Why travelling to “find yourself” is absolute rubbish

TRAVELLING to “find yourself” is absolute rubbish. There, we said it. What you really need to do is get over yourself.

OPINION

The full version of this story is available on Vice Australia.

REMEMBER when you were 19, and you went to Ibiza or Bali for the first time and saw a temple and thought “pffft temples”, and then spent the next two weeks getting drunk?

And you were comfortable in that decision because you knew you were “travelling,” and that word alone proved your fondness for cultural exchange and spiritual engagement, while affirming your special sensitivities and unique talents.

Yes, discovering travel was a wonderful thing, and it took you to a lot of kinky and obscure countries throughout your 20s. Only now the curtain is falling on your 20s, and you’re noticing all the other travellers are still 19.

Suddenly you’re at some backpacker’s hostel in Laos, listening to an a***hole strumming “Wonderwall” on their travel ukulele, and an unpleasant thought blunders into your head: Am I too old for this? Have I become a creepy douchebag?

PROBLEM 1: EVERYONE IS OBSESSED WITH FINDING THEMSELVES

Donning a traditional hat and crafting an Insta-worthy photo isn’t finding yourself.

In the history of the world, do you know how many people have found themselves by making out with Germans and falling off motorbikes? None.

In fact, most people go home sick, broke, and rattled after a few weeks.

Also, how many meaningful interactions have you actually had with the honest-living indigenous peoples of (insert country here)? And buying a poncho from someone doesn’t count.

I have a poncho and the label says, “Made in China.”

Ironically I wouldn’t go to a Chinese poncho factory because my brain says, “peace and understanding don’t come from a factory in China,” and yet my memento of peace and understanding did come from a factory in China.

Also, the 40,000 year-old hilltop lady who sold it to me didn’t consider herself to be a purveyor of peace and understanding.

She was just the shop front for some third-world supply chain I didn’t understand.

PROBLEM 2: TRAVELLING MAKES ME RACIST

People from rich countries are irresponsible and cheerfully insensitive. Picture: Paula Bronstein

Not racist in the well-trodden anti-brown people sense.

In fact, Laos showed me how infinitely smarter, nicer, and all-round better the locals were to my own countrymen. They treat foreigners like friends, whereas in Australia we lock up foreigners for simply trying to get a job at Domino’s.

Instead, travelling makes me racist about people from rich countries.

We’re all so annoying. British lads travel about in packs of seven trying to get laid, while consistently being the most sunburnt people in the whole country.

Dutch and Germans just go around the world looking for the most horrifically authentic travel experience the can find. “I hate this town,” they always tell you in a tourist town packed with other Dutch and Germans.

“Last week, we were up in Tkugytfsuyfspoguhfsg, have you heard of that place? No, I didn’t think you would have. It’s very remote. Very remote. They don’t even have people there; it was just us and leeches. We loved it.”

But of all the nationalities, no group of people is more irresponsible and cheerfully insensitive than Australians.

Did you actually bother stopping to talk to locals, like these monks in Luang Prabang?

Our women will go from sober to alcohol poisoning in 15 minutes, and then scream heart-wrenching insults at taxi drivers before slumping asleep in a garden bed.

As an Australian guy, I’m aware we do this too, but with more time up our sleeves before passing out. We use this time to alternate between frothy-mouthed lust and aggression, while pissing on everything we can and stealing drinks from bars and/or religious icons because we think it’s funny.

I could go on, but you get the point.

SO I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE

I’ve become all too aware that backpackers are douchebags and that I’m a douchebag because I’m one of them. But I have a plan.

Next time I travel somewhere, I’m going with a mission. It could be anything. Like I’m going to climb the tallest tree in Japan. Or intern on a film in Nigeria.

Just something that punctures that cultural surface that as a backpacker, is so easy to skim. Just something to do that’s not seeing a temple, or getting wasted.

The full version of this article is available on Vice Australia.

Follow Julian Morgans on Twitter.

Originally published as Why travelling to “find yourself” is absolute rubbish