After a decade of travel, including 2 years (and counting!) of full-time, solo travel, I’ve learned a few lessons, the biggest one being: I couldn’t do this alone.
I couldn’t live this life without the “big sisters” in my life.
The ones who push me to make the best decisions for myself.
The ones who pick on me when I overthink things,
but are also willing to yap for hours about a trip idea.
I spent years of my life hesitating and overthinking. Planning too much and doing too little. But the travel bug keeps bugging. And as Billy Joel says in Vienna, “you can get what you want or you can just get old.”
So instead of hesitating, I am going. I’m getting what I want out of my life. And maybe I can inspire you to do the same.
Maybe you hesitate too. Maybe you want to travel but need that tough love, that affectionate push. Or maybe you need a hand of assistance, or a friend to yap with about your plans and ideas.
Well, tap me in! Consider me your big sister for travel. I put together all the information for you. Hopefully this blog can reduce some of the decision fatigue or anxiety that comes with planning travel.
I overthink so you don’t have to. This website includes trip itineraries, recommendations, guides, budgets, and practical info. Anything that made me think “I wish I knew this before coming here.” You can also find a lot of this in short-form on my socials if you prefer visual learning. 🙂
You don’t have to be rich to travel long term. You don’t need to wear harem pants to stay at a hostel. You don’t have to be fit to see mountaintop views.
In other words, if you want to travel, you can. According to your preferences, your hobbies, and your abilities.
For so long, I tried to fit myself into a specific “traveler” box. I felt imposter syndrome depending on what room I was in. I either traveled too much (“you must be running away from something”) or had barely scratched the surface.
I told myself I am not hippie enough to fit in at a yoga retreat in Bali; I’m not professional enough to rent a desk at a coworking space in Hong Kong; I’m not fit enough to hike the Acatenango volcano in Guatemala.
It took me awhile to discover my personality and my desires as someone who travels. And now I identify as a medium traveler.
When I started planning my travel for me, rather than what I thought I had to do to be a “real” traveler, my whole life changed! That is liberation.
You can build your travel around what YOU like to do. If you like to eat or drink wine, plan your trip around restful days and exciting meal times. If you like to be active, go to a new country and forgo its capital city in lieu of the hiking trails. There are no rules!
The advice I wish a big sister had told me: you could do every activity suggested for tourists, spend your whole trip catering to others’ suggestions, and someone will still ask “why didn’t you do THIS instead?” There is no point in checking things off for the sake of it. Do what makes you happy!
If you are ever in need of travel motivation, I find mine in the lyrics of Billy Joel’s Vienna. There are a few lines that are absolute bangers – the one that hits me directly in the chest is
“You can get what you want or you can just get old.”
No matter what you choose to do with the next year, 5 years, 20 years of your life, the time will pass anyways. I am going to turn 40 in ten years. Whether I spend those years in my home town working a job I don’t like and getting glimmers of joy on some weekends, or I spend those years gallivanting around the world collecting memories and overlapping tattoos. If I learn to speak Spanish, if I write a book, or if I cater to my imposter syndrome and do absolutely nothing, I will still turn 40 on the same day.
A truth that becomes more clear with age is no one is just happy. I dare you to find someone who doesn’t stress about money or hate their job sometimes. Who hasn’t had an existential crisis (or 12)? There will always be chores to get done, bills to pay, doctors appointments to go to, and people you love passing away. It is important to get over the fantasy that we are working towards a goal that will solve all our problems and make us happy all the time.
There is no version of your life without stress and pain. There is no version of your life where it becomes easy to get what you want. So go for it now.
It reminds me of that quote: “the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is right now.”
The advice I wish a big sister had told me: you are going to be old no matter what. How you choose to fill your days now is the stories you will be sharing with your grandchildren. So many people choose safety, choose hesitation and self doubt. But we only get one chance at life, so we should live it exactly according to what we want to do.
If other people can do it, you can do it. If you want to do it, you can do it. So stop thinking about it and just do it already.