tudies have shown that there may well be a ‘wanderlust gene‘ – meaning that if you’re lucky, you’ve got a genetic makeup that just makes you want to go and not stop going…. I think it’s great – it’s what’s driven explorers and adventurers to map the world, oceans, rivers, mountains and will eventually get us into space. Some of us just feel driven to go and see for ourselves. It can become. a compulsion – but hey, now you can just blame it on your genes.
1. Hotels
Luckily I have a pretty nice home in the Philippines. I enjoy the creature comforts of a king-sized bed, lots of feather pillows and down comforters, my clawfoot tub, and a gym in my bedroom. So hotels can sometimes be a disappointment. When you travel you want to stay somewhere more luxurious than your own house… Otherwise, you’re paying to stay someplace less comfortable… Not much fun.
However, there are some unique hotels out there, bespoke bed and breakfasts and just oddball artistic space. That’s what I look for, please surprise me – fun colors, games in the room, an exceptional bar downstairs, rooftop pools, great views, and ideal locations. Nothing is more fun to find a hotel that is even better than your house, a bed more comfortable, room service delicious, and to just exist in someone else’s house for a few days. That’s a vacation – to ‘get away.’
Airbnb can also be fun, and save somewhat on costs. Unfortunately, somewhere down the line, someone decided that a well designed Airbnb is an all-white one. Thus staying at a good Airbnb often means just sitting in a white empty cube. Hotels still win for old school luxury, but Airbnb wins for more space.
2. Photography
There’s plenty to photograph around you, friends, family, your city. Short trips to nearby cities. But nothing is as motivating as going someplace far away. You want to capture it all, understand what you’re seeing and distill it in a photograph. Travel moments are fleeting, and we’re never sure they’re going to come again, will we ever get back to this city? Will it be the same, or will I be? So we’re driven to capture as much of the moment as we can and hold onto it. So we snap away.
Not to mention that standing beneath the Eiffel Tower is more interesting to share than your lunch of instant noodles.
While the equipment continues to get better, more megapixels, bigger zooms, stabilization it still comes down to the photographer, not the hardware. You can spend a lifetime trying to capture what you see when you’re in a place. Sometimes I have to remind myself to put down the camera and just look around me, with my eyes – not through an LCD screen. Kurt Vonnegut said instead of taking pictures we should ‘just blink firmly’ – but then, who has that kind of memory.
3. Eye candy
The Philippines has some good views, downtown Manila at night from the top of a hotel, Bohol’s chocolate hills, Boracay beaches, slums… Er… But I mean – the Swiss Alps, Versailles, Notre Dame, Greek Islands, Looking down on Hong Kong, Norweigan Fjords or all of the Lofoten islands or Iceland’s moonscape…. It’s just otherworldly – the landscapes and cityscapes you can see when traveling.
If there’s no other reason to leave the comfort of home and your subscription to Netflix it could be just to stand in front of the Matterhorn or some fantastic beach and just soak in all the eye candy of this amazing world.
4. Relationships
If you want to solidify a relationship, build memories, build history, shared experiences and hardships and shared ways to overcome those hardships. Nothing helps (or hurts) like a long trip. You’ll certainly find out quickly if you’re compatible. Things don’t always go right, flights are missed, you oversleep, you get tired and sick. Travel is a good way to see if you’re compatible if you can take care of each other. A relationship in the long term is more of a partnership of a shared vision of the future.
On hone hand, you lose that solo travelers ability to quietly and introspectively just look at the world and watch. You’ll be busy making sure your partner is okay, fed, happy, not bored, saying endlessly mundane things like ‘look at that’ hey look this, did you see that…. Hundreds of times per day.
But when you come home from the trip, you feel like you did something – together… We just conquered 22 countries – woohoo. That shared history lasts and the investment you make in each other can help overcome some of the low spots that will inevitably surface.
5. Sitting in bars
Few things beat sitting in a pub in a new city. Looking at the cocktail menu, or trying local beers. A bar is always a friendly space where you can sit, and for a couple of peso, dollars or euros sip on a drink for an hour or two, out of the heat or cold, watch local life and have a filling meal.
Bars are everywhere, and they’re almost always welcoming (er.. Except Sweden), when your feet are sore, when you need to look through your phone for the next sight, or when you just need to decompress, a drink and a little darkness or ambiance can quiet your mind.
Love visiting bars in new countries.
6. History
Island nations close the equator didn’t take the same evolutionary path anthropologically and culturally as other northern regions. We weren’t forced to adapt to harsh winters, figure out ways to store food all winter, etc. Luckily our weather was good year-round. Artists like Paul Gauguin fled those big complicated cities like London and lived out his life on the islands in French Polynesia.
It’s interesting to see other countries and cultures that were forced to evolve to survive, to depend on industry and innovation, Building up instead of out. If you look at the Philippines just 100 years ago compared to Europe there’s a huge difference. The first ‘skyscraper’ that came to Manila was the Manila Hotel in 1912, and it was just eight stories high!. We’ve come a long way, quickly.
But standing in cities that our thousands of years old; like Rome, Venice, Paris, London – just lends a different experience of our ancestors, the history that took place, and how short our lives are.
7. Shopping
Let’s admit it. Every Filipina loves to shop. Every girl loves to shop really. When on the road you probably don’t have room to buy a lot of the tourist junk that looks so appealing. But you can always find the little itsy bitsy room in the corner of the suitcase to cram just-one-more-souvenier in there. For me, it’s mostly magnets. Most of my souvenirs are photographs. However, I like collecting some of the cooler magnets as they’re small and I can place them on my metal doors and refrigerator at home.
I also collect t-shirts for gifts for family members (pasalubong). Sometimes the sales in Europe are amazing, even compared to the Philippines, and the quality and styles can be better.
8. Food!
Unfortunately, I don’t love chocolate. Even milk chocolate tastes bitter to me. But there’s’ plenty on the road to discover. One thing I love about traveling is finding that one dish I that crystalizes that country for me. The one I long for when I’m back home.
Every city I’ve visited has at least one incredible food that blows me away.
- Paris: crepes and pastry shops
- Amsterdam: Pancakes, cheese, and Vlaamse Frites
- Frankfurt: pretzels
- German Christmas market candy, gingerbread, and gluhwein
- Bangkok curries
- Irish hard cider
- Italian Gelato
While I often miss Filipino food when abroad it’s great to find one or two comfort foods you can count on.
9. Same-same but different
All countries have the same problem, creating stop signs, pedestrian crossings, train stations, subway systems, trams and busses, things all cities have, but each country has solved them in slightly different ways. I love to seek out and find those small differences. While much of the world is quickly becoming standardized there’s still enough quirkiness on the small scale to keep you interested if you’re into design.
10. Architecture
The Philippines has a lot of great things, but architecture isn’t one of the top. At least compared to century-old cities like Paris, London, Amsterdam, etc. Looking at Flying buttresses, gothic, classical, art deco, neoclassical, victorian and medieval, baroque and Beaux-Arts, Byzantine and Tudor, brutalist or Futurist. Every country has its conglomeration of styles and periods. Famous architects, cathedrals that took hundreds of years to complete.
Just looking at these buildings and knowing they’ve been here LONG before you came along, and will be here long after you’re gone… Admiring the ingenuity of humans. It’s all very cool and one of my favorite things to photograph while traveling.
11. Playing the explorer
Being a stranger in a strange land. Being an explorer. We have it incredibly easy. No months at sea to cross just one ocean, scurvy, pirates, drowning, plagues, and everything else our ancestors had to deal with. Even Magellean the first to circumnavigate the globe didn’t make it, ending up being killed in the shore of Mactan island in the Philippines for trying to introduce Christianity to our ancestors.
Traveling fulfills the dream of visiting faraway places you grew up hearing about but didn’t think you’d ever be lucky enough to visit.
We call ourselves explorers and adventurers, but how hard is it really to take a flight to the Lofoten islands, rent a car, and drive around from one Instagram spot to the next. Or explore Paris via Grab taxi.
As the worlds middle class is steadily rising more and more people are getting the chance to see the world and that’s great – more infrastructure, cheaper fares, but also more over-tourism and what used to be rare, what used to have to be worked for, and was dangerous is now about as adventurous as coloring in a coloring book. Still, it’s fun to go, be there, and see it with your own eyes and carve out your impressions of cities where hundreds of millions have done the same.
12. Activities
Activities you can’t do at home – tobogganing, ice skating, kayaking.
Few things I’m fully sure of in this strange world, but I’m pretty sure you will never find yourself 3,000 meters up a snow-covered mountain with your toboggan holding on for dear life as you scream down to the quaint village at the bottom 6km below where they warm you up with mulled wine… Some things you just can’t experience in the Philippines. Yes, you can ice skate at the mall of Asia in Manila – but you’re not on a frozen lake in St. Moritz. Sure you can eat ‘gelato’ from a mall in Glorietta, but it’s probably not real gelato made fresh like in Italy. I love hiking, bike riding, snow sports, swimming, spas and activities that you have to travel to find because they’re just not available at home.
