Why did I go travelling for two years?

I almost came back to Australia regretting my decision to travel, but thankfully an old journal entry reminded me why I went on this adventure in the first place.

Admiring the views on the Ha Giang Loop

Finally! After 22 months of travelling, I have returned back to Melbourne. My plane landed at 9:26am on the 8th of May, and after an hour of waiting for my bag to appear on the baggage carousel I was greeted by my mother at the return gates with a long hug. On my first weekend back home, I caught up with some of my closest friends over a lovely homemade dinner at my parent’s place to not only celebrate my return but also my 28th birthday.

I got to share with my loved ones some of the great things I got to do like swim in the crystal blue water beaches in Palawan, hike through the mountains in the Northern Albania, ride on the back of a motorcycle admiring the breathtaking scenes on the Ha Giang Loop, spot hyenas, giraffes, elephants and wildebeests on a safari in Kruger Park, watch the sunset in the Sahara desert, teach English at a summer camp in the mountains overlooking Lake Como, volunteer at a World War Two bunker site in Edinburgh where they had pet emus roaming about.

While I did have a great time galivanting around the world, I almost came back to Australia feeling regretful about my decision to go travelling in the first place. My last week of travel was an absolute nightmare, which triggered an undesirable existential crisis and almost tainted two years’ worth of amazing experiences and memories.

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong

Things started to go downhill the day I left Phi Phi Island for Koh Samui. I had an eight-hour journey ahead of me that day which involved two ferries and a bus. I noticed on the first ferry ride my stomach was feeling a little unsettled. I brushed off my queasy feelings, to motion sickness, despite never getting seasick before. I thought my stomach would settle on the bus ride. It did not. I spent the majority of the bus ride vomiting into a plastic bag filled with candy bar wrappers I found on the floor near my seat. I tried to conduct myself in a very quiet and demure way, but based on the amount of people putting their fingers in their ears to deafen out my dry heaves, I don’t think I succeeded.

By the time I got to my hostel in Koh Samui I was desperate to get a good night sleep in a nice comfortable bed. Unfortunately, my first hostel was not able to provide that, as the bed I went to lie down in was so uncomfortable I thought I had accidentally fallen onto the concrete floor. The ‘mattress’ they had provided had zero support and all you could feel was the wooden plank underneath. I endured this for two nights before deciding to check into a nicer hostel up the road. The beds were far more comfortable, but just as I was about to doze off, a French man in my dorm spotted an undesirable guest in his own bed. It was bed bugs. We tried calling reception to inform them, but no one was at the desk or answering the phone number provided, so at midnight I relocated to the rooftop and slept on the couch there while the others in my room went to a hotel up the road.

Although I was still feeling unwell, I decided the next morning I would make the twelve-hour journey from Koh Samui to Bangkok and spend my last two days in a slightly more expensive hostel which had a pool and thankfully no bed bugs in the dorms. However, just when I thought I could finally relax, my phone screen started glitching two days before my return to Australia. My phone screen had glitched when I first arrived in Thailand, so this was the second time I had to withdraw money from my sparse bank account to get it fixed. Thankfully, the new screen lasted until my return to Australia, but my laptop completely broke down hours before my flight.

Posing in front of Maya Bay on Phi Phi Islands (before I got food poisoning, had to deal with bed bugs and broken technology)

Feeling Regretful for a moment

With so much going wrong just before my return to Australia I started to think to myself that this entire trip was a big mistake. Instead of looking back fondly on all the great adventures I had, I started to feel a sense of regret. Even moments before I boarded the plane back to Australia, I couldn’t shake these feelings that my decision to go travelling two years ago and every subsequent choice after that was the wrong one.

Did I go travelling for too long? If I came back earlier when I had a bit more money in my savings account, I wouldn’t be feeling as much pressure to find a job once I land back in Melbourne. Why didn’t I try and become a travel influencer, or apply for digital nomad jobs while I was away? If I had spent more time capitalising on my travels or applying for jobs where I could work while travelling, I wouldn’t have to return to Australia in the first place.

Feeling grateful forever

I really did not want my two years of travelling to be ruined by one bad week. To help counter these negative feelings I decided to open up my travel journal and read some passages about my trips to remind me of the great times I’ve had. I thought I would need to read a few journal entries, but in the end, it was just the first one which I wrote before I left Australia for that got me out of my funk.

For as long as I can remember, life has felt planned out and I have felt like I always need to be working towards something like finishing school, getting a university degree, getting a job, moving out of home, finding the love of my life. Besides the last one I have done all those things, but most of the time it didn’t feel like it was on my terms. It felt like something I had to do, not something I wanted to do. Going on this trip feels like the first time I am doing something I want to do, and I am not doing it for some sort of career progression or a means to prove myself worth or status in society. I am doing it because I want to. I want to have adventures and meet new people and see if there are ways of living that align with what I want out of life. I am not sure where this trip will lead me or what its purpose is, all I hope is that I am brave enough to keep moving forward and to come out the other end changed for the better.

Past me reminded present me why I went travelling in the first place. I went travelling because I wanted to stop trying to achieve the goals capitalism decided was worth achieving and figure out for myself what I wanted to achieve in life. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and learn more about who I was and what I was capable of. I wanted to go travelling because it was something I wanted to do, and I finally had the means to do it. I didn’t want to have a return date or try and become a travel influencer or digital nomad because I wanted to live in the moment as much as I could, and for once in my life not worry about the future. It may not have been the most economically responsible decision, but what I lost in money I gained in experiences and memories.

I will be forever grateful to the 26-year-old me for stepping on that plane on July 21st, 2023, because the past two years have been simultaneously the most fun years of my life and most crucial in my personal development.