.png)
10 Life-Lessons I Learned From Traveling All Over Asia
10 Life-Lessons I Learned From Traveling All Over Asia
I spent the past five years
traveling all over the world. I’ve been to all kinds of places and I fell in
love with many different countries. The world is a wonderful place, but there’s
one place that I fell in love with the most.
This place is called Asia.
I’ve been to Thailand, I visited
China and I traveled all over the Philippines. Now, years after I embarked on
the journey of a lifetime, I moved to Thailand. That’s how much I love it.
But it wasn’t always rainbows and
unicorns. I had good days and I had bad days. I experienced what love and
happiness really means, but at the same time I also learned that not every
smile in the Land of Smiles is real.
The experiences I made, the
people I met, and the things I learned on the road are worth more than every
college degree in the world. Today I want to share some of these lessons with
you. Maybe I can inspire you to hit the road and to make your own experiences.
1. The Western Culture is Far from Perfect
Sometimes we Western people are a
bit arrogant, especially when it comes to our culture. We assume that our
culture is the best and that the world has to bow to our will. While believing
this, we love to ignore all the positive aspects of other cultures. We see the
negative aspects, but are blind to the positive ones. This is extremely
dangerous. This assumed superiority makes us blind to our own faults and flaws.
I just have to think about the little word “respect”. Compared to every Asian
culture I know of, the West sucks when it comes to respect. If we weren’t so
blind to other cultures, we could improve some aspects of our own culture. Deep
down we know that we are not perfect. We just don’t want to accept it.
2. Some People Have Real Problems
Have you ever heard of the Smokey Mountains
in the Philippines? It’s a mountain of garbage. But it’s more than that.
It’s the home to thousands of people who live there. The reason why this place
is called Smokey Mountains is because of the constant smoke that comes from
burning garbage and tires. I’ve been there and I’ve seen how the poorest of the
poor live. And you can believe me one
thing. I get really angry whenever I see one of those videos in which some
spoilt Western child cries because the IPhone is black and not white. This
makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve never cried because of the color of a
smartphone, but I remember days in my life where I complained about the most
ridiculous things. Not anymore. Once you see that there are people in this
world who have real problems, your so-called problems end in smoke.
3. Asian People Have Better Manners than Western People
Sorry, but that’s just how it is.
Asian people have better manners than Western people. The only impolite, disrespectful,
and downright rude people I met on my trip through Asia where Western tourists.
It’s sad but true.
I mean, there is a reason why
some Asian people don’t respect Western tourists. You just need to walk on
Khaosan Road in Bangkok after midnight. It’s not a beautiful picture. I met
quite a few Asian people who told me that they think that Western people are
crazy drunk idiots who don’t have any manners. I can understand it. Imagine a
mob of drunk Asians would walk up and down in front of your house, screaming
weird stuff and falling down every two meters. That’s how some Asians feel
about us. And that’s why I say “no” whenever one of my friends visits me in
Thailand and asks me to go to Khaosan Road.
4. The Attention Will Boost Your Ego
Are you a white man? Then you
will get a lot of attention in Asia. You might not get any attention in Bangkok
or Manila, because the people are surrounded by white male expats, but if you
travel to rural parts in the Philippines, you will get attention…a lot of it. People
will make photos of you. They’ll look at you as if you were Tom Cruise. And the
women will love you. They will be all over you. I will never forget this one
day where I was in a mall in a smaller city in the Philippines. Every girl in
the mall looked at me. I felt like a celebrity. And no, I don’t tell you this
because I want to brag. I tell you this because I want to warn you…
5. Your Ego is Your Biggest Enemy
Thanks to all the attention, I
quickly realized that my ego was my biggest
enemy. Your ego is a
fragile construct and the more you boost it, the more you turn into a person
you don’t want to be. I experienced this firsthand. The more time I spent
around people who admired me because of the color of my skin the more arrogant
I became. I feel ashamed to admit it, but there’s a high chance that you will
experience the same. It’s easy to feel like the king of the world when everyone
and their grandmother want to take a picture for you, but it’s even easier to
lose control over your own emotions. The feeling of being invincible is not as
healthy as it sounds.
6. Vitamin D Can Kill Your Depression
Are you feeling depressed? Take
some Vitamin D. No, I’m not working for a supplement company and I don’t get
any compensation for this recommendation. It’s just a life-lesson that I
learned while traveling all over Asia. I stumbled upon the power of Vitamin D
by accident. I asked myself over and over again why I was so happy when I
traveled in warm and sunny Asian countries and so depressed when I visited
Japan at a time when the sun didn’t say hello once. I did a lot of research and
I discovered that a Vitamin D deficiency is one of the top reasons for
depression, mood swings and negative feelings. Usually, you get Vitamin D
through the sun, but if there’s no sun, you don’t get enough Vitamin D. Do your
own research. It changed my life and it might change yours.
7. Not Every Smile is Real
Asian people are very friendly.
They smile all the time, especially in Thailand. It’s easy to assume that they
all want to be your friends and that they are genuinely nice people. Don’t get
me wrong. Some of them are. I have many friends in Asia and I love my Thai
girlfriend more than anything in this world. She smiles most of the time.
But be careful. Not every smile
is real. There are many friendly people in Asia, but some of them use this
friendliness to fuck you over big time. That’s just how it is. Please don’t
make the mistake and assume that everyone who smiles is a nice person.
8. People are Not What You Think They Are
We have certain stereotypes in
mind whenever we visit a new country. And most of the time these stereotypes
are wrong. Just thinking about all the stereotypes that I had in mind before I
traveled to Asia makes me doubt my own sanity. I was convinced that all Thai
women are bar girls. I was convinced that Chinese people eat their dogs. I was
convinced that…I don’t even want to continue. Well, only a tiny percentage of the women in Thailand work in bars and I
actually met quite a few Chinese people who walked their dogs without putting
salt and pepper on them. People are not what you think they are. Don’t allow
stupid stereotypes to influence your opinion before you have booked your
flight.
9. Love Can Hit You Out of Nowhere
This is one of the most
important, most beautiful and also most painful life lessons that I learned
from traveling all over Asia. Love can hit you out of nowhere and there’s a
high chance that it will hit you when you expect it the least. It happened in
my life and I met a lot of couples on the road who also met when they neither
expected it nor wanted it to happen. I love my girlfriend with all my heart,
but when I met her I wasn’t really ready for love. I was a restless soul and I
thought that settling down would be my death. Little did I know that falling in
love with this beautiful Thai woman was the best thing that could ever happen
to me.
10. Home is Where Your Heart is
Do I really end this article with
such a cheesy proverb? Yes, I do. And I do it because it’s something that I had
to learn the hard way while being back in Europe. Even before I met my
girlfriend I knew that I wouldn’t stay in Europe forever. But after I met her I
was sure that I would leave. There’s just one place in the world where I feel
at home and that’s where my heart is. You can deny it as much as you want, but
the same is true for you. If your heart belongs to another place or person, you
won’t be happy until you move. My heart is in Thailand and that’s where I
belong. Say hi when you stop by.
GUEST POST AUTHOR
Sebastian Harris is the world’s one and only international
dating crash test dummy whose mission is to help you to
find and attract the foreign woman of your dreams! Ultimate
dating coach for Asian folks – catch him here: https://www.globalseducer.com/.
****
Work with me! Want to
guest post? Please send an email to: bowdywanders@gmail.com, send me a tweet at @bowdywanders, or leave a comment at http://www.bowdywanders.com/ :-)
[CAFÉ COFFEE] Read the rest of the Café-Coffee Features Series:
0 Wandering Thoughts: