The truth about travelling in your 30’s
Thinking of travelling in your 30’s, well here is the reality.
I made the decision back in early 2021 to live one of the dreams that I never thought would be possible for me. To travel Asia (Thailand). In order to do so I sacrificed everything that I had worked so hard for.
The home that at one point I always wanted, in my ideal location (Kent Coast), with a very nice car and a comfortable lifestyle. Along with giving up regularly paying clients for my services in recruitment which would operate as a lifestyle business.
Come December as I stripped everything back, I could feel the excitement that everything I was once told to be a success at this stage of life. I had put a huge middle finger to and was rebelling. Rebelling against the system. Maybe only part rebellion, it felt like if I didn’t take this chance on life, when would I ever do it. I didn’t want someday to be killer of my dreams anymore. To lay on my death bed thinking I wish I had done that.
Someday is today.
What was to come for me emotionally should have had a warning sticker on it. Lets get this right my expectation was high, I wanted to feel freedom, I wanted to live an unconventional life and I wanted to feel like what I had always seen in pictures or movies. A young man without a care in the world but his only worry where his next Singha (my choice of Thai beer) would come from, on a beach that I had never seen before.
Instead it never quite felt like that.
INFACT it still doesn’t.
Let’s paint the picture first, I have been in corporate jobs within London / Kent since I was 16. I only know or knew of 4 weeks annual leave, when you did get this cram in two weeks of sun, sinking more beers than I choose to remember and I only know one way of living. Fast, rushed and zero time. 20 years of this script has been built. I had also became accustomed to a certain way of living, where I could treat the family to a round on a Friday night or buy a new shirt without giving it a second thought.
Now I sit here five months in and I find myself counting every penny. The good deeds I could do for others aren’t as forthcoming due to having very little or what society would deem as little. On paper you would think I was failure.
I digress a little so let me get back to it.
The first couple of weeks it felt just like I had always imagined, I was amazed by the wonders of Asia, the locals way of living, the white sand, the unreal sunsets and I couldn’t get over the cost of beer which was a 5th of what I would pay for one in the UK. If you lived in London like I did for many years this novelty was bloody unreal.
I asked myself questions like “what took me so long” or “I am living like a king on £20 a day with an air con room (must have for me) do you ever want to go back”
Thailand is bloody amazing! It is beautifully manic, scenic and worlds apart from how I live at home. The people are amazing and I have been blessed to meet some fantastic people on the journey and make new best friends. Friends that celebrate you, accept you for you and respect your boundaries. I didn’t have to hide any of my past.
So why the hell am I struggling? I ask myself this question every day. I have moments where I am so happy and at such peace. But in the main I feel a little lost or out of place.
Who is to blame here?
Well me and putting up with Western Society for so long. I am stressed when I don’t work, it makes me feel a failure, worthless and judged. I mean judged because I don’t have what a typical man of my age should have, the two up two down type of family, in a home, mortgaged up to my eyeballs and living for the weekend.
Instead I just have clothes on my back, a laptop and my journal.
My brain still works at 100mph all it wants to do is next! Next destination, next task, next tick box exercise and next fucking everything. I really am practising on being present. But at times when I am, I beat myself up for not doing enough or the feeling of not contributing.
I came here because I could feel that I had more to offer life than what I currently was. My label that was self imposed “The pesky recruiter.” So I pursued what I was passionate about, mental health and I wanted to follow that finally honour myself. This was my opportunity to allow space for that to find me quite organically.
Instead I have pushed for it. Like pushing water up a hill and I can’t help feel that I have missed the gold in my experience.
Today which is the 22nd May 2022. I have cried all day. All day. I feel lost, overwhelmed, ungrounded, stressed and if you looked at the scenery on my instagram you would think its the opposite story. Instead I am faced with a completely new situation.
How can I live with very little mainly money and feel that I am a success?
(Hence me counting every penny) Why I try to recreate my life.
How can I rewrite 20 years of script in a couple months. Allow myself to forget my comforts and get comfortable in the discomfort of not knowing. Not knowing how this adventure unfolds or the not knowing how my purpose will reveal itself. We in the UK love to know, love that control of a situation and love to sit in comfort.
Nothing wrong with that and fucking hell do I miss it for some twisted reason. But why? I wanted nothing more than freedom and recreation.
I have chosen my path now, I chose all the above and I chose to sacrifice. I have to learn to trust the reason why. Trust that I can still unearth the gold.
I can see why now many people don’t embark on this journey because it so out of the comfort zone and especially at my age of 36. Travel fatigue (yes that is thing) has really set in and me being a family boy like I am just wants a belly of food from my family or a cold one with my brothers.
BUT……
Do I regret my decision! HELL NO!
Thailand is a place of magic and wonder. Temples, Buddhas, cheap food cooked from a single wok that makes you salivate, culture and the best beaches I have ever seen. The sunsets of Railay are out a movie set. A place in the North, a village which resembles an island feel in the hills called Pai that’s just the most peaceful and warming place I have ever been. At times I feel like I am back in the Kent Coutryside. I mean you have to see these to believe it.
You have moments where you need to pinch yourself. If you look behind the beaten track you step back in time a 100 years and it’s surreal.
Oh and another thing, for a man’s ego it does bloody wonders. You have many takers who would love you to spend the night or marry you. No need to worry about getting rejected on a Saturday night after a couple of drinks of Dutch courage. As one person said to me “one night in Bangkok will change your life” I am not sure what that meant, I have my thoughts on that. But I will leave that to your imagination.
For this I am grateful and I will not ever sit there saying to myself “someday”. What ever happens in my life now, my soul has been nourished, warmed and my mind expanded. I did it at 36!!! Not the way I envisaged 18 years ago, wild parties, cheap hostels and a wasted attempt at a travelling romance. Nope I done it as a mature man, one who has grown further and can honestly say it has enriched me.
Communities are forged on very little but don’t ask for more than they have to here. They are perfectly happy, blissfully unaware of the pressures us Westerners are under.
So it’s got me thinking what would they think of my unnecessary pressures?
How can I put these lessons of little being more, success actually being determined by life balance, not what car we have, clothes we wear or how big your house / bank balance is.
How can I now put these lessons into my life and de attach from a script that has had me in cobra like vice for all of my life? Well I don’t know that answer currently.
But what I do have is me, memories and a dream to achieve something that I call a passion.
So for that, Thailand you have widened my awareness and you have a place in my heart always.
If your thinking of doing it, DO IT! It may not be what you thought but god damn is it one hell of a ride and I am not here to play safe anymore.
That last point is what attempted suicide taught me.
