Inspire Your Travel Bug

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It’s funny how a song can bring back so many memories.

I had been having a bad day a few days ago, I was tired of the heat and constant sweating, annoyed at the quality of the wifi in Laos (I had missed Mother’s Day and wasn’t able to talk to my parents properly in weeks), and just plain fed up with the way things run here in Asia (not really a big deal but with everything piling up even the small things were getting to me).

I hadn’t listened to music pretty much the entire time we’ve been travelling but I was going through my songs trying to find one for the video I had just made when I stumbled on a playlist I had made back in Australia, when my year there had just started, Will and I were still so new at the time and everything was fresh and exciting. It was the song Jubel, which had been greatly popular that year and was one of mine and Will’s “Australia theme songs”, I’m sure all you travellers have your own, and if you were in Aus back in 2013-2014 Jubel is probably one of them.

Listening to it was just what I needed, a reminder of all the good things, all the adventures and memories traveling has given me, a reminder of why I travel and why I’m still going. You forget to appreciate the little things, like smiling kindly at the locals who bark at you “Tuk tuk? Tuk tuk?” who are only trying to make a living, you stop taking those extra pictures, thinking it’s just another temple, another water fall, another market, when in reality you’ll regret it later. You forget to eat all the local food you can because you’ve gotten so tired of eating the same thing and would give anything for a nice juicy burger, when really, once you get home all you’ll be craving are those god damn delicious baguettes from Vang Vieng, those spring rolls in Luang Prabang, that Pad Thai from that little corner restaurant down that alley on Koh Phi Phi, or that delicious Vietnamese BBQ from that sidewalk restaurant with those tiny plastic chairs (if you can even call them that, they’re more like step stools) in Hanoi. You forget why you started travelling in the first place. It had been my dream my whole life, to travel the world, to live aboard, to be somewhere other than Canada and Australia was the start of it all. I went from day dreaming about my dreams to living them.

Travelling long-term is tough sometimes, sometimes all you want to do is give up and go home, you lose sight of how beautiful each country is and it all just becomes a blur, forgetting that not too long ago you would have given anything to be exactly where you are now.

So from one long-term traveller to another, there will always be bad days and there will always be moments of doubt and frustration but just grab your music put in your headphones, find a playlist you know has music from happy days and just have a listen, guaranteed you’ll feel better afterwards.

And if that doesn’t do it check out these awesome travel videos for some inspiration: