How To Be An Utterly Boring Traveller

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Photo credit: Flickr / Tom Coates

Being an utterly boring traveller takes a lot of skill, not only do you have to go out into the world and see all there is to see, you have to tell everyone about it, but without ever managing to inspire other people to get out into the world themselves. It’s a very fine line to tread, you have to talk about these amazing places, but you have to sap the energy out of people listening. So instead of them joining in on a great conversation about your travels around the world, they simply want to get away from you as fast as possible.

Utterly Boring Travellers or UBT’s are terrible people, I don’t think they intentionally strive to be UBT’s as most people simply fall into this revered profession. Honestly in some ways UBT’s are almost as bad as Chirpys, Chirpys don’t want you to go in the first place but UBT’s make you never want to go to the places they talked ever. Especially if you have never been to the place they are talking about as you can get the impression that if this is all that the UBT can talk about there really must be nothing there, so you go to lengths to avoid it.

Now while it was mentioned that most people simply fall into the profession of UBT, you don’t have to leave everything so much to chance. If you want to get to being a successful UBT that much faster there are ways to do that. So how to you stop the process of becoming a great traveller and instead revert back to being an UBT?

First thing you have to of course is start travelling. But make sure that before you go that you start telling everyone you know in nauseating detail. Inlude information about what time you are going, what kind of plane is taking you there, what you will do if the car breaks down and you can’t make it to the airport, and definitely don’t foget to mention what number your plane seat is. Don’t just tell people this information ocne though, make sure to tell them again, and again, and again.

Once you have done that to death, start travelling. You don’t have a lot of stories left so don’t inflict them on the locals just yet, wait until you get home. Or if that won’t happen for awhile start with your fellow travellers if you don’t speak the language.

Make sure to go to these incredible far of places after that, but the key to being a UBT is not to left other people start talking. You always have to be the one talking, you always have to be the one sharing the stories. Make sure to talk about every single aspect of your day, including what you ate for breakfast and what time you got to each site. But remember don’t be clear on every single aspect, make sure that you constantly have to start your story over again and again because you can’t remember what exactly you ate for breakfast. This tactic works best if there are two UBT’s travelling together and they can tag team the people around you but it can work if it’s just you as well.

Remember to talk aout your day but the key here is to never mention how the must see landmarks are. If you go to Paris for example never talk about how great the Eiffel Tower, or if you do, talk about in such bland terms that your audiences feels as though they are listening to grass growing.

Never ever forge to drop names, repeatedly. It’s best if they are famous people, but it can work with people that no one has ever heard of. In fact if no one has ever heard of them it does work better, because if they are listening enough to ask who that is you can then go on a ten minute spiel about who they are, how you met them and where they used to live. Nothing screams UBT like name dropping.

Start every story with “When I Was In … [insert country name]” refuse to talk about anything else and do not listen to the groans that surround you as your friends, if you have any, moan about hearing another story about that country that could only be boring when you talk about it.

Tell everyone how things sure have changed since you were here last. This piece of advice is usually for the older travellers who want to make the leap into being an UBT, but it can work for anyone who has been to a place a number of times. Though it doesn’t have to be so, you can simply make it up.

Complain about everything. Everyone knows that you can only be truly be a UBT if you complain about everything. Never mind the fact that you are doing what thousands of people would give their left arm to do, what matters is that this piece of cheese isn’t the same as home.

Constantly ask questions. While this may not be a UBT trait officially, but if you ask questions solely to find a way to work your incredibly boring travel story into the conversation then it can become a UBT trait. You are not an truly an UBT if you don’t work at least one of your travel stories into every conversation you ever had.

Tell the same story over and over again. And again, and again, and again. If the people silly enough to be standing around you haven’t heard the same story three different times then you are simply not on your way to being an UBT.

In the end to be an UBT the key thing that you have do is keep talking. It doesn’t matter if you are having eyes rolled at you, it doesn’t matter if people try to polite you stop talking, it doesn’t matter if they have heard the same story over and over again, to be an utterly boring traveller you have to keep talking.