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The hardest time during a hitchhiking trip: 2:30 PM
After reading and organizing accounts of hitchhiking trips, I found that what people struggle with most is finding a place to sleep. Hitchhiking itself can be achieved after dozens or hundreds of attempts, but lodging is different because it involves entering someone's home or personal space; people don't readily open their doors, it's hard to develop a sense of solidarity quickly, and it's difficult to tell whether someone who seems kind might actually be dangerous. As the night gets later, the number of people willing to open their doors or talk steadily decreases. The later in the afternoon it gets, the more serious the situation becomes and the fewer opportunities there are to talk. That's why many hitchhikers' nights begin at 2 PM: they greet people during the day, explain their situation, then work and receive lodging in return for that work.
Because this practice is not easy, many days are spent sleeping on the street, at stations, or in terminals. The territoriality of homeless people who occupy stations and roads, and their loud drinking gatherings, create an anxiety for travelers that makes it impossible to sleep. Missing a night's sleep ruins the next day's schedule or plans. These repeated experiences make it understandable that most people can't last beyond seven days and give up hitchhiking.
It's not only lodging and nights that make life difficult. Having to secure meals and perform labor under someone's direction means the trip centers on work as much as travel; sometimes you may have to do extremely hard tasks, and you may find yourself in difficult or dangerous situations. In such processes you can get hurt, your life may be threatened, and you will inevitably enter a puzzling, dreamlike state of 'what am I doing?'.
I learned about hitchhiking from books
You can find quite a few accounts from people who actually went hitchhiking on search portals. But the vague, hazy nature of many of those writings doesn't satisfy my vague desire to go hitchhiking myself. So I decided to look at books by people who have lived hitchhiking, not just reviews. There were quite a few books, but the popular ones are these four.
I was able to read the three books from the left, but I couldn't read the last one, Kim Chan-sam's "World Travel." As the definitive classic of hitchhiking and a first-generation world travel account, it's no longer available in used bookstores and you'd probably have to rummage through secondhand bookshops to find it.All the books were easy to read and stimulated considerable boldness and imagination.
A book by Sang-geun JeongIt emphasized possibilities that made it seem that anyone could do it, rather than focusing on hardships. Still, one can infer a fair amount of suffering and difficulty behind that ease and possibility.
A book by Si-hyung RyuIt was impressive in how it depicted the process of pursuing dreams and a life model; even amid many constraining difficulties that came his way, his pursuit of his goals showed reliability and the passion and daring of youth.
A book by Si-jun AnI was impressed by how a once-anxious young man filled himself through various challenges and experiences. He organized those processes well as experiences and connected them to his inner dialogue, which helped make up for his shortcomings. I recommend it to everyone.
Do you want some candy?
This happened while I was traveling abroad. I was walking down the street when someone approached me with eyes that made me wonder whether they were high or out of their mind. A gaunt, weak-looking person came up and asked, "Do you want some candy?" Of course, having grown up in Korea where people on the street sometimes approach you asking if you believe in the Way, saying you are very lucky, or that there is a spirit at your house, I bluntly said I was fine. Later I learned that in that neighborhood people give candy to make you groggy, and if you fall asleep they extort your money or even kidnap you, and I was quite shocked.
The books above also recount countless moments of danger. There are stories of people having all their belongings stolen, being scammed described almost as a rite of passage, and even accounts of kidnappings, traffic accidents, and earthquakes—each introduced one by one. Reading stories about life-threatening incidents while traveling made my mouth dry and my heart race at times. After reading, various thoughts came to mind over time.
What would I have done if I were one of the people in those books? If I had eaten that candy while traveling, what would have happened? If I were to face moments where fraud or theft left me unable to do anything, moments when I couldn't contact anyone, and I didn't even have money to buy a single loaf of bread... I felt like I would probably just stop right there and become like a fossil.
In the book 'Travel Is the Best Education', which contains stories about taking a gap year through travel, there is a sentence like this.A traveler's day is equivalent to ten days of an ordinary person.I think this is because when you spend your time fully for yourself without work or study, you physically have more time, and because you spend time in a different environment you experience many emotions. That probably increases the frequency of incidents as well. While browsing sites and articles and trying to organize them, I realized that bizarre incidents happen frequently, and after giving up on compiling them all, I decided to add my own perspective and summarize ways to be cautious while traveling.
Respect your intuition.
People differ, but we have a developed sense called intuition. Simply put, even if it is not rational or emotionally logical, sometimes the thought "I shouldn't do this. It's dangerous" suddenly pops into your head. I want to say that you should never ignore those feelings when traveling without money. All the incident reports circulating online about moneyless travel say that before something happened to them, they had premonitory signs or a hunch that "this isn't right." Likewise,If you feel something strange or have a bad hunch while traveling without money, stop immediately.And stop what you're doing and look for another way.
Be aware of changes in the environment and people's expressions.
Sometimes when you go to a restaurant in Korea and ask "Which dish is good here?", the owner will say all the dishes are good. If you ask part-timers, perhaps out of annoyance, they also say everything is good or recommend the most-ordered dishes. But you can't do that abroad. So when you don't know the language or the food, you tend to order the top item on the menu, and at that moment you may notice the waiter's expression change. It's as if their face is telling you that's the worst choice you could make. If I don't have the energy to cancel and order something else, I just eat it, but in moneyless travel and safety that's a different matter. I watch the taxi driver's expression when I ask to be taken somewhere, the change of atmosphere when I turn into an alley, the looks of people turning toward me when I appear, the silence, and the moments when someone approaches smiling and offers me something—I am cautious of all these moments. There's a Japanese proverb: "read the air." Likewise,If you encounter a moment when the environment or people's mood changes around you, stop and think again.Because you are doing one of the most dangerous types of travel in the world: traveling without money.
Accept that this is not Korea, and don't chase the "best."
Most of our experiences occur in ordinary daily life. In other words, our system of logic is aligned with the emotional logic of everyday life. Over time, our way of thinking that produced choices, effort, focus, and results will try to produce the best performance or the best results in every moment, even when you are traveling without money. Don't do that when you're on such a trip. This is not routine. Your everyday logic doesn't necessarily apply here, so you don't need to fight using everyday reasoning or stress the outcome. Living somewhere else often yields results different from your own logic.Simply reinterpreting and accepting those things as best you can may be one of the greatest lessons that moneyless travel teaches you.Also, the habit of always choosing the best may be something to set aside for a while. That result might not be the best in the place where you're traveling without money. Results that are unreasonably good often lead to problems.
The value of money
Moneyless travel is traveling with nothing. If you insist there is something, it's your time and labor; in the process of converting time and labor into accommodation and meals, we unknowingly apply the same value judgments we usually do. We think, "I might as well have worked part-time for this amount of labor," or "I might as well have stayed home and rested." That can make my moneyless trip feel unhappy, and relationships with people I meet during the trip can become twisted into absurd situations. Those situations come back to you and create greater hardship and unfairness. You have nothing. If you see the world and return with nothing, that will be a successful moneyless trip.So don't evaluate your trip by the value of money.If I had to say, I would call the act of setting aside the value of money temporarily a way to prevent accidents from happening to you. You are more valuable than money.
Do I recommend traveling without money? Does it have to be that kind of trip?
In fact, I'm someone who has tried traveling without money, and after researching such trips extensively,The conclusion is that I do not recommend going on a moneyless trip.
There are only two reasons,First: you only live once.Many people encounter many incidents and accidents while traveling without money. And sometimes they face life-or-death moments. Life is precious. It can also cause a lot of pain to many people. So please think carefully.
Second:I'm not sure that the experiences and values gained from a moneyless trip are worth risking one's life for.I think they can be sufficiently replaced by other things, and if you spend a little money to cover accommodation or meals, you can feel and learn more. Personally, when I see young Korean soldiers I find them admirable and impressive. Adapting to and doing things in such very different environments is remarkable. In my eyes, people who go on working holidays and those who emigrate are all impressive.
If you want to learn from people, meet more people; if you want to learn new environments and cultures, you can spend a gap year on a working holiday. If you want to reflect on yourself, mentoring can provide an objective analysis of you. I don't necessarily think that traveling without money is the answer. Also, although there are things you learn because you have no money, I know there are experiences you won't even get close to without money.
By Editor Kim Hanryang
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