Complete and Creative

How Traveling Can Really Suck

Quite strange for a travel blog to have an article with such a title, isn’t it?

Well, it’s the simple truth. What I don’t like about many travel guides is that they romanticize their subjects. They make it sound as if it’s impossible to have a bad time on location. After all, travel guides are marketing tools of sorts. This article is to show that I do see the grass on the other side, and traveling really can suck sometimes.

A section of the Grand Canyon in February 2006. Pretty, isn’t it? Now imagine being there while it was still snowing, and your tent was threadbare.

In Southern California, where there’s perpetual sunshine, residents envy the snow that people who live in places like Boston and New York get, especially during the holiday season. But have you actually ever lived in a city that snows heavily? You wouldn’t find it romantic then. London is an awesome city, no doubt about that, but you wouldn’t love it so much when it rains all day and has fog all over. Tokyo is known to foreigners for a lot of things, but unbearably hot and humid summers are probably not among the common list. Let’s not even talk about the notorious traffic that plagues the residents and visitors of all the above mentioned places.

Aside from weather woes, other natural and unnatural elements can turn a trip sour. Don’t you just enjoy that office rush to get everything done right before your trip? What about flight delays, flight cancellations, lost luggage, those long security checks at the airport, and the crappy food onboard the plane? I’m one of the lucky few who no longer get jetlag, but I’m willing to bet you’re probably not one of them (if you are, however, then more power to us both). How about travel companions? You’ll get to know each other very well, maybe a little too well. Someone’s bound to snore or take too long in the shower (or just otherwise be a pain in the neck to be around constantly and in close quarters even though they’re cool to hang with in small doses).

If you travel frequently or for long periods of time for work or for studies, then you do get tired of a different hotel room every night and you must miss your family and friends. I personally love to get on planes, not really for the plane rides themselves but because I know the plane will take me somewhere far away. A friend of mine, on the other hand, whose work demands that he travels internationally all the time, gets shivers when he thinks about going to an airport and getting on a plane. And, man, can traveling be expensive (although it doesn’t have to be)! And what is up with having to learn a foreign language anyway?

Okay, this next part isn’t sarcasm: It hurts to say goodbye, and it never gets easier. Never. I’m talking about uttering farewell to people and places you’ve grown to love (this particularly refers to serious travelers who stay in one place for months at a time, but I’ve come to realize time isn’t a strict prequisite to getting attached to people and places, which is a topic for a whole other post). This may be a tad sentimental, but I believe all travelers are romantics at heart. Why else would we endure sitting in a cramped seat for a dozen plus hours sharing oxygen with 150 strangers in the same tube of steel? Why else would we shell out hard-earned cash to leave the comforts of home for something that has no definite investment returns? Why else would we humiliate ourselves by trying to speak foreign languages that are seemingly impossible to grasp? Because somewhere deep down inside we believe there’s something out there worth seeing and doing and people out there worth meeting and loving.

It really is odd how you can get attached to some people or places so quickly. I won’t try to explain it (at least not in this article). As much as it may suck to leave your home away from home and to say farewell to people who have been like your family, to use a cliche, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Except you haven’t lost them. We all live in one world. You can always go visit again.