Taken by the Wind » Travel Personalities

Is there such thing as being TOO OLD for a “youth” hostel?

Reannon Muth — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:57:52 +0000

Photo Courtesy of Barnacles Hostel

On my way to Jamaica last week, I had an overnight layover in Miami. Not wanting to spend a lot of money on lodging, I booked a hostel near the airport. After getting off the bus and wandering around lost for an hour (in heels and in the heat), I arrived at the hostel hot and tired and looking forward to ditching my roller-bag and taking a nap.

As soon as I walked into the dorm room, however, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. First, though it was only two in the afternoon, there was already a party underway in the dorm’s common room. Beer bottles lined the coffee table, techno blasted from the stereo system and several people were smoking in the kitchen; using the sink as an ashtray.

After saying hello and dumping my stuff on the bunk bed, I decided that since I wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon, I might as well take a shower. But as soon as I opened the bathroom door, I realized that wasn’t going to happen either, thanks to the naked girl passed out on the toilet in the dorm’s only bathroom.

“Oh! Sorry!” I said, backing away from the open doorway as soon as I saw her. I expected her to hastily stand up and slam the door shut, but she didn’t even seem to register my presence.

“Are you okay?” She didn’t move. Crap, is she dead? I thought. I headed down to the reception desk to find the hostel’s manager (a shirtless, barefoot 30-something), in a fight with the housekeeper.

“Can I help you?” he asked as soon as he noticed me.

“Um, yeah. I’m checking out…” I placed the dorm key on the desk in front of him.

“Why? Is it because of the girl? Cause you can change rooms if you want…”

“Um…you mean the girl passed out in the bathroom?” He knew about her?

“There’s a girl passed out in the bathroom!?” He looked at the housekeeper accusingly, as if he had had something to do with it.

“Yeah. Look. I’m gonna go…” I said, wondering what girl he’d been referring to, but too weirded out by the situation to want to stick around to find out.

Later, after gathering my stuff and wandering down the highway a ways, I found a motel. Though it cost 70 dollars (about 50 dollars more than the hostel had) I was happy to pay it.

Five years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about staying in that hostel. I would have no doubt joined the party; heck, I probably would have been the one to start it. But now, at 29, getting wasted with strangers on a Monday afternoon was the last thing I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was take a hot shower (alone!) and crawl into a comfortable king-size motel bed and sleep.

When I read about travelers like 29-year-old blogger Matt (who’s been bouncing around from hostel to hostel nearly non-stop for the past five years) or about 34-year-old blogger Christine (who not only stays in hostels with her husband but her one-year-old baby), I wonder how they do it. I also wonder whether or not they should.

As Christine explained:

“No one wants to party their way around the world and then find a baby is in the room… especially if they’re from the States. I noticed this taboo pretty quickly as we stayed in a hostel in Bogotá…the American kids were definitely not into the cherubic angel cooing at them from across the room (sort of a buzz kill, me thinks).”

A few months ago, while staying in a hostel in Portland, Oregon, I encountered something similiar. I awoke at six in the morning to get a drink of water and as I sleepily stumbled out of the dorm room barefoot and in my snowman pajamas, I was embarassed to find a 40-something Asian man sitting in a chair in the hallway. Though it was barely dawn, he was dressed in a suit and watching Modern Family on his laptop. It looked as though he’d been up for hours.

We nodded at one another and I patted down my messy hair, feeling both self-conscious and resentful that he’d caught me looking so disheveled. It was Saturday, for crying out loud! He should have been sleeping off a hangover like a normal person.

But he wasn’t the only one up early. There were quite a few other older people chatting in the kitchen over coffee. One guy looked to be in his late 60′s.

“I’m so hung-over,” I overheard him tell a girl. He was clearly trying to relate to us; to let us all know that even though he’d probably been given a senior citizen discount when he’d reserved his hostel room, he was still cool. It was painful to watch and I felt embarrassed for him.

Anyway, what do you think? Does the old adage “age ain’t nothin’ but a number” apply here or do ‘old people’ cramp a hostel’s style?

Why Long-Term Travel Ain’t All That and a Bag of Chips

Reannon Muth — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:31:05 +0000

"To the Clouds" by Claudio Vaccaro

Blogger Tina Su longed to escape the dull routine of daily life and thus, like so many of others who read about ‘mini-retirements’ in The 4-Hour Workweek, she put her job on hold and went on an extended tour through India. A few weeks into her trip however, she realized that the image she’d had of a mini-retirement being a glorious escape filled with ‘spiritual growth’ and ‘creative stimulation’ was an idealistic and romanticized one. Though she’d eliminated one routine (her job) she’d replaced it with another (sight-seeing) and soon grew bored and wanted to go home.

“After six weeks of traveling,” she wrote in the blog post ‘The Mini-Retirement Misconception‘, “I was starting to get bored. Sightseeing got old really fast, and I didn’t want to visit another fort or palace again. After eight weeks of floating around without real responsibilities, I was anxious to come home and be productive again.”

I could definitely relate. I spent four months in India and four months in Central America and discovered that four months was about a month too long. I learned that while I love living in a foreign country, wandering aimlessly through one? Not so much. I need the structure of a job or else I grow antsy and anxious.

A lot of travel writers and bloggers try to sell the idea of the vagabond lifestyle as this exciting, Huck-Finn-type adventure (and it can be) but what they often leave out is that it’s exhausting, lonely and even boring, as well.

Or as Tina put it:

“While traveling can enrich your life experience and enhance your understandings of other cultures, it will not make you happier and cannot be the solution to your discontentment at home. I’ve learned that, at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter what I’m doing, as long as I am being productive and contributing towards a greater cause other than myself. Regardless of what I’m doing, true happiness can only be found right now.”

Personality Types and Blogging: How Personality May Affect Your Writing

Reannon Muth — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:52:18 +0000

Photo by Ed Yourdon

Side-stepping away from travel for a half-a-second, this post is about my second favorite activity: writing. I stumbled upon this girl’s blog a while back and found it fascinating. In it, she outlines the strengths and weaknesses of various personality types as they relate to people’s ability to write. If you don’t know your Myers-Briggs personality type, you’ll have to take the test first (a shortened version is available online for free). You can view a complete list of all 16 ‘writer’ personality types on her website, but I’ve included a few interesting ones below.

INFP Writing Personality

From the blog:

“Work best in a quiet environment where they won’t be interrupted. They like autonomy so they can perfect their writing according to their own high standards without having to follow someone else’s schedule.

Prefer writing about personal topics. You may lose your creative drive if the subject isn’t meaningful to you. If so, try taking an angle that allows you to write about your feelings on the topic. If you’re an INFP technical writer, look for ways to connect with readers by anticipating and meeting their needs.”

Famous INFP writers: Shakespeare, Yeats, Emily Bronte, JRR Tolkein, Amy Tan

ISFP Writing Personality

From the blog:

“ISFP writers are acutely aware of the sensations in their physical world. They are adept at conveying the feelings associated with texture, color, and sound. ISFPs want to connect with their audience on a personal level and can have difficulty writing if unsure of the audience’s expectations. Their focus on others is so strong that they may hesitate to express their own deeply held beliefs. But if they learn to trust their voice, they can communicate their gifts of quiet joy and keen perceptions to their readers.”

Famous ISFP writers: Eminem

ENFP Writing Personality

From the blog:

“ENFP writers are creative souls with an ear for language. They find abundant inspiration in the world around them. But they can lose steam quickly if the topic is dull, which can lead to procrastination and missed deadlines. If you’re an ENFP, you’ll likely find that talking about the topic with others can help you maintain your interest and discover new approaches. Too much isolation can make writing a chore.

Famous ENFP writers: Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Dr. Seuss

How Do You Define ‘Home’ When You Live Out of a Suitcase?

Reannon Muth — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:24:15 +0000

Photo Courtesy of "I Am Not I's" Flickr photostream

Finish this sentence: Home is…

For me that answer isn’t an easy one. I was born and raised in Hawaii, finished high school and college in New York and have lived in 10 different cities in five different countries since then. I currently live in Las Vegas. While a part of each of those places has felt homey in its own way, I have yet to find a piece of the planet to lie the ‘ol welcome mat down on (at least not permanently).

But according to Sean Bonner’s post “Where is Home?”, that doesn’t matter. My home is planet Earth. Period.

Here’s an exert from his blog post:

“There is a whole group of people, Global Nomads, Technomads and Permanent Travelers who don’t live anywhere, but at the same time live everywhere. In the same way that people are drawn to the idea of “home,” I think that the ability to call the whole world home is just as romantic, and equally if not more attractive.”

He also mentioned that he sees this as the ‘natural progression of things’ and that as individual society’s move further into one big global society, everyone will eventually have lives spread across dozens of cities and several time zones. Living out of a suitcase will be the new normal.

I like that idea. Instead of feeling lost or inadequate for not having that elusive ‘home sweet home’, we nomadic souls should instead view ourselves as simply being a little ahead of our time.

Are You a Perpetual Optimist? You May have Brain Damage

Reannon Muth — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 02:00:38 +0000

'Jump' by CK Wong

I’ve been accused of being optimistic to the point of being delusional and until reading an article in the Huffington Post, I assumed that all of the play-it-safers telling me not to backpack through Guatemala alone or vacation in Columbia were the ones not in touch with reality. They’re exaggerating, I thought. They’re wussies. They’re only cautioning me against climbing that active volcano because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

But according to the journal Nature Neuroscience, it might be me whose risk assessment skills are a little out of whack. The study found that the brains of eternal optimists lack the ability to accurately process negative information. Optimists believe ‘everything will somehow work out in the end’, not due to any strength in character on their part, but due to a faulty wiring in their brains. And although the ability to look on the bright side can be a positive trait when someone is coping with say, the death of a friend, it can prove to be just the opposite when someone is deciding whether or not to skydive sans parachute.

As researcher Dr. Tali Sharot put it, “Seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty can be a positive thing –- it can lower stress and anxiety and be good for our health and well-being. But it can also mean that we are less likely to take precautionary action, such as practising safe sex or saving for retirement.”

What the study failed to do was offer any advice . Those wearing rose-colored glasses are brain-damaged. Okay. Got it. But what exactly am I supposed to do about it?

Not worry and (ha!) just hope for the best?

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