Recently, I was having a juicy conversation with a friend about the use of smart phones while traveling. We agreed. They certainly make life easier. But they also take a lot of flavor out of travel, too. I asked him to write about his thoughts on the topic for this month’s installment of my Conversation Starter series. This is what Kyle had to say.
“I don’t use my smart phone very often while traveling and here’s why.
First off, I grew up camping with my family, and that’s like belonging to a traveling circus. Canvas tents and gear spilling out of every compartment in our car as we make home in another new park or forest. Then it was running around looking at and meeting every other kid in the campground or investigating others’ campsites.
Being an explorer, asking questions of others, and finding out about our new surroundings became an integral part of each day. It was all about forging connections with those right in front of me. Learning an ease of the give-and-take interactions with strangers. I loved it.
Years later, at 23 years old, I flew to Europe with a general plan to experience the new and the different. I landed in London, and stayed the first night in a youth hostel in Holland Park because a cute Canadian girl on the plane clued me into the fantastic youth hostel system in England. Two days later, I had bought a used motorcycle and traveled around Europe for the next three months using the youth hostel system and without smart phone in sight.
The hospitality of many locals blew me away. Sometimes when I had only stopped to ask a question I ended up with an invitation for dinner or a place to sleep that night.
My upbringing and life experiences had both prepared me and habituated me to keeping my head up, being curious, and engaging strangers or locals in the process of exploring new places or solving problems. From that ad-hoc approach, memorable travel stories were born.
Countless times I pulled my motorcycle over on a country road to ask a farmer for directions. I would see detail like the worn tweed collar of his coat and feel his warmth (or brusqueness) in how he dealt with me. I felt the uneven peat field under my feet and maybe saw him leaning with fatigue against the stone wall his great-grandfather laid out a century ago, while his dog lay nearby with his muddy paws.
Many good conversations have started this way resulting in an invitation to something spectacular like the best freshly caught mackerel and baked potatoes pulled from his field the previous day. Had I used my GPS, I would have arrived at the youth hostel hours earlier. But is that what I was in Ireland for?
Smart phones can make travel efficient, seamless, and comfortable. But they also make it sterile. I find that a smart phone becomes another extension of trying to manage everything to my expectations of comfort, convenience, and predictability that I have at home – the antithesis of spontaneity and discovery.
A smart phone mutes my ability to see and assimilate what’s around me because it both takes my attention away from the flow of uninterrupted experience, and it continually calls to me to record video, double-check, not miss anything happening at home, keep up with any big news, search for things to see locally, and…and….YIKES!
I find myself with my face in a screen, traveling but not seeing and experiencing. Instead, I’m trying to orchestrate “THE PERFECT TRIP” while missing the adventure I am actually on.
For me, traveling, like life, is about being open to the day-to-day moments of the culture, environment, and people around me, while slowly forging my connection to it all so that eventually I feel at home wherever I am. A smart phone can keep me head-down, mired in monitoring my own little world while real substance streams by around me.”
So here’s where you come in! What are your views on traveling with a smart phone? Would you dare traveling without yours?
Vicky K
November 7, 2015 at 5:16 pmDo tablets count?
travelwithkate
November 8, 2015 at 7:38 pmHmmm. I think it depends on how you use them. If you use them for reading and games during transit or leisure… fine. But it you use them like smart phone… always referencing the internet for things, then you are missing your surroundings.
Vicky
November 10, 2015 at 4:40 amWhat if you use them for reading, music, watching something before you go to sleep and for viber?
mmoma1
November 8, 2015 at 2:46 pmI don’t think I could ever travel without my smartphone for safety reasons. What if I get stranded? Plus I rely very heavily on google maps when I travel! But it may be worth a shot when I go to Tibet next year.
mmoma1
November 8, 2015 at 2:46 pmI don’t think I could ever travel without my smartphone for safety reasons. What if I get stranded? Plus I rely very heavily on google maps when I travel! But it may be worth a shot when I go to Tibet next year.
travelwithkate
November 8, 2015 at 7:41 pmLove to hear that! Well, honestly, I don’t suggest leaving your phone at home. It really is useful in an emergency. But maybe just leaving it in your bag instead of using it to find your way around when you could be interacting with locals to find your way or find a place to eat. And definitely don’t check your emails more than once a day! I think it is finding a balance.
Emmy 'Nekomimi' Wilkinson
October 10, 2016 at 9:43 amI don’t even have a smartphone in everyday life, for many of the above reasons ! I believe that emails should be confined to my desktop and only checked every few days, haha. Though admittedly, I do usually travel with my partner, who does have a smartphone and I sometimes ask him to google things, usually on menus, because I don’t like to order something when I have no idea what it is, yet I also want to try local foods! (Of course, you can ask the waiter, but do you really want to be that person in the restaurant that asks the waiter to translate 30 menu items for you?)
It is nice to be able to look on a maps app to see where we are when we’re lost, or for our progress on a hike, not constantly but usually when we are already tired, aching and cold. I can be quite shy, especially when I don’t speak the language, so asking directions from strangers in an unfamiliar city with a language barrier is a negative experience rather than a positive one for me; I can deal with it, but I’d prefer not to on holiday. On a long hike, there is usually no one around to ask directions from! So although I can see that occasionally “asking locals for advice” can be a positive part of a trip, if like me you get easily cold, tired and frustrated, and find yourself lost in a big city or alone going in circles in the countryside, then it can easily spoil an otherwise pleasant experience.
The other thing I like to use a smartphone for when travelling is a restaurant app. I am not fussy about food, but my partner is a keen foodie, and I care about it a little more when on holiday; I always want to try the local delicacies rather than ending up eating food similar to back home! We are also usually travelling on a tight budget, so an app like TripAdvisor can be very helpful to find a good “local” place to eat that is nearby, and which is both within budget and has good reviews. It depends of course on where you are, but without a smartphone you can easily spend hours walking round looking for somewhere to eat that is affordable, and then if the food there isn’t great, it’s disappointing. Often there are great little places just off the beaten track that you never would have found, but an app can tell you what’s near based on your GPS location, and this way we’ve avoided eating at chain restaurants on holiday and found some amazing gems of tiny family run restaurants, much more the kind of eating experience we enjoy. Other information in the reviews such as “the prices aren’t cheap, but the portions are enormous, so it’s actually very reasonable” can also be useful when deciding where to eat!
Of course, we could do away with the smartphone if we just took a paper map and a guidebook with us, however then you have to buy a different one for each trip, you need to transport these heavy/bulky items with you, they are quite susceptible to being rained upon and going soggy, a paper map would not have your current location which is quite helpful, and guidebooks can fall out of date quite quickly. A smartphone on the other hand fits into your pocket, is up to date, and holds information and maps for almost anywhere you might like to go! As long as my S.O. can discipline himself to leave the smartphone out of sight until it is needed, I have no qualms with him taking it with him, and I admit I often find it useful as well.