21 Actually useful things long term travel will teach you

After spending roughly a year and a half on a solo budget tour, I've compiled a list of actually useful in day to day life, the-universe-is-definitely-not-sending-you-signals things I've learned. This isn't everything. It's not even the tip of the iceberg, and granted, not all of this stuff will stand true for someone who's going island hopping in Fiji or on a luxury cruise. As with everything, the journey is what you make of it. But here are 21 reasons to go travel, as if you needed them:

1. To wake up early.

99% of my life I was convinced there is no valid reason I should ever wake up before 11. Not even if the neighborhood was on fire. No, really, it was on fire. Slept through the whole event. My family still laughs at me for it.

I now rarely wake up later than 8:00, even on weekends. What happened? Not much. While traveling I genuinely WANTED to wake up early, to do and see everything. I didn't have the TIME to lay around in bed. And because I became happily aware of time and how I can choose to spend it, if I sleep in I feel like I'm wasting opportunities.

I'll get tons of extra sleep when I'm dead. Unlike this little guy on the right.

2. Change your face.

Granted this is a kind of weird thing to say, 'cause I’ve been living my life with just one face . Anyway why am I giving my own looks so much credit? What an ego-maniac I am. Well, yes, but that’s not what we're going to discuss. The thing is, people will respond to the face you’re making. Your face is your business card -especially when you travel. Your smile is an invite, your downcast eyes and sad gaze is a “closed” sign on the door to a million potential friendships. To invite good people, you gotta at least look like "good people".

And this is true no matter where you are or what you're doing, but becomes more pronounced when you're out of your comfort zone.

Change your face and you will attract what you're looking for.

3.Kick bad habits

I kinda hinted at this in point 1, but when it comes to habits, it can go both ways. You'll either kick bad habits or gain new ones, and it really all depends on you and your head-space. If you're looking to fill a gap in your life, your more likely to pick up bad habits. You might spend your journey partying and find yourself doing questionable drug cocktails off of a stripper's ass somewhere in Brazil. Power to you.

If you're out here to discover, to learn, to grow, you're more likely to quit habits that prevent you from doing that. Whether its smoking -because cigarettes are hard to come by in the Sahara, drinking, reading gossip, chocolate, binge watching Netflix, waking up late, or needing a daily dose of caffeine (OK maybe more than daily), you'll find that there are things more important to you than getting your fix. The best part is, it will feel pretty nice to know you can and have flourished without them.

4. Project management

When I’m not writing blogs nobody reads and gallivanting around the planet I moonlight as a project manager, so trust me when I say the following: long term travel is the best lesson in GOOD project management I have ever had, and likely will ever have.

There’s nothing to test your scheduling, planning, networking, communications and budgeting skills like needing to get to a flight in the capital of Turkmenistan yesterday on 7$ when the next leg of your journey is in Georgia in -2 hours and your bags are gone and no one will sell you a decent horse for less than 10$ and a pack of gum. Your friend has your pack of gum and he was supposed to meet you in the next town today but the border is closed due to an unexpected festival and now here you are, no gum, no horse, negative time and insufficient funds.

Traveling long term inherently means that even if you meticulously plan out everything, it’s more likely that everything you plan mid–long term will turn out not much like you imagined. This forces you to be resourceful, opportunistic, spontaneous yet calculated, to plan in stages and milestones, to give buffers and slack time, to foresee risks and mitigate the right ones, to analyze critical paths etc etc. All the goodies that make a PM froth at the corners of the mouth like a hyena with rabies.

Planned: 3 days in S.Korea.

Not Planned: grade 50000 ankle sprain falling off a....handicap ramp. The irony.

5. How to pack

Be it in cubes, spheres, triangles, dry bags, wet bags (ew), You. Will. Be . A pro. You will no longer remember how to handle closet space without filling it to the last centimeter of IKEA's wet dreams. You will show up to peoples’ houses and start compulsively rolling their t-shirts into tight little cylinders until you find yourself giving Snoop Dogg-narrated YouTube videos on the subject. You quit your day job and begin combating Marie Kondo fans in a world wide campaign to prove that minimalism is nice but have you ever added a 6th shirt to your wardrobe? Life changing.

Yes. Even if that particular shirt doesn't bring you joy.

6. How to say NO

Awkward conversations, political conversations, not-cool-man conversations, conversations that took a turn-for-the-worst, conversations you just generally don’t care to be having. You will encounter these so often you will learn how to pull out of these before you impregnate. You'll learn there's a time to hold your ground, and a time when it's simply not worth the hassle. For many, learning how to say NO comes with age.

But the challenges of being on a journey can certainly speed up the process and teach you when it is important to stand your ground.

and thus...

7. How to get what you want

Sometimes, we know what we want, or even what we need, we just don't know how to go about getting it. Traveling kind of forces you to try. Maybe it's because you think you'll never see these people again, or because you have no choice. Either way you'll find yourself fighting for something, unable to give up and doing what you can to make what you want happen. If you're like me - generally a go with the flow, ambivalent type- traveling will teach you to not give up, and not be afraid to make demands, until you get what you need.

8 How to talk to anyone

Where are you from, how long have you been traveling, where are you headed next. These are the “what do you do for a living” cocktail hour small talk questions every backpacker knows and loves/hates. Only it’s most likely over a beer and pasta rather than cocktails and caviar bites. Equipped with these and other friendly convo starters, the shiest of us learn how to strike up conversations at the drop of a hat. This begins to carry over into other aspects of life and before you know it you are cucumber-level cool when chatting with people who used to make your hands awkwardly clammy.

There's a certain mental breakthrough when you're capable of befriending people without knowing or expecting what, if anything, will come of it.

Sometimes, by fluke, you'll find people who stick around.

A brunette walks into a bar, asks everyone at the bar if they want to be friend. Everyone says yes. The end.

Tokyo, japan

9. Create bonds with people you’ve only known a few weeks, days, or even hours.

Yes yes, hours. Traveling can some times put us in extreme situations where both the best and worst of our characters come to light. In these moments you see people for what they are, stripped of their facades and the roles they generally play in the “Real world” (I don’t like that term, but we’ll get to that soon), you have no walls up to guard you and nothing to hold back.

This is the beauty of the friendships and relationships that are formed on the road.

10. People are shitheads

Most definitely, you will come across some die-hard shitheads. People that are dutifully committed to making the world a generally crappier place to live in. Wanna know something else? You won’t remember them. I promise. I’m sure they were there, but I can’t recall a single one off the top of my head. Which leads me to my next point.

11. Not to give a fuck

If you read the bestselling quasi-self-help book of a similar title then you’re probably already clued in. But just in case, you’ll find that several months of globetrotting teaches you to just NOT CARE about the shit that’s not worth caring about. Got scammed? Phone stolen? Deserted mid-trek? Kicked out of your hostel? Doesn’t fucking matter. You learn how to handle these seeming crises with poise. You don't need to control your aggravation, but instead realize that most things are not worth getting worked up over. You will pick up, move on, and forget all about it in no time.

Why? Because you will also

12. Learn to fall in love

People will surprise you. You'll find that they can pretty damn amazing. I mean, bring-you-to-tears, unbelievably amazing. The kindness, generosity, brightness, pure joy you encounter will leave you dumb-founded with gratitude and inspiration. And, you guessed it, these are the ones you will remember. You may never even know their names but their smiles will be engraved in your mind. And THEY will most likely be the reason you fall in love with a place. Any place. No matter how shitty it actually is.

13 How to negotiate

Some people are natural born negotiators. They walk into a business, let's take Starbucks for example, and ask for a cup of coffee. 15 minutes later they emerge from the glass doors holding a bar of pure gold, the CEO’s pants, the barista’s number AND, to put the icing on the cake, their name spelled correctly on their coffee cup. Bastards.

This is not me, I am a born shitty negotiator. I always found bargaining to be disrespectful. It’s basically telling someone you think their life-sustaining source of income isn’t worth what they think it is. Like someone would now say to me, Hila, your writing is crap.

Fair enough. I’m not getting paid anyway. But if I were I’d be offended. That’s why I’m surprised that traveling was able to teach me how to effectively bargain without feeling like an asshole or degrading the other party’s service or product, but still coming to an agreement we find mutually beneficial.

I’m proud to say I’m now confidently able to tell my boss I appreciate his laughable attempt at avoiding giving me a raise but he can go fuck himself, kindly. Respectfully. And in the most beneficial way possible.

14 Not to wear make up

Granted this one only directly applies to only about 55% of the world population, but females make up the majority of solo travelers. And even if you're a guy, you might benefit from knowing this.

Quick bio. Before I went to off to backpack the world, I hardly ever left my house without make up. I don't know why. Some days I even felt prettier without it, but it was sort of ingrained that it's expected of me to look "put together". When you're backpacking the only thing "put together" is the stuff you've been lugging on your back, in the best case scenario. You don't have the space, time, or energy to be dealing with contouring your cheek bones. Half the time you'll sweat it off within minutes. The outcome is not only feeling more comfortable in your own skin, but also quite obviously, letting your skin freakin breathe.

actually I'm not wearing make up in any of these, but here's another for good measure

15 How to get by on peanuts

If I can only tell you how many times I hung on to a used ziplock bag (What? They're useful!), wore something out until it was no longer wearable, and got rid of everything that I just couldn't be bothered to carry, be it a lamp or a pair of socks. Even after returning to a "normal" life, I found myself accumulating less stuff. Not only do I not care to have an array of IG worthy beach outfits, I also find I've reassigned my values (and my cash) to more meaningful causes.

There's this great line in Big Fish where Danny Davito tells Ewan McGregor's character "you don't got much, but you've got a lot of it". Traveling long term will not only teach you to get by on very little - whether its money, clothing, food, human contact, cellular data, whatever- but also how to appreciate the little you have. By doing so, you turn your gaze outwards to the things that aren't yours, but you're apart of. Like that kickass sunset.

The bottom line is that getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is the art of perseverance. Or something like that.

16 How to Hustle

It ain't where I been but where I'm about to go- said Jay Z and Cassidy circa 199something.

True to his word, being a hustler is kind of a journey. For some people its innate, like bargaining. I'm a born hustler for better or worse. Few and far between are the days that I'm not working at something. My full CV has more deviations than a statistics report. I've done film voice overs, built websites, cleaned rooms, drafted contracts, reviewed blueprints, taught yoga, traded stocks, etc. All in a day's work. I'm not a hero, I just hustle. If this isn't you, traveling long term will teach you. You'll be out there looking to volunteer, do side-gigs, learn new skills etc. you'll try things you'd never imagine you'd be good at, and maybe you're not- but maybe, just maybe, you are. Hell, you might find your "true calling".

17 Figuring out what you do/don't want to do

Knowing what you don't want to do is pretty easy. You'd think. Ask yourself if you want to mop floors for a living. I'd venture to guess most people would say no. But I can tell you that having mopped a floor or two on my route, I find it to be in many ways more pleasant than some of the "important" jobs I've done. When you travel, contrary to popular belief- the universe is unlikely slap you in the face with your grande purpose and destiny. But if you expose yourself to enough opportunities, you might find out a little more about yourself, and you can take that information and funnel it into a little life goals assessment.

You may be surprised by what you conclude.

18 Communications

I don’t know exactly where I was, but I know the words that came out of my mouth per verbatim when I was asked, in broken English, how long I would be there. “I here, 2 day. I more here, 3 week.” Yes, this was a sentence.

And I hold a degree in English.

English isn't your mother tongue? Good.

Nothing says newbie traveler like someone who doesn’t know when it’s time to drop the tense conjugations, predicates, and whatever nonsense they teach you in third grade grammar. In fact, you may want to go into miming. Because often time making obscure visuals with your hands works better. An unreasonable amount of my time in Myanmar was spent walking around establishments doing the chicken dance like an excited kindergartner. There's nothing wrong with communicating in the language most of us are at least 60% fluent in- the one that involves your boday. Learning to rely on your instinctive language allows you to understand people beyond words, through observation and empathy. And observation, my friend, is a damn useful tool. Empathy, however, is pretty useless. As long as you're a sociopath.

19 Building immunity

Serious illness aside, at one point or another you’ll likely have not a single clue as to what it is that you just put in your mouth.

But enough about my wild night in Bangkok. Let’s talk food. I can’t name the number of times someone gave me a bowl of something unknown and after attempting to inquire after it’s origins, I gave up and chowed down. At this point my stomach is either lined with the remainders of Panzer tanks or there’s a whole biome of scientifically non-classified organisms eating me alive from the inside. I’ll let you know when I do.

There's this widely held theory that the human immune system becomes lazy when we live in near-sterility.

One week in India should fix that for ya.

guess

20 How to truly master diet and exercise.

In the day-to-day life it’s easy enough to order a salad to the office and hit the gym after hours. On a journey you may not hear the word salad for months and you get your physical activity from actual activities like hiking, climbing, swimming, etc. You may not do these things regularly let alone everyday or multiple times a week. And depending on how broad of a region you’re traveling through, what you eat might vary greatly. You'll eventually figure out what physical activity you actually love and therefore can stick to, and what food makes you feel less like a fuzzy sloth. Eventually, you'll find out what actually does and doesn’t work for you in the real world.

Wait.

The what?

Girl whatchu jus say??

21 Where the real world is.

We’re taught, almost from day one, that the real world is where all young, hopeful, motivated and confident souls, fresh out of the nest and prepared to conquer the world…go to die. It usually comes after some lengthy period of schooling. But whatever that is or was for you, that most definitely is not the real world. The problem is, I don’t have an alternative for you. I can’t explain to you what the real world is in simple words. It would take a novel. Maybe two. And I’m pretty sure it’s not even the same for everyone. But if you have a hunch I might be right, then the best I can do is urge you to go out there and find it. Because it’s definitely not where they told you it would be.