When I first came to Batam

We found ourselves at a mall looking for a sim card. The man asked me how long I was going to stay here, and I told him a month. A whole month? His surprised reaction got me to write about my journey.

There are so many places in Indonesia that are worth seeing for it’s beautiful beaches and scenery. Why would you come to Batam?

I’ve been out travelling for about two years now, and there are many exciting places I have yet to visit. There’s just too many thrills that my heart could become addicted to and really forget what my real intention for being out here was for. I sought to become brave each day by meeting people on my journey.

To experience play, to experience their practice and culture, and to be part of their ordinary day to day.

If I kept chasing thrills, all I would meet is tourists and travellers alike, all searching for their personal treasure of experiences. If I kept going to all the beautiful destinations, all I could write about is how you should really be here.

As a traveller, I want to encourage you to go anywhere.

Your anywhere should inspire you to be in transient and learn something you’re really uncomfortable learning. Maybe it’s a journey into a religiously-parent-passed-down stereotype about certain people you wish to amend your empathetic soul to. Maybe you want to see more than what the media is pushing about Islam and make friends with people who are good to you instead of pushing away people because some president told you they were bad people.

My learning experience has triggered my inner desire to learn more than English, and by learning a little here and there, people are warm and welcoming towards my travel lifestyle because I’d rather learn about their life than impose myself as their center of the universe.

Meeting the world takes a bit of courage and research. There are some common tendencies I can see when I choose a place to stick around to.

If you’ve selected a place with many beautiful selfie opportunities, you’ve most likely ended up in a place where ordinary people are making a living off you. You will often find annoyed foreigners who have stayed longer than they should have, complaining about the locals ridiculously upselling their goods.

• Short term value: Beautiful selfies, might lose more money than you planned to, and gorgeous experiences to awe your friends and family at home.

• Long term value: I’d get ridiculously tired of not getting to know the real locals, because just like telemarketers in America, tourist spots are filled with persistent entrepreneurs hustling their way into the capitalists’ dream.

If you’ve selected a place without a 7-11, not much roads or ridesharing, you’ve obviously decided that you really want a break from your normal humanity. Places like these often need help that they cannot afford.

• Short term value: You’ll get to be Brad Pitt or an alien for a couple days to the locals, and might even feel like a superstar because people will ask to take photos with you. If you’ve come for an ego boost that Jamba Juice couldn’t blend into your White Gummy, short terming this venture may be what you needed.

• Long term value: If you’ve located a volunteer destination with a host who has ambitions to helping the locals in providing education, shelter, and/or self-sustainability, the greatest gift you can give is your time. What you’ll receive is a lifelong memory of random little ones that have learned your words and terrible times when they tricked you into jumping into a cold ass river that made you have a dangerously high fever that luckily didn’t kill you.

You can see the world in a way that people that stay home can only experience in reading novels and listening to their buddy’s burning man experience. You’ll become familiar with the color of skin, the religion, the foreign language that you’ve been immersing in for months.

So when a person of that kind of ice cream flavor walks into your first world life when you’re back home away from the dangerous scary world, you can properly tune your ears, your heart, and your mind to listening and having genuine experiences with them.

You’re suddenly part of a travelling family troupe

And now you’re looking out for your six year old child and making sure her experiences are safe so you’ve mapped out destinations that are viable in maintaining her learning habits and making sure that the soil for growing her courage maintains its nutritional value and proper temperature so that growth is strong and steady.

Taking risky adventures that I used to be able to take while solo venturing has now become something I can’t consciously do now that I am in parent mode. But now we are able to fortify her confidence in being a child born into not a country, but born into this world. Parent and child alike, we struggle with communicating in the unfamiliar language we have found temporary homes in. Every day is a learning experience, creating better habits and trimming the bad ones.

My mission now is to world-school this Sweet Child o’ Mine. I don’t know how well we can hold up financially, but I’d rather be travelling than living in a gigantic home complaining about all the taxes I have to pay for the ridiculous amount of money I am worth. People can make a fortune from their blogs, for whatever creative content they are passionate about. I want to make enough to float this dream boat. I want to make enough to have the power to encourage others to become part of this world of genuinely being grateful for one another.

The traveller is in all of us because our legend lives in the people we can inspire.

All photos were taken by me on my adventures. :)