In this report, I discuss why I slow travel instead of putting down roots.
First I will explain why slow traveling is better when compared to traditional travel. Then I will explain why I love slow travel so much, I have been unable to stop, so far. Then I will explain why I slow travel instead of putting down roots.
But I don’t know everything about any particular subject so make sure to explain what you see differently in the comments to make this a more complete resource on slow travel versus traditional travel.
I left the USA in 2007. I have traveled the world ever since. I will show you pictures of my 15 years of continuous travels as I talk about slow traveling. The beautiful woman traveling with me is Qiang Hui of HoboVentures.com. Qiang joined my slow travels in 2017 and she has been with me ever since. Make sure to subscribe to learn everything about slow travel and how to retire cheap in paradise for pennies.
What is Slow Travel?
Within the slow travel community, people do slow travel differently. So I will describe my own version of slow travel first and then tell you how others do it differently. I will our slow travels in the year 2021 as an example.
On New Year’s day of 2021, we were in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We rented a beautiful studio apartment there and stayed for a month. I will throw in some photos of each place we visited in 2021 to keep you entertained and to prove that I am who I say I am.
We had flown into Playa del Carmen, Mexico from Huatulco, Mexico. We had been in Huatulco Mexico for a month also. After we left Playa del Carmen, we stayed in Puerto Morelos for 6 weeks. So the first characteristic you will notice about slow travel is how much time you spend in each place.
Slow Travel is all about time
Once we got to Mexico we spent over 3 months there. Most slow travelers fly to a new country and stay for a few months. You bought an expensive ticket and flew for hours to a new place. If you stay there longer, the cost of your flight is amortized over more time.
If you only take two or three flights per year, of $300 each, your airfare is less than one thousand dollars per year. $1000 per year of flights turns out to be less than $3.00 per day for flights.
By spending more time in each country, your cost of airfare for traveling the world plummets rather quickly. By spending more time in each place, you can become much more intimate with each country. So slow travel is better because you spend less on airfare.
Traditional travel just skims the surface
When I was a young working single person, I used to take Club Med vacations. Those are all-inclusive vacations that include food, alcohol, and airfare. At about $1000 per week, it would cost me $142 per day.
At that age, I was mostly just interested in women. I would spend the whole time trying to have fun. Since everything I needed was inside the gated resort, I had almost no interest in the culture I was visiting. I was like a drunken sailor on shore leave. I had only 7 days to blow off steam before I had to fly home.
So traditional travel resulted in a few short-lived temporary romances but not much lasted past the flights home.
But as I aged, I started traditional travel with my wife, and later my girlfriend. Once in a good relationship, I became much more interested in learning about the culture I was visiting. Even when we only had a week or two, we would visit museums, go on nature excursions, learn about the history and architecture, and learn about the national and regional foods.
At that time, I learned that I was what I call a cultural explorer. I loved learning about each country. I also learned that it is really difficult to immerse yourself in a country in just a week or two. Almost everywhere we went in the world, I wished I could have stayed longer.
Traditional travel just seemed to skim the surface.
Slow travel is a more intimate experience
As a slow traveler, I was able to experience a new country much more intimately once I had the time. Intimacy takes time. After I quit my job, I started working part-time online as a consultant. For almost 10 years, I was a remote worker. I could live anywhere in the world with an internet connection.
Since I could stay for weeks or months in each place, I was able to form an intimate relationship with each country, each city, because now I had the gift of time. Countries are like people, if you spend a few moments with them, you get an idea about who they are.
When you spend a month or two, walking around at the street level, interacting with locals, you get to know a country more intimately.
Yes, sure, I still take a tourist tour once and a while when I am in a new city. But more often than not, I read about the history of the city while I am there. I walk by the spots where things happened. I often create walking tours of each city I visit.
When you get to know a city first hand for a week or two with your feet on the ground, even riding public transportation, as opposed to just spending 3 or 4 hours on a tour bus learning highlights blasted over a megaphone on a tourist bus, it just feels more intimate.
You feel like you get to know a place. Slow travel is a much more intimate way of making friends with the world.
The Goal of Slow Travel Versus Traditional Travel
I won’t presume to know why you travel. But for me, before I was a slow traveler, my goal of traditional travel was twofold. First, it was to blow off some steam and have some serious fun. Since I only had a week or two during my working years, my holiday was my reward for working the other 50 weeks of the year.
I had worked all year and my holiday was my me-time. That is probably why I was willing to spend so much money so quickly–I wanted to get my money’s worth. So the goal of traditional travel was to reward me for putting up with life for the other 50 weeks.
If you think about it, that is what retirement is supposed to be also. Retirement is when we quit doing what other people want us to do and we begin living like we want to. But for most of us, we really aren’t 100% sure of what we will want to do in retirement.
I thought I knew what I wanted to do when I retired. But looking back, I just didn’t have a clear picture of how, or if, my travels during retirement would be any different. But once I was finally slow traveling, I quickly learned how it would be different for me.
The difference for me was in the goals. When I was a traditional traveler, whether chasing love in my twenties or chasing culture with my lover as I aged, the goal of traditional travel was the same. The goal was to entertain me. The goal was almost pure entertainment.
When I was doing what other people wanted all year long, the joy of pure entertainment did not feel decadent. It felt like I was justifiably allowed to focus only on visceral experiences.
But once I was slow traveling the world, my goal of slow travel gradually shifted to education. There was something deeply interesting about reading about how cultures formed and evolved while sitting or standing in the very spot where the history you are learning happened.
For example, I learned why the Spanish Conquistadors and colonialists were allowed to rape and kill the original people of Mexico while their religious leaders remained silent. An older Mexican man explained it to me in Morelia Mexico in the central park there.
The Spanish nobility believed that the indigenous people of the Americas were not people. Since they were not people, the nobility decided that religious norms such as, “Though shalt not kill,” could be freely ignored, and you could still get into heaven.
When in Cartagena, I learned about a Roman Catholic priest that taught otherwise. When you stand on the ground where these men of alleged honor lived and learn how the world has transformed over the centuries slowly arching towards justice, some hope for humanity may grow in you.
So for me, the gift of time has given me slow travel. And slow travel has allowed me to learn how the world is and how it has changed over the last few thousand years. So traditional travel is about entertainment and slow travel feels more like education.
But the line between the two seems to be rather thin. You see, I enjoy learning about the world as I travel around slowly. I find it very entertaining. So isn’t slow travel for me just another form of entertainment that takes longer to learn and feels a little more substantive?
I think so.
Why I slow travel instead of putting down roots?
I promised to explain why I am still slow traveling the world instead of putting down roots in my favorite place. Once I have been in a place for more than a month or two, I start researching all of the great things to do around, just an hour or two away. These are great for day trips.
Once I feel like I know a place well and have learned all about it, and once I have visited all of the day trips nearby, I start reading about places a day or two away. When I learn about a place that I think can keep me entertained educationally for a few weeks or months, off I go.
So that is why I keep slow traveling the world. There is always somewhere a day or two away by bus that I can go spend a few weeks or a month. So why fly home when I spent all that money getting here?
So why don’t I buy a place in my favorite place? I don’t want to leave an empty bed anywhere in the world when I am not sure when I will return. Sometimes I am gone for a year or two. And I can always just rent a furnished apartment when I return to this part of the world. So why pay for an empty place?
I think of the world as my oyster. So I slowly move forward throughout the world. I rarely buy roundtrip tickets. I am a cultural explorer. I move forward throughout the world.
I find that learning about a new place I have never been to before is more fun than just staying in my favorite place in the world. Exploring a new place is more fun than staying in the same place all the time.
I know some of you love going home. I remember when I loved going home. It was back before I started slow traveling. When I was a traditional traveler, I would get annoyed by the constant hustle and bustle of travel.
But once I started slow traveling, I learned that the hustle and bustle of traditional travel only lasted the first week or so because I was trying to get everything done in 7 days. But now, when I start to feel the hustle and bustle, I just take a few days or a week off from activities. Instead, I stay home and cook meals and hang out in my furnished apartment. Then when I feel the urge to do explore the culture more I head out the door.
So the idea of relaxing at home is just done differently during slow travel. Instead of flying home after a week or two, I stay inside my furnished apartment wherever I am in the world. I cook at home, read, write, work out, and watch Netflix.
If I miss family and friends, I do a zoom call or check out what they are doing on Facebook. So, that is why I have not put down roots yet. I may change my mind someday and put down roots. But so far, slow traveling gives me the perfect combination of downtime and cultural exploration.
But we are not all the same. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below this video. Thank you for reviewing our report, why I slow travel instead of putting down roots.
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This is Dan of Vagabond Awake, the Youtube channel for VagabondBuddha.com. Thank you for stopping by. The world is your home. What time will you be home for dinner?