Observe or Live? - Thailand Reflections #2

It’s only my been two weeks since I left New Zealand, and it already feels like a lifetime. With a variety of experiences, from spending a few days visiting tribes in the mountains, to spending a week with a local community, and backpacking around beautiful places. In this short amount of time, this is what I’ve realised:

Yes travelling is incredible. You see beautiful new places, you see scenery like never before. You see the beautiful sunrise and mind blowing temples. But what I’ve realised that is the most important thing of travelling, is not only the beautiful locations, but more importantly the people you see them with. It’s not observing, but mentally learning the culture and physically living it. The true learnings come when you open your mind up to a whole new way of living.

Learning to speak a new language is extremely rewarding. It shows that you truly want to bond with the person across from you. I found it as a way to respect that person, to link that bond that breaks us apart from one another. To show interest in their culture, in their thoughts and way of living.

I found it most rewarding when I spent time with locals who taught me different things about their style of food, explained the history behind certain customs and rituals. When you saw the picture behind the pretty temple. When you read the story behind the front cover. This is the most rewarding part. Next time you go travelling, I would advice you to try avoid the popular places. The place where you can speak English without the struggle to learn a few words of the locallanguage. Go off the track where you are the only foreigner, and show respect to the people. They will take you on the most incredible experiences. From learning to make Thai Pizza, learning how they survive through farming, to a elite cooking class from a Proffessional Bangkok chef. These moments are a lot more memoriable than the places you can find online. 


I found the most important thing is not so much about the places you go, but instead the people you meet. The connections you make. The things you learn. It may be better to stay in one retreated homestay and learn about their lifestyle, occasionally go to pretty places, but instead let your heart out and learn about their way of living. Try not force your own culture into it because, man, we’re in their country, let’s at least step out of our comfort zone and learn what we can. 


Learning about Agriculture and Farming at friend’s village. 



Eating delicious local food in a small village.


University cooking class in Phrae






Most amazing homestay experience in Phrae. 



Comments

  1. Unknown25 February 2019 at 12:04

    Amazing experience you are living my beautiful daughter! I am proud of you :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway - My Experience after Leaving University

My name is Melisa Gomez. My transition story will be based on going from first year of university, to a gap year out in the real world. Why did I leave uni? Let me give you a back story. I entered university in 2017 straight from highschool. To be honest, I didn’t really know what i was doing. Academics has always been extremely important in my family, and I was a high achiever at school. My mind had always been set on going acing a degree at the University of Auckland straight after high school. However, when I came to the decision of degree, I realised I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to study. After a lot of research, I decided to dive into a conjoint of Business and Psychology. Psych because it was something that always interested me, business because... I guess that’s the go to option when you really don’t know. This commenced to a year of stress, overworking, and many panic attacks. As I said, academia was extremely important to me, and I set myself tasks to achieve the h...
Read more

More Than A Co-Working Space

Image
Hello friends! For those of you who know me personally, you’d know that for the past few months I’ve been an intern at a wonderful place called MoveSpace. You’ve probably heard me rave about it a million times, got multiple invites to their events, had me begging for you to come experience the magic at least once. So now, I would like to share with you deeply the experience I have had the past few months, and the potential you could as well. So... What is MoveSpace? Officially, MoveSpace is a “Creative Co-working & Event Space - Home for creators making the world more awesome. Celebrating human connection, creativity & social change …” But really… What IS MoveSpace? What do you feel when you enter it. How does it forever change your world, your perspectives, your friendships. It is so much more than it’s description, and with this, I would like to share. What does MoveSpace mean to me? A place to create, to express yourself. I never thought I was a ‘creati...
Read more

My Experience Living Off The Grid

Hello again 😄 Before I write, I want to bring some points to the surface. I have decided to make my posts raw, pure, and unfiltered. This means that I will write out my thoughts, maybe read through it once, and just let it out into the world. No triple checking for spelling mistakes, no grammar corrections, no eliminating and double thinking. The reason I chose to do this is because I feel like sometimes we filter ourselves too much, we write what we want but after dwelling on it for a bit, we chose to back off and not do it in the fear of what people may think or say. There is going to be no space for that here. The best way to connect with people is to be vulnerable and pure, so this is what will be. Second, everything I write about is my experience, things that I have noticed and been through. I know that we all have different perspectives, opinions, ways of living life. I am also aware that I could be totally wrong in many things, so please tell me your opinions! I would lo...
Read more