. The opportunity cost grows, because my roots grow deeper every year.
I'm currently on one of these trips. The last ones felt exactly like what you described, so for this one, I went back to the drawing board.
This time, I dotted the solo journey with people I know. I meet with friends in different places every 7-10 days.
I also slowed waaaay down. This is a motorcycle trip, but I only average 100 km per day. I now have time to linger in cafés. I can read, sketch, or just work for a few hours. I can take the slow, twisty roads across national parks and avoid highways completely. The ride is shorter so I arrive refreshed.
It worked. This is one of the best trip I've taken in years. Above all, it's the first motorcycle trip I consider successful since 2019.
for me traveling was always a means to get to specific places, or rather to meet specific people. when i was younger i traveled on a bike without a goal or with the goal to find interesting people in the places i went to, and sometimes the destination of the next day was defined by the people i met. being on a bike meant that i was slower and had less freedom to make detours, but i did manage to spend two weeks biking around in luxembourg, which is a rather small country that i could have crossed in a day.
as i got older i focused on places where i already had contacts or where i could find someone through couchsurfing websites ahead of time. i never considered going to places where i could not make these contacts. the goal was to stay in those places and learn about the life of the people. the scenery on the way in between was just a bonus.
There’s this sort of malaise that took over when Bourdain died which burst the idea that travel was in some way healing or reparative. It can be, but it can also widen the gap between you and the world.
For me what I got out of travel was just being able to experience the “normalcy” of other countries, peoples, cultures. There was this romantic notion that I’d learn something really important about humanity or my place on the earth - all those thoughts in some way seem to exist on a more “conceptual” emotional depth, where you are experiencing and touring, rather than participating. Staying places allows more time for depth than going with the idea that you’ll be moving on.
The whole “digital nomad” trend, while like in a way laudable as a truly neat that it’s possible effect of globalization, still carries a sort of colonial, exchange-rate-maxxing exploitative vibe. It’s playing rich, in a way.
Still, it’s a big world, and it’s good if you can to experience some of it.
I'm the same age as the author. I've been feeling exactly the same. I feel like in the past there was something magical about travelling. It was like seeing a different world for the first time. Everything was exciting and I noticed every little aspect of the place such as license plates, trash bins, road signs. I still notice those things but I can't help but notice that that feeling of awe is gone. I've been attributing this to age, but who knows, maybe the world is becoming less diverse?
Your experience with travel resonates. It opens one's perspective early on, but then it kind of gets dull over time. And after a while, travel is mostly an avenue to have good memories with friends and family, relax, indulge in local cuisines/culture, and enjoy the beautiful nature.
And the topic of whether wanting to travel will motivate one to make more money is a topic for a different thread altogether. It's probably difficult to bring that drive if one doesn't have it.
P.S. You forgot to post the Gokarna June '22 pics in your photo album. It took me a minute to realize it was you only after reading that you moved to Goa and seeing your Goa flat pic.
Author mentions traveling means making 'much' money. I understand then why it might become a chore.
Also, some in their 30ies develop the urge to found a family and settle down.
Offtopic as it's not from the linked blog post, but this had me laughing:
> Today was my first day at this stealth startup. The boss (CEO) is a dick, but we’re building great stuff. The physical entertainment/tourism industry is a huge market, and it’s very possible that we’re going to be the next Disneyworld.
I don't go to big resorts by myself. But when I travel, it's to finally meet discord friends, or to meet them again. That means also hosting friends from abroad, which absolutely feels like vacation on its own.
Dude, I feel you picked places in similar styles. You are looking for a specific lifestyle that you are mostly comfortable with. You should consider building these elements around a place where you'd like to call your home.
I have always despised travel, possibly as a result of being moved around a lot as a child.
I do not care for a single facet of it. Not the planning, or the reservations, of the attaining of paperwork. Packing or parking. Checking maps to see where my terminal might be. Pre-flight fondling by total strangers. Getting on a plane. Being on a plane. Getting off of a plane. Trying to find my way to wherever it is I am supposed to go, which I know in theory but must now execute. I also have a mild handicap which can make navigating some situations more difficult than it would otherwise be for someone normal. Seeing just kind of torture the word "breakfast" has undergone to appear in the hotel at morning.
Then there is the thing itself, whatever it is you are supposed to be seeing. Chances are, you won't even be able to get close to it. Apparently, you get to look at the Mona Lisa from something of a distance, and now less than a minute. Oooh. Then you should get a laminated card that says "Some photons bounced off of the Mona Lisa and were absorbed by my retina" so you can tell everyone.
And you're trapped wherever it is until your ticket home is valid.
Even if someone else is paying for it, I just have zero interest. Unfortunately, some friends have gotten into cruises and traveling, which leads to frequent exhortation that I, too, should travel, no matter how much I demur. Being pushed for travel was also an irritant at a previous job.
They say, "Well, think of all of the strange foods and new restaurants!" I spend more time at the international markets than most and, honestly, this city has plenty of restaurants I have yet to try, so if that were a motivating factor, I hardly need a plane ticket and itinerary to partake.
The furthest I have gone is about three hundred miles to take a close friend (he had a very terrible year of one disaster after another occur to him) to a concert to cheer him up.
i can sympathize. all the things you don't like about traveling, i don't like either. thankfully it is possible to avoid many of them. at least in europe you can travel by train, which is a lot more comfortable than airplanes. when i go somewhere i make contact to locals in advance which often means that i get picked up, so i don't have to navigate tourist traps, or at least i get the local instructions how to get to the city. i spent two weeks in paris with local friends, and we didn't do a single day of sightseeing. no museum, and i don't remember if we even went to see the eiffel tower. the only true sightseeing that i enjoyed was the great wall in china which i was able to visit while living in beijing. and again, thanks to locals i got there on public transport instead of a tourist bus.
and yes, you can do a lot of exploring locally too.
to your last point going to a concert with a friend, i think the important part here is the reason you did that, not the distance or even the destination. not even the concert.
for me, having such a reason makes traveling all the more worthwhile.
when you do the same thing year after year, eventually you will realize that you are not learning anything new anymore, and the only way to change that is to change what you are doing, or how you are doing things. a five year old doesn't dislike spinach because they had enough of it, but because they are unfamiliar with it. clearly this is not the case here. i changed the way i travel every few years. in my teens i was doing bike rides. in my late teens i discovered that i could afford trains in eastern europe. in my late 20s i found that i could get work in remote places. and in my 30s i got married. i never stopped moving to new places. i just changed the way i got there, and the reason to be there, and the main motivator for change was that with the old way i didn't learn anything new anymore.
Is it though? At any age we have some kind of experienced wisdom. It's what guides us moving forward. Of course, my experienced wisdom at 30 is different to what I had at 20, however it's not a replacement of the former, but built on top of it.
After 35, you don't like traveling but boy do you like 'Vacationing'.
Author is right, after you travel (and slum it a bit) you realize that after surface level cultural/food/history differences everyone kinda/sorta wants similar things in life and while people's life stories are interesting, you start noticing patterns.
OTOH, (Caveat:I don't have enough money for this) there is nothing that recharges you more than first class tickets somewhere beautiful and getting pampered in a resort. People (esp in their 20's) poo poo this. Rightly so, you should be experiencing the "real culture". But me, I've done that already, I'm gonna sit in the Four Seasons.
P.S: Another thing I'd suggest the author try is fitness trips! Big Hikes, marathons, surfing competitions? Nothing speedruns cultural competency like doing a really difficult thing somewhere new. Get Travel insurance.
Maybe. I’m 35 now and any time I participate in any kind of catered tourism it turns my stomach. Maybe I was just spoiled on it by reading ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’. Maybe I’ve worked too many service jobs. But regardless, I just can’t put out of my mind how little business I have being there other than that I have some cash to burn. Paying for hospitality is about as appealing as paying for sex. In my mind if I don’t have a single friend who can host me in a city, I just don’t have a reason to go.
Then again I already live in a beautiful place and I’ve always been great at being a tourist in my own city. Ask me again in 10 years and maybe I’ll have your outlook.
This feels like pretty typical millennial sensibilities (including me). We don't like class differences made explicit via performative gestures. The fact that they are happening even if you don't participate is irrelevant.
I like lush beautifully designed resorts, my room cleaned, and top-notch local fare room service, but all the other service song-and-dance, the waiting on you hand and foot (as is typical in some developing nations), I can do without.
the reality is people need to feed themselves, and sometimes a job that feels shitty is better than no job. I’m sure you know that, i just point it out to say “it’s ok”. They signed up for that job because they need it. It’s not slave labor.
If you feel guilty about the class difference, then do what i do, and tip very generously. I like to leave $100 tip on the bed for housekeeping (at fancy hotels) upon checkout. Tip your taxi / uber well. you get the idea.
It's important to recognize other cultures and realize that while Americans enjoy tipping (and often rely on tips as their source of income), not every country, especially in Asia, accepts or appreciates tips, and some treat it as an offense.
Haha yeah, this feels way too real. There's definitely a point where the idea of "discovering yourself" through 4 a.m. bus rides and questionable hostels loses its charm, and a comfy robe, ocean view, and zero responsibilities start sounding like peak enlightenment.
does it? i haven't noticed. how about crossing the border at 3am with young kids and lots of luggage? once you have children the time of zero responsibilities is gone. at least until they are all grown up. i do enjoy a nice hotel only on business trips, because someone else is paying for it...
My wife and I are in our late 30s and did our first all-included resort trip about 2 years ago. It was boring and we went right back to our regular traveling of walking all over new countries to see the different culture and new places. Already planning our next 3 trips, none of them resorts.
I'm also feeling done with traveling. I pre-pandemic traveled a lot for work and they were mostly (not all, but mostly) good experiences that I looked for forward too. After the pandemic the work travel never really re-asserted itself to the same level. On the rarer occasions I do travel now I find the process of it more hassle: fewer or no airline perks, longer lineups and more waiting at airports, entry lineups, and just so much more hassle at every step. The experiences are less enjoyable too as many places just feel more the same as every other place. Yes you can get some amazing food, but you can also pick wrong and getting mediocre or crappy food. Meeting new people when traveling is only getting harder, this is part of the global phone attention problem.
I've also done the resort thing, and its not for me. The luxury and pampering many seem to love just makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. I also don't like the planned outings and such. Even if the thing we're brought to see/experience is objectively amazing, I'm always made to feel like an object being processed by a machine: line up here, get your pass, line up there, look at thing / do thing, move along, NEXT!
I'm finding more contentment just being where I'm at and taking advantage of the things that are close by.
For me, it's not so much the vacationing that I enjoy (I can do a pampered resort for maybe 1 week a year max before it gets really tiring). It's more a combination of already seeing a whole bunch of stuff and getting older (and feeling that older in my body) utterly changes the tradeoffs. Cramming my fat ass into an economy seat on flights longer than 4 hours to save a few thousand on flights 20's me was all over that, 40's me no freaking way. I can either afford the business class tickets or I'm not going at this point. Staying in a hostel/ renting a van and sleeping in the back of it to save a few thousand on hotels? Same deal hells yes for 20's me, PFO for 40's me. Flying in one spot, booking 1 or 2 nights in hostels traveling across the region for three weeks then flying out somewhere else? Big yes in my 20's big nope now. Now I fly in somewhere and spend at least 3 nights in every spot (but often a whole week) and instead of 35k+ steps and 12 hour plus non stop go days to see as much as possible, 10-15k usual, 20k max with some relaxation time planned for every day.
> People (esp in their 20's) poo poo this. Rightly so
Not really. It's sour grapes imho.
I wouldn’t say sour grapes, just that people have a certain budget. Forgoing Business/First i used to be able to afford more days away, maybe an extra city, etc
As I get older I take business class more, because I prefer the comfort over having a few extra days. Ask younger me and he would have taken the extra holiday days
You can sit in a fancy spa or a luxury hotel anywhere and they share a lot of intentional similarities to cater to the same audience of jetsetting luxury travelers. What does a plane ticket add to the experience over a staycation at the local intercontinental?
That is why it is very common for vacations (of people who stays at Four Seasons) to start or end a business trips: I am already there, might as well get my family to join and try some new foods.
You're wrong :-). I hate that stuff, and I'm technically not even in my 20s anymore!
>After 35, you don't like traveling but boy do you like 'Vacationing'.
My mother started traveling alone after 50. She's 62 this year and I think the only years without any traveling she had were the COVID years.
Same for me more or less. Never was interested in traveling until around 35.
Having just been on safari staying mostly at 4 and 5 star places, I gotta admit that the one night out at a local pub still has its place when traveling.
The author needs to build furniture to pay for their food and stay. What Four Seasons.
Haha that's fair. Though I wouldn't say I need to, but I like to. These are the few times I get to work with my hands, and having some accountability of an exchange helps with consistency and discipline. But YMMV of course.
I disagree. I despise pampering in a country where everyone makes a pittance and slaving over some rich American is a more lucrative career than most others. I come from such a country.
It’s possible to have fun very easily, even a very relaxing vacation and not have most of the money siphoned away by some corporation like a giant resort company that plays fast and loose with local resources because the government is desperate for employment
In my case I haven't soured on travel but I have gotten busier.
I’ve narrowed down where I like to live and do that, after having seen what other developed nations have to offer. (There are parts of the developing world I could enjoy but I don’t see myself prioritizing them when I get back into the extended travel circuit.)
I can slum it purely for the social aspect, and then pamper myself at a Four Seasons tier place on the weekend - subsidized largely by credit card rewards points. Nice places are inherently not nearly as social as nice hostels. But I can also fly a paramour in, du jour.
As long as my health stays great my 30s have been a god-tier version of my 20s and I can see my 40s going that way as well. My 20s was mired by chasing rites of passages and learning I didn't like or want that. Doing the power couple thing with a fellow corporate climber, moving in, etc. Classically, I’m fine with the most aimless anti-intellectual and visually attractive partners as soon as I had the option. “Wife changing money” is what they colloquially say.
Film festivals, music festivals, retreats, the “socialite circuit”, living other places for a couple of months… the allure of that hasn't gone away, for me. In the mean time, life is just speeding by working and saving again, staying entertained in my chosen city, until I actually do something entrepreneurial again.
> there is nothing that recharges you more than first class tickets somewhere beautiful and getting pampered in a resort
From first-hand experience, 100% this absolutely. The most relaxed I have ever felt in my life (and with a decrease in my resting heart rate to prove it, thanks Apple Watch) was a nice flight and a week at a high-end all-inclusive with just myself and a spa and pool day every day.
And I totally agree with the realization one can come to about how similar we all are after experiencing what others may call “different” cultures.
Granted I still have the travel itch all the time, it’s difficult to scratch that itch with obligations at home, but you do what you can, and take the passport stamps as they come!
Your story made me feel less alone.
I used to love traveling too. I would go to many places, meet new people, try new foods, and see pretty things. It made me happy and helped me learn a lot.
But then, like you, I stayed home more. I moved to a small town. Life became slow but nice. I made new friends, grew plants, cooked food, and played games. I started to feel happy without going far.
I liked how you said, “the connection to people not being punctuated by an impending departure.” That means a lot. When we stay, we make deep friendships that last.
Maybe one day we will travel again. But right now, this calm, quiet life feels good. Maybe this is a new kind of adventure.
Thank you. You helped me understand my own feelings better.
There’s a weird gap in the modern world when it comes to travel, which is traveling as a group / society. In the distant past it was very common for entire societies to be nomadic. You’d have both your friends and family + movement around the globe.
On the other hand, the solo traveler is a recent phenomenon largely enabled by 20th century technology and political developments.
I know there are programs which travel the world as a group, but they tend to be very ends-focused (“startup travelers”) etc.
So, the era of time when the Earth had open, undefined spaces (“smooth space” as defined by the philosopher Deleuze) seems to be basically over forever, barring an apocalyptic event. We might have to wait for new planets to see nomadic societies existing again.
The idea of "smooth space" being gone is kinda haunting. Everything's mapped, monetized, reviewed on TripAdvisor. There's very little true unknown left to stumble into
While that is definitely true, you can ignore it and choose local options. I often try to ask locals where they go to eat. Most people are excited to share a recommendation or two and why they like it.
Another thing I do, is avoid online menues at least ahead of visiting a spot and make my selections once I arrive. I can't say it's better, but it definitely keeps the serendipitous and suspense that I remember from my younger years before everything was online and had a million reviews.
According to the authors of the idea capitalism and globalization actually create smooth space. I don't fully get that part to be honest
Deleuze mentioned on HN? I'll have to check my window for aerial pigs come the morning.
> when the Earth had open, undefined spaces
For physical spaces, you're correct, but it is worth noting that other spaces have appeared and thereafter made the same transition. The internet, for example, is a pretty clear-cut case of a striated system today -- it facilitates desires into tightly-controlled pathways and channels by which means value can be extracted. But in its early years, it was almost totally smooth: communities like Geocities and MySpace demonstrate this through their total stylistic incoherency. While it is of course different than actually going to a new place, it's still a rare thing -- to experience a "totally new" place, unblemished and unoccupied.
And it's not impossible for striated spaces to be deterritorialized: as Deleuze points out, this is in fact a natural tendency of striated space, and it takes active effort (e.g. by a capitalist world-system) to maintain the existing striation.
Hah, I think I've mentioned Deleuze a few times on HN over the years.
The early internet definitely was a smooth space and the 90s cyberpunk mood really echoes a lot of Deleuze. Nick Land, the CCRU, and similar thinkers were very influenced by D&G. Great reading, if a bit sad now looking back.
I'm not sure how the Earth itself would be deterritorialized, though, as I feel like you'd need to undo basically everything from property rights to the Westphalian concept of a state. Seems unlikely to me, barring anarchy/apocalypse or some kind of AI god that confiscates all land and enforces a ban on property ownership. Perhaps if the northern European model of free range, open access to lands could be extended over more area.
> On the other hand, the solo traveler is a recent phenomenon largely enabled by 20th century technology and political developments.
I think people like Marco Polo were not so uncommon for most of history.
Marco Polo was uncommon, which is why we remember him today. He also didn’t go entirely alone, and spent years traveling to places that can be reached in hours today. Not the same thing.
If we got to space colonization, I guess that could count as new, physical, smooth space?
Yeah I suppose we wouldn’t need a new planet, merely self-sustaining space colonies.
I feel similarly about where I live now, but don't come to quite the same feelings about travel, just different feelings than I used to. For me, the grass was literally greener in nearly every different place compared to where I lived until I moved. My hometown was and is truly a shithole, it actively discourages every quality that the author describes and that I get in Vancouver; it's not impossible to develop, but it's rarer than it should be, assuming you'd be willing to put in the same amount of effort and have enough patience anyway. Travel had a different feeling when I felt that people in different places were fundamentally different, which led to a certain kind of extra novelty. Likewise, travel brought different feelings when I was more confused upon landing (which the author eludes to) or couldn't communicate, or could fantasize about one day living in the place as a dream. But.. I did, I moved, and developed a much more interesting and valuable life than I could have otherwise, and now I don't glamorize some of those other places quite like I used to. I have zero interest in moving away from where I do, those other places aren't competitive in the ways they'd need to be for me. That said, I do still value the exploration of discomfort and the adventure it would be to re-establish a third life somewhere new, because I don't really know how it would go, and that's still invigorating in a way that I couldn't have imagined when I was much younger. It's just that nearly none of those places would compete, I already love my day to day environment; that sort of move would be an intimidating leap despite not looking for anything better. That said, I'm fortunate that I've managed to build something for myself in a city that does compete favorably. I go to other "world class" cities, and it's very hard to find better food, better scenery, or really anything else that I don't already have access to. I'd need to go to more low key rural areas, and I'm excited about that.
I’m not sure if it’s Covid or just entering my 30s, but both I and many of my friends have noticed a similar shift. We used to love the idea of traveling the world and meeting new people, and while we still do that to an extent, the excitement of backpacking around the globe and going to off-beat places isn't there anymore.
However, it doesn’t bother me. The idea of constant travel can feel a bit forced, because Western society emphasises it so much as a way to feel fulfilled. But, happiness and fulfillment exists in a thousand other things. Isaac Asimov, for example, spent most of his life in a New York apartment, writing articles, books, and letters. He loved it so much that the first thing he did after coming home from heart surgery was to rush towards his typewriter. He disliked being distracted from writing so much that he wasn't even willing to travel to Hollywood to get his novels adapted.
So, while travelling occasionally is enriching and helps me mentally, I am okay with the idea of just sitting at home and working on my projects, being excited about programming, writing, and learning.
The idea of “traveling the world” when young is a very recent, very privileged and very Western perspective.
Growing up in post-communist Bulgaria during the 1990s and 2000s, I had never been abroad with my family as a child. At an age of 18 years, I started working from home as a PHP programmer for a guy from Switzerland I found online. When he invited me to his place in Basel for a 2-week visit, to me it felt like flying in space. I was valuing every second of my stay there like I am on another planet.
I grew up in a "developing country". Our family travel was limited to around 200km radius. The first time I went somewhere with only a friend that was like 1,000km, I felt the same as you describe! It was like going to another planet. People had very different accents and liked different types of music, different food etc. In my 20's, though, I managed to migrate to a rich country and started meeting people from all over the world. I met people who spent 6 months in each country, more or less, and had been to like 20 countries in the last few years alone. These were not millionaires, they were young backpackers who did small jobs to pay for their travels. I did not even know that kind of thing was possible at the time. This changed my perspective and after a few years I started doing the same! Went everywhere I could, staying on backpacker hostels. Like many others are saying, it gets tiring after a while. Today, like top commenter, I prefer to stay at the Fours Seasons (or whatever 5-start hotel is available) and just get slightly off the beaten track... but I still want to talk to the locals and try to experience as much as possible the local culture as it is still illuminating to me.
It's not all that recent, the concept of a Grand Tour around Europe's cultural touchstones in order to complete your education was quite common among the rich from the 17th century onwards
Key word being „among the rich“.
I’m completely with you on the forced but. Sometimes it feels like there’s a massive societal push to travel. Yet overall discoveresque time spending is looked down upon. Sorry, nowadays I learn more about the world in my tiny garden than traveling again to see the same patterns over and over. Yet people don’t seem to be excited about my gardening stories and pictures :D
I’ve grown older, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop traveling. There’s something enriching about setting out alone, discovering new places, and connecting with people but not just on the surface. Before I go somewhere, I take the time to learn about its history, its society, its ways. That way, when I meet someone, there’s a chance for real connection, not just polite small talk. Because if you only skim the surface, everything can seem familiar,sometimes even too Westernized once u look closer, the uniqueness reveals itself.
There’s also something powerful in returning to a place after many years. When you see how it’s changed, you might begin to understand how societies grow, shift, and evolve. And in doing so, you also begin to see your own world more clearly how it too has changed, often in ways you might not notice from inside your everyday bubble.
Different societies don’t just look different they understand the world differently. And sometimes that can be painful to confront. In Western cultures, individualism often makes it seem logical to live and work far from family, sometimes because your hometown couldn’t offer things. But maybe that wasn’t a failure of the system, maybe that was the system. One that only works when social bonds are weakened, everyones reflexes on human connection and personal sacrifice (grinding) is normalized.
Now, we live in a world where people struggle to understand how others think, vote, feel. A village in Uzbekistan, a town in Sicily, a city in the Midwest, or a neighborhood in New York they’re worlds apart, thats is very very obvious. I’ve been to many of these places, sometimes twice, and they’re not the same planet. And they’re drifting further apart.
But this isn’t new. The ancient Athenians were explorers, traders, thinkers, learners. They brought ideas home and reshaped their world. Yet, with time, even they began to say, "This is how it’s always been. Things are the same" They were resistant to understand the underlying mechanisms, as the world around them shifted. Their knowledge came through a lens that blinded them to the reasons of transformation. And eventually, their dominance faded suddenly and decisively driven by the same forces they could no longer truly understand.
It’s a pattern worth remembering. Because maybe, just maybe, we’re living through something similar today. Seeling the world is an enabler for effective introspection. I avoid the touristy places though, they feel like crowded movie sets.
I enjoy traveling a lot. Specifically traveling. Not arriving and staying somewhere, not vacationing, not sight seeing. Traveling has always been a fun experience to me. The road trip, the adventure part of a vacation. Spend a day or two to drive as far as possible, stop by places to rest and relax, then get back to it. Find an interesting road, where does that lead? People dismiss the adventure of traveling and just rush to the destination. Like quick travel in a game, if you walk to the destination, sometimes you find cool stuff, sometimes not, and sometimes you distract and detour so hard that you end up with a new destination instead. I don't consider flying to be traveling though, it's just flying to me, a rush of getting to a destination.
Welcome, I hope you have a good time. You don't hear about Kazakhstan here every day, and rarely in a positive light.
If anyone else comes to Kazakhstan and wants to see "the real country", I'd humbly suggest looking outside the two largest cities because they're the only places that have seen any development over the past three decades. My city hasn't changed at all since the end of the 1980s, you look at the photographs from that era and the only difference you see are significantly increased numbers of cars. That's pretty typical.
If you ever wonder why some people have a nostalgia for the Soviet Union — that's why, all significant infrastructure was built back then and hasn't been touched since. The Chinese have been pouring some money into infrastructure for the past few years (mostly power plants and railroads), but the volume is incomparable with ye olde days since they are doing it across the globe and don't have infinite money.
Some of our "patriots" become aggressive when you mention this, so you might want to keep it in mind.
A commenter down below called us "a third-world country", and while that's silly (pretty much only because we're "second world" by definition), it's only fair.
Hi, OP here - your country is amazing and I'd love to visit beyond the major cities.
This was mostly a ski trip and my first time here, so I barely got a chance to get out of town - but I do intend to come back next winter and go visit some friends in the western region :)
Hello! Thank you for your comment! Do you have any thoughts about why the capacity to invest in infrastructure in Kazakhstan seemingly decreased after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
The answer is boring — massive corruption: the country has been making very good money by selling oil and gas to the West (along with some other things like uranium and coal), but most of it goes to vanity projects like building out Astana (hiring famous - and thus expensive - architects from around the world) and buying luxury real estate for the ruling elite in places like London and Dubai.
There's also the brain drain: since 1991, there's been a massive emigration to Russia of all places, which has slowed down a bit since 2022, but it's still going on — we have a negative migration balance with them. That in itself is quite telling.
Some of this is "with age comes wisdom" but some of this is ageless. I travelled extensively for work before covid for over 20 years and thought I'd welcome it back post covid but I now find it a mixed blessing. Perhaps I'm half way down the ladder the OP has climbed off.
Yes, age does tend to make many want to root - and perhaps that is part of wisdom at play.
I love traveling, but rarely alone, and always with a purpose. I find aimless traveling just for the sake of saying I've been somewhere more exhausting than exhilarating. If I'm going to the Netherlands it's to visit some ancestral villages. If I'm going to Japan it's because I have a deep fascination with Kabuki and Noh. But I too love having a place to call home, with people in my community who are familiar with me.
Tourism has been in an absolute bubble since the 1990s . The social media turbocharged this , creating a literal rat race where travel became almost 'work' in search of the perfect selfie.
Do you think we might be seeing this bubble bursting now ?
It helps to look at where & why the author has settled: thanks to tech like Zoom (that really came into its own around Covid) one can be physically settled in a place and also participate in global markets and global conversations.
Good for fomo and good for anyone looking to design a life; why not live in a place that enriches your body! Wherever you live, you can now find work that connects and enriches your mind. Your designed life provides so much of what you seek from travel but also community: getting to say hello to the same people each day for years.
When you're younger, travel feels like expansion, like leveling up your soul. But over time, especially when you build a life with real depth and connection, the appeal of fleeting experiences starts to fade. You’re not just collecting memories anymore - you're living them.
i went through a similar experience. as a young person i spent all my school and university holidays traveling, only staying a few days in each place. there was no other option really, because i didn't want to outstay my welcome. as i started working i found jobs in remote places and instead of traveling went there to live and work which allowed me to spend more time with the same people and form deeper connections. still fleeting in a way, but less so. when i got married i effectively settled in china where i was able to make much deeper connections. in the meantime thanks to the internet (and in part thanks to covid motivating local groups to have online meetings) i was able to reconnect to old and new friends back home and keep in touch with them as well.
I cannot confirm that. When I was younger I liked traveling to far countries like the US, Australia, New Zealand (living in Europe) To the US I would no longer travel for political reasons, and generally I try not to fly anymore when not necessary to visit relatives. So I travel by Interrail (called Eurail for those outside of Europe) and even there often with a focus on slower trains. At 60 it was the first occasion I got a senior citizen reduction in my life. Even that was a new experience :) And slower trains allow many kinds of new experiences, from the co-passengers and from the places they stop at.
My traveling taught me that people are the same everywhere, but now that I know that, I no longer want to to travel just travel.
It’s more of a reminder of that
i came to the opposite conclusion. people are vastly different. interestingly initially i was only traveling in western countries and i paid attention to the differences between say europeans and americans, western and eastern europeans, etc. there were plenty of differences, but those differences disappeared when i reached asia. i found a culture and attitude that is vastly different from everything western. while one year in new zealand was enough to learn about it. 15 years in china aren't.
Every year, I go on a long winter solo trip. Some trips were incredible, and others felt exactly like what you describe.
The main reason is that I'm leaving a rich home life and quickly miss my people and the things we do together. Every other night a new place and a new hotel room, and a meal alone in a crowd. It feels weird to leave home specifically to get so uncomfortable. The opportunity cost grows, because my roots grow deeper every year.
I'm currently on one of these trips. The last ones felt exactly like what you described, so for this one, I went back to the drawing board.
This time, I dotted the solo journey with people I know. I meet with friends in different places every 7-10 days.
I also slowed waaaay down. This is a motorcycle trip, but I only average 100 km per day. I now have time to linger in cafés. I can read, sketch, or just work for a few hours. I can take the slow, twisty roads across national parks and avoid highways completely. The ride is shorter so I arrive refreshed.
It worked. This is one of the best trip I've taken in years. Above all, it's the first motorcycle trip I consider successful since 2019.
for me traveling was always a means to get to specific places, or rather to meet specific people. when i was younger i traveled on a bike without a goal or with the goal to find interesting people in the places i went to, and sometimes the destination of the next day was defined by the people i met. being on a bike meant that i was slower and had less freedom to make detours, but i did manage to spend two weeks biking around in luxembourg, which is a rather small country that i could have crossed in a day.
as i got older i focused on places where i already had contacts or where i could find someone through couchsurfing websites ahead of time. i never considered going to places where i could not make these contacts. the goal was to stay in those places and learn about the life of the people. the scenery on the way in between was just a bonus.
Reads like an extended humble brag. Not much substance here.
Yeah, I do agree with that. Tho in my defence, I put thatbin to balance out the self-pityness of the rest of it :)
There’s this sort of malaise that took over when Bourdain died which burst the idea that travel was in some way healing or reparative. It can be, but it can also widen the gap between you and the world.
For me what I got out of travel was just being able to experience the “normalcy” of other countries, peoples, cultures. There was this romantic notion that I’d learn something really important about humanity or my place on the earth - all those thoughts in some way seem to exist on a more “conceptual” emotional depth, where you are experiencing and touring, rather than participating. Staying places allows more time for depth than going with the idea that you’ll be moving on.
The whole “digital nomad” trend, while like in a way laudable as a truly neat that it’s possible effect of globalization, still carries a sort of colonial, exchange-rate-maxxing exploitative vibe. It’s playing rich, in a way.
Still, it’s a big world, and it’s good if you can to experience some of it.
I'm the same age as the author. I've been feeling exactly the same. I feel like in the past there was something magical about travelling. It was like seeing a different world for the first time. Everything was exciting and I noticed every little aspect of the place such as license plates, trash bins, road signs. I still notice those things but I can't help but notice that that feeling of awe is gone. I've been attributing this to age, but who knows, maybe the world is becoming less diverse?
Your experience with travel resonates. It opens one's perspective early on, but then it kind of gets dull over time. And after a while, travel is mostly an avenue to have good memories with friends and family, relax, indulge in local cuisines/culture, and enjoy the beautiful nature.
And the topic of whether wanting to travel will motivate one to make more money is a topic for a different thread altogether. It's probably difficult to bring that drive if one doesn't have it.
P.S. You forgot to post the Gokarna June '22 pics in your photo album. It took me a minute to realize it was you only after reading that you moved to Goa and seeing your Goa flat pic.
The experience of the author is 100% similar to mine with the same conclusions and with the same age brackets it's eerie.
Author mentions traveling means making 'much' money. I understand then why it might become a chore.
Also, some in their 30ies develop the urge to found a family and settle down.
Offtopic as it's not from the linked blog post, but this had me laughing:
> Today was my first day at this stealth startup. The boss (CEO) is a dick, but we’re building great stuff. The physical entertainment/tourism industry is a huge market, and it’s very possible that we’re going to be the next Disneyworld.
lmao, glad you got a chuckle out of that.
Just for context to other HNers, that quote is from a satire piece[1] and in no way was I building the next Disneyworld
[1] https://sidverma.io/posts/diary-of-a-new-employee/
Traveling to big cities certainly loses its appeal after a while. Nowadays, I tend to prefer little adventures involving nature/sport.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hhzAgAzSr4
I don't go to big resorts by myself. But when I travel, it's to finally meet discord friends, or to meet them again. That means also hosting friends from abroad, which absolutely feels like vacation on its own.
that post gives similar feelings as the song Caledonia by Dougie MacLean
They mention a few times that they travel with the intent of making money. That’s the root of the problem.
I wouldn’t like traveling anymore either if I did it mainly to make money. Oops.
Dude, I feel you picked places in similar styles. You are looking for a specific lifestyle that you are mostly comfortable with. You should consider building these elements around a place where you'd like to call your home.
I have always despised travel, possibly as a result of being moved around a lot as a child.
I do not care for a single facet of it. Not the planning, or the reservations, of the attaining of paperwork. Packing or parking. Checking maps to see where my terminal might be. Pre-flight fondling by total strangers. Getting on a plane. Being on a plane. Getting off of a plane. Trying to find my way to wherever it is I am supposed to go, which I know in theory but must now execute. I also have a mild handicap which can make navigating some situations more difficult than it would otherwise be for someone normal. Seeing just kind of torture the word "breakfast" has undergone to appear in the hotel at morning.
Then there is the thing itself, whatever it is you are supposed to be seeing. Chances are, you won't even be able to get close to it. Apparently, you get to look at the Mona Lisa from something of a distance, and now less than a minute. Oooh. Then you should get a laminated card that says "Some photons bounced off of the Mona Lisa and were absorbed by my retina" so you can tell everyone.
And you're trapped wherever it is until your ticket home is valid.
Even if someone else is paying for it, I just have zero interest. Unfortunately, some friends have gotten into cruises and traveling, which leads to frequent exhortation that I, too, should travel, no matter how much I demur. Being pushed for travel was also an irritant at a previous job.
They say, "Well, think of all of the strange foods and new restaurants!" I spend more time at the international markets than most and, honestly, this city has plenty of restaurants I have yet to try, so if that were a motivating factor, I hardly need a plane ticket and itinerary to partake.
The furthest I have gone is about three hundred miles to take a close friend (he had a very terrible year of one disaster after another occur to him) to a concert to cheer him up.
i can sympathize. all the things you don't like about traveling, i don't like either. thankfully it is possible to avoid many of them. at least in europe you can travel by train, which is a lot more comfortable than airplanes. when i go somewhere i make contact to locals in advance which often means that i get picked up, so i don't have to navigate tourist traps, or at least i get the local instructions how to get to the city. i spent two weeks in paris with local friends, and we didn't do a single day of sightseeing. no museum, and i don't remember if we even went to see the eiffel tower. the only true sightseeing that i enjoyed was the great wall in china which i was able to visit while living in beijing. and again, thanks to locals i got there on public transport instead of a tourist bus.
and yes, you can do a lot of exploring locally too.
to your last point going to a concert with a friend, i think the important part here is the reason you did that, not the distance or even the destination. not even the concert. for me, having such a reason makes traveling all the more worthwhile.
the hype of indepedence is in your early 20s then after a few travels its boring
"Right now, I am writing this essay from the living room of my hostel in Almaty, Kazakhstan."
Breaking news: Hostels in third world countries loose their charm as you get older.
Absolutely, had me guffawing. This whole post is absurd.
But boys in third world countries don't ...
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Thoughtfully essay, but writing this at age 29-30 feels kind of like a five year old telling me they don’t like Spinach
-this is still too early in life to come to hard realizations on experienced wisdom..
give it some time and tell me about it again in your 50s -
when you do the same thing year after year, eventually you will realize that you are not learning anything new anymore, and the only way to change that is to change what you are doing, or how you are doing things. a five year old doesn't dislike spinach because they had enough of it, but because they are unfamiliar with it. clearly this is not the case here. i changed the way i travel every few years. in my teens i was doing bike rides. in my late teens i discovered that i could afford trains in eastern europe. in my late 20s i found that i could get work in remote places. and in my 30s i got married. i never stopped moving to new places. i just changed the way i got there, and the reason to be there, and the main motivator for change was that with the old way i didn't learn anything new anymore.
Is it though? At any age we have some kind of experienced wisdom. It's what guides us moving forward. Of course, my experienced wisdom at 30 is different to what I had at 20, however it's not a replacement of the former, but built on top of it.