Being a traveller, not just visitor

I love travelling, and I'm sure there are many people out there love travelling as well.

Nowsdays, young people prefer backpacking rather than just follow the tour. By backpacking, you can feel the journey much better.

I had my first backpacking last year, my destination is Taiwan. Taiwan is easier to me as the national language there is mandarin and the taiwanese are very friendly and helpful. It was a memorable travel experience for me. Although we need to plan everything ourselves and sometimes we were lost, but definitely everything is worth.

My personal thought is that you can feel the place better if you being a traveller, not just the visitor. What's the difference? To me, being a traveller is to establish a communication channel between you and the people there. With this, we the travellers are closer with the country and can see their culture better. Being a visitor, like follow a tour, sometimes I feel that you just follow the destination chosen and you can't really select which place that you want to go. You just visit the places that have been chosen under the package and most of the time, we just spend time in shopping (which we can do in Malaysia obviously) and spend a little time in other activities.

The conditions to become a backpacker are:
1. you must have a good preparation on the place that have been chosen, like the accomodation availability, transportation, culture, etc
2. you must not have language barrier for the place that have been chosen
3. the people that will travel with you, at least there is someone who has good sense of direction and if possible all share common interest

I will think the people who is going to travel with you plays the most important role. It is not the place that is the most important, but the people who will have the biggest impact. Imagine if you travel to a place twice, the feeling will be different eveytime you travel with different people.

Try to be more adventurous, being a travellers, not just a visitors.