«» Travel Notes 017: Excellent Advice for Young, Budget Travelers (c/o Kevin Kelly)
Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier
HELLO. I’m Atom, and you’ve received my Travel Notes, which I send out once a week, every week:
→ On the weeks I travel, I share stories, reflections, and lessons.
→ On the weeks I stay home, I share tips, tools, and templates.
My goal here is to bring you with me to all 82 provinces of the Philippines. Solo travel can be thrilling, but I enjoy my travels more when I have someone to share it with.
Kevin Kelly is most well known for co-founding the award-winning magazine Wired and for writing the ubiquitous essay 1,000 True Fans.
What is less known about Kevin Kelly is the time he spent as a nomadic photojournalist. After attending the University of Rhode Island for one year, Kevin left for Asia. “That was one of the best decisions I ever made,” he recalls in his website’s biography. “I traveled in the 1970s as a poor, solo photographer in the hinterlands and villages of Asia, between Iran and Japan. I traveled on about US$2,500 per year and came back with 36,000 slides.”
From here, Kevin went on to launch and sell Walking Journal, the first American magazine dedicated to recreational walking; oversee the publication of four versions of the Whole Earth Catalogs, a distillation of the best tools and books for self-education, which sold over a million copies; launch the Cool Tools website, where he has reviewed one cool tool daily since 2003; write multiple best-selling books about the future of technology; and many many more.
With the richness of his experiences as a foundation, Kevin wrote down 68 bits of unsolicited advice for his 68th birthday. The piece was so popular that he expanded it to 103 bits of advice on his 70th birthday and continued adding to it each year.
The final output? 450 aphorisms compiled into a pocketbook called Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier.
I love that Kevin spent so much time traveling because his book contains a wealth of practical advice for young, budget travelers like myself.
Here are my favorite:
Prototype your life. Try stuff instead of making grand plans.
A major part of travel is to leave stuff behind. The more you leave behind the further you will advance.
When you are anxious because of your to-do list take comfort in your have-done list.
When you are young, spend at least 6 months to 1 year living as cheaply as you can owning as little as you possibly can eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent. That way any time you have to risk something in the future, you won’t be afraid of the “worst-case” scenario.
At first, buy the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job buy the very best you can afford.
A vacation + a disaster = an adventure
Don’t be in haste. When you are in a hurry you are more easily conned or manipulated.
On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first bypassing the cities and then return to the big city at the end. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar conveniences of a busy city on the way back.
When hitchhiking look like the person you want to pick you up.
Money is overrated. Truly new things rarely need an abundance of money. If that was so, billionaires would have a monopoly on inventing new things, and they don’t. Instead, almost all breakthroughs are made by those who lack money. If breakthroughs could be bought, then the rich would buy them. Instead, passion, persistence, belief, and ingenuity are required to invent new things qualities the poor and young often have in abundance. Stay hungry.
If you can’t tell what you desperately need it’s probably sleep.
About 99% of the time, the right time is right now.
Your enjoyment of travel is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage. This is 100% true of backpacking. It is liberating to realize how little you really need.
In a genuine survival situation, you can go 3 weeks without food and 3 days without water but only 3 hours without warmth or shade. So don’t worry about food. Focus on temperature and water.
When you board an airplane, arrive at your room in a hotel, or start a new job, locate the emergency exits. It only takes a minute.
Take the stairs.
Getting cheated occasionally is the small price for trusting the best of everyone because when you trust the best in others they generally treat you best.
Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook to your hometown or region. You’ll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year.
Don’t wait in line to eat something famous. It is rarely worth the wait.
In preparing for a long hike old shoes of any type are superior to brand-new shoes of any type. Don’t use a long hike to break in shoes.
Rather than steering your life to avoid the unexpected aim directly for it.
Don’t grocery shop while hungry
Hikers’ rule: Don’t step on what you can step over; don’t step over what you can walk around.
To have a great trip, head toward an interest rather than to a place. Travel to passions rather than destinations.
Trust the 3-star product reviews because they tell both the good and the bad, which is the real state for most things.
Your 20s are the perfect time to do a few things that are unusual, weird, bold, risky, unexplainable, crazy, unprofitable, and look nothing like “success.” For the rest of your life these experiences will serve as your muse.
If you are stuck in life travel to a place you have never heard of.
Very few regrets in life are about what you did. Almost all are about what you didn’t do.
Happy travels!!
Atom
Are you interested in exploring the 82 provinces of the Philippines too? Here are some ways I can help...
Easy-peasy: let’s get on a call. I’ll save every Sunday 3:30-4:00 PM (GMT+8) for anyone serious about making it happen. Send me an email, and I’ll send you a link.
Travel can be expensive. Here is my list of hacks to spend less on PH travel and a spreadsheet template to help you budget your next trip.
I make a spreadsheet to compile research for every trip. Here’s the guide to my Drive with all spreadsheets.
Sources:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kevin-kelly/excellent-advice-for-living/
https://kk.org/thetechnium/103-bits-of-advice-i-wish-i-had-known/
https://kk.org/biography