The Bottom 5 Less Glamorous Sides of Travel

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    • Travelling the world isn’t always hunky-dory and hiccup-free. Whether you miss the odd home comfort or end up scraping funds together to pay for a roof and meal for the night, your global adventure and quest for freedom can require you to overcome the odd stumbling block along the way. Here are a few things to file in the ‘less glamorous‘ section of backpacking.

    Unclean Toilets

    The beauty of backpacking is learning to share. Whether it’s a useful bit of information or a cold beer in the evening, adopting the ethos ‘what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine‘ will only make strengthen the bonds with your brethren.

    Unfortunately this mantra also extends to the toilet facilities of your accommodation on occasions, usually right in the middle of the cleaning rota!!

    Whether it’s first thing in the morning going to prepare yourself for the day ahead or bleary-eyed and barefoot in the early hours, the last thing you want to do is find some kind soul has felt the need to use all the toilet roll, urinate over the seat and then forget to flush, in all the cubicles, right when you need them the most.

    Conclusion: At least they’ve not been sick in the sink. Oh, wait…

    Looking For Work

    From hunting for bar work to fund you round just a bit more of Europe to applying for jobs in Australia on your year-long working visa, there is nothing less depressing that sitting on Gumtree or Craigslist while your flush friends enjoy a day on the beach or crawl round the Happy Hours all afternoon. There’s only so many times you can tweak your CV to make it look like that flyering job in Ibiza enhanced your customer service skills or your part-time hours at The Red Lion in Romford have fully equipped you for Saturday night at the city’s busiest nightclub. Unfortunately for you, the whole world is in recession and you’ve found yourself in a country that employs the natives first.

    Conclusion: Log out, power off and go join your friends. A pitcher of Sex on the Beach is only $5 you know…

    Boredom

    It can’t be sight-seeing, beach days and/or drinking all the time. There will be periods of the day when your friends are busy, you’re tired, poor and the sun has not got its hat on. You’ve seen the nearest sights three times already and there are no city tours running today. The hostel’s kicked you out of your room and your next connection isn’t for another few hours. The bar’s shut, the TV’s broken and you’re in completely the wrong time zone to phone home. You’re up-to-date with e-mails and news and just finished your last good book. There’s only one thing left to do.

    Conclusion: Facebook!!

    Injury And Illness

    When you’re laying in bed with a forehead hotter than the sun and a drum and bass gig taking place inside your head it can really make you wonder if leaving your mum and the hot water bottle at home was such a good idea after all. Insurance and health cards will cover your costs and medicine, but it really is no fun being bed-ridden for an extended period of time anywhere, let alone on your own, abroad, with nobody to answer to your cries or extend even the mildest of sympathies. Your room-mates are, unfortunately, ‘finding themselves‘, not the second coming of Mother Theresa.

    The only saving grace is you didn’t ski yourself into a tree 1500m above sea level before they air-lifted your broken body to hospital on the other side of the country where you lay in plaster and intravenously rigged up to some machines that go ‘bleep‘ in the night before being charged your life savings for the pleasure.

    Conclusion: Headache’s not so bad now, is it? Make sure you’ve got travel insurance

    Crime, A Victim Of

    When you travel the world, two things will follow you no matter where you go – hangovers and crime. The former will be gone after some food and fresh air (and a pint), but the effects of the latter can range from short-lived inconvenience to the next flight home. If you’re unlucky the most you’ll experience is stolen sunglasses or being duped out of $50, but other times the consequences can be a lot more drastic and difficult to deal with.

    Conclusion: Serious cases that can be the harshest of wake-up calls to a backpacker’s dream are thankfully in the minority, but it’s worth remembering the world in which we travel doesn’t revolve around us, and we’re not the only ones inhabiting it.

    99% of your travels will be amazing and it’s easy to forget the less glamourous side of travel. Never-the-less it’s worth being prepared for reality when you embark on your next amazing travel adventure.

    Tell us about your less glamourous travel experiences

    Comment below and vent your frustrations and observations on the other side of travel experiences.

    13.6

    By jamescouling

    James enjoys all manner of trips to unchartered territories, be it for a few days or a few months. Draws inspiration from everywhere and has just returned from a trip to Europe and America.

    What do you think? Post your comments

    • Alina and Tina says:

      Those dirty toilets are still the worst perspective as far as I am concerned. And it’s been like that for most of my life. Nothing worse on any trip, ever:) Then again, I was rarely sick and all the crime I ran into was mostly at home, not while traveling.

    • Robyn says:

      Travelling alone in an American airport – I collected my baggage then had to go to the toilet – try manouevering yourself, your suitcase and a shoulder bag into a toilet cubicle – no fun!

    • Tijmen says:

      My worst experience has to be getting a knee injury while I was planning on doing lots of hiking in NZ. I twisted my knee there, and it took months before it finally healed. Never had much trouble with crimes, dirty toilets or the other things you mention above.

    • Yvonne @JustTravelous says:

      Thanks for sharing this! When I travel I ALWAYS miss my bathroom at home with my own toilet and perfect working HOT shower. If someone would invent beaming (hopefully soon) I would use it on my travels just to beam me back to my own bathroom ten minutes a day :)

    • Evi @evitravels says:

      Agree with all of the above, and would add: dealing with unexpected issues from back home, like cell phone/cable companies making mistakes and thinking you still owe them more money, that sort of thing. Almost impossible to deal with when you have no mailing address, and they refuse to contact you through email consistently!

    • Robyn says:

      Reminds me of many years ago, staying in Youth Hostels in Australia. We had a car but it had no aircon and they had their hottest weather for 75 years. We had to get out during the day as the hostels closed all day. One day we were in a tin-pot town with nowhere to go. It was so diabolically hot we sought out the local pool but there were so many people in it it was virtually standing room only! Someone else told us about a natural pool in a park that people swam in. We found it, walked almost an hour in the heat, covered with swarms of flies, to find a tiny, slimy green pool that you had to climb down a cliff to get to. Only two of my friends went down and said it was warm and slimy – they only dipped their feet in. On the way back to the car – uphill – I swallowed a fly! That was it, we packed up and moved on!

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