Traveling is, and always will be about surrendering. When you’re in a new place, you have to surrender to a new culture, surrender to the moment and to the forces that be. So much of the value in travel, especially the long-term kind, is in letting go of control and opening your mind to new experiences, people, perspectives, etc.
It’s humbling to surrender control. It makes you grateful (I’ve previously referred to that “full” feeling).
There are those hardened few, the really spontaneous free spirits seeking not just adventure, fun, and new friends, but a really authentic travel experience. I’ve encountered this breed everywhere I’ve been. They’re the ones who hitchhike for six weeks through the countryside of Turkey, form a special bond with a particular truck driver who then invites them to live on his farm for two weeks to milk goats. If you ask them, they will say casually how much they love the country and its people. “So where do you recommend I visit when I go there?” you inquire.
“I don’t really know, I spent most of my time in obscure villages drinking Turkish coffee and sleeping on straw,” they’ll say.
They’re the ones who, after learning that the dorm room in the hostel is unfortunately full for the night, will walk across the street into the rocky outskirts of the desert, and “camp” there instead, sans tent or sleeping bag (true story). They’ll do it because it’s extreme. It’s authentic.
Traveling is, and always will be about surrendering.
They’re the ones who hate on Khao San Road and backpacker culture in general because backpacking just “isn’t what it used to be, man. It’s too easy now”.
Most recently I met one such authenticity-seeker in Israel who was determined to visit Syria and Egypt despite, or perhaps because of, the tense political climate. He thinks it will be more authentic than the ‘tourist-ridden’ Israel.
It’s humbling to surrender control. It makes you grateful.
Forever unsatisfied with the beaten path, or really with any path at all, they are forever seeking to know a place in the deepest way; they want to know a place as it really, truly is, not as it appears to be to other, less aware tourists and fun-seekers.
I get it, I do, but I think this seeking – this constant dissatisfaction with the traditional travel experience – can be kind of dark. Why not surrender to Khao San Road and enjoy it for what it is instead of fighting it or complaining about it? Southeast Asian backpacker hubs might not have much to do with Southeast Asian culture, but they are anthropologically interesting in their own way; they have their own extremely unique melting pot backpacker culture.
Why not surrender to Khao San Road and enjoy it for what it is instead of fighting it or complaining about it?
Like humans, countries don’t have a single authentic identity; they are our subjective experiences of them. Your travel experience is not just the place you visit, but the people you meet and the things you choose to do, in the same way that your identity is incredibly multifaceted and your mood or even personality can change depending on who you’re with and what you’re doing in that particular moment.
Sometimes I feel like those people forever seeking the true, untouched, “real” culture of the places they visit are looking for something that doesn’t exist at least not in a universal, objective way. I say stop looking and surrender. That way you can’t be dissatisfied by what you find.
Further reading: NY Times article, Can a Trip Ever Be ‘Authentic’?
