Things That Suck About Travel

Just a forewarning: I’m sick with a cold at the moment. There are few things in the world worse than being sick when you’re traveling. Not only is everything more of a challenge, that you likely don’t have the energy for, you have to endure being in a New Place With Limited Time, too sick to enjoy it or explore.

Travel is my favourite hobby/obssession. Even though it’s the best thing in the world, it doesn’t mean there is nothing that sucks about travel. In fact, there are a lot of things that suck about travel. I’m tired of reading travel blogs with shiny photos and glamorous stories: lots of parts of travel are very unglamorous. I’ve had so many moments during the past few years where I wanted to just never travel again, buy a piece of land somewhere out in the middle of no where and never-ever-leave.

With my poor planning skills, innate desire to get a ‘great deal’ and affinity for bad luck, I’ve experienced a lot of things that suck about travel, including:

1) Getting Ripped Off
I tend to look up things on Google Maps before ordering a taxi, so I can estimate the distance and price. Yesterday I did exactly that but was distracted by practicing my very poor Spanish with my driver that I forget to check where we were going. The taxi was to the bus station, only 3km from my hostel, but wound up taking half an hour and costing thrice the price. I’m such a sucker for conversation. It’s not that I can’t afford to be ripped off; I always leave a little wiggle room in my budget for this, but it’s painful when you’ve made the effort to plan ahead and start to have that tingling feeling that you’re being taken for a ride.

All I could muster was “muy carro” with puppy dog eyes. The driver didn’t respond and just looked at me with an expression that said: “that was the point, silly gringo”. 

2) Missing Laundry
You know when you’re doing your own laundry at home and a sock or two disappears? That sucks. When you’re traveling it goes one up on that, everything goes missing. I had some laundry done in Iquitos and saw them counting each piece before they wrote down a number (more on this later). I assumed that they would count everything up before returning it to me, so neglected to check. Fatal error. Two countries later and I’m down around 6 pieces of clothing, including half of my underwear sets.

3) Not Being Able to do Your Own Laundry
I recently had a very traumatic experience in that very same laundry shop. I went to the Amazon for 4 days (incase you hadn’t read already: It Was Awesome) and had managed to basically douse my clothes in sweat, sunscreen and Deet. It was disgusting. It was one of the few times in my life that I was genuinely repulsed by myself. I threw ALL my clothes into a bag and marched to the laundry place and slowly slid the bag across the bench, while my eyes pleaded: “I’m sorry, I’m not usually this disgusting”.

To my horror the laundry lady decided to count each piece of clothing. She poured my filthily, crusty clothes on the ground and then individually counted them and placed them back in the bag. I winced. This was the most horrific thing I had ever endured in my life. I wanted to throw money at her, as an apology for her trauma, and take the first flight out of Iquitos. But, I needed those clothes so I did my best to pretend this was all a bad dream. As she slid the receipt over to me, I saw in her eyes a look that I’ll never forget. I wanted to explain to her that I had just been in the Amazon and really, it was not my fault. But I figured it was better to run out of the store as quickly as I could.

Perhaps she stole some of my clothes as payment for what she endured that day. Or maybe she burned them. Either way, I miss doing my own laundry and sharing my shame only with myself.

4) Feeling Sick and Assuming You’re Dying
I’m a hypochondriac. Sometimes I think I’m an evolved hypochondriac because I’m aware that I freak out over everything and can often soothe myself “Don’t worry, Izy, you’re just freaking out, you’re probably fine”. This works wonders when I’m in New Zealand and not surrounded by things that are trying to kill me.

While in the Amazon I went on a night walk without a torch (first mistake). During the walk I fell over and grabbed a tree branch to support myself that I couldn’t see (second mistake). Instantly I was at a 8 on the pain scale, but I wanted to play it cool so tried to deal with it by myself in the dark (third mistake). I could feel some prickles in my hand, so promptly removed all three of them. After some time had passed and I was certain I could hold back the tears, my hand still felt like it was on fire so I asked to borrow someone’s torch to assess the damage. It looked fine. The next day I woke up and my hand was infected and it hurt to move it. I couldn’t really clasp things; it was basically useless. For around half an hour I contemplated what would happen if my hand was amputated.

What would happen to my typing speed? Would it halve, or would it be even less than half? Would my left hand learn to compensate for his missing brother? So many questions, so few answers.

Once we returned to civilisation I took some medication and it cleared up in a day or two. But the thing about traveling to weird destinations is that I’m always getting weird illnesses. Then when you’re already feeling lowly you have to go and try to negotiate some drugs from a pharmacist in a wild mix of Spanglish and sign language – while then promptly getting ripped off. Double whammy.

5) People in Dorms Who are Assholes
I like staying in dorms because I like to meet people and steal their travel plans. I have done enough travel planning now that I quite enjoy meeting someone, charming them with fabulous New Zealand accent and then accepting their invitation to join their adventures.

I don’t like staying in dorms because I actually like to sleep.

It’s hard, because in my experience I am best at making friends with people staying in my hostel who are actually in the same room as me. Perhaps it’s because I can catch them off guard, like when they’re trying to pack up their dirty laundry or are just waking up from their slumber. People in the common areas have had coffee and are not so susceptible to my trip stealing. I think, because they’re in the same room as me, they realise they can never escape.

I’ve had numerous opportunities to meet Assholes in Dorms. There’s probably a 1:3 ratio of assholes to cool people in dorms, which is actually pretty good. For every asshole, you’re likely to meet 3 good people. Just enough to keep me from hating dorms, but not enough to make it a pain-free experience.

Recent Assholes in Dorms:

2 girls in Panama who decided that it would be a wonderful idea to turn the bedroom light on at 4am and proceed to talk loudly, in German. I’m sure German sounds fabulous when you’re well slept and it’s an appropriate hour, but at 4am I wanted to stab their eyes out. They weren’t even getting ready for bed, they just wanted to come into the room and chat. They left the room for half an hour, but left the light on. I got up and turned it off. They came back in and I felt like I had been sucked into a time machine and spat out thirty minutes prior, having to endure their shit all over again. Too tired for conversation or any communication beyond an evil glare, I got up and turned the light off and sighed. I can already see my future as a jaded 80 year old hating on the youth for being so spritely and energetic at all hours.

American guy who proceeded to Skype call his best friend about potentially being set up with his sister, while in a shared dorm in Yangon, Myanmar after midnight. Hey buddy, guess what? You’re not at home, you’re not going to be set up with her any time soon so how about you do us all the courtesy of shutting up?

Often the trend of meeting assholes in dorms will be broken up by meeting someone who’s creepy. Creepy people exist everywhere, but it’s annoying when they know where you sleep and have 24/7 access to your room. During my time in San Jose, between sleeping excessive amounts and feeling sorry for myself, a man decided to take a shining to me. Usually I would appreciate this, but he had the same amount of character you’d find in a wrung-out sponge and he was also at least a decade older than my father.

He invited me out to dinner and I was so caught off guard, and too sick to lie strategically, that I went along. Even indulging in one of my favourite hobbies – eating – was not enough to make his company enjoyable. When we returned to the hostel I decided to read a book and placed my handbag next to me on the couch as a clear “Don’t Fucking Sit Here” sign. He, without asking, moved it to the side and proceeded to talk to me. I did my best to barely engage in conversation and maintained holding my book. It didn’t deter him. At one point he went to the bathroom and upon returning decided to grab my toes. I don’t like strange people ignoring obvious social cues, such as ‘leave me alone, now’ and I especially don’t like people touching my feet.

It was just weird. I promptly excused myself to bed and pretended none of it had ever happened.

6) Exceptionally Long Transit
During my early years backpacking, I had so much enthusiasm. A 36 hour bus ride through a third world country with no toilet on the bus and aggressive food poisoning? That sounds like such an *adventure*, sign me up.

Those days are long gone and now even a 5 hour bus ride evokes a childish “Do I have to?” inside my head.

Thankfully on my most recent trip – from Panama City to San Jose by bus – I was so sick that I literally fell into a coma for the entire trip. It was broken briefly to do a border crossing, but I slept the entire 16 hour trip, without any medication.

Exceptionally long travel sucks. Even if you take a few changes of clothes and some wet wipes, you are still sitting in the same position for much too long. You have to strategically plan your bathroom breaks, how much liquid you’ll consume and ration out your electronics battery life. It’s hard work.

 7) It’s Addictive
Have you ever ran a race where for every kilometer you run, they move the finish line three kilometers further away? Nope. It probably doesn’t exist, because that would be a very cruel, soul-destroying race. That’s kind of how travel is for me. Not that I’m racing to go anywhere, but the more places I visit, the more I add to my list. It’s like a never-ending to-do list that grows faster than I can tick things off.

So there we go, travel sucks. You shouldn’t do it.