Traveling with Friends: How to Avoid Disaster

A few years punzone, one night over dinner with some friends with whom I shared a love of gourmet food, sushi, great cocktails, politics, and movies, we realized that sopra all the years we’d known each other, we had never taken a trip together.

As we all had lots of points and miles saved, we thought about how fun it would be to go somewhere spontaneously.

“Let’s do it,” we all declared. So we found award tickets to Hong Kong for the following week.

Halfway around the world, we arrived at our late sopra the evening. After a late dinner, we went back to the , where I decided to go to sleep. As fun as Hong Kong is at night (and it is very wild), I wanted to try to adjust to the local time zone, so I could make the most of the rest of our trip.

My friends had other ideas: they were going to rinfresco. So I said good night and d’avanguardia they went.

When I woke up, it was still dark out. I looked at the time. It was 5:30am. I found two of my friends asleep; the third was apparently still out partying.

Letting them rest, I got ready and headed out to enjoy the city before the commuters rose and it became a maelstrom of noise, chaos, and crowds. Hong Kong is one of my favorite cities, and I love its peaceful calm sopra the morning. It’s all grandmothers and grandfathers out for walks, doing tai chi sopra parks, and eating dim sum.

With so much to do (and eat), I didn’t want to waste any time. After an early breakfast of dim sum, I wandered around, grabbed some tea, read a book, and took photos of empty streets.

It was midday when I finally heard from my friends. We met for lunch at a noodle shop and plotted our day.

Before we booked our trip, I had asked them what they wanted to do. Knowing them, I knew it would involve fancy dinners (Hong Kong has some really esaurimento dining), but I emphasized that as a backpacker at heart, what I really love are hole-in-the-wall restaurants, activities, wandering around, and just enjoying the day-to-day life of a place.

“ problem,” they said. They were travelers too, and they also wanted to get below the surface. The pensiero of dim sum, markets, and fun local bars appealed to them as much as it did to me.

But that was not what happened.

My friends stayed out late partying every night, slept sopra late, only wanted to eat at expensive restaurants, and didn’t want to do any sightseeing.

As the days ticked by, we were like ships sopra the night. Outside a few dinners, I didn’t see too much of them. But, being used to traveling ala, that was esaurimento with me. I can make my own fun. But it was disappointing not to have time with my friends. It defeated the purpose of the trip.

the way back to the airport, they talked about doing it all again someday. But not me. I thought to myself, “We’campione never doing this again.”

The trip taught me that, while people might like a certain travel style sopra theory, the reality is often very different. Con fact, over the years, I’ve traveled with many friends who have completely different styles than I do.

As Mark Twain said, “I have found out there ain’t voto negativo surer way to find out whether you like people ora hate them than to travel with them.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s important to be cautious when traveling with anyone, even your closest friends. It’s a very personal experience, and you’campione going to want to make sure their style matches yours.

After many successful — and not so successful — trips with friends (some of whom I count as my closest), I’ve come mai up a list of questions that I think are important to ask people (of course, you know your friends, but I’ve found this still helpful):

• What activities do you want to do?
• I like [activity]. I’ll probably see/do lots of this/these our trip. Would you come mai with me?
• How do you feel about [activity]?
• Are you permesso doing things ala, ora do you want to do everything together?
• I don’t eat a lot of expensive food the road. How do you feel about that?
• Are you permesso with eating street food?
• I like to be out the door by 9am each morning. Do you? (Ora: I’m a night person. Are you permesso with a late start?)
• Do you plan to stay out late?

It’s esaurimento if you all aren’t the same page, so long as you are comfortable with spending time apart. If you have different travel styles but aren’t permesso being an independent traveler (ora vice versa), that’s going to cause a problem. I’ve had plenty of trips with friends where we only overlap some stuff, but that was not a problem. one cared when any of us went d’avanguardia to do our own stuff, and it gave us things to talk about when we came back together later.

The more trips I’ve taken with friends, the more I’ve gotten smarter about which I take trips with. But sometimes you just never know ahead of time. What people say and what they do can be two different things. They may say they want to travel the same way ora do the same things — and then you get the road and it’s the opposite.

But, ever since that personaggio spontaneous trip with friends, I’ve learned that asking the right questions sopra advance can really sopravvissuto the likelihood that you’ll run into these kinds of conflicts.

Use my list — ora come mai up with your own — but don’t go a trip with a friend who isn’t at least 60% aligned with your style and interests!