Since I was a kid I’ve had this urge of going to places and discovering stuff. As I grew the urge did as well. However a lot of times I didn’t have someone to share the urge with. And as time went by it was bugging me more and more. There will never be a perfect time for traveling, the perfect amount of money, or any perfect circumstances whatsoever. I know that I would spend the last penny traveling, but to travel to the other side of the world completely alone? Hmm, would you dare? I’ve been wanting to do it for such a long time but fear was stopping me. And then I beat it and finally decided to travel alone. And it was the best decision I could have made. Why? Well let’s just say that in just a short amount of time on the road I’ve managed to see the world from a complete new perspective. I’ll try to give you some reason to beat the fear and go out there.
Going in circles in the streets of Bangkok, getting stuck in traffic for hours, shopping at Chiang Mai’s Sunday walking street market, biking through Sukhothai’s temples, feeling in love with the mountains of Laos, following a Buddhist monk ceremony, getting emotional over what people have lived through the secret war, playing with local kids, getting to know the most beautiful and honest young man who has decided to become a monk, driving through horrible bumpy roads yet getting the best image of what Laos really is, peeing in the worst toilets you could possibly imagine, paying money to go to this horrible toilets while feeling someone should be paying me to do that, having showers standing next to the toilet and showering the toilet as well as showering myself (that’s how bathrooms are in Asia, 1 square meter with a toilet and a shower above it, no tub or shower cabin), eating a huge amount of weird food, getting sick from it, trying to avoid spicy, realizing that spicy is almost impossible to avoid in Asia, getting to know a Hawaiian guy who protected me as if he was my father, finding out his daughter was born on the same day I was, sharing a room with local lizards, getting beaten buy numerous bugs, being attacked by a pack of dogs guarding the temple at night (that was a shocker – I have always been beloved in the dog world), climbing on the top of a waterfall with a Californian dude, getting to know the sweetest Irish couple, getting a room with an Israeli and a Swiss guy (who I did not know whatsoever, but we’ve agreed to share in order to lower our expenses), hanging out with the Israelis, the American and the Swiss guy, starting to feel like they’re my family, respecting them for doing the same thing I am, talking about travels, taking about life, taking about the life of the travelers, reading each others blogs, showing each other where we’ve been, feeling we have so much in common, acting like we’ve know each other forever, learning German, speaking Spanish, counting in Hebrew, loving how it’s understood that it’s not the destination that counts, it’s the journey and the people you share that journey with, going to a horrible little club in Vang Vieng, meeting Lourdes and becoming friends in such a short time, loosing Lourdes’s phone number and email, not being able to sleep because of that, thinking how I could never see Lourdes again, getting to Vientiane, renting a motorbike with the Swiss guy, driving through Asian traffic, trying to find the Buddha park, getting completely lost, asking people for direction, people don’t understand shit, getting near after an hour of driving and realizing it’s closed, driving to the market, randomly meeting our American friend from Vang Vieng, meeting his friend from Laos, getting taken to a Korean dinner, driving all night through Vientiane in search of good bars, laughing with my whole heart because the Swiss guy uses the word: Tiptop, helping him get out of the shower where he got stuck with the door knob in his hand (and where he would have spent the night if I hadn’t heard him), laughing at that for hours, getting up early to get to the Buddha park again, learning how to drive a motorbike, driving a motorbike through the villages outside Vientiane, making videos of us driving through villages, finally getting to the Buddha park, getting amazed by it’s beauty, climbing on the hugest lying Buddha I’ve ever seen, driving a motorbike back all the way to Vientiane (Mom, I had a helmet and I was not driving fast 😉 ) , avoiding animals, cars, bikes, kids, holes in the road, getting soooo sun burnt, having the sweetest Laos girl, the American’s friend, be our guide through her city, releasing birds from their cage for good luck, eating fried bananas, climbing the Arc de Triomphe of Vientiane, laughing at signs written in English in Asia, most of them being written wrong, going to see temples with the people that have after only a few days of shared traveling gotten inside of my heart, saying goodbye to that people, meeting them again in other destinations, getting lost in Ha Noi, getting stood up by my couch surfing host, not being able to exchange even one word with Vietnamese people, being surprised of their non-knowledge of simple things like yes or no, shocked by the fact that a 5 member family can fit on one motorbike, getting scared and lost, trying to find a hostel since gotten stood up by my host, not being able to, meeting a man who called his English speaking daughter to help me, being sent to a hotel, brutally overpaid it, fighting with everyone as they all want to take as much money from me as they can (and God knows I ain’t got much), not knowing where I was, being afraid, texting the only person I knew was living in Ha Noi (which I have never seen, we’d only spoken through couch surfing), not knowing how to explain where I was (the receptionist at the hotel can’t understand the word “address”, cannot read a map and ignores the fact that I am really worried), getting rescued and found by that guy from couch surfing, getting my money back because he speaks Vietnamese, driving to his place through a huge traffic jam on a motorbike with my huge backpack, speaking Spanish, not understanding the guy very well due to his strong andaluz accent, going out, drinking, understanding the guy perfectly despite his strong andaluz accent, meeting a Colombian guy, meeting Irish people, getting friends with the Irish people, learning all of them how to say “ŽIVJELI” (a Croatian word for “cheers”), the Spanish guy cannot remember the word no matter how many times I repeat it, getting caught by the rain, having to drive on the motorbike through the rain, wearing funny looking raincoats but still getting soaked, getting to a club, dancing with Vietnamese people, meeting an Indian (the best dancer I have seen in my life), going to another bar across town, getting soaked again, driving back home, getting soaked one more time, not speaking Castellano anymore, not only understanding the guy with his andaluz way of speaking, but talking to him in andaluz, listening to Extremoduro in Vietnam, waking up, feeling ran over by a truck, booking tickets for next destinations, seeing the streets of Ha Noi, playing with a Vietnamese little girl, getting super excited about new destinations, being my own boss, being free to decide whatever I want to do, not doing stuff when I don’t want to, enjoying being myself and learning to be alone, learning to appreciate people so much more, learning to live each day at a time, learning to live for the moment, every moment can be magical if you focus on it, rather than focusing on the past or the future, learning to adopt to any kind of environment, being more patient, not just stepping but jumping out of my comfort zone, loving it outside of the comfort zone, learning each and every day, becoming more confident, having more balls, learning to live with less stuff, feeling humble, feeling like there’s so much things to do and see, feeling afraid, excited, happy, interested, feeling alive, writing a new post, hoping to encourage someone to do the same.
JUST GO OUT THERE AND TAKE A LOOK AT THE WORLD. WONDERFUL, ISN’T IT?
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