AI Website CreatorI was in Vietnam, in a cafe when it hit me: Why am I in a cafe and not on some crazy adventure in the mountains!? Is social media making us all want the same "epic" trips? Inspired by the book "Wanting," I'm exploring how influencers shape our travel desires and asking: What do I truly want from this Vietnam trip?
I was in a cafe yesterday working on my projects, just like I try to do almost every day, and then it hit me: "Why am I in a cafe when I'm in Vietnam?!" I immediately started thinking that this whole trip to Vietnam was a waste – I hadn't gone to the most popular places in the country or had a super adventurous backpacking experience. We've been here for quite some time now, and we haven't even left Hanoi once! I naturally started panicking. Was I wasting my time? Was I wasting money? Had I just wasted my gap year? I was spiraling and overthinking and immediately started looking at places to visit from Hanoi.
But then I took a sip of my cold hot chocolate (hot chocolate with frozen coconut milk) and calmed down a bit. I actually quite enjoyed my time in Vietnam. It was almost exactly what I wanted it to be. I did more traditional backpacking routes in Japan, China, and the Philippines, and I wanted Vietnam to be a bit different. Even though Vietnam is the perfect backpacker's dream for many, I planned to spend my time here on more "administrative" tasks: applying to master's degrees, working on this website, maybe even finding a job for when I arrive in Europe. Basically, just living my life but for cheaper. Hanoi seemed like the best place for that.
I was recently reading a book, Wanting by Luke Burgis, that made me rethink why I do things the way I do, or rather, why I desire the things that I desire. I think watching all the YouTubers and influencers on social media having the best time of their lives traveling, doing the craziest things, jumping off cliffs, and swimming with sharks makes me feel like I'm missing out on the "travel experience." I crave those experiences because I see other people desiring (and having) them. The book described how watching other people want (or have) something suggests to us that the thing is worth wanting. And I truly believe that it would be worth swimming with sharks, or whales, and I hope to do that at some point in my life.
However, the problem for me, and I suspect for many other people as well, is that there are so many inspirations of "what to yearn for" jumping at me from Instagram and TikTok that it gets overwhelming. I want everything I see. And I'm sure it would be worth having all of it, from vacations three times a year to five kids to being a millionaire. But are all those things that I genuinely long for, or do I desire them because someone else has them?
After reading this book, I've been trying to figure out what are the things that I actually long for, that come from myself, from an internal place. What are the things that are buried underneath all the influences from social media, under all the things that I think I should want, underneath everything that comes externally to me from the outside? What are the things that I truly seek?
And I think for Vietnam, I only wished to go out to have adventures once or twice, to give me a little bit of an adrenaline rush, but otherwise, all I want is to go to a cafe and have a cold hot chocolate.
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