Do you lose contact with your friends from back home when you are travelling?
When you get home do you keep contact with the people you met while travelling?
Do you have any tips about keeping friendships alive while you are not around?
Yes, well i've found that long term travel & having so much time on your hands, together with the many daily challenges i face helps you grow as a person & deal with these things that hurt you. I'm having a great time, seeing the world & growing spiritually & expect to go back to the uk a new person!
Reply to this After I got home, I had a different reaction from one friend, who believed that I would not want to continue to be her friend, because I had done all the traveling and she had not. She made a comment about me lowering myself to spend time with her. She lacked confidence talking to me now. I was shocked because I consider her a very savvy and sophisticated person.
Some people want to hear specifics about just food, or just clothes, or just religion. They have an interest in just one aspect internationally. I've learned to ask in a conversation, "What interests you? food? clothes? habits? transportaiton? what?" It's less of a monologue then, more of a dialogue.
Reply to this I have been shocked at comments some people make about my travels when I get home.
For example, one aquaintance made wink wink nudge nudge comments about Cabana boys when I told her I stayed in a beach hut on an island in Thailand. She made my time in Thailand seem like a hen party instead of what I felt it was.
Reply to this Yes, its actually quite embarrasing sometimes is'nt it, i think it comes down to ignorance. Alot of people where i come from view travelling, especially as a solo woman as something quite odd & desperate. As i'm not actually with some bloke for a 2 week package holiday in Benidorm which i think to some people is the norm..... Well, i've come to the conclusion that it would do me good to hook up with some likeminded travellers & have just discovered Travbuddy.com a great site for meeting & maybe spending some time with fellow travellers. This should take my mind off those so called "friends" back home who have dropped me like a ton of bricks!
Reply to this I think my aquaintance has no experience of backpacking. She and her friends only go on package holidays with bars, parties, swimming pools.... It would be difficult to explain backpacking to her. But it is still hard to believe that she thinks I fly accross the world to flirt with Cabana boys. I seriously hope she was joking. :D It is hardly surprising that internet travel sites are so popular.
You can try for travel buddies on this site too if you want Wendy.
Here is a link to the looking for travel companions forum.
Looking for Travel Companions
Reply to this Thanks for posting this question and expressing your feelings on this. It has shed some light for me. I have travelled to South America a few times and with the availability and cost of using the internet, I usually do an email to everyone on my list that I think would be interested in whats happening. This is before I was aware of travelblog - I will now use this forum. Now, as far as friends travelling: as a person back home working and doing my normal life without travel, I feel that my information is too boring for those people I know who are out and about in the world. I read their blogs and put a little comment here and there to let them know I am thinking of them, but I don't want to bore them, or have them feel they have to respond to my emails. Now that you have voiced this concern and I have read comments from others, I am seeing this as a display of being disinterested in their travels, which I can assure you I am not. Therefore, I will be sure to send emails to my family and friends travelling abroad so they are not feeling lonely. Thanks again, and hopefully your friends read your blog and start conversing with you while you are away from home.
Reply to this Thanks for this Mel, i'm going to have a look. Well, i'm starting to think i've got to get the ball rolling for myself & develop a social life for myself now i'm away. I guess its my responsibility to ensure my social life while i'm travelling is satisfying. I've found that i meet tons of people, on trips, coach journeys etc, we get on, chat even exhange email addresses sometimes. But often it rarely goes futher than that. As a single woman i would'nt just go into a bar alone at night & unless your actually staying at a place with alot of other single & willing to mingle people about then your likely to be on your own.
Freetoraom, this is a wonderful insight from someone back home living a normal life. I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM FOLKS BACK HOME MORE! Maybe they think i'm living the high life sunning myself on a tropical beach every day but there is actually a downside of occational lonliness, maintaining links with friends back home means alot.
Reply to this A few comments...
- Some people just aren't good at keeping in touch while apart, but once you're back in together things are often fine.
- For the folks back home, they still have all the craziness of life going on...jobs, families, commuting, bills, recreation, etc. It's easy to get lost in the shuffle of their daily grind when you're a zillion miles away.
- As Ali said, if you come home with an attitude about your experience and what you know now...that won't play well. A friend of mine said "I'm glad you haven't come home and been a douche bag (sorry) by telling us how we do everything wrong and the rest of the world is better than us". If you do think that you have lots of new special knowledge...but tactful in how you impart that wisdom to others.
- People at home will have different levels of interest. I kinda let them determine how much we talk about it rather than pushing some agenda on them. If they don't really care, then just interact with them like you always have talking about non-travel things. If they do care...then ramble on!
- If you come home and someone has told you that she doesn't want to be your friend anymore...I get the feeling that would have happened anyway and is completely untied to the fact you were traveling. If someone says they don't want to be your friend because you traveled...well...that's nuts.
- Facebook. It's the greatest thing for keeping in touch with people I've met along the way. Collecting emails is ok, but I find that no one ever uses them...because it requires action. With Facebook (or bebo, whatever) you can passively keep track of each other (seeing when they post photos, change status "I'm in Timbuktu!", etc). Seeing the quick news feeds or a quick check on their profile is an easy way to drop a quick note to people. Thanks Mark Zuckerburg.
That's all I got.
Reply to this Thanks Mark, this is great feedback. I've had so many varied responses to my original plight which i think have more or less covered the subject for me, just about to join Bebo. Thanks again.
Reply to this Yeah, bars can be difficult for women in certain countries especially if there are not lots of foreign women in them. I usually hang out in cafes. I meet lots of people in those.
Just laughing about a comment you made Marc. Your friend sounds like my boyfriend. He says he hates the way travellers have the attitude that when they are not travelling and just doing what everybody else is doing they think they are not living or that they are wasting time.
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