A Farewell to Backpacking (for now)

May 16, 2024 was cloudy, hot, and humid day in Hanoi, Vietnam. Hanoi is a fascinating metropolis that I had once brazenly declared my favorite city in Asia. But on this day it felt stifling as I sat in my hostel common room feeling about as tired and anti-social as I’ve ever felt in my life. All around me were smiling faces speaking all different languages, brimming with the excitement of travel. I could tell some people were running off of pure adrenaline for their 2-3 week vacation and others were stoked to be beginning a year long round the world trip. And I sat through it all completely numb to the energy around me, wishing I could just sleep.

It was time to come home. 

For the previous few weeks I’d been putting off or avoiding some intense feelings namely homesickness, emotional, mental and physical exhaustion, and a yearn for deeper, real connection with someone who really knew me. To cope I’d taken rest days, face-timed family, ate food that reminded me of home, and spent more time with American travelers. But I finally reached a point of diminishing returns.

Inevitably, all travelers reach the burnout stage. Yep, backpackers have burnout too. It manifests much like work-related burnout. Except instead of feeling like you can’t read another email or attend another meeting, it feels like you can’t see another new place or meet another new person. Turns out overwhelming your senses with intense new stimuli every day (and some nights) for the better half of a year can start to take a toll. 

Yet despite all of this, I was also experiencing intense feelings of guilt. After all, this trip has been a dream of mine for years, could I really sit here and wish I was home? How could I possibly be done?

And yet, I was done. 

As difficult as it was to rationalize at that time. 

It felt like part of my ideology was dying. This lifestyle that I’d decided was the best way to be present and live to the fullest was no longer something I wanted or felt like I could do anymore. And while I’ll continue to preach the vagabonding lore to any interested audience, I very much feel like I’ve been there, and done that.

Almost a year ago I left a good job and a beautiful life in the American west to live out of my backpack for a year and see the world. Since then I’ve lived on a goat ‘farm’ in Colombia, visited both famous and lesser known Incan ruins in Peru, submitted 6000m peaks in Bolivia, taught English at a monastery in Thailand, lived the island life in Cambodia, and motorbiked through lush green mountain passes in Vietnam. 

I’ve also been alone in a hotel room with a fever of 103F, woken up to cockroaches in my dorm bunk, spent one week enduring the worst food poisoning of my life, gotten bed bugs once every two months (on average), experienced altitude sickness, and been robbed. 

So after 7 months of the backpacker lifestyle it was time for this adventure to come to a close.

And so it did on May 23, when I returned home by way of a 12 hour layover in Tokyo.

One month of recuperating later and I sit comfortably at home writing this blog. I’m typically the kind of person who feels nostalgic and bittersweet at the end of epic trips such as this one, but it’s taken a while for that to kick in, I think in part because at the end I was so ready to finish the trip. 

What I do feel now is a deep sense of gratitude to be at home surrounded by people who love me. There’s really no substitute for that. Between visiting with family and friends (and attending the wedding of one of my best friends), I am finally starting to feel emotionally revitalized. After 7 months of solo travel (3 in South America and 4 in Asia), I can say to you now with a unique level of certainty: There’s no place like home.

So, in lieu of a deep dive into my last months in Vietnam, I’ll end this post with a few photos from those last epic weeks. 

More to come,

Charlie