The Rabbit Hole

Question: How does a girl who falls - no, actually, she jumps, eyes open, down a rabbit hole, plummeting into chaos, come out the other end unchanged?
The answer? She doesn't.

This quote comes from Little Black Book, a chick flick I watched once in high school and again this week on Netflix. It's a movie that has represented my life in so many ways as of late, but regarding travel, this quote says SO much! 

No matter how seasoned anyone is as a traveler, visiting a new place and becoming immersed in a new culture for hours, days, or even months tosses a person into a sort of chaos, a realm of the unknown. There are different levels of preparedness for tackling this sort of chaos, and in a way I thrive off of making sense of the chaos of visiting new places. But this element of uncertainty that is present with any form of travel is a large part of what I believe makes travel so alluring. There is always risk associated with traveling, but with risks come rewards. Not all travel experiences are full of fun and excitement, but all are great adventures in the end. 

There is no way that anyone can come away from those experiences unchanged. Sometimes a trip will only change you a little, but more often than not travel has the power to affect people in profound ways. A lot of people like to say travel helped them learn a lot about themselves. I think that is a great way to learn from your experiences, but seeing the effect of the travel industry on a variety of places I love having grown up in Hawaii and visited family in Thailand over the years, I try not to look at travel in a way that seems so selfish, for lack of a better word. From my perspective, travel and tourism is about the interaction between the locals and the tourists, and both groups come away changed in different ways. So sure, I always learn little things about myself from the trips I have taken, but mostly I love learning more about my place in this world.

Jumping off a (short) cliff on Maunawili Falls at home on Oahu, Summer 2009

Turning 26: The Next Travel Frontier

I'll be turning 26 in a couple weeks, and 26 is a big age in the realm of budget travel. Once I turn 26, I will no longer be eligible for the more common Young Adult/Youth discounts on tickets for museums, train tickets, and other attractions throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world. This saddens me since I was really hoping to do a huge backpacking trip through Europe some time before 26 to take advantage of these deals. But it is what it is, and as I get older, I will turn my travel goals toward the next big age in budget travel: 30. Once I turn 30, I will no longer be eligible for a handful of amazing Working Holiday Visas that exist in magical countries like New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. Many countries offer U.S. citizens (and others) a one or two year visa for work and play if you apply before you are 30 years old. That gives me four years to plan and execute a working holiday year in at least one fun country.

The biggest road block toward accomplishing this in my life is that is difficult to leave a job like mine. I have a very liberal paid-time-off setup, and I really enjoy my job. It's the next best thing to traveling the world. I get to work with maps and plans, and on nights and weekends I get to travel for fun. And within a year and a half, I will qualify to take the American Institute of Certified Planners exam to become a certified city planner. Having that AICP certification is like passing the bar exam for urban planning, and being so close to that goal, I'm not sure that I want to leave just yet. 


So although I don't yet know how it will work out, I have four years to find some way to take advantage of one of those working holiday visas before I turn the big 3-0. I can't wait to make it happen!

Picture from my 25th birthday last year when I was in Savannah, GA for the
National Preservation Conference. I love it when work and travel go together!

Travel Update!

I've been off the blogosphere for a few months since I've been traveling a ton lately! Between catching up at work and catching up on my sleep, I haven't had much time for anything else. But such is the travel life. In order to make travel a priority in my life lately, I have sacrificed the time to do a lot of other things, including working on this blog and sleeping. And when you travel as much as I do, it really gets difficult to balance a full time office job and this fun travel life. It's worth every second of it though! :)

Just to catch y'all up on where I've been since around the time of my last post, here is a map of my travels since July:

If you want to hear about any particular destinations, let me know and I'll cover it in a post! It would help to have a trip to start with :) I can't decide which to show off first!