It took a long time to get from New Delhi, India, to Osaka, Japan, because of the layover in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It took a total of 28 hours. The flights themselves were about five hours each, but the layover was 18 hours. Since I had received two lounge passes through Trip.com and thought this trip was going to be my last one for a while, I used both of them, one in India and one in Vietnam. The people in the lounges looked rich, or at least rich enough to pay extra money to enjoy this kind of experience. I am not the type of person who would pay for these experiences, even if I had the money. However, I felt a bit miserable thinking about the fact that they had paid for something that I was getting for free. The experience itself was, of course, luxurious, and I am not used to that kind of environment. I enjoyed the moment, but what I enjoyed more was the fact that I could save enough money for two dinners at the airport. I do not want to buy or eat something at an airport just because everything there is expensive.
Anyway, I survived the 18-hour layover. I do not like Tan Son Nhat Airport because there is no area where I can sit at a table and chair. There are also no charging areas. I spent my time reflecting on this trip while sitting on one of the regular chairs for passengers.
I left Japan a month ago with the intention of working for at least half a year in Phuket, Thailand, as a judo teacher. I landed at Phuket International Airport to start a new chapter of my life. I am not going to describe what happened there in detail, but something already felt a bit off on Day 1. However, it was too early to make a decision. Over the next couple of days, I was able to visualize and experience what my life there was going to look like, and I decided to leave.
I could have decided to stay there and work simply because I wanted to settle down and get paid. However, I felt that it would not be ideal to spend my late 20s doing something just for those reasons in the long term. I know that I am lucky to be able to make that decision, even though I knew that I was going to become a person without a job. Of course, I felt anxious about having to decide what I was going to do next, but I followed my gut and made a quick decision.
After I left the dojo, I did not want to just go back home to Japan. The reason was that I did not want to return to Japan after such a short stay, especially after paying a few hundred dollars for the flight. I decided to travel to other countries instead. That was not necessarily the original reason why I wanted to travel, but I wanted to stay away from home for a while, and I did not want to feel like the money I had spent on the flight had simply been wasted.
I headed to Old Phuket, where I stayed at the best hostel I have ever stayed at. Meeting a muscular Indian guy in the same dorm room gave me a nostalgic feeling that I had become a traveler again. It was easy to decide what my next destination was going to be. Since I could travel overland and had not visited Malaysia during my previous trip, I decided to make it my next destination.
I also had one country that I definitely wanted to visit in my 20s: India. I was looking at flight prices from Malaysia to India, but they were more expensive than I had expected. That is why I decided to fly cheaply to Bangladesh and then travel to India by land. That way of traveling made me more excited and also made more sense financially. In the end, I visited four countries over the course of a month.
Throughout the entire month, I felt different from the way I had felt during my previous three-month trip. For some reason, I did not truly enjoy traveling this time. At first, I thought it was because I had left Japan for a job, so I could not really switch my mindset back to being a traveler. But at some point, I found myself getting tired of simply spending my time and money on traveling. Instead, I wanted to start creating something from my experiences. I had no idea what that would be, but at least I knew that I did not want to keep traveling and exploring new places without creating anything from it.
After realizing that, I started thinking about what would really come next. Because of that, I think I was not fully committed to traveling during this month.
Now I am back home. Although I felt a sense of achievement after returning from my three-month trip last time, I do not have that feeling this time. Instead, I feel like, “I came back home again.”
I definitely did not feel positive about going back home, since I had the feeling that I was returning to reality and uncertainty, with no idea what was going to happen next. I do not have any regrets about my decision to quit the job in Phuket or about being able to visit the three countries, especially India. But now I need to face the uncertainty.
Now I remember some quotes from books written by backpackers. For example:
“I am experiencing a degree of travel burnout; after about two months of backpack travel, I am beginning to lose interest in visiting more cultural sites. If and when this happens, the best thing to do is to stay in one place for a few days, build a routine, rest, and clear the head.”
— Domenico Italo Composto-Hart
I now feel that it is inevitable for backpackers to eventually come back home and face reality.
I hope that I will be able to travel again, both mentally and financially, at some point. There are still so many countries that I have not visited and would like to visit. I have no idea when that will be, but I hope it will be soon enough that I can still travel while I have the physical stamina to do so.
