Post-Travel Reflections

Hi friends and family,

I’m writing this final post about my travels, or rather reflections on my travels, with a confusing mix of emotions. On the one hand, I’m sad that the travels are over. Seeing new parts of the world, meeting interesting people, and generally not knowing what was in store for a given day or week was an experience I enjoyed. I felt present and enthused, like each day was a unique gift to be opened. The journeys were awesome; the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of New Zealand, and the Great Barrier Reef, among many others, were incredible sights to see. The people I met along the way were inspiring and friendly, and it was cool being able to connect with other travelers in hostels, hear about their experiences, and create new ones with them. Most days felt like fresh adventures where I could choose to do whatever and have the experience I wanted. The novelty and excitement were amazing, and I’ve been missing the feeling of exploration and adventure.

On the other hand, I’m glad to be back in Hawai’i. I’m in more of a routine now than I was before traveling and that’s been nice. I’m getting back to the gym, playing lots of volleyball, surfing more as the summer swells come in, reading, learning a bit of the ukulele, and searching for a job (which isn’t as much fun). It’s been great to see my friends here, most of whom I hadn’t seen since mid-December when I left the island to go back home for the holidays. I’ve been thinking after my travels that I really love life in Hawai’i and I want to commit more to the island and buy into relationships and experiences as fully as I can.

The past few months of traveling now feel like a surreal period in my life. At the time of travel it all felt real, but looking back at the memories, they have a dreamlike quality. After being back for a month, I’m still surprised that I had the experiences I did over the past few months. Even though I feel like I did a pretty good job of being present at the time and relishing the travels (though there are things I think I could’ve done better which I’ll talk about soon), it’s hard at the current moment to shake the feeling that the experiences were fleeting and I should’ve held on tighter and enjoyed them more. Maybe this wistfulness is a sign that I should do another similar travel experience sometime.

I’m still grappling with what I’d do differently next time. I think I’d like to mix up the type of travel, for starters, and do some more solo travel. Mel and I traveled together for the majority of the time, and we both compromised on things that we wouldn’t have needed to if we’d been doing our own thing. I think mixing in some solo travel, especially since we had close to three months together, would’ve been good for taking some time apart to recharge, doing whatever we pleased on our own schedules for a change, and meeting more people on our own. Especially if we’d planned to travel with each other for a couple weeks at a time again after solo travels, it would’ve been fun to go off and have our own adventures and have exciting stories, interesting connections, and new perspectives to share when we got back to each other. Neither of us had solo traveled before, which is probably part of the reason we stuck together the whole time. On my next adventure, I’ll feel more confident about it and hope to mix it in if I’m traveling for longer than a few weeks.

Another thing I’d like to try, which might go hand in hand with solo traveling, is to do more activities based on what people in the area recommend, whether they’re locals or other travelers. Since Mel and I were together while traveling, it was easy for us to spend most of our time in each other’s company and search the internet to figure out what we should do. There’s nothing wrong with that, but as the one doing most of the research, I got tired of figuring out our itinerary from scratch in each place on top of finding accommodations, transportation, and more. The reviews I found for activities on the internet were typically very positive, too, but it was hard to tell what the experiences would actually be like.

I think talking more with people in the hostels we stayed at could’ve helped out with this and made it easier to decide if an activity was worth it when factoring in cost, travel time, and other logistics. Getting recommendations from locals and other travelers might also have led to doing those activities with them and meeting more interesting people. Though it’s tough to say what the best approach is because one of my least favorite activities of the whole trip, the Puffing Billy train ride in Melbourne, was something we heard about through some travelers in our hostel in Cairns. If I’d researched it on my own, it’s something I probably would’ve avoided. In future travels, maybe I’d try to get a general sense of what activities there are in an area from locals and travelers and then spend a short amount of time researching on the internet to check and make sure they looked good.

Something I thought I did right while traveling was having a rough outline of the trip, but lots of room for flexibility. I knew I wanted to meet my friends in New Zealand in mid-late February, go to Fiji to meet one of Mel’s friends a bit before that, and return to Hawai’i in late March or early April. Those were nice dates to have penciled in because it left us with about a month in Thailand in the beginning of the travels and gave the trip a rough shape. Having a month in Thailand, but not much specific planned in the month, was great for playing things by ear and going to places to stay for as long as we liked.

I think not having the big details filled out, like my return flight to Hawai’i, or a flight from Southeast Asia to Fiji, would’ve made the planning overwhelming since there would be so many options. Conversely, planning accommodations for specific cities and booking activities too far in advance would’ve been stressful to figure out and wouldn’t have given us much flexibility to leave places we disliked early or stay in places we enjoyed longer. Thankfully for most of the places we went we were able to find last minute accommodations, transportation, and activities for relatively cheap. There were a couple things that were tougher to figure out, like our sailing experience in the Whitsundays, but we mostly did alright playing things by ear and planning as we went.

I think the rough outline strategy is good for not rushing around to too many places. Even though I had nearly three months to travel, I wish I’d taken more time to see some places. The transportation from place to place was really tiring and it was nice to spend time in some of the places without much of an agenda. I think for much of the travel I had an overly eager mentality and wanted to see as many sites as possible and check off all the boxes. It’s part of who I am and hard for me to turn that off. Still, I think spending more time in places is a good way to be able to do the big attractions and still have more time to relax and not feel like I’m rushing around. I think part of it, too, is traveling to a place for the first time is always the trickiest in terms of knowing how to spend time. When I go back to the countries I visited, I’ll know where to revisit and spend more time and which places to forego.

I’m glad I journaled during the trip. There were many times during the trip when I didn’t feel like writing, and it was quite inconvenient in the campervan in New Zealand, but now that all is said and done I’m glad to have written down my experiences and thoughts and feelings while traveling. Hopefully the journal will be fun for me (and the blog fun for others and myself) to look back at someday and recall the adventures.

The travels were some of the most exciting and unique experiences of my life, so I definitely want to do more longer travels in the coming years while I still have relatively little responsibility. I enjoyed seeing new places, meeting cool people, and having a new adventure every day.

I think this will likely be the last blog post for a long time; I’ve hit the limit for my storage and can’t upload anymore pictures or videos without permanently removing older ones from the site, which I don’t want to do. Thanks so much to all of my readers, whether you’ve read one word in a single post or everything in all the posts. (Props to the latter group, I know I’m not the most succinct writer). I hope you’ve enjoyed following my adventures and I appreciate your support and interest.