Is Social Media Ruining Travel? How Expectations Influence Happiness
Is social media ruining travel? We explore whether overexposure to travel destinations is setting us up for disappointment, ensuring our travel expectations cannot be met.
In this episode of Tripology Podcast, we unpack how social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and even travel blogs, impact how we experience travel —and how it might be making us less happy on the road. We discuss the psychology behind the Instagram vs Reality meme and ask: is travel content the enemy of spontaneity?
Hostel Common Room returns with a fantastic email from a listener, one which will resonate with many: does overplanning dull the experience?
Stay tuned for Tales of a Trip, as we hear a story from a listener who stayed with a Monastic community, only to discover she would be cooking mash potato for 500 people in one of France's largest commercial kitchens!
Join our Patreon community to access the Lost & Found section. This week, Adam shares the story of how he was almost scammed out of $2k for an apartment in Queenstown, New Zealand. Join here: https://www.patreon.com/tripologypodcast
📌 Topics in this episode:
00:00 - Intro
01:05 - The Golden Age of travel: Pre-2020 vs Backpacking in 2025
03:06 - How hostels & backpackers have changed
05:30 - The rise of the Digital Nomad, and how digital nomads have impacted hostel culture
08:40 - Backpacker diets & hostel kitchens
13:20 - Hostel Common Room: overplanning vs spontaneity
16:10 - How expectations govern happiness: Adam & Alun's backpacking let-downs
21:42 - Tales of a Trip: the stress of cooking for 500 French foodies!
👇 Tell us in the comments — has social media ever ruined a destination for you? Send your travel stories into: https://www.tripologypodcast.com/talesofatrip
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Transcript:
Alun:
[0:02] Hello and welcome to this episode of Tripology. It's the only podcast where the hosts get up early in the morning in an Airbnb and switch the mics on. I'm Alun and I'm here with one of the best backpackers in the world, my best friend, it's the ever-expectant Adam.
Adam:
[0:18] I'm expecting big things for this episode, mate. We've got some hostel culture coming up. We're going to discuss how things have changed in hostels over the years. We've got an amazing, amazing email from a listener and then at the end, everyone's favourite new item on the show is tales of a trip
Alun:
[0:31] Yeah tales of a trip backpacking stories from the backpacking community oh my goodness can't wait for it yeah man i was talking to you last night we're holed up in this airbnb sharing a double bed to save money and we sort of said you know what are hostels changing because we both started traveling around 2015 didn't we around that sort of time 2014 for you 2016 2014.
Adam:
[0:56] December the 16th 2014
Alun:
[0:58] September 2015 for me basically the same i think that was slap bang in the middle of the golden age of traveling hear me out guys you.
Adam:
[1:10] Have mentioned this a few times and i i mean of course we would all love to believe that we traveled at the greatest time to travel yeah um we maybe caught the tail end of what it is you're about to talk about uh sure i would have loved to be traveling around iran in the 70s but it just wasn't available to me then because i wasn't alive
Alun:
[1:26] I think that it's easy to be like yeah i was there when it was the best you know but i do think the golden age of travel started somewhere around 2010 okay
Alun:
[1:36] and ended with the pandemic right.
Adam:
[1:39] The reason i just just all travel ended with the pandemic so
Alun:
[1:42] Exactly and then when it re kind of convened and everyone's like oh we can travel again it wasn't quite the same it's still beautiful still the most amazing thing in my life i love it as.
Adam:
[1:52] If travel's listening in
Alun:
[1:54] Please i still adore you um and people should definitely travel now you know yeah but i think that basically what happened was in 2010 it was the first sort of decade the beginning of that decade was the first time where you had internet technology yeah that made traveling convenient easy it was easy to research it was easy to book hostels it was easy to find out information where you were going yeah but it was still not the most popular thing sure it still required a lot of panache to go like i'm going to be a long-term traveler almost everyone doing long-term travel had some kind of mental illness i know because i was one of them it was like in In 2015, you'd get people traveling kind of for six months, all that stuff. But the people you met who were like, I'm going for a year, you were like, oh, fucking me too. What's wrong with you? Yeah. Anxiety and depression. Oh yeah. I'm running away from something. Nowadays that's just not the same because of increased accessibility.
Adam:
[2:56] Yeah you definitely find a different type of backpacker i think and it's easy for us to say that'd be really interesting send your emails in send your messages in um because we would like to get your thoughts on this but i feel like over the 10 11 years that i've been traveling and living in hostels there's definitely a different type of backpacker now not necessarily bad you know we can't choose which era we're born in or anything like that but i also think that when we started out you had to proactively go and search maybe a bus or something in terms of the infrastructure and logistics whereas now it's you're absolutely peppered every single opportunity by travel companies or local tour companies and they're all offering a similar experience um when we were back you know back when we were traveling i would agree i would say that there were lots of people that were older than me obviously because i was younger um but yeah nowadays technology the way that it's changed things certainly in hostels when you're signing into hostels there's two hostels i want to talk about one of them's in in auckland not going to mention it because i know the guys there they're great friends and the other one's in seoul in auckland i arrived at the reception which closes at five five p.m for a reception on a hostel it's ridiculously early i hated it
Adam:
[4:04] Uh i arrived there before five and wanted to check in but i was immediately shown some little kiosk some little robot type screen thing where you've got to plug in all your details and all that sort of stuff and the person behind the counter said we are trying to train that machine there's been some new software uploaded and we just want to test it out so i can't check you in at the desk can you just check in with that machine and i was like oh my god uh you know 10 minutes later the thing didn't work and i was back to square one having to check in with a human now i wouldn't necessarily mind that i understand there's a changing times but if you go to seoul korea there's a place called something cube or something like that and the check-in process is so impersonal that it ends up creating these metaphoric barriers within the hostel it lacks a personal touch yeah i mean you can't you can't even meet a human even if you wanted to and that is a big issue for me because one of the reasons we stay in hostels is to meet other people it is to have that lovely backpacking communal atmosphere but you get sent an email with a check-in code and then then then Then you go through the door, you have one check-in code for the door, then you have another check-in code for your locker. And even though there's like a big communal space where everyone has breakfast, no one talks to each other because of these, what will become literal barriers between the dorms and the check-in process. And they just try and keep everyone as far away as they can from each other. And I think that is a negative.
Alun:
[5:20] Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk a little bit further, because what you're talking about, that sort of ease of accessibility,
Alun:
[5:26] get in, get on your laptop, don't talk to anyone. That is symptomatic of this era we're living in now, which is the rise of the digital nomad. Preface that by saying, I love the fact that we're now living post-pandemic in a world where people don't feel that they have to be constrained to the office. They can get their laptops. They can go to hostels. I love that. I think it's great. I would rather we lived in that world. But it has to be said, it changes hostel culture. We're now in this world where pre-pandemic yeah you had to be like crazy to just go i'm not going to get a job i'm going to travel i'm going to be nomadic now in the pandemic everyone was like oh god is this the future we can't handle this we've got to leave everyone's sort of like in a mass exodus it feels like yeah okay now's the time to seize this opportunity seize my life i'm going to go traveling yeah and so you you're kind of like the the old school travelers who are all like hey fuck the government they're all sort of like um i mean we're crowded by by these new wave travelers these digital nomads that's not necessarily in itself a bad thing but it does create a very different situation in hostels when people's primary directive is to work to check in easily not to like be social not to experience a place so much as just live and work out of a hostel yeah.
Adam:
[6:49] I wonder as well maybe what's compounding the issue is that because everywhere else has become so expensive, now the people that maybe were staying in private accommodation or hotels, They can't afford that. So the next step down is, of course, staying in a hostel. Yeah. So now you're actually seeing people that probably have a higher economy than they would have done. Whereas before, you know, hostels were just for us cheapos.
Alun:
[7:11] Yeah, totally. And then hostels react, don't they? Because hostels get all these new clientele of richer people. Who are working. Yeah, absolutely. So then it's like the hostel starts selling the experience of, come here, it's ever so social. Becomes the same price as the Airbnb. Travellers like me and you are forced out of the hostels because it's too pricey now. and go to Airbnb. It's a cyclical cycle.
Alun:
[7:32] I think here on Topology, let's just encourage good hostel etiquette. If you're staying in a hostel, I think to some extent, you have an obligation to do your work, finish your work, but do engage in the social culture. It's really important to smile at people, to make conversation. You take your work, you do it, but I think social aspects are important.
Adam:
[7:55] Yeah, it's not about being gatekeepers or anything like that. I mean, And can you imagine if we exist in a time in the future where in order to go to a certain country or a certain hostel, you will have had to prove that you've been to so many other countries before or some crazy dystopian future like that? I do think that there are some things that are happening in hostels nowadays
Adam:
[8:13] that maybe weren't 10, 15 years ago. Okay.
Alun:
[8:15] Talk to me about that.
Adam:
[8:16] It's positive because it involves food. Okay. But now we are seeing some pretty exceptional cooking in hostel kitchens nowadays. Days i mean i've been living in hostels probably for the last 15 months on or off i am trying i'm trying to find somewhere to live that's a little bit more permanent with a little bit less uh with a little bit more privacy definitely um hopefully where the cooking is also good but it'll be done by me so who knows um but i'm seeing some meals that are being whipped up in these in these hostels and i'm like chiming in going Oh, if you have any leftovers, or if you want me to join you for that.
Alun:
[8:50] Back in 2015, it was a fried egg. Yeah, yeah. If you're lucky. Maybe put some bread in the toaster.
Adam:
[8:56] Yeah, there'll be some paprika that was left on the free stuff shelf.
Alun:
[8:59] What's the craziest thing you've seen rustled up? And by which nationality?
Adam:
[9:02] Well, actually, the craziest thing, Kian, if you're listening, mate, big shout out to you. He was on the carnivore diet in a hostel. So can you imagine this? I know you know a lot about diet and nutrition, all these different... I'm not going to call it a fad. uh but he was on the carnivore diet whilst we were staying together in auckland and he fried up he was on about 750 grams of meat per meal wow uh and i tell you what going into the kitchen at nine o'clock in the morning and he's frying up two fat steaks with a couple of eggs that's probably the craziest thing because it completely consumes everyone in there which was which was pretty cool but you're seeing like elaborate elaborate meals where you've got usually french people actually they're quite sociable i've seen some sunday night dinners recently where they're doing like a roast chicken someone's on the potatoes they're you know doing the vegetables and there's a sauce on its way michelin star hostel it's very collaborative and i really love that um and and i think that that has improved because back when we were traveling at the beginning i would say there was a heavy heavy proportion of those sodium loaded instant noodles that are no good for anyone you wouldn't you if you wouldn't feed them to your worst enemy why are you eating them the backpacker
Alun:
[10:11] Diet yeah i think backpackers had a reputation back then as being like slightly.
Adam:
[10:16] Unshowered yeah slightly malnourished yeah sort
Alun:
[10:20] Of like urchins you know we were nomads we were vagabonds nowadays the backpacker's image is slightly changing you know you might see a backpacker in a supreme
Alun:
[10:28] shirt who's just had a beautiful steak and chips made on a hostile pan and that's fine.
Adam:
[10:32] I'll tell you one more thing i have seen more of we will talk about food but birkenstocks seem to be like the backpacker choice of footwear now so i mean the average spend for a backpacker now is much more than than what it was when we were young definitely i mean now you get a backpacker wearing a bag that probably costs more than the flight which maybe is normal but you know three four hundred quid for a bag and they're dressed to the nines in all the latest arcturix gear chuck is a sponsor if you're listening, and some Birkenstocks. But just going back to food very briefly, there is a bit of a hot take coming, and it was said to me in a hostel in Auckland, actually, one of the ones I mentioned earlier. Now, this is quite funny, and it'd be interesting to see whether this observation is something that you've seen. Even though French people are known for their food, even though they have an inherent understanding of food and drink pairings and their cuisine, they seem to just be naturally very good cooks, bon vivant, the people that love their good livers, right? They often will be cooking the shittiest food.
Alun:
[11:32] Oh, interesting.
Adam:
[11:33] Yeah, and I've seen it. I mean, this is one of those things that people just drop into a conversation. You go, oh my God, you're so right. And it's so funny. This guy said to me, have you ever noticed that French people, more often than not, when they're wrestling up something for dinner, it will just be pasta and tomato ketchup? Wow. And there's probably French people listening to this now going, we're not like that. I'm sorry. I've seen enough of it.
Alun:
[11:55] Pasta and tomato ketchup? I've never seen that myself.
Adam:
[11:57] I mean, it's interesting. just just pasta and red sauce and this was happening at the table to me uh you know a couple of weeks ago or whatever when i was last in auckland and i made a joke because i i feel like i'm somewhat in the french community when i'm speaking french with a with a larger group uh i said to them do you do you not like food and it didn't go down that well there was a couple of sniggers um but i just thought pasta and and ketchup like seriously yeah enjoy yourself come on live a little but we're not surely we're not at that stage now where i feel like there's almost this um once you label yourself a backpacker or you are backpacking as a uh you know vocational whatever you you then end up living like one even though you don't have to you don't have to eat those instant noodles guys yeah you can afford something better i'd rather you ate less but better yeah than three times a day those instant noodles that are absolutely no good for anyone it's
Alun:
[12:55] A hell of a hot take, first and foremost adam we're a backpacking community show we love to hear from our listeners if you go to our website topologypodcast.com we've got a contact form in the hostel common room people can ask us questions like two elder statesmen of travel oh my goodness what do i do how do i get around what backpack should i buy that sort of thing we've had a listener email us it's the hostel common room.
Adam:
[13:29] We've got an amazing email this week, mate. It's from the lovely Michael from New Zealand. Funnily enough, big shout out. Hi, Adam and Alun. I've been pondering a bit of a travel dilemma and would love to get your take on it as seasoned backpackers from the golden age. Reflecting, I realise that many of my favourite travel experiences came from the completely unexpected, not just in terms of meeting people on the road, but also the classic sightseeing moments. While visiting my partner's family in Osaka, I took a day trip to Nara. I was having a great time watching the deer and sampling some local treats. But while wandering around, I stumbled across a massive temple, Todaji. I was blown away by its size and even more so when I stepped inside and saw the enormous Buddha. It was one of those unreal, serendipitous moments that left a huge impression on me, even though it might not be as famous as Kinkaku-ji. The Golden Pavilion, I've been there, and Kiyomizu Dera. It was far more memorable because I hadn't expected it. Another example would be ordering the chef's recommendation at a random street stall. Those meals often blow me away more than anything I see trending on Instagram. What I'm guessing at is that the unexpected often impacts me the most. I imagine that's a common feeling among travellers. My dilemma is sometimes I feel the more I plan, the more I spoil things for myself. I've noticed that watching too many YouTube videos and doing deep research can make certain places feel a little overexposed. Like the sense of discovery is lost before I even arrive. Does all the pre-trip research end up dulling the experience? Cheers, Michael.
Alun:
[14:53] Thanks, Michael, for sending a message into the hostel common room. Yeah, I think it does.
Adam:
[15:00] Is the short answer.
Alun:
[15:02] You can divide travellers on this topic into a couple of different camps. You've got the serial planners, people who structure their time very, very rigidly. yeah and then you've got the people who aren't german, and then you've got people who just go with the flow and just travel as they like and i personally fall into the latter camp i'm really not good at planning no.
Adam:
[15:29] No you don't plan a lot do you feel like i plan too much
Alun:
[15:32] Not too much but you of the two of us definitely plan more yeah and a little tip for you if you are someone who doesn't particularly like to plan you like to be like michael you appreciate that the best things are the unexpected things you don't like to google image things before you go oh what do the pyramids look like oh that's what they look like uh if you want to avoid that sort of disappointment find yourself a friend who loves to plan and then like a little parasite like a tick or a leech or something like that just go along with their adventures you'll always be surprised yeah.
Adam:
[16:03] I mean this is probably twofold for me so the first thing is that if you set expectations your i think expectations govern happiness If you set them really high and you already have a preconceived idea in your head or you have some sort of image in your head of what an experience or visiting a place is going to be like, you're setting yourself up for failure. I really believe that because often you imagine things not just in the past, but also in the future much better than they will be. I also think that what compounds the issue and probably makes things even worse is that often the best things that happen when we travel are the things that are unplanned. They're the things that aren't tangible. It's the little interactions with people. It's the, you know, seeing a wild animal or something like that. I mean, you can't pay for that stuff. So, yeah, I would totally agree. One of the things that springs to mind is the most underwhelming landmark I've seen, this iconic Sydney Opera House.
Alun:
[16:57] Okay, interesting. You didn't like it.
Adam:
[16:59] It's not that I didn't like it, but I think I'd just seen it hundreds, if not thousands of times growing up.
Alun:
[17:04] The picture became more iconic than the actual thing.
Adam:
[17:06] Yeah, and when I arrived, it's absolutely dwarfed by the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Which i think is extraordinary i love a good bridge i really do like bridges so the fact that the sydney opera house is almost the star of the show and people talk about sydney harvard bridge but i think it's so much more impressive than the opera houses that i was just left feeling a little bit flat once i'd seen it i thought oh that's a shame you
Alun:
[17:30] Raise a very astute point this idea that happiness is when expectation meets reality and this weird feeling we get when those two things don't quite pair up. And I think that because we're living in a digital age, digital nomads coming into hostiles, I think that means that we're exposed all the time to the best images of the best things to do. Rainbow Mountain's an example people use a lot. Mm-hmm. And now I think Rainbow Mountain's really, really cool in person.
Tales of a Trip:
[17:59] Yeah.
Alun:
[17:59] It's like a formation, it's a mountain in Peru, where all the sand that adorns the mountain is different colours. Mm-hmm. But, people have edited pictures of Rainbow Mountain to such high heaven that the actual living thing can't possibly add up in terms of its color display. It can't possibly be anything akin to the pictures you see before you go there. There's tall people all around Cusco saying, oh, come to Rainbow Mountain. And they're showing pictures on the side of their stalls of this effervescently red, pink, green mountain where the saturation has been boosted right up.
Adam:
[18:38] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alun:
[18:39] So it's just not that.
Adam:
[18:40] Yeah.
Alun:
[18:41] It's an actual mountain that has colours that exist on planet Earth.
Adam:
[18:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alun:
[18:45] So you're best off if you just, if you didn't see those pictures, the first people that ever walked in those deserts and saw those mountains would have been like, fucking hell.
Adam:
[18:54] Yeah, yeah.
Alun:
[18:55] But then I've met a lot of travellers who went like, oh, oh, it's just, it's actually something that looks like it could exist in nature.
Adam:
[19:01] Yeah, it doesn't look anywhere near as distorted or warped or the saturation's been turned up.
Alun:
[19:05] Totally. You're best off just not looking.
Adam:
[19:07] Yeah. I think you're probably right. Also, the time that you visit places. I mean, he's mentioned in the email, Kiyomizodira. I've been there, and I don't know if you remember, that's in Kyoto. It's a lovely, lovely temple. I went there at like 5 or 6 a.m., and there was no one there. Now, if you search on the internet, best temples to visit or whatever in Kyoto, it will always show up. But the problem is, a lot of the pictures you see have been taken by influencers or other people that have been there, travel blogs and stuff. And they probably go there at a similar time so that they can get a shot with no one else in it. If you go there thinking oh my god it looks so tranquil it looks so peaceful i can't wait until i walk around and i appreciate the way that the gravel's been i don't know bloody swept or whatever in a certain direction
Alun:
[19:45] I love doing that in temples sweeping the gravel but if.
Adam:
[19:49] Um but you show up sort of 9am with the other 2 000 tourists it doesn't matter how beautiful the architecture is or the history of the place is objectively
Alun:
[19:57] Michael i think the balance to strike is probably you've got to do a little bit of planning you don't want to be completely out on a limb especially if you're new to backpacking and stuff like that you pretty much want to have an idea of what you want to do yeah and then but just don't go too rigid rigidity is the enemy of spontaneity so as spontaneous traveling is the most fun kind of traveling where you're open and free to like meet a stranger in a hostel and be like oh you're cool let's travel together let's do something together oh you're interested in food amazing let's go to the place you want to eat i think that's really really important to have your your focus and your plans loose enough yeah to allow those moments of,
Alun:
[20:38] wonderment because why do we travel if not for the pursuit of wonderment yeah.
Adam:
[20:42] And you know the food thing as well kind of feeds into this because if you go somewhere like a two michelin star restaurant for example this is the analogy i'm going to use if you're paying 200 300 euros a pop it better be the best meal of your life yeah anything less than that and you're you're thinking this isn't value for money if you go to a little street food stall as michael's mentioned and you pay like 50, 50p or a pound for something and it blows you away. You think, oh my God, this is incredible value for money. It's about the expectations.
Alun:
[21:09] Totally. Thanks for email, Michael.
Adam:
[21:11] Thanks, Michael. Love to hear from you.
Alun:
[21:15] And here we are, fast approaching one of our favourite sections of the show. If you go to tripologypodcast.com forward slash tales of a trip, there's a section there where you can click a little button and immediately record three minutes of your greatest travel story. We put the call out to all backpackers. It can be a beautiful memory, a crazy adventure. We just want to hear the best travel stories. We play them on the podcast every week. Let's hear this week's Tales of a Trip.
Tales of a Trip:
[21:43] My name's Rebecca. I'm from Australia. And I wanted to share a story about a week I spent in the monastic community in France. So I stayed in a place called Taise. Taise is known for always having an onus on welcoming younger people into their community for about a week at a time for meditation, contemplation, prayer, and building community with one another. So as a person of faith, this was a really lovely and beneficial time, and I'm forever grateful for the kinds of friendships I made with people from different languages, different cultures, different faith backgrounds, and it was super special. One of the expectations of spending time in this community, however, was contributing through some labour or through some work. So for most people, this might have been something like cleaning the toilets for an hour a day.
Tales of a Trip:
[22:38] Or doing some other kind of work around the around the community to assist um for me when I arrived uh I put my hand up for assisting with dinner duty um so just you know kitchen prep What I didn't expect from my experience in a monastic society was that in putting my hand up to work on dinner preparations was that I would be stepping into Framson's second biggest industrial kitchen with capacity to feed to up to 3,000 people.
Adam:
[23:17] Wow.
Tales of a Trip:
[23:18] Luckily for me, however, I never had to cook for 3,000 people, only for up to about, you know, 500 people per night. And never in my life have I seen pots and pans, the size of which you could probably fit a whole couple of humans in there, like something real grim fairy tale-esque like Hansel and Gretel. That was so big and it was just insane amounts of food that we had to start pumping out of that kitchen. Um even the most basic tomato you know pasta with red sauce became a huge effort to feed everybody out there waiting for a bowl of food for you every night and i remember um we'd sit there with these uh massive vats of boiling water with one person pouring in the the instant mashed potato and the other one with a witch's stick size whisk making sure that everything would actually turn into food for the people out there that night and then I finished my dinner duties and my friends would say I was mashed potato night again I didn't like the mashed potato that much and I'd look them in the eye and I'd say I mix that mash if you don't eat it I swear we'll never be friends again
Alun:
[24:39] thank you so much for sending that in rebecca i loved that i loved it because it was a kind of story that we've not had yet on tales of a trip had a different pace didn't it and that's the beautiful thing about someone's greatest travel story it can be something crazy and melancholic and wild or it can be something like like the the effervescent nature of that story the beautiful fizz behind it is that she was working she was doing something it was focused on friendship, connection, spirituality. And that memory, for Rebecca, of mixing that mashed potato, of creating that thing, is visceral. It's a travel experience. It's something that affected her, and it's stored as this, like, oh, remember when I was doing that crazy thing that was outside of my regular life? I was making mashed potato in a kitchen that's equipped to be 3,000 people. That is the kind of experience that, most people just don't get is is beautiful in its simplicity.
Adam:
[25:40] Yeah an industrial kitchen in france i've never heard such a thing yeah but no that speaks to us because we're experientialists yeah and i would absolutely love especially based off uh rebecca's story there to have been able to have that experience as well i can't even imagine the size of those parts i mean the capacity to feed 3 000 people yeah
Alun:
[25:59] Can you imagine the the noise and the din that's going on that hum of people working people creating i think that's so so beautiful and the theme of this show is french people and red sauce and pasta.
Adam:
[26:11] Red sauce yeah that's crazy it's funny again expectations because rebecca went into that experience not really knowing she probably thought you know i hope i'm not putting words in your mouth here rebecca but you might have thought what can i do what do i have the ability to do well a bit of cooking bit of cleaning that'd be fine in the kitchen just a kitchen hand yeah lo and behold you end up feeding 500 people you'd just be blown away by something like that. I've never done anything like that. And the cooking actually is a big part of travel, isn't it? I don't just mean in a hostel. I mean, lots of people do cooking courses when they go to Southeast Asia learning about the cuisine. We saw some people in India doing it as well. So those sorts of experiences, I think, are not just what makes travel, but also what sets you apart from other people. We spoke recently about competitive travel. I know I was guilty when I was young of wanting to be able to tell stories that other people couldn't. And I think that that absolutely fits this category.
Alun:
[27:01] One of the worst things you can do when you're traveling, one of the most awful wastes of time, are people who go traveling and they spend a year just seeing amazing things. It is a waste of time if you just do that. Because as a traveler, your opportunity is to accumulate new experiences and skills that would be impossible to get at your home country. And I'm sorry to say this, but it's firmly my belief. I think if you've traveled and you've not got any new skills as a result of it, you've not traveled in the best way. So that's why people do cooking courses and things like that. You're in Thailand. Why not learn to make a killer pad thai? So when you go home, you can cook it for your partner and have this really cool thing where no one else knows in your community how to do that. And I think rebecca's made a really good go of going she's interested in spirituality she's a person of faith she's gone to a monastic community she's lived out that experience that she's taken from home i'm a person of faith and she's done something unique that she couldn't do at home with it maybe.
Adam:
[27:57] She's even lost friends over mashed potato
Alun:
[27:59] Yeah exactly.
Adam:
[28:00] Who would have known going into that that she would have become so attached to the mash put her heart and soul into it willing to lose friends over it as well
Alun:
[28:06] Ruin your social life over a mushed up potato exactly i.
Adam:
[28:10] Can make some pretty mean mashed potato
Alun:
[28:12] Well that is an important point isn't it to do things that create stories go out of your way to engage in activities that can teach you new things giving you perspective.
Adam:
[28:23] Yeah yeah and that's exactly the sort of story that we love to hear on this show i mean by all means guys please keep sending them in we love hearing them obviously this is a platform for you guys to share your stories and inspire the people that are listening as well
Alun:
[28:34] Absolutely we love to hear them we love it when we get a little notification saying there's a new tales of a trip come in we save them listen to them on the show talk about them with you guys we're going to head off to the patreon section now we are you've got a crazy story haven't you about a scam in queenstown yeah patreon.com.
Adam:
[28:51] Forward slash topology podcast i'm going to tell Alun all about the time i was scammed in uh in queenstown which only happened a couple of days ago i've got the email to read out here it is honestly unbelievable for
Alun:
[29:01] The rest of you Tripologists there's a link to all our socials down in the description
Alun:
[29:04] but for now we'll see you all next.
Adam:
[29:06] Week see you there. Bye
