The secret to having an authentic experience - every time you travel
At 11pm at night, feeling my mattress squelch as I rolled over, on a soggy fishing boat, I realised: this is the secret sauce...
Lifestyle
Don't miss out on the headlines from Lifestyle. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The stars shone. The boat rocked. Silver pelagic fish jumped. The inky sky pressed down on my face. I rolled over in my blanket and felt a gentle breeze nibble my ear.
Bliss.
If it wasn’t for the occasional chirping of the crew’s phones (maybe Candy Crush?) or the blinking safety light on top of the boat's tender, this could have been a scene out of the deepest, darkest Sumatra - a tropical setup unchanged for centuries.
I congratulated myself on my deft choice of sleeping arrangement, thinking how cool it was to be sleeping on top of a boat. Then it began to rain.
Though the downpour drenched my hopes of a good night’s sleep, it did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for spreading the gospel of travelling via your hobbies.
In my case, on this boat in remote Indonesia, exploring the Mentawais, I had simultaneously the best and worst trip of my life.
But I don’t regret it.
This is because I had the time of my life not just from a surfing point of view, but also a social one, having met - and got close to - people I would never interact with back at home.
Thinking back on all the trips that permanently "altered by brain chemistry" (as they say on TikTok), I’ve come to the conclusion: hobbies are the best way to explore a destination.
Here are some reasons why.
It's more authentic
Before I wax lyrical about how to have an authentic travel experience, what is an authentic travel experience? For me, an authentic travel experience is one where you're being yourself, and the people you're with are being themselves. It's that simple. This is why I prefer to explore destinations via my hobbies rather than by going to a fancy resort and having staff perform a song and dance for me (or doing a 'village tour' where the locals pretend to act authentically for my consumption).
Yes: the cook on my budget surf charter boat might have glowered at me when I asked for more rice, and mocked how I kept asking him for more inconvenient things (namely, food) by saying sarcastically "oh thank you, thank you, f**k off, thank you" to his sous chef, when he was particularly stressed, but at least I knew he was being real with me.
Also on authenticity: if you're pretending to be interested in history when you're really not, or culture, when you're really not, alongside a bunch of other people who are also pretending to be interested in history and culture who are really not, then you're probably less likely to form organic blossoming connections with them than you would with a group of people who are all actually rabidly obsessed with surfing, or scuba diving, or hiking, or whatever.
It sounds corny, but if you want an authentic experience, just be yourself. Authenticity attracts authenticity.
You meet outrageous characters - and learn valuable lessons from them
From Hawaii to Morocco, I have a bit of a habit of turning up solo at renowned surf spots, significantly unprepared (i.e. without a hire car) and getting adopted by an older grizzled surf dude. Once, in Morocco, I met another Aussie guy who was about 15 years older than me. We were the only surfers staying in the riad and immediately gravitated towards each other. He'd been there a while and was bored of having no one to talk surf with. I'd just got there and didn't have a car (it was a 3km walk to the wave). It turned out he had worked all over the world on a superyacht, and (he claimed) saved up enough money to buy a piece of land in Mexico and was turning it into a hostel.
He had all sorts of tales of getting stopped by corrupt police while driving his motorbike in Mexico and loved to show off about how he always knew how to handle them. He also gave me hash, which I never planned to smoke, but was too polite to turn down, when he left. I stupidly put it in the side pocket of my bag, intending to throw it out later (it's illegal in Morocco, even if it is fairly widespread), but forgot about it. This led to a heart in mouth moment on my last day when at the very last minute, before leaving my accomodation to cross the border and go back to Spain, I remembered it was still there. That's a big lesson I won't be forgetting in a hurry (never allow social awkwardness put you in a situation where you might get arrested).
You find mentors
Not everyone's crazy. Sometimes you find people more responsible than you. Case in point: last year I met a guy in his late 50s in Hawaii. In classic me style, I had no rental car, and was content with surfing out the front of our accommodation. He started offering me lifts and I bought him a bottle of wine at the end of the week. We still exchange cute "surf's pumping over here" messages on Facebook every now and then now we're both back in our respective cities in Australia. In this way, I've realised, chasing your hobbies around the world can fill in the gaps in the kind of people you've been missing in your daily life (my dad used to surf, but doesn't anymore due to back problems, and I'm pretty sure this guy has kids, but they don't surf).
You find community
Whether you join a WhatsApp social football group, a Facebook roller skating group (which meets up one night a week to blade around the city), or a language exchange, following your hobby when you travel helps you meet new people, and see the city you're in through a local's eyes. It's also a nice way to forge connections with people who you have at least one thing in common with.
You get out of your comfort zone
Is there anything more rewarding than spending a sleepless night with carnivorous butterflies munching at your stomach? With dread steadily increasing like the backing track of Oppenheimer? Before conquering your fears (and having a few celebratory drinks) the next day? It doesn't matter if your thing is surfing, swimming with whale sharks, mountain climbing, skydiving, whitewater rafting or mixed martial arts, wow that's a good feeling.
You learn hectic skills
It's not just me who has found my most priceless travel memories have come from chasing my hobbies. As Simone Mitchell, Associate Digital Editor at Escape recently told me, "I recently travelled to Japan, and spent an evening doing a private cooking class at Cooking Studio Kanazawa."
She added: "A local woman named Moe had converted a traditional town house into a cooking studio. She plied us with a plum spirit she had been distilling under the kitchen table, and gave us a crash course in sake. Needless to say, we had a great night."
"We made a three-course meal together and learned about the traditional ingredients, and chatted throughout. Spending time with a local gave me a heightened understanding of everyday life in Kanazawa and a greater appreciation of how much care Japanese people take when preparing food."
"I will never make an omelette the same way again. I took those cooking techniques home with me. It's a great way of bringing a little bit of the destination back with you - way better than any souvenir you could buy."
You have time to talk
As my partner and I realised on a trip to New Zealand last year, it's cool to like, actually talk to each other. Normally we just work all day, then go home and watch TV, having only conversed about things like "are you working from home tomorrow?" "should we bother going to this thing on Friday?" and "do you want anything from the supermarket?"
On a three day hike (the Routeburn) in New Zealand though, it was a revelation: 12 hours a day of conversation to be filled. And there's only so much you can talk about food, or the views. So yeah: following one of our hobbies (hiking) was great as it gave us the chance to have the sort of deeper conversations we would like to have more regularly. And when we go stay in a luxury hotel, we tend to turn the TV on and follow a similar routine to at home.
You have time to think
Following your hobbies when you travel, especially ones like running or hiking, allows you to indulge in those manic spiralling (in the best way) chats you have with yourself in your own head during most physically meditative activities. I don't know what it is about movement, but I don't have as good internal monologues when I'm sitting in a hotel pool (unless I've had a lot of cocktails).
You connect with nature
If you're like me, and most of your hobbies involve salt water (or crowds of sweaty soccer fans), then deciding where to travel based on your hobbies (rather than what's enjoyable for your friends and family) is a no brainer, as it enables you to feel like part of something greater than yourself (whether that's by swimming with manta rays in Fiji, or walking to the Camp Nou in Barcelona).
You're not expecting a city to do something for you - you're doing something for yourself
Rather than sitting back and expecting a place to throw you a 'fun time,' while you whinge and moan (or expect a miracle) from the sidelines, I prefer to make my own amusement. Unless you're somewhere that innately special (and a lot of that has to do with how you've been conditioned to think about it before you get there) like Paris, or particularly alien to you, which is so different to where you live it shocks you into being 'wowed' without you doing anything amazeballs, I reckon it's always better to be proactive about having a good time.
Though I'm a big fan of, to use a hideously overused phrase, "living how the locals live" to try and wrap your brain around a place, I'm also a fan of remembering what you find fun at home, and re-creating it abroad. Likewise: if you don't find sitting around in cafes and being a foodie that special in Sydney, there's no reason why it would particularly blow your mind in London (that said, some places have better foods than others, and going to them could be what starts you on a new hobby which you then take home - so take this recommendation with a pinch of salt).
More Coverage
Originally published as The secret to having an authentic experience - every time you travel
Could Esther Perel’s new Hinge prompts change the way we date?
Get chatting
Cruise review: The new Oceania Allura
If new-build ship Oceania Allura was an aeroplane cabin, it would be wedged between premium economy and business class. For Champagne on a craft beer budget, Oceania Cruises’ is your go-to.