The Accidental Traveler

Posted: 05/28/2013 | May 28th, 2013

I can count on one hand all the places I visited before I was 23. Travel wasn’t part of my upbringing. It wasn’t something my family did outside of the occasional road trip to visit my grandmother in Florida.

In college, I skipped studying abroad because I was afraid I might miss something. I went to Montreal twice, because when you’re under 21 and can’t afford spring break in Cancún, Montreal is the closest place to go when you live in Boston. It wasn’t until I was 23 that I left North America to visit Costa Rica, and I only did that because that’s what I thought you were supposed to do when you work. With two weeks of vacation a year, you’re supposed to go somewhere and have fun, right? It wasn’t that I had a burning desire to travel; it was just something I thought I had to do.

But that trip to Costa Rica changed my whole life. After that, I was hooked. I was in love. I was addicted. I needed to travel in my life.

A couple of months ago, I told this story during a radio interview and the host called me an accidental traveler.

I liked that phrase. The accidental traveler.

I’d never thought about it that way before, but it’s fitting.

In the beginning, I had no burning desire to travel; it was just something that happened. Travel became part of my life only as an afterthought. I never woke up wanting to be nomadic.

Being called an accidental traveler made me think about the journeys we take as people.

Are they deliberate, or do they just happen? How many times do we discover our journey only while we’re in the middle of it?

I think about the journey I’ve taken. It began first as a simple desire to travel more, then changed to a stronger desire to take a gap year, and then became wanting to travel forever. I fell into travel writing as a way to make that happen.

Now I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.

Each step, each twist and turn, happened without any prior planning or thinking. In the words of Robert Frost, “way leads on to way.”

I found my path only while I was on it.

My mind sometimes goes back to when I was 23 and in Costa Rica. What made Costa Rica so special was that it showed me I could live life on my own terms. Travel allowed me to do what I wanted when I wanted. It made every day Saturday and filled it with endless possibility.

I think of my friend Chris Guillebeau, who recently finished his journey to visit all the countries in the world before his 35th birthday, and how he described his journey as one that evolved over time:

You want to see a couple of countries.

Then a couple more.

One day you wake up, and you’re on a quest to see every country in the world.

Just like one day, you wake up, and you realize you’ve become a world traveler.

You don’t know how it happened. You can’t really pinpoint the exact moment you or your life changed.

But it did.

Your one-year plan turns into 18 months, then 36 months, and then, suddenly, you’re celebrating five years on the road.

You’re a traveler. It’s in your blood. It’s who you are.

And you sit and write this in your favorite coffee shop in NYC, reflect on how you got here, think about all the other big moments in your life, and realize that the best ones all happened as accidents.

And as you get ready to travel again, you realize that sometimes just falling into something can be the best thing to happen to you.

One day, you set out on a path, and the road twists and turns, and you think you’re still on that same path until you stop and rest. Then you look around and realize you’re not where you intended to be, but someplace even better.

Then there, in this new world, as you get ready to celebrate being another year older, you come to the conclusion that no plan might be the best plan, and you’re happy letting life’s accidents lead the way.

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The Grass is Never Greener: How Travel Shows You Our Shared Humanity

Posted: 12/09/2013 | December 9th, 2013

As I lay on a beach on the island of Ko Lipe, my Kiwi friend Paul turned to me and asked, “Backgammon?”

“Of course,” I said. “What else is there to do.”

We’d play for hours before heading to our favorite restaurant in the “town center.” The owner would teach us Thai and the local Chao Lay language while laughing at our inability to handle spicy food. We’d laugh along with him, share some jokes, and head back to the beach.

At night, we’d walk barefoot to the island’s main beach, and, with the generators buzzing in the background, drink and smoke with our other friends into the wee hours of the morning.

Then when the generators turned off and we only had starlight to light our way, we would bid each other good night until morning, when we would do it all over again.

When I first began traveling, I imagined myself as Indiana Jones on the quest for the Holy Grail (definitely not some weird crystal-skull space aliens). My Holy Grail was that perfect travel moment in some off-the-beaten-path city no one had ever visited before. I’d have a chance encounter with a local that would give me a window into the local culture, change my life, and open my eyes to the beauty of humanity.

In short, I was looking for my version of The Beach.

The Beach was a book published in the 1990s about backpackers in Thailand who, fed up with the commercialization of the backpacker trail in Asia, sought out a more authentic, pristine paradise.

Ko Lipe was an island filled with banana pancakes, Wi-Fi, and tourists. It wasn’t paradise, but it was my paradise.

The Beach exists, but it’s not a particular place or destination; it’s a moment in time when complete strangers from opposite ends of the world come together, share memories, and create bonds that last forever.

You find those moments constantly, and when you do, you begin to realize what travel has been trying to teach you from the beginning:

No matter where you are in the world, we’re exactly the same.

And that simple realization is the most exciting “Aha!” moment you can ever experience.

Before I started traveling, I dreamt that elsewhere in the world the grass was greener. That while I was stuck in my boring office job, people in destinations I only dreamed of were doing wonderful and exciting things.

If only I was there, my life would be better and more exciting.

But traveling around the world has taught me that the grass on your neighbor’s lawn is the exact same shade of green as your own.

The more you travel, the more you realize that daily life and people around the world are exactly the same.

And, in doing so, you come to understand the beauty of our shared humanity.

Everyone wakes up, worries about their kids, their weight, their friends, and their job. They commute. They relax on the weekend. They listen to music and love movies. They laugh, they cry, the worry just like you.

But local culture is simply how different people do things. I love how the French obsess over wine, the Japanese are so polite, Scandinavians love their rules, Thais seem to have a clock that is forever 20 minutes late, and Latin cultures are passionate and fiery.

That is culture. That variety is why I travel.

I want to see how people live life around the world, from the farmers on the Mongolian steppe to the office workers in fast-paced Tokyo to the tribes of the Amazon. What’s the local take on the mundane stuff that I do back home?

We may want to believe that the world is nonstop excitement everywhere but where we are — but it’s not. It’s the same.

I used to live in Bangkok teaching English. While I had flexible hours, I still dealt with commutes, bills, landlords, wearing suits to work, and everything else that comes with an office job. I got together with friends after work for dinner and drinks and did it all over again the next day.

There I was, continents away from home, and it was like I was back in that cubicle in Boston all over again.

The day-to-day life of people halfway across the world is no different than yours.

On Ko Lipe, the locals would take their kids to school before opening their shops. They’d talk to us about their hopes and dreams, and they’d complain when not enough tourists got off the boat. We’d attend birthday parties, trade language lessons, and head out fishing with them. There was a routine to their lives.

You’ll find people doing things differently wherever you are. Sure, it’s fun eating on the Seine, sailing the Greek islands, or racing a motorcycle around Hanoi. But locals aren’t doing that every day. They’re simply living their lives, just like you are right now.

As tourists, we often gaze upon other cultures as if looking at a museum exhibit, gawking at people and how they do things. “Isn’t that funny,” we might say. “How weird they eat so late.” “It makes no sense to do it that way.”

But to me, those cultural differences are simply like the little quirks of a friend, no more or less exciting than your own (but sometimes much more interesting).

When you realize how alike our lives are, you realize we’re all in this together. You no longer see people as some “other,” but instead recognize yourself in them — the same struggles, hopes, dreams, and desires you have, they have for themselves.

And so, when an interviewer asked me last week about the greatest thing traveling the world has taught me, my mind instantly raced through all those moments on Ko Lipe, and without hesitation, I replied:

“We’re all the same.”

How to Travel the World on $50 a Day

My New York Times best-selling paperback guide to world travel will teach you how to master the art of travel save money, get off the beaten path, and have a more local, richer travel experiences. Click here to learn more about the book, how it can help you, and you can start reading it today!

Travel and the Art of Losing Friends

After months on the road, you find yourself back home and excited to resume old friendships. You plan dinners, get-togethers, and nights out. And, as some people fail to respond or show up, you begin realize an awful truth — while you were out exploring the world, your friends crept out the back door of your life.

And, unlike you, they aren’t coming back.

They ghosted.

After being away for over six months, I came back to New York eager to reconnect with my friends. I missed their faces, stories, and presence. But, as most New Yorkers will tell you, friendships are often hard to maintain under the crushing pace of life even when you’re in the same city. Everyone moves a million miles a minute, there’s always an event to attend, and making time for each other is a constant battle of highly conflicting schedules.

“What are you doing two weeks from now?” is a common question in the city that never sleeps.

I expected it but, after many weeks of missed connections and noticed absences from events, I realized that while I was away, I too had been ghosted on. Many had taken my absence as an excuse to finally exit stage left.

At first, I was sad. People I cared about left my life for seemingly no reason. “What did I do wrong? How can I change to get them back?” I wondered.

Then I was mad. “Screw those jerks! They weren’t fun anyway,” I said in an attempt to mask the hurt.

But as I calmed down and thought about it more, I realized I was looking at this situation the wrong way. Going away didn’t lose me friends; it had shown me who my true friends were.

Most people maintain a wide social network, and when you are in touch with that network it’s easy to think relationships are deeper than they are. Traveling showed me which connections were actually deep and which ones were only deep in my mind.

It’s true that friends move in and out of your life regardless of whether you travel or not. It’s life — people change and grow apart. I have many friends I no longer talk to. We moved to different cities, our interests changed, and the ties that bound us grew weaker over time.

But that is a gradual uncoupling and one less emotionally blunt. We know and understand why it’s happening.

But imagine throwing a party, having a great time, going to grab a drink, and turning around to see everyone is suddenly gone.

It’s sudden, shocking, and very depressing.

Part of me thinks “Well, this is just New York. This city is just hard.” But then I remember the tales of other travelers who’ve experienced the same thing and realize it’s not just me and it’s not just this city.

Travel expedites the process of separation and exposes the quality of your friendships. Being away frays the weak bonds you attempt to maintain while strengthening the ones that will withstand the distance of time and space.

My lifestyle doesn’t make maintaining friendships easier, but it doesn’t make it impossible either. I have friends around the world I only see every few years but we make the effort to stay in touch. When we are together, our bond is still strong. I know my friends wonder if I’m actually back or passing through and thus often leave it to me to text them. However, after establishing that I am really back and I do want to hang out, you begin to wonder how strong the bond is when you’re doing all the work. When your texts go unanswered and plans constantly get cancelled, you see the writing on the wall.

Maybe they want a friend who isn’t a nomad. Maybe we grew apart and I just didn’t realize it.

But, as I said last week, I need to find balance in my life again – and that includes coming to terms with this.

Maybe one day the people who’ve left will wonder how I am and what I’m doing. Maybe a part of them will be sad that they don’t know.

But what I do know is that while they were ghosting, those that stayed and I became closer.

And, for that, I am truly grateful.

Reflections on 5 Months of Travel: Time to Hang Up the Backpack

Last year, after my friend Scott passed away, I decided it was time to stop trying to plan a big multi-month trip and actually do it. His death made me realize that our time is short and you shouldn’t put off something in hopes that “the perfect time will come.” There’s no perfect time to just go — but there I was, waiting for one. I had fallen for the thing that I so often argue people not to do.

For the last couple of years, most of my travel has been in short, very frenetic bursts – a far cry from the slow travel I undertook when I started on the road. Between conferences, life obligations, and trying to having a home base, I kept cutting my trips shorter than I wanted.

Sure, I was on the road, but it wasn’t those endless, carefree travel days of yore. Trying to juggle so many things in my life made it hard to just pick up and take off.

Scott’s death made me rethink my position, and so last November, I packed my bag and hit the road again. I wanted adventure, freedom, and to remember what it was like to have no time limit on your travels — to just go with the flow all over again.

Five months later, I came home.

Change is often gradual and insidious. You often don’t realize how much a trip has affected you until months later. You don’t realize that time spent hiking through the Amazon changed you until it is too late.

But I knew right away how this trip changed me: it taught me that I don’t want to travel for so long for the foreseeable future. I’m over it.

I love travel, but after ten years on the road, I discovered that spending five months away isn’t enjoyable for me. It’s too long to be away when I’m in a period of my life where I want to slow down and create a life in just one place.

I loved the first two months — they were fun, exciting, and everything I thought they would be — but, as time went on, this trip confirmed what I began to believe after my book tour: two months of constant travel is my new limit. After that, I get burnt out.

I’m not sure when it happened, but I like being home. I’ve been going back and forth with the idea of having a home for years, but this last trip helped me realize I really do like staying in one place, going to the gym, cooking, going to bed at 10, reading books, and all those other homebody-like routines.

And my friends and I are going to open more hostels this year, which will consume a lot of my time and require me to be stateside! (NYC and Portland, I’m coming for you!)

I’m shocked at myself for changing. Who would have thought there would be a domesticated Matt? Not I!

I have many domestic trips lined up but my passport won’t be used until July when I go to Sweden. I’ll fly again to warmer climates in the winter but I’m excited not to have any other travel plans on my calendar.

I need a break. I’m slightly sick of being on the road. The anxiety and panic attacks my last trip caused while trying to juggle everything made me realize I am no superman. Working while traveling has taught me I never want to do that again. Those Argentinians in San Rafael shook me to the core when they said, “Why are you working so much? Did you come to travel or to work?”

They were right. I came to travel. I don’t want to work and travel anymore and the only way to do that is shift how I travel.

The most enjoyable parts of my last trip were when I was simply a traveler. When the computer was shut, when I was offline and could fully immerse myself in my destination, I was my happiest. I felt like I was immersed in a destination and focused.

I’m going back to that kind of travel.

While I might have outgrown long-term travel, I certainly did not outgrow backpacking. Being with those guys in San Rafael, staying in hostels in Australia, and hanging out with travelers in Southeast Asia made me realize I want to do more of that — and just that.

My computer is not coming with me anymore.

They say trips take you, you don’t take them, and I’ve never walked away from a trip without some new insight. This trip showed me that if I’m going to enjoy my travels, I need to change how I approach them — by planning shorter trips and leaving my work at home.

When something becomes a chore, you lose your passion for it, and the last thing I want to do is lose my love of travel… even for a second.

And, though I’m taking a break and enjoying this rest stop, I still see the road and I know, sooner or later, I will answer its siren song, sling on my backpack, and be on the move again.