Love this! I'd also be wary of any "best things to do in X city" roundups from big travel publications. As a former travel writer, I can tell you from experience that a lot of those are written by people who have never been to those places and just Googled it.
To this day, the best trip I've taken was to Transylvania. The only things we planned were which cities we were going to, how we were getting there, and where we were staying. We didn't research any restaurants or attractions ahead of time, and that left space for us to discover the most amazing places and let opportunities unfold naturally. For example, if we had planned everything out, I wouldn't have been able to say yes to the tour the hostel offered to a random castle (that years later would be featured in The Christmas Prince movies haha).
For sure!! Pretty sure many of these roundups are AI now too 🙈 but tbh in terms of accuracy, i feel like doing actual research can be sometimes better than selling everything you did as the best thing everyone else must do 😬
You put it so kindly - 'be wary'! I hate those lists yet there's a reason they're called clickbait (I can't resist, I think I just love being annoyed 😂). I suspected many people haven't visited those places and the same locations pop up again and again.
I remember back many years ago, I met a Let's Go writer who dished all the secrets, like how they skipped some places, literally spent 5 seconds lying on the bed in a hostel to see how comfortable it was, popped into a cafe for literally 2 minutes and then wrote about the 'chilled Aussie music vibe'. Never trusted guidebooks since!
A totally different era, though, compared to today's TikTok stuff.
This is refreshing to read about from a millennial perspective (or are you gen Z? sorry, I forget where the cut off is!), old cranks like me worry about these new travel trends and social media. I'm just glad I barely interact off of Substack and am immune to all this nonsense. Just go where you want, right? I know, it's not that easy, people are suckers.
I remember in the early 2010s, visiting Barcelona and seeing the ridiculous queue to get into the Gaudi museum. The people were stood there looking miserable and irritated. I did some lazy investigative 'research' and asked a few people who looked exceptionally annoyed why they were bothering to wait and almost all of them said something like 'well, you kinda have to go here, right?' Not a single one of them actually wanted to go. Honestly, why bother...
Is Kyrgyzstan a thing now? I have no idea. I lived there in 2009 and if it's a TikTok or whatever trend now, that upsets me.
haha i am actually a living breathing example of a true Zillennial so no worries :D Here's what I want you to do, download TikTok, look at some Kyrgyzstan travel videos (there are many to scroll through) and then use that as a framework when you write about living there in 2009. I'd be so keen to read that story!
But yeah, it's like a new hot niche destination to travel to. The most popular videos always show people galloping on horses through the mountains. Looks pretty epic but absolutely not for me. I always wonder whether all these people knew where Kyrgyzstan was or what its capital was before seeing it online and deciding its cool now. There must have been some extremely successful tourism campaign somewhere.
It might surprise you to hear I already have TikTok, but only on my desktop - my phone is so old and slow and I can't download any more apps on it. I only started a TikTok about a year ago for book marketing purposes but I barely use it and never look at other stuff. But I will do some Kyrgyz deep diving (though it might irritate me!)
Funnily, I started my first blog in Feb 2009 just after I arrived in Bishkek. And one of these days I want to resurrect that material, polish it up and even put it into book form.
Forgive me for dropping a link here (it's tacky, I know!), but this gives you a very brief insight into my Kyrgyz days:
i became really tired of tiktok near the beginning of my southeast asia trip because my feed knew i was there and kept trying to tell me what i needed to be doing. i’m not an itinerary girl, and i love the unexpected moments of travel and just stumbling around - i don’t want to copy paste someone else’s experiences. i’ve had a draft going about this topic for a while actually! i’m so glad you raised this in such a thoughtful way
Thank you <3 and girl, don't abandon that draft I'd love to hear your point of view!!! (ironically this was in my drafts for like 6 months, it just became relevant again as I'm going on a trip soon)
Great piece! I think a lot about “viral” destinations and how it’s usually an algorithm that’s dictating the places we chose to travel and the hotspots/restaurants/cafes we visit too.
When I first went to Thailand 10 years ago, I left my phone at home and just took a really old flip phone with me (with no internet) so I could call if needed. I didn’t do any research into ‘best restaurants’ and couldn’t look online at reviews - I just went to what was nearby or where someone recommended and everything I ate was amazing. When I went back to Thailand last year, I saved a ridiculous amount of places and some of them involved trekking across the city to go try a dish that I probably could have eaten somewhere nearby that was just as good (and then I’m set up for more disappointment too as I’m expecting it to be the best “insert dish here.”) I defo feel like the TikTok itinerary era creates a sense of unnecessary FOMO that can make travel more stressful!
Thank you! Viral destinations also live rent-free in my head tbh, I'm so fascinated by that topic and how it happens.
Also, traveling with a flip phone is a boss move! I used to travel with a regular phone but was too cheap to pay for data most of the time so same same but different :D I wonder if something like that could be replicated nowadays...
And yes, I swear that the best food I had in Thailand was always from some random street stall!!!
When I went to Vietnam last year, I tried doing it without a phone, but found it impossible! I needed it to book Grab's, book/talk to tour guides I had booked experiences with, use maps, access train tickets, etc 😭. Maybe it would be easier to try doing phoneless if it's somewhere you don't need to move around too much!
First off, I've never heard the quote "to be interesting, you have to be interested," and now it's my new favorite quote, so thanks for sharing that.
I've done wayyyyy too many things just because of social media even though I knew I wouldn't even like doing those things before signing up for them. sigh. Halfway through my last trip, I made a point of asking myself something along the lines of "would I be doing this if I couldn't take pictures to post and prove I did this?" We have totally lost the plot though because most of us travel to show off and we aren't even recognizing thats the core reason
And although I do agree that social media has drastically changed the way we travel and even the why (unfortunately the why being to show off on Instagram for most), I love to be the devil's advocate sometimes; if there was no social media we would find other ways to find recommendations. Lonely planet guides, blogs, whatever other guides are out there, etc. But, again, I do agree that social media is the main problem, I just like dwelling on all the possibilities, all the arguments.
Thanks so much for this comment! Devils advocate is definitely warranted here, I'm not against using social media to find tips and recommendations as a whole, I do it too! But I do feel like it's so easy to get lost in the sauce, turn our brains off and just follow...
For example, the picture from the Popeye village in Malta I added cracks me up, went there because we were in the area and I remembered seeing it on instagram all the time, no further research. paid 15 euro each to realize its clearly for kids or adults who realllyyyyy love Robin Williams 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ never felt so scammed but the joke was 100% on me
“… you are robbing yourself of the opportunity to experience something you wouldn’t find in a destination guide.” - ain’t that the absolute truth. 🫶🏻✨ Really enjoyed reading this. Thanks!
I love this, when I tried to imagine what I’d do without the internet I was hit with a VISCERAL fear of “but what if I miss something inportant” inportant to who neve? Important to who? Like you my favourite travel memories come from animals and maybe pretty bodies of water and mountains. Which if in reality if I miss a “highlight” it can’t be the worst thing.
Part of the excitement of a trip for me is looking into it, but maybe there’s a middle ground, particularly here in Australia I’ve been blown away with how helpful vistors centres are. Maybe it’s time to utilise them more as primary source rather than the internet!
(Which sounds crazily obvious when you put it that way…)
Yes, love this so much. I just posted a similar article about how travel doesn’t have to be all or nothing 💛 I like getting inspiration from blogs and then doing some of my own research and letting the rest flow
“Would you still have the same urge to be there?” It’s interesting you bring this up because I’ve been on both sides- a traveler pre-social media and a consumer of travel content. In, I decided to do a semester abroad to teach elementary school in England. Instagram was fairly new (aging myself here) and travel-influencers were definitely not a thing. I’ve always had this distinct pull to visit other places, and now I feel like the constant “must-see this” and “don’t miss this” posts ruin the fun of discovering. The flip side to this is, I do like to document where I’ve been. I’m just intentional in the way I share those experiences with others. Or at least I try to be.
I loved this, especially your point about being wary about any kind of recommendations online. I’ve tried to avoid Travel Tok lately as the algorithm and I have been fighting (which you know! 🤪), but you’re spot on, that point also stands for things like travel blogs
I’ve somehow never heard of the Popeye Village in Malta and that part had me cackling. SO thankful that stayed off my chronically online friend’s fyp, because she undoubtedly would have dragged us there after seeing a TikTok (I’ve written briefly before about how I’ve still never forgiven her for taking us to the most awful ‘popular’ spots in Berlin she’d found scrolling 😭)
So excited to hear about your upcoming travels in Taiwan! (ps — your mum and I sound like we’d be travel besties, I need a fellow Greek mythology fiend around)
Love this! I'd also be wary of any "best things to do in X city" roundups from big travel publications. As a former travel writer, I can tell you from experience that a lot of those are written by people who have never been to those places and just Googled it.
To this day, the best trip I've taken was to Transylvania. The only things we planned were which cities we were going to, how we were getting there, and where we were staying. We didn't research any restaurants or attractions ahead of time, and that left space for us to discover the most amazing places and let opportunities unfold naturally. For example, if we had planned everything out, I wouldn't have been able to say yes to the tour the hostel offered to a random castle (that years later would be featured in The Christmas Prince movies haha).
For sure!! Pretty sure many of these roundups are AI now too 🙈 but tbh in terms of accuracy, i feel like doing actual research can be sometimes better than selling everything you did as the best thing everyone else must do 😬
also, the castle story is so cool!!
That’s such a good point! Can’t do it all and not everyone has the same interests
You put it so kindly - 'be wary'! I hate those lists yet there's a reason they're called clickbait (I can't resist, I think I just love being annoyed 😂). I suspected many people haven't visited those places and the same locations pop up again and again.
I remember back many years ago, I met a Let's Go writer who dished all the secrets, like how they skipped some places, literally spent 5 seconds lying on the bed in a hostel to see how comfortable it was, popped into a cafe for literally 2 minutes and then wrote about the 'chilled Aussie music vibe'. Never trusted guidebooks since!
A totally different era, though, compared to today's TikTok stuff.
This is refreshing to read about from a millennial perspective (or are you gen Z? sorry, I forget where the cut off is!), old cranks like me worry about these new travel trends and social media. I'm just glad I barely interact off of Substack and am immune to all this nonsense. Just go where you want, right? I know, it's not that easy, people are suckers.
I remember in the early 2010s, visiting Barcelona and seeing the ridiculous queue to get into the Gaudi museum. The people were stood there looking miserable and irritated. I did some lazy investigative 'research' and asked a few people who looked exceptionally annoyed why they were bothering to wait and almost all of them said something like 'well, you kinda have to go here, right?' Not a single one of them actually wanted to go. Honestly, why bother...
Is Kyrgyzstan a thing now? I have no idea. I lived there in 2009 and if it's a TikTok or whatever trend now, that upsets me.
haha i am actually a living breathing example of a true Zillennial so no worries :D Here's what I want you to do, download TikTok, look at some Kyrgyzstan travel videos (there are many to scroll through) and then use that as a framework when you write about living there in 2009. I'd be so keen to read that story!
But yeah, it's like a new hot niche destination to travel to. The most popular videos always show people galloping on horses through the mountains. Looks pretty epic but absolutely not for me. I always wonder whether all these people knew where Kyrgyzstan was or what its capital was before seeing it online and deciding its cool now. There must have been some extremely successful tourism campaign somewhere.
It might surprise you to hear I already have TikTok, but only on my desktop - my phone is so old and slow and I can't download any more apps on it. I only started a TikTok about a year ago for book marketing purposes but I barely use it and never look at other stuff. But I will do some Kyrgyz deep diving (though it might irritate me!)
Funnily, I started my first blog in Feb 2009 just after I arrived in Bishkek. And one of these days I want to resurrect that material, polish it up and even put it into book form.
Forgive me for dropping a link here (it's tacky, I know!), but this gives you a very brief insight into my Kyrgyz days:
https://danielpuzzo.substack.com/p/some-central-asian-derring-do-just
“I asked Google, Reddit, ChatGPT, my partner, a tarot deck, and the Universe.” love this part: me, everyday to anything ♥️
Hehehe same 😁
i became really tired of tiktok near the beginning of my southeast asia trip because my feed knew i was there and kept trying to tell me what i needed to be doing. i’m not an itinerary girl, and i love the unexpected moments of travel and just stumbling around - i don’t want to copy paste someone else’s experiences. i’ve had a draft going about this topic for a while actually! i’m so glad you raised this in such a thoughtful way
Thank you <3 and girl, don't abandon that draft I'd love to hear your point of view!!! (ironically this was in my drafts for like 6 months, it just became relevant again as I'm going on a trip soon)
Great piece! I think a lot about “viral” destinations and how it’s usually an algorithm that’s dictating the places we chose to travel and the hotspots/restaurants/cafes we visit too.
When I first went to Thailand 10 years ago, I left my phone at home and just took a really old flip phone with me (with no internet) so I could call if needed. I didn’t do any research into ‘best restaurants’ and couldn’t look online at reviews - I just went to what was nearby or where someone recommended and everything I ate was amazing. When I went back to Thailand last year, I saved a ridiculous amount of places and some of them involved trekking across the city to go try a dish that I probably could have eaten somewhere nearby that was just as good (and then I’m set up for more disappointment too as I’m expecting it to be the best “insert dish here.”) I defo feel like the TikTok itinerary era creates a sense of unnecessary FOMO that can make travel more stressful!
Thank you! Viral destinations also live rent-free in my head tbh, I'm so fascinated by that topic and how it happens.
Also, traveling with a flip phone is a boss move! I used to travel with a regular phone but was too cheap to pay for data most of the time so same same but different :D I wonder if something like that could be replicated nowadays...
And yes, I swear that the best food I had in Thailand was always from some random street stall!!!
When I went to Vietnam last year, I tried doing it without a phone, but found it impossible! I needed it to book Grab's, book/talk to tour guides I had booked experiences with, use maps, access train tickets, etc 😭. Maybe it would be easier to try doing phoneless if it's somewhere you don't need to move around too much!
Okay love so many things about this!!!
First off, I've never heard the quote "to be interesting, you have to be interested," and now it's my new favorite quote, so thanks for sharing that.
I've done wayyyyy too many things just because of social media even though I knew I wouldn't even like doing those things before signing up for them. sigh. Halfway through my last trip, I made a point of asking myself something along the lines of "would I be doing this if I couldn't take pictures to post and prove I did this?" We have totally lost the plot though because most of us travel to show off and we aren't even recognizing thats the core reason
And although I do agree that social media has drastically changed the way we travel and even the why (unfortunately the why being to show off on Instagram for most), I love to be the devil's advocate sometimes; if there was no social media we would find other ways to find recommendations. Lonely planet guides, blogs, whatever other guides are out there, etc. But, again, I do agree that social media is the main problem, I just like dwelling on all the possibilities, all the arguments.
I could go on and on about this haha
Thanks so much for this comment! Devils advocate is definitely warranted here, I'm not against using social media to find tips and recommendations as a whole, I do it too! But I do feel like it's so easy to get lost in the sauce, turn our brains off and just follow...
For example, the picture from the Popeye village in Malta I added cracks me up, went there because we were in the area and I remembered seeing it on instagram all the time, no further research. paid 15 euro each to realize its clearly for kids or adults who realllyyyyy love Robin Williams 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ never felt so scammed but the joke was 100% on me
More authentic travel please!
100% !! Thanks for reading 🥰
“… you are robbing yourself of the opportunity to experience something you wouldn’t find in a destination guide.” - ain’t that the absolute truth. 🫶🏻✨ Really enjoyed reading this. Thanks!
I love this, when I tried to imagine what I’d do without the internet I was hit with a VISCERAL fear of “but what if I miss something inportant” inportant to who neve? Important to who? Like you my favourite travel memories come from animals and maybe pretty bodies of water and mountains. Which if in reality if I miss a “highlight” it can’t be the worst thing.
Part of the excitement of a trip for me is looking into it, but maybe there’s a middle ground, particularly here in Australia I’ve been blown away with how helpful vistors centres are. Maybe it’s time to utilise them more as primary source rather than the internet!
(Which sounds crazily obvious when you put it that way…)
Yes, love this so much. I just posted a similar article about how travel doesn’t have to be all or nothing 💛 I like getting inspiration from blogs and then doing some of my own research and letting the rest flow
Some great reminders! Love this article!
“Would you still have the same urge to be there?” It’s interesting you bring this up because I’ve been on both sides- a traveler pre-social media and a consumer of travel content. In, I decided to do a semester abroad to teach elementary school in England. Instagram was fairly new (aging myself here) and travel-influencers were definitely not a thing. I’ve always had this distinct pull to visit other places, and now I feel like the constant “must-see this” and “don’t miss this” posts ruin the fun of discovering. The flip side to this is, I do like to document where I’ve been. I’m just intentional in the way I share those experiences with others. Or at least I try to be.
I loved this, especially your point about being wary about any kind of recommendations online. I’ve tried to avoid Travel Tok lately as the algorithm and I have been fighting (which you know! 🤪), but you’re spot on, that point also stands for things like travel blogs
I’ve somehow never heard of the Popeye Village in Malta and that part had me cackling. SO thankful that stayed off my chronically online friend’s fyp, because she undoubtedly would have dragged us there after seeing a TikTok (I’ve written briefly before about how I’ve still never forgiven her for taking us to the most awful ‘popular’ spots in Berlin she’d found scrolling 😭)
So excited to hear about your upcoming travels in Taiwan! (ps — your mum and I sound like we’d be travel besties, I need a fellow Greek mythology fiend around)