The Introverts Guide to Travel

The Introverts Guide to Travel
Photo credit: Flickr / National Library NZ

 

A lot of people in the world are extroverts. You can usually hear them before you see them. In travelling the world they are pretty much everywhere, and the thing is about travel is, that you are expected to be one.

Introverts aren’t supposed to travel; it just doesn’t fit the mould of what you expect a traveller to be like. I’m not sure where the Introverts are supposed to be exactly, seemingly that they don’t travel the world (at home in the kitchen?), but as a proud introvert I am sticking up for the introvert who is sick of being expected to meet new friends and just hook up with a bunch of people when going travelling and cruising the bars.

Now you don’t have to hide your introverted way fellow travellers, there is a place for you. I thought about forming a support group to help fellow introverts in travelling, but then I realised the only people that would be there would be introverts and as such we wouldn’t show up.

So instead of the support group and hiding in shame this article was created in hopes of showing the world that introverts do travel the world and how you can cope as a travelling introvert.

 

How to talk to new people

Introverts have a hard time talking to other people, whether strangers or otherwise and when travelling even though we love travel we have to talk to a lot of people. Whether you want to or not.

This is especially fun when in a country where you don’t speak the language so not only do you have to talk to someone new, you run the very high risk of looking like an idiot, something that we definitely don’t like.

To overcome this barrier try to find someone official, like a tour guide or a guard or someone how answers questions all day. They will generally know what they are talking about and they also can’t get mad at you because it’s their job.

 

How to Dodge Irritating Extroverts

Sometimes doesn’t matter what you say you will find an extrovert following you around. Sometimes this is alright if you know them, but if a random extrovert, doing what they do best, has managed to latch onto you and won’t go away, you need an exit strategy.

One worded answers usually won’t work, because honestly they like the sound of their own voices. The only way to get rid of them is to fake somewhere you have to be in the next thirty minutes. They will usually want to come with you. Whatever you do don’t go back to wherever you are staying, you have practically invited them in if you do that, and then you will never get rid of them. Keep saying you have to go and duck into a tourist attraction and try to lose them.

If they finally don’t get the message, now this is an extreme last resort measure, find a big guy (for girls), or some hot girl (or the guys) and latch onto them, quoting them as the girlfriend/boyfriends whatever. This will usually get rid of that irritating extrovert. But this is a last resort, because you may just swap one bad extrovert for another.

 

How To Not Hide

Just because you happen to be travelling the world not to meet people, but instead to actually see what the world has to offer, doesn’t mean you have to hide that. Sitting in a cafe or tourist attraction is nothing to be ashamed of.

In fact most people will come up to you when they see someone sitting alone and start talking to you, if they happen to be irritating see the above passage for losing them, but sometimes it can work for you.

 

Being an introvert is a challenge in today’s world, especially when going travelling. You are expected to be going out into the world to meet new people, and talk a lot. For introverts this can be a struggle, we thrive on self motivation and are somewhat drained by interaction with others, but this is not a bad thing. We do not need to overcome being an introvert as something of a character flaw, we just to travel in our own way. Experience travel by embracing it in our own way and keep travelling.

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