Bocas del Toro kinda sucks

[amw]

Ah, hostels. I remember why i dislike hostels. It's not so much the setup of shared room and shower, although obviously i would prefer privacy. It's the clientele. I think Paul Theroux described it well when he said that backpackers annoyed him because they invariably come from wealthy countries and travel poor countries, but somehow every

Comments

[amw]

I think you are misunderstanding my purpose for traveling. I don't have high expectations, especially not for places that i never had any interest in visiting in the first place. I didn't have any expectations for Panama because i never planned to come here. It was just a spontaneous decision to buy a cheap plane ticket - why not? If i hate everything about this country, oh well, i don't care. That's part of traveling. Now i know.

The way i see it, no matter where you go in the world, 50% of the places will always be in the list of the worst places you ever traveled. I don't expect to have some kind of dream holiday everywhere i go, i don't think that's realistic. Also, it would be boring for me. For me traveling is not about finding some kind of perfect place to stay forever, it is the process of discovery, experiencing new places, whether good or bad. I like to go to a place and see what it is like, compare how it is different or the same to other places, try to understand how the people live there and what kind of lives they lead.

I don't really "miss" any one place, because i don't really have a "home" anywhere to miss. For example, i do miss the clubbing scene of Berlin, but i do not miss the gentrification and the cold weather and the bad Asian food. I miss the many cheap and delicious foods of China, but i do not miss the oppressive government. Every place has good things and bad things. I think it is normal to have good memories of a place, even if you left it behind, and i think it's fine to acknowledge the bad things in the place you are now.

If money was no object, i think i would love to travel forever. I feel so much happier when i am not stuck in one place. Every time i stay in one place i find myself getting more depressed the longer i stay. Like i am wasting my life away. It might be that if i travel non-stop for 10 years then i would get sick of it and want to rest... but i have never had the opportunity to travel for 10 years, so i don't know. I always run out of money and am forced to get a job again, so it's hard to imagine what my life would be like if i had enough money never to work again. Even on my most miserable day when i am traveling to a new place, it is a day that on average is happier for me than any day i am stuck in one town being forced to work.