The Perfect Destination Doesn’t Exist
(The New Version)
A version of this piece was originally published on the travel website Shut Up and Go on February 3, 2020. And while that piece was adequate in portraying my idea, there was more that could be said. Unlike my previous “raw versions” of old pieces, I actually wanted to go back and revive it completely. Since originally finishing this piece I’ve traveled and experienced much more, and I feel my thoughts can now be fleshed out to a much fuller extent. This is the new version of this piece, and I hope you enjoy.
Shot by Austin Dalley on iPhone XR
So you want to see the world. To step off a plane in that place that has filled your wanderlust dreams. And like so many future voyagers do, you research for all the information you can absorb about that soon to be place of wonder. But for every glossy travel publication that’s laced with ideally edited vistas, hunger inducing descriptions of local food scenes, and raving articles about how amazing that place is, there are almost as many travel forums, fuming comments, and ranting blog posts on how that same place actually really, really terrible.
Paris has dog shit on the sidewalks, and occasionally smells like piss. Athens is dripping in graffiti and dirt. Thailand has endless mosquitos. South Africa is ridden with crime. There are Italian cities with a trash problem rivaling New York City itself. On and on the list goes, with very few destinations of the world avoiding the harsh scrutiny of the trip advisor reviewer. But let me tell you a secret. This is pretty big, so lean in close: the perfect destination doesn’t exist. The perfect place will never exist. And while that may seem cynical, hear me out- that’s inevitable, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Why an ideal place can never exist, can be broken down into a few parts. First, is the often overlooked fact that “perfect” is subjective. What may be a problem for one may be a perk for another, and vice versa. Some people love big cities, with the crowds, incessant stimulation, and endless options. Others are drained by such places, and prefer smaller cities or the countryside for the very opposite reasons. Some people don’t mind graffiti or street art, and may even like it (I am not one of those people). Others like to be near the sea, others still would rather be in a historic gem than a modern metropolis. These preferences are endless, and none of them are “right” or “wrong” because every person needs different aspects to be happy in the place they live or travel in. We all have our own unique mentalities, and trying to state that any place is good for anyone is grossly hyperbolic.
Second, the experience one has in a city depends entirely on the person themself. Because traveling is not merely going somewhere to look at a landmark then leave (at least, it definitely should be more than that). When you travel, you immerse yourself, however temporarily, into a new way of living, and that means normal day to day interactions. Whether you get coffee, buy bread, go to a pharmacy, sit in a public park, get a drink at a bar, eat at a restaurant, you interact with this new world and all that are in it. And how you interact, of course, is dependent on who you are. How you present yourself, what your personality is, how you carry yourself, are all things that will change your experience wherever you go, and sometimes it’s just out of your control. I always find it amusing when I come across lists on the internet about “the friendliest places” to travel in, because there are literally an endless number of ways someone can be treated depending on unique personalities interacting. I’ll give myself for an example. To this day one of the friendliest cities I’ve traveled to is Paris. Yes, you read that correctly. In the French city where the inhabitants are often stereotyped as fashionably rude, I had no such experience. Every person I interacted with was very pleasant, with most of them smiling (this was in the before times, when masks weren’t covering half our faces). Two years later, I went to Athens, (obviously) the capital of Greece which is very often claimed by travelers as the country with the nicest locals. And I was…less than impressed. I suppose no one was overtly rude, but the majority of Athenians I encountered seemed indifferent at best and were honestly a far cry from the stories I’ve heard across the internet. And what it all comes down to is that no matter where you go on this earth, humans are human. There are some light regional differences, sure, but any place will have it’s mixture of rude people, nice people, indifferent people, and everything in between.
Which brings me to my last point. In many or most places you will probably travel to, humans live there. And humans are human. Sometimes we’re dirty. Sometimes we erect ugly buildings. Sometimes governments become corrupt. Sometimes we don’t take as good care of things as we should. Humanity is flawed, and our cities and nations don’t exist in a vacuum where they’re sheltered from weathering or time or political turmoil. Places exist in history, and will always be affected by that history. Some places have been able to right the wrongs of their history and are now thriving, clean, beautiful locales. But the truth is that not everywhere is able to do that, or at least not yet, and even then I still can’t think of a country where there isn’t at least one cultural, historical, or political flaw.
In case it needs to be iterated, this isn’t to scare anyone away from traveling. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have any expectations or wish that a place is maybe how you always dreamed it to be. Because sometimes, many times, traveling is everything you dreamed of. But something that I think every traveler is guilty of at least once in their life is setting their expectations too high. You’ve seen one too many immaculately edited photos on Instagram, Youtube videos filled with sweeping drone footage and cinematic scenery, and you just fell for it. You expected that little part of the world to be so flawless that by the time you were there and living it, you couldn’t help but feel that something was missing, something was wrong. And this is a problem that’s only exacerbated in the world of social media, where it’s the expected norm to share the best, for every feed to be a highlight reel. All the world becomes a stage to show the most manicured versions of both ourselves and the places we go, because we really want to show the world that we’ve made it, and we’re living that life.
But this leads to the question: where is the good in this? What is the benefit of realizing somewhere you’ve always wanted to go is in fact not a flawless work of art? Because, at least from my experience and those of other travelers for decades before me, places with few flaws very often feel strangely lacking. Flat. Dull. When a place doesn’t have any qualities that add texture to the experience, it feels as if the place is almost unreal, a Disneyland where everything is perfectly as it should be. It may be beautiful, sure, but when cities don’t feel realistic, lived in, raw, they never feel quite right. We often assume it’s good qualities in a place that keep our interest when in reality it’s often those imperfections, because they are what pique ones intrigue.
This fact is somewhat reinforced by the numbers: if travelers truly found the most interest in places that are by many metrics considered nearly “perfect” such as the Scandinavian nations, Switzerland, Australia, or Singapore, then these countries would be the most frequently visited. But in actuality, the most visited countries in the world, which includes Italy, Turkey, Mexico, and China, are mainly culturally rich, vibrant, and or historic places, regardless of the subtle or obvious flaws the nations may have.
Shot by Austin Dalley on iPhone XR
And it’s in those kinds of places, the ones that are beautiful but perhaps slightly broken, where we most often learn something. When you take in the surroundings, the crumbling buildings, the crowded side streets, and at the end of the day you’re in a bar and you ask a local, how did this place become like it is? Those kinds of places often make you push yourself, get out of your comfort zone, and give you the true travel experiences you’ve always wanted, ones of adventure, excitement, and unpredictability. But of course, if that doesn’t interest you, that’s fine. One can certainly cherry pick their travels to go to the “best” destinations, where everything is clean and manicured, and nothing is unsightly or off-putting. And you’ll probably get some very nice photos, everything will be safe, and everything will go along to the plan of your local itinerary. But that’s not for me. Take me to the cities with reality. Take me to the countries lined with markets of locals screaming in their colorful dialects, where the streets are a charybdis of cars and horns and people braving their life to go get a coffee. Because honestly, if I wanted a cross cultural experience that’s approachable, with no garbage, locals speaking foreign languages, graffiti, homelessness, or an impending feeling of getting lost, then I could always book a ticket to Disneyland. If I’m going to shut up and go, I’m going to go to a place that makes me feel the truth of living in another corner of this little world, flaws and all. How else would I learn the truth about its beautiful imperfection?