I have traveled to Mexico, Costa Rica, and Thailand. My motivation to go to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico was my family. They wanted to go on a big trip when I graduated high school so we went there to an all-inclusive resort on the beach. It was a great time and it was my first time out of the country. During this trip we snorkeled on the island of Cozumel, parasailed, zip lined, and swam in caves.
The second country that I have visited was Costa Rica back in 2017. The reason why I went there is that I wanted to go on a trip and my friend was also looking at the same trip so we decided to go with each other in the summer. We went through a group called EF Ultimate Break. We met up with people from around the country and we went all around Costa Rica while we hiked through waterfalls, made homemade tortillas, went on a night jungle tour, relaxed on the beach, and much more.
The most recent journey was when I went to Thailand for two weeks in January 2018. It was just my sister and I and we traveled all over. We went to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Koh Lipe, Phi Phi Islands, Krabi, and Phuket. We had do many fun experiences including touring temples, bathing elephants in waterfalls, becoming Thai chefs, hiking, relaxing on the beach, and went scuba diving. The only downfall of the trip was that we both got food poisoning on the last day so we were stuck in the hotel room. I do not regret any of my trips and I plan on exploring, learning, and growing with experiences more.
Huberman explains the reasoning on why she travels is to not only novel on things, but to see things through other people’s eyes. She realizes that with her experiences in India. There are multiple occasions that she was uncomfortable doing something. For example, India doesn’t really have a trash system so everyone just throws their trash on the ground. She was shocked that they did that and she was unaware of how different it is in Maine.
Another incident that happened to her whilst in India was that when she was walking one day a man started to grope her. Luckily, police arrived right away before anything terrible happened. Once the police took him away from her, they started to punch, kick, and beat him up. She was appalled on how they did that without the right to remain silent. Even with that assault being towards her, she was culture shocked more than anything. With those two experiences, she realized that she has been so accustomed to the ways in America, that she forgot that there is a whole world full of different lifestyles other than her own. It made her realize the true meaning of travel, to see the world through other people’s eyes.
Out of the list of ten reasons on why it is important to travel, three of them really stuck out to me. The first one that stuck out was that it teaches you about the world. Sure, you can read stories or textbooks on different countries, but that doesn’t really indulge you in the culture. It takes actually being there and interacting with the people there. Even if you stay at a fancy resort, it still gives you the sense of language there. Knowing about the rest of the world is very important because you can’t just live your life thinking that everyone else is like America. There is a whole world out there with different people, landforms, and culture.
The second reason that stuck out to me was it teaches you about yourself. That is important to me because you never really know about yourself until you are faced with some challenges. The way you think through situation and figure it out says how your brain works. If things don’t turn out exactly as planned, the way that you cope with things certainly shows something about a personality. Traveling can compare the way that your living styles from other in other countries. You are unique, they are unique.
The third reason as to why traveling is important is that it provides you with unforgettable moments and experiences. That is the main reason people travel in general! You aren’t able to experience most things in Nebraska or even the US. You will learn new languages, different ways of living, and discover multiple personalities along the way of travel. All of the ten reasons that were provided are important in travel, but there three stuck to me personally. There three reasons have related to myself when traveling and when I get back from a trip. Those reasons helped me determine the person I am today.
I 100% agree with his statements. He made excellent points on why it is important to travel. Those are the exact reasons on why I am starting to travel more often now than later. The 6 reasons to travel abroad while you are young are: 1. You’ll Get Out of Your Comfort Zone, 2. Traveling Builds Confidence, 3. You Will Develop Cultural Sensitivity, 4. You Can Adapt to Globalization, 5 Be Immersed in a Second (or Third) Language, and 6. Infinite Opportunities to Network. Again, I agree on those personally. An example as to why they are true is when I traveled to Costa Rica I met a girl from New York and just this past fall I visited her and stayed with her. I networked through travel, now I have a connection in New York. I have noticed that I am more confident in the things that I do daily as well.
If I had to add to Peterson’s list it would be: 7. You Are Young for Only So Long. With that being said, it would mean that you have a young body. When the body gets older, you are not capable of doing a lot of active things like hiking, sleeping in bunk beds or camping. Another thing that your body might not be capable of is eating all foods. The food may include living off small snacks, eating pasta every day in Italy, or spicy ethnic food in Thailand. These might stop an older person for indulging themselves in getting the full experience. Just because our bodies age, doesn’t mean our love for traveling or personality goes away. Even as you get older, keep traveling!
There are multiple reasons as to why Americans do not travel. One of those reasons is because of work. A part of American society is graduating high school, going to college and then working full-time straight out of college. People do not think that there is any time to travel. The article mentioned how in New Zealand and other countries that they promote taking a year off to travel in between phases in life. People are afraid that gap year might look bad on their resume or that they will forget everything they learned in school. When people have already started their full-time jobs, they do not even use all of their vacation time on big trips, they mostly just take small trips.
Another reason why Americans do not travel is because of skepticism and ignorance. This reason is the one that I hear of the most when people do not want to travel. In the media and news, the bad things that happen in countries are reported on more than the good things. People shy away from Mexico because they hear of how there has been a robbing or drug exchange outside of their resort. What they fail to realize is that it happens everywhere, even in their home town. Lately, you never hear anything good in the media in different countries, like France is getting rid of a lot of plastics. Only bad things are being heard, making people not want to travel.
A person in my life that is isolated from the rest of the world is my friend Sam. She is a student at UNO and she is graduating soon. She does not plan on taking a year off or going on any graduation trip. She just wants to move out and start her job. There is nothing wrong with that, buts she doesn’t talk about having any passion in exploring different countries. She reads a lot into the media so she is aware of events and political news happening around the world, but she isn’t aware on why to travel. She is still young and I try to convince her to travel with me but she usually finds a way out of it. I don’t think that she is afraid to travel, she is just comfortable living her life here.
Another person in my life that is pretty isolated is my mom. As soon as she graduated high school, she went into nursing school, then got married and started having kids. She has never really had a passion to travel and explore before she settled down. She has always wanted to start her family earlier than later. Her first time out of the country was when we went to Mexico back in 2015. That has been the only time she has been out of the country. She says that she wants to travel to Europe and Hawaii but she is not making an effort to do any of those things. She also warns me about traveling when I plan trips about staying away from the bad countries. Her version of bad countries are the less developed countries. She mentioned how she won’t go back to Mexico because of a bad thing she read in the news. I hope that we can get her encouraged to travel more.
I enjoyed watching the two series, they were funny and it encouraged me to travel more. I think that Wollaston was right on how the ‘two-man’ journey was not really true. Ewan and Charley had a camera man, medic, team behind them and people via phone organizing the all of their documents. They were encouraged by Ted Simon’s trip, who was just by himself on his motorcycle. He had no one else with him; no crew, videographer, etc. It’s true that they went through all of these obstacles on their bikes, but so did the cameraman, Claudio. Claudio rode on his bike, camped, and conquered the same obstacle with the boys. Why was he not praised like everyone else?
Ewan and Charley were plenty prepared for their journey with their technology, crew, fancy bikes, etc. If they wanted to do their own unique trip, they did a great job. But if they wanted to do their trip based off of Ted Simon’s, it was not accurate. Ted Simon did his trip by himself, no crew, no technology besides a camera. He prepares and drove via motorcycle, which is where the similarities end. Ted was gone for four years but he covered 54 countries compared to the 12 countries for 115 days that the boys did. Their journey was inspiring and full of culture, but if they wanted to make it based off of Tim, they should have made it into less of a movie and more of a personal discovery.
I agree that they were not prepared for the physical geographic factors of this trip. Yes, they studied ahead of time by knowing when to be careful with roads, prepares themselves for camping, etc. They should not have been too shocked on how difficult the roads of Mongolia were. It is common how they are bad with a car, of course they will be more difficult with a motorcycle. The same situation happened during the road of bones in Russia. It was an impossible road with deep rivers to go through so they should not have been frustrated when they were stuck. I am glad that they took those paths for the scenery and the accessibility. They learned a lot about themselves during those tough times
Ewan, Charley, and the team needed to do more research on human geography. They did plenty of research of Russia o how aggressive the people were. They practiced physically with self-defense, medical aid, and fighting. They did not need to prepare themselves that much on the physical aspect because the Russians were nice to them. They did study Russian before they left whish was handy, too bad they didn’t remember most of it. They should have prepared for the countries in between. Like how friendly the citizens were in Kazakhstan that they got a police escort and everyone was helpful. Their friendliness shocked them.
Submitted by Sarah Hunt on February 3, 2019.