Is Traveling a Privilege?
On traveling, privilege, and a passport from a developing country. From the perspective of a much younger me.
“I am really envious of your lifestyle,” a younger acquaintance once told me when I said I could not attend the poetry reading this month for a five-week trip in Southeast Asia. With migraine hammering my temples, I only gave a tired smile. She was one of the many who expressed their admiration for the so-called privileged life I live.
To travel is to have money.
Privilege is a word I often associate with middle-class friends with a tinge of envy. Because it seems like, again, they do not have to worry about rent, bills, and the occasional financial aid to support one’s family—quite a common narrative for the majority of Filipinos. They only have to worry about themselves. Their money is solely theirs. They are lucky in that sense.
Notes from My First Trip Abroad
On being a Southeast Asian woman traveling abroad and passport privilegemedium.com
While I come from a financially deprived one. I sent two of my brothers to a public university. (One finished his studies, knocked up his young girlfriend, and got married right after; the other in his final year and hoped he will not end up on the same path). I am too privy to my own space, so I rented a small pad for myself and Hip and Carbon, the cat royals. With tuition, allowances, and monthly bills to think of, traveling should be out of my league. My salary as a teacher was not enough to cover everything.
Contrary to inspirational porn running aplenty on social media, you have to worry about money, especially when you travel, more so, if you desire to travel for more than a week. To travel is to have money. There is at the least, a dorm bed, a bus ride, or cheap meals to pay for. Hitchhiking, Couchsurfing, and begging are not for everyone.
A Southeast Asian Traveler’s View on Begpackers in Asia
I’m Jona of backpackingwithabook.com. And these are my no-holds-barred thoughts on begpacking in Asia. I’m a Filipino…medium.com
Poor yet ambitious to travel the world, I do not have a luxurious life. My only expensive purchases were my cameras, the most pocket-draining was Loca, a secondhand Lumix GX7. I hoard secondhand books, and I’m on a first-name basis with BookSale staff in Cebu. I hauled my #ootds from ukay-ukay — a Cebuana term for scour-scour, because beautiful thrifted outfits do need intense scouring.
I could say I live modestly. But to own three cameras and have a wall of books is not modest at all, and I would agree. But except for those, I do not own anything. I do not own a single appliance. Ah, wait, I do have a printer, a dysfunctional netbook, a cheap and equally dysfunctional tablet, and a smartphone — gadgets all needed for the life I chose for myself.
Buying the camera, paying the monthly dues, saving for the five-week Southeast trip, and regularly traveling around the Philippines were never easy nor dramatically hard.
I long for places I have never been. I see moving as meditative, as significant as standing still. I long for new experiences.
Little sacrifices had to be made. Instead of writing my fiction and poetry —the heart and soul of my existence, I was chasing travel content writing deadlines for an American company. Instead of enjoying the sea in front of me, there I was pounding words after words like a content mill machine. Instead of letting sleep claim me, I had to be awake in the dead of the night to meet deadlines. This unhealthy lifestyle often resulted in migraines and bouts of insomnia.
But I was not complaining. I still considered myself fortunate, which others called privileged, to make a living from writing although not the kind of writing I shared with the literary circles, which could be the snobbiest when it comes to writing. My friends did complain. Instead of hanging out with them for hours, I marooned myself to earn.
Because I wanted to travel. Because I needed money for the kind of lifestyle I chose for myself.
Yes, traveling, to some extent, is a privilege. But personally, traveling is a conscious decision, the life I choose for myself.
An American financial blogger once wrote that traveling is “entirely a game of money and access.” This is true. In so many ways. But traveling has so many intersectionalities. True, you have to have money. True, you must have a passport that does not alarm immigration officers.
But how about those who do not come from money and do not have the desired passport but still long to travel?
Traveling, in the context of a poor traveler from a developing country, is a game of guts and prioritizing. It took guts to email news outlets if they needed a regular travel contributor. It took guts to inquire about writing jobs here and there. It took more than guts to tell Mama I would not offer financial support at the family table because I had my own life to think of.
I long for places I have never been to. I see moving as meditative, as significant as standing still. I long for new experiences.
To leave everything behind and travel the world is something I would love to do. I admire those who have the courage to do so. But I was and am still a worry-wart and an overthinker. I worry about money. I worry about Carbon and Hip. I worry about my plants not being watered by the housesitter. I worry about failing because I do not have moneyed parents to rely on when a crisis comes. I worry about getting old penniless.
So, I save. I save it for my trips. I invest the little amount I can put aside.
Yes, traveling, to some extent, is a privilege. But personally, traveling is a conscious decision, the life I choose for myself.
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