Do We Ever Get Bored Of Travel?

Do we, did we, ever get bored with travel or the necessities of a travel lifestyle? No. Travel is always exciting. But sometimes we get bored, yes. I’ll explain a bit about the boredom of travel in this post.

The Boring Parts of Travel

Waiting at an airport for hours between flights, sitting on budget airlines for hours, long train and bus journeys, they can be boring for some people. I really don’t find any of these tedious parts of travel boring. Uncomfortable at times, but not boring.

I love the journeys from A-B that are a part of travel. These are new experiences, changing environments to enjoy and an excuse to relax and do nothing.

I love to talk to people, so if I have a chatty neighbour on a train, that’s great. If not, I have movies to watch, books to read, and games to play. Sometimes I just meditate, and I’ve always enjoyed watching the world go by.

The kids were always big readers, so Harry Potter or Warrior Cats would prevent boredom. They also slept well on planes, buses and trains, so no, I don’t think they were bored by these parts of travel.

The Parts of Travel That Were Boring

I get bored if I have nothing to do, or if I can’t motivate myself to do something. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the words “I’m bored” come out of my kids’ mouths, but it’s something I say about once a month.

The boredom is more about my internal struggles and procrastination habit than anything external. Boredom is a state of mind.

I know that if I were forced to take a beach vacation, or to relax in a resort, I would be bored out of my mind, as I don’t enjoy doing nothing. So we don’t take those vacations.

Cruising is similar, a lot of people would find that boring, but we fought off the boredom by throwing ourselves into quizzes, Sudoku, classes and shows. It was fun to do things that we didn’t normally do.

That said, I wouldn’t get on a cruise ship again unless I needed to, in order to reach a Pacific island nation, for instance.

I was bored at times if we stayed in a place for too long. I love the novelty of new places, and once you’ve seen everything there is to see, explored every back street and market and toured the shops, yes, I’ll be bored and crave a new destination.

I have to be busy, and with two children, I usually was. I think solo travel would be boring for me, or would take a lot of mental effort to keep my brain in its happy place all day.

If you’ve been with us a long time, you’ll remember a reader asking what we did all day, stranded on a small Thai island for weeks while Chef recovered from surgery. This person thought we must be bored. I answered that question in this post.

Am I Bored With Travel Today?

No, I still love the idea of travel, but the need isn’t as strong as it was. There’s too much going on in the world, and I don’t feel perfectly safe while travelling, as I used to. Safety never bothered me but today it’s something I think about.

Natural disasters, dangerous humans, transport accidents, and even terrorism play on my mind. They never used to. The world has changed a lot. It’s not because I’m more anxious, it’s because the dangers are more real. I conquered my anxiety a long time ago.

These thoughts on the wisdom of visiting certain places go into picking destinations.

If I were in Europe or Asia, I would still be travelling a lot. It’s easy to catch a train or plane for a few days anywhere, cheaply. I’ve taken international flights for as little as $19 in Asia. Living in Australia makes any travel difficult and expensive. Even getting to the airport is hard, it’s almost 2 hours away with no public transport to get us there.

All of these logistical difficulties make travel difficult. This is why today we just do one or two extended trips most years. It’s much cheaper to visit multiple places on the back of one set of flights from and to Australia.

Financially, we’re OK, and travel has always been our big priority. We are extremely frugal and minimalist, and I grow most of our own food, so the money is there to take a trip. I have to mention this because so many people are in financial strife today. We can afford travel because we make sure we can. Having kids with incomes still living at home helps too. It makes huge financial sense for families to stick together today; it always did. But “they” wanted the kids out the door ASAP, in debt, paying taxes and utilities, struggling to get by.

If you’re wondering how we get time off from work, that’s easy, we all have part-time casual jobs with zero hours commitments. We like our freedom.

Why Am I Writing About Travel Being Boring?

I can’t understand why anyone would find travel boring. I have a friend who dislikes it, but that’s not the same as finding it boring. We dug into all this in “Why do people travel?” If you think travel is boring or have ever found it boring, tell us why and where in the comments, we’d all love to know.

I’m answering a question. The person who asked it probably didn’t know they were asking, but they typed into the search bar on my site “was it boring”. Well, now they know! Thanks for reading. Did you see our new post on Sydney with kids?

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