Fuck me, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written a post, or pretty much anything for that matter (except for the emails to my travel insurance about claiming for the flights we missed, oops), but always better late than never.

 

I got back from the Philippines one week ago now, and naturally thought it would be fitting to move houses approximately seven hours after I’d landed on the runway in Melbourne at 1am. So it’s safe to say it’s been a pretty hectic week - but what’s new.

 

Now I’ve had some time to collect my thoughts on our trip and wow wow wow where do I begin, what a fucking five weeks. I’ve made heaps of content on my TikTok about recommendations and will be making a few posts on here also, but that’s not what this particular post is about. See this as more of a general chit chat, verbal diarrhoea (kind of a fitting term - too far? too far) if you will, of my current thoughts and feelings about backpacking and travelling.

 

I’m now 24 years old (25 later on this year) and whilst I only started travelling 2 and a half years ago, things felt very different as a freshly 22 year old as to how they do now. Christ she’s an old age PENSIONER by the frickin sounds of it. But I met a few people whilst being away that feel similarly about travelling in your mid-twenties compared to when just finishing uni or school and this trip really highlighted that difference to me.

 

Towards the latter end of my trip, I felt myself itching to get back home - an admittance in of itself which feels laden with guilt. But this is not to say that I was having a bad time, or was ungrateful for what I was experiencing. I frankly got to a point in the last five days or so where I was very much just … over it.

 

My cousin and I were at our final stop in Coron. Needless to say, it didn’t help matters that she had food poisoning and we were staying in possibly, no certainly, the worst hostel of the trip, in which the room was as a big as a generously-sized toilet cubicle. One that we were sharing with four guys that unsurprisingly stunk of BO and where the air-con cut out not just once, but twice, and I found myself counting my final moments drowning with sweat in a top bunk at 5am close to passing out from overheating.

 

Anyway I digress.

 

A lot of people I met also mentioned feeling this sort of way (maybe a less dramatised version), which leads me to make quite a controversial statement: IT’S OKAY TO ADMIT THAT YOU WANT TO GO HOME.

 

I was just over a lot of things. I was so over not having my own space or privacy, something I hadn’t really grappled with whilst travelling for that period of time before. I wanted my routine back, to cook myself a meal, to not be eaten alive by mozzies every waking second, to not have to introduce myself for the 50th time and explain that 'yes I’m from Skegness and no that’s not in Scotland'.

 

Fuck me I sound like a whiney little bitch.

 

But there were just points where I wanted to get the fuck back to melbs - which is good in one respect as it shows that I really have found a home here. And, as is the intention of this blog after all, I’m just keeping it real. Whereas some people would assume that to crave these comforts is to be ungrateful for the wonders you’re experiencing in real time, I would strongly disagree. These two feelings (as with many things in life) are not mutually exclusive. I can simultaneously be having an incredible day, standing in awe at the beach that I just arrived at, whilst also missing my friends back home or my morning coffee at my favourite place.

 

One feeling does not negate the other.

 

I think this just ultimately circles back round to the perception of backpacking on social media. Yet when you speak to travellers in real life, so many people feel exactly this way, specifically speaking about becoming desensitised to certain experiences. I definitely relate to this, I almost got to a point where I was thinking 'I don’t know if I do want to go and see another beach' - even though I was in the fucking Philippines for god’s sake.

 

But when your everyday routine becomes intensely heightened, the sights you're seeing and activities you're doing inevitably and unfortunately fall into mundanity as would any routine of life. This is one of the reasons why I think travelling long-term just wouldn’t personally be for me anymore.

 

So after being back for a week, I am happy to be back in my normal life, whilst simultaneously experiencing some holiday blues and recognising the incredible trip that I had: as possibly one of the best I've ever been on and would sing this country's praises to absolutely anyone.

 

But I’ve also accepted that my style of travelling is now best when it's shorter-term, maybe 3 or 4 weeks maximum and that’s absolutely okay. It’s okay to not want to go out every single night, or to turn down the free home-brewed, slightly suspicious-looking, spirit at the hostel, or spend a day chilling by the pool instead of going on an island tour trip, or craving a day on your own - or it’s okay to want to do every single one of those things. You fucking do you. 

 

I just ultimately have a different mindset now, I’ve alleviated the pressure in regards to how I think my trips should be, or what they need to look like, versus how I really want them to be, which is a huge change compared to when I first left the UK, which feels fucking good.