The Beginning (Part 3/3) – My route, my backpack and budget resources

My Route

After a lot of iteration on my schedule, my route and the way I would move from one place to another. I create my final route for this journey.

My Route. I'm glad to show it. I'll keep updating any changes.

The best thing of having a route and a schedule it’s that, little by little, I realized that I can change it at will. That nothing it’s written in stone and that if I want to stay a couple more days in one place I can do it, and it’s OK. It’s a freedom feeling.

There are some key days that I have to respect. For example, my first destination was Manila. To there, and from there, I already bought my air tickets, so I can’t extend my stay. But from Malaysia to China, I’m traveling by land. So If I decide to stay more in one place and less in other, I can totally do it. That is part of the joy on this long term traveling.

There are some changes from the first map that I share. This is because, there are a lot of places that have high Visa Cost and due transportation and connectivity between them and other places I prioritize to visit. Those left behind countries are now on my bucket list of places that will be part of my next journey, I hope.

My Backpack

Because of the extended length of the journey, I felt that I needed a huge bag, however, a medium size travel backpack it’s more than enough. According to Rolf Potts, in Vagabonding, the smaller your luggage, the better you’ll travel. Rolf statement it’s extremely accurate, but you will only fully understand this until you hit the road.

At the beginning I had 4 bags with me. They were from different sizes and purpose. I brought them with me, just because I was able to carry it. I felt like playing Lego with them. Moving them around, trying to create something cool and useful. However on my first 2 days, I get rid of 1 of those bags.

On the road, you become really selective and objective with your stuff. If it’s useful you keep, otherwise you say good bye to it. My luggage in general it’s getting smaller in every stop that I’m doing. Right now I’m just traveling with my backpack (Master Roshi’s Shell) and my little backpack where usually you keep your most valuable items. This is a traveler, and a common sense, rule. If I need to take one thing of my luggage, it will only be my small bag, the rest you can replace it easily wherever you go.

My ideal backpack, for this specific journey will be:

-1 pair of jeans

-4-5 Shirts

-7 sets of underwear (boxer’s and socks) – IDK about bras sorry to the female readers.

-1 swimming suit

-1 Casual Short

-2 Athletic Shorts

-1 Pair of Walking Shoes

-1 Pair of Athletic Shoes

-1 Pair of Sandals

-1 Jacket

-1 Towel

-1 Blanket (This one because I stole it from my sister :p)

-A Small bag where you can carry your toiletries.

-My Computer, and other gadgets… They’re my toys, despite several recommendations on not bringing them, I decided that it’s a weight I’m willing to carry.

-Passport

-Money Bag

-Journal

I think that’s it.

Through this journey, I’ll be on hot weather, because I’ll visit tropical countries and because it will be summer in all the other places.

My Backpack. La viajera

My Resources

For doing a long term trip, there are a lot of myths. The most common is that requires a lot of money to do it. However, if you’re willing to go budget, and use some of the advantages of today Social Networks, you can save a lot of money and be able to meet great people in the processes.

One of the rules of this trip is to never stay in a Hotel. Just stay in: hostels, Airbnb, friend’s houses or at a Couchsurfing Host.

Airbnb, it’s a website where you can rent a room in someone else property, but that property is not necessarily a hotel, or guest house. There are a lot of people that they have a second house, and apartment and they rent it, usually you rent it for a couple of months or years. On Airbnb, they rented more in a retail kind of way.

On Airbnb people rent places without a contract, just for a couple of days (like a hotel). The business model, in my opinion, it’s to sell in retail, and break the monolithic contracts in the renting industry.

An analogy for this can the selling of cigarettes pack. Let’s imagine that selling the whole pack it’s the normal renting industry. Airbnb, open up the pack and sells you cigarettes by unit. In this way, more people can access, although, you might have to pay a higher price per night, than if you rent the apartment for months. You can get really good places, for the price of a hostel night. Give it a try.

The view from my Airbnb place at Penang, Malaysia. $10 USD per night.

Now Couchsurfing. This is one of the main reasons that enables me to do this journey. Couchsurfing it’s an online community of hosts and guests. There are people around the world that they have a couch to share, they want meet and interact with foreigners or travelers, and they’re kind enough to tell it the world.

With Couchsurfing, you can be hosted by a person for a couple of nights, free of charge. However, it’s not a hotel. If you do Couchsurfing, the general assumption is that you want to talk and interact with your host. You will share more than just a couch, you can share experiences, food, skills, etc. It’s a way of knowing people, travel on budget and have a great time.

With Dennis, my first Couchsurf Host in Manila

Also, one of my biggest resource it’s that I’m lucky enough to be part of the KDI Alumni, which is one of the most complete professional networks in the world. In our school we’re surrounded by people of more than 70 different countries. It’s a truly globalized environment. You learn, and become friends, with people of Mozambique and Kazakhstan. I learn a lot of Muslim Culture, and I learn, in general to be open minded.

There are prejudice in all of us, I think it’s part of how humans work, but interacting with such a diverse group of people, makes you think differently. You understand that value judgment of good or bad are irrelevant, all cultures are different, they all have different history and we are all right and wrong.

While in school, I gain a lot of friends and colleagues. With this said, I had the chance of making friends for life, that I will visit trough this trip, with some of them I will stay, with others I’ll meet and have a dinner, but with all of them I know I’ll have a great time.

With Tebbie, one of my KDI Classmate

Well, this is the end of my beginning, on how this journey started, my purpose and some guidelines of my journey in general.

I strongly recommend if you’re planning to do a long term journey, please read Vagabonding from Rolf Potts.

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This trip started on March 3^rd, when I left South Korea to visit Philippines. On March 11^th I flew to Kuala Lumpur and since March 20^th I’m in Thailand. I will keep on posting a little about my perception of this countries and some of my experience.

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Special Thanks for all the people that have offer their couch and hospitality with me. I’m deeply thank you with you, and I hope I can repay you when you come to my country or to any other traveler that indirectly receive my hospitality on your behalf. 

The Beginning (Part 2 of 3) - My Purpose

Imagining my trip was a lot easier than planning it. I started to understand the actual limits of my idea. I end it up doing a reality check. For example I was wondering, how much time I’m willing to stay abroad, how am I going to support myself? Am I going to do it alone? What do I want to do? Is it truly worth it? And it was when I hit this two questions, when I decided to stop, and give a serious thought about what I was doing.

I started a "push-back" process, that’s when you have a negative or unfavorable reaction to and idea. Something like the “devil’s advocate” in the canonization process. Probably, I started doing this as way of confirming the solidity of my decision.

When I was working as a business analyst, and while studying economics, I learned to always evaluate different scenarios of any project, or estimation. To support my hypothesis with rigorous assumptions and try to figure out stress scenarios to my analysis, in order to be accurate on my suggestions, or at least be confident enough to present them to my bosses or professors. I think every economist learn how to be a strong critic, to test their own work, and their colleagues.

Doing this exercises helped me become more confident while presenting my work. It helped me to defend mine ideas against others and against myself. So I did this with this trip. I wanted to convince myself, in a more realistic way, that this journey was worth it, that all my other scenarios weren't as attractive as these one, or that this was the most beneficial thing to do for me. I wanted to convince myself.

First I needed to find my purpose on this trip is, what do I want to do while being on a long-term journey. And this is what I came up with:

1)      I want to find a better way of being me. While growing up, I've always had something to aim or reach for, there is always predetermined path that I’ve followed. In school, everyone is trying to get a degree, it's a straight forward goal for everyone. Professors, school, community, family and peers challenges you to reach your goal. There is a whole social structure that decide the right path and incentives that pushes kids and young people to a education goal.

Once you go to a job, you have a different incentives and paths. You start being economically independent, which it always feel good, you start growing yourself outside family and became more like your own individual. However, during 8 hours a day, if not more, your purpose is given by someone else. You work to reach certain goals in someone else company or project, which is not bad, but is a vested path to our lives. There are some cases, like when you're your own boss, where your work and decisions are translated as your own path. But, usually you go to a firm, look for a job, you follow a career path, and you're actions are driven by the company you work for.

My main purpose on this journey is to learn how to challenge myself, how to reach my own goals, how to live my life. I want this to be a "stress test" of what I'm able to do, how I'm able to be happy, how I can grow within my own path. At the time of thinking this, I couldn’t avoid thinking on my elementary school teacher, she used to leave the classroom and say “Behave properly, you don’t need the police to be always on top of you”. I will translate this into live properly. Traveling for 7 months is not a wild vacation, is living my life abroad, being myself under different and constantly changing situation. I will behave like me and I will be free in my own way, without peer, family or social pressure. Hopefully, at the end of the journey, I will be freer in my own way.

It make sense? Well, it's weird for me too, but I truly feel that I will be born again, not of what I will do or meet, but because I’m deciding for myself and being true to myself. “True will set you free” John 8:32. It’s just a quote.

There are people, who I deeply admire, that they found themselves in their daily life, in their routine. There are people that are self-aware of themselves and their surroundings. They understand what it takes to be happy in life. They discover it by themselves. Hopefully this trip take me closer to that group of people, and if not, at least I tried.

In a few words, I want to manage myself. I want to learn to manage my own objectives, my own resource and my own pace in order to get outcomes that I truly desire: happiness, which is not a something or someone, but a way of live life.

2)    Explore the world. The second pillar of my journey it’s to grasp and live, a little bit, of what is out there. As a Salvadorian, my can be traveled between 3-5 hours. There is no place that you can physically travel that is further than 6 hours of distance. Usually, if you're from San Salvador, you can travel around everywhere you want in less than 30-45 minutes… well at least before the SITRAMSS.

What I mean is that everything it's relatively close. The total opposite of this reality, would be the Trans-Siberian journey from Vladivostok to Moscow, where it takes 6 days on a train to travel from one part of Russia to the next one. This is not only a tourist trip, this is actual mean of transportation and communication that people uses in their lives. Imagine that you need to go to your capital and your only choice is a 6 day train trip (one way) that means, you do have to plan everything perfectly.

Trans-Siberian Map

Source: seat61.com one of the most useful website for train traveling around the world.

Like the Tran-Siberian journey, there are a lot of different and infinite roads that for me as a Salvadorian are unimaginably long. I want to explore part of them. I want to get lost in the road. This is just one part of exploring the world. This is just territorial exploration.

But let's talk about Food! Most of people I know loves food. This mean that I'm a fatty with fatty friends or food it's something everyone enjoys. Exploring the world without trying it different flavors, combinations of ingredients, table manners, etc., would be a mistake.

I want to try different food and assimilate a little bit of the history of food. Eating is a universal part of every human lives. If you know about food, you probably understand a little about the culture. For example, in Korea, there is a dish called “Army Stew”. I LOVE IT! Not just because of its taste, but because of the story behind it. South Korea, in the 1960's, was one of the poorest countries in the world, and they were fighting a war among themselves. This war was one of the many battlefield of the war between US and USSR. Anyway, this stew came up from Korean people that use US Army leftovers of ham and sausages to prepare a meal for their families and communities. That’s why the name of the dish. This story broke my heart, I could empathize what does this meal means to a society at war. I learn to value a lot more this dish.

This is the type of stories and foods I want to try around the world. By the way, Army Stew it’s quite spicy, but mixed with dok and noodles makes a really good combination.

Army Stew (Budae Jigae/ 부대찌개) 

Source: Noob Cook

3)    Meeting locals from every country I visit. There is nothing like a 1 on 1 chat with locals. You explore the country really fast. Meeting locals help you relate a lot of their reality, but at the same time, be astonished about our different customs. Meeting with locals help you put a face to the country. Finding your own ambassador of a specific country. Everyone has something to say and every story is truly interest if you dig into it properly. This is the underlying idea of “Humans of New York” but can be replicate it all over the world. Earth, it's a mix between familiarity and unknown that makes you wonder about origins, intertwine history and current state of different civilizations.

Even though, there are thousands of traveling articles, blogs (this is one of them) and books about how to travel around each county, there is nothing like talking and sharing with locals. They contextualize what you read, they demystify all those "Top 10 things to do…" They can show you that, even though you're in a paradisiac town, or nearby of the most astonish monument of the world, life has more beautiful things to offer and that joy comes from different sources.

They can show you the social and cultural wonders of a country. For example, in the Philippines, when you go for a drinks with friends, you do "tagay", which means that everybody drinks from one cup. Everyone make a circle, and they share conversation and their drink. I was in Iligan, September 2014, and I got the chance to try this with the Basketball Team of IMCC. We were pouring beer, I drink a glass of beer (a small one, not a pint) and then it get refill and goes to the next one. This was far more valuable for me than checking Intramuros, one of the most famous tourist attractions.

Intramuros, Manila

Tagay - One glass drinknig. I hate that I don't have a photo of myself drinking like this. 

Source: becomingfilipino.com

This are my three main goals on this journey. I feel that understanding this and internalizing this made me more confident about the decision. I know that if I apply for a job, I will be able to put my journey experience as part of my resume, because I'm convinced that this year will teach me a lot more of life, people and cultures than any other type of study or internship. I tested that this is far more valuable and unique than any other possibilities of what could I do with my year. I’m happy with my choice… truly and decisively happy with it.

(To be continue)

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On the next and final part I will share my final itinerary and a little more on how I'm planning to make this happening. This is not a solo effort, I needed the help of a lot of people. On my next I will also write about the Philippines, my first stop in this journey. Thanks for all the positive comments I receive on my first post and all the doubts you had about it. With the next post, more concrete thing will appear so I’ll rush myself to write about it.

The Beginning (Part 1 of 3)

One day, early October 2014, I was at Cafe Monster, having my regular Vanilla Latte when I was figuring out what would be my purpose in 2015. I've been having this type of meetings with myself for the last 4 years, and it have helped me to ease my anxiety and hunger for purpose during the year. As big organization plan and budget their next year, I decided to do the same.

This year I felt that I was in a very good position and that I could be more aggressive in my dreams, this was my starting scenario for 2015:

-I was finishing my Master's Degree in Development Policies at KDI School

-I was living in South Korea (I'm a Salvadorian)

-I had no job commitment anywhere in the world

-I have some savings left

-I was just about to turn 26 (International age, for those Korean readers)

With these in my mind, I felt that my options were:

-Find a Job in My Country; it was the logical or the most common and practical thing to do.

-Find a Job Somewhere Else; it was hard, but I had a good CV and I'm confident in myself to risk something for this possibility.

-Creating my own enterprise; Sky is the limit, so why not?

-Travel for a while around South East Asia; I wanted to do it, It will require some savings, and it will delay my abroad experience, however it's not productive at all, just leisure.

After some thinking, several more coffees, and an overwhelming feeling that "This might be my last opportunity", I was headed to traveling for a while in the early 2015. I started doing some brainstorming about what to do? and where to go?, and while procrastinating for a school assignment, I end it up fantasizing about one of my biggest dreams in life: Traveling around the world.

I used an interactive map using Google "My Maps", and I drew a really ambitious journey, after all it was just a dream. While drawing my desired route, I felt myself wondering trough countless places, meeting good and bad people, feeling the freedom of moving and living at my own pace but, at the same time, I started to feel afraid of the challenges that this adventure might bring. I remember thinking "what will happen if I get lost, sick, robbed, scammed, etc.?" These fears are still in my mind, but that day, I just continued doing my map.

I dreamt of traveling around 38 different Countries and I was planning to do it in 10 months! I realize it was going to take the same amount of time that another master degree, but this journey would have more photos, more walking and more memories.

That day, I felt like I started to build my dream; this journey.

That map was sticked to my mind, and the next week I was checking it out, reading about the countries, reading about backpacking and also applying for jobs. At this time, I hadn't decide what I was doing. Little by little, the journey grew in me, and I decided it was my dream, I became a fatalist and told myself "maybe this is it, it's now or never", and while I talked with my roommate, and few other friends about it, I reach an agreement with myself: HABEMUS TRIP!White smoke came out of my head and there I was, decided to this trip, with no idea how to do it, but I was feeling happy that I was starting my journey.

The following weeks, I look up for Visa Requirements, estimated budgets from experienced travelers, and all other type of information that only the fear of the unknown and the joy of your dream can push you to look out for.

I spent around 2 weeks, dedicating 1 hour a day to build up my idea. I was ready to present a strong case to my family. I'm from El Salvador, so my family are huge in my life. I love them, and I care about their opinion, however, I was doing this either way, but I needed to talk to them.

Through our Skype meeting of every Sunday, I talked with them and present my idea, my dream. They reacted, as only they could. I remember vividly their words: "We support you no matter what you decide to do, If you're happy we are happy". I felt like WOW! They truly love me, because it's not easy to detached yourself from a loved one. Have you ever tried? It hurts like hell! But, they've done that with me, and I love them even more. This was the official starting shoot for my adventure. I made a commitment not just to me, but to them. The next couple of days I spread the word and with that I felt my own, socialized pressure: I'm doing this!

(To be continue)

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Thanks for reading my blog and this first part of the beginning of my journey. Please comment and feel free to ask anything. Also, please let me know of any type of grammatical errors that you find or any style suggestions. English it's not my first language, however I want to be better at it. If there is someone out there that wants to help me reviewing and editing my blog, please contact me :)