There’s this sense that many of us have right after graduating college: The fun is over. It’s time to get a job, start a 401K, and relegate our travel to what can fit into two weeks of vacation time each year. “Endless travel sounds magical,” we think. But it seems out of reach. We have school debt, responsibilities, and the sweltering expectations of our parents to grind away at. We can’t just venture into the unknown without a trust fund or a safety net!
Unless you’re a person like Alexandra Baackes. In that case, you graduated college and thought, “Fuck it. I want to travel the world, and I’m not going to let anything stand in my way.” Literally a week after Baackes left school, she got on a plane, crossed the world, and started a different kind of life. That was six years ago, and she hasn’t stopped moving yet.
One thing Alex tries to stress is that she didn’t grow up traveling all over the world, and she wasn’t born wealthy. She’s just a person who went to Thailand one summer in college, and realized that there isn’t just one way to live your life. You don’t need to pick one spot to live and stick there. You could live anywhere and everywhere. And, on top of that realization, you can make a career doing so. Alex started a blog, “Alex in Wanderland,” to document her travels, and before long, it became her business. Now, writing about travel and experiences is how she makes her living. It’s a great story and one worth aspiring to.
I was able to talk to Alex recently about what it’s like to be a fulltime world traveler, and her tips on where to go, what to do around the world, and how you too, can live the travel lifestyle you crave.
You started traveling as soon as you graduated college. Were you by yourself that first big trip?
I was, yes. I moved to Thailand with my boyfriend, but I traveled around Europe a little bit first, and never looked back. I still keep going back to the same place, Koh Tao, so that’s been my home base on and off all these years. It definitely made a big impression on me.
What do you love about Koh Tao?
There’s a great sense of community. There’s an amazing expat population that I really love. Beautiful weather, a big life lived outdoors. I spend a lot of my time wherever I am in the world on my laptop of course for work, but when I get the chance to log off- I really want to spend as much time outside as possible. I love the options there for hiking and diving, and just being on the beach.
Do you have tips for people who are looking to travel the world solo?
I think traveling alone can be very intimidating at first. Until I took that first big trip to Thailand, I didn’t really have anyone in my life I knew who had done long term travel or big backpacking trips. I didn’t have any point of reference, other than the movies. Everything I knew about travel, pretty much, I learned from the movie “The Beach”.
I think a great way to get around that is you can take a course. I just did an amazing ten day coding boot camp in Bali, and there were people in that group who were traveling to Asia for the first time. You learn a skill, you have this amazing built-in group of friends, and you have this structure of people who are there that you can reach out to with questions. It doesn’t have to be coding, it can be a scuba diving course. It could really be anything.
I read that you love scuba diving! Did you get into diving during your travels or were you already a scuba diver?
I did, yeah. I had no intention to dive, but I ended up on an island in Thailand that is very popular for diving, so I kind of got talked into it. I’m so glad I did because it really changed my life. Now I dive absolutely everywhere I can. This month I’m writing a story for Sport Diver magazine about diving in Guatemala, and the high altitude lake they have there, Lake Atitlan, so it’s given me tons of opportunities as well.
What’s the coolest place that you’ve dived?
There are so many amazing ones, but actually one of my favorites is right here in the US. There’s a night dive you can do on the big island in Hawaii, where manta rays come every night. You don’t do much, you kind of plop down into the bottom of the ocean and you hold a light. The light attracts the plankton which then attracts the manta rays, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It definitely leaves you crying in your mask a little, so that’s fantastic.
What are some countries you’ve been to in the last couple of years that you’ve been surprised that you love?
I absolutely love Central America. It’s one of my favorite areas of the world. I’ve now traveled to every country in Central America. I didn’t really think of that as very extraordinary when I did it, but a lot of the comments that I got over and over again were from young women who were asking me about safety and security. So to me, that was eye-opening, to realize that for a lot of people, that’s a region they’d be hesitant to travel to. I was excited to share with them that I actually found it a really comfortable and exciting place to travel solo.
What are some off the beaten path things you did in Central America that you’d recommend people try?
I actually ended up spending about a week in Guatemala City. I had some friends there that were working on an architecture project and living in artist’s commune. I was at the end of a really long trip and wanted the comfort of friends, so I went and stayed with them. I was absolutely blown away by the city. We went to Capoeira classes and biked all over and went to the markets and found beautiful food. I ended up writing a post called “News Flash: Guatemala City doesn’t suck.” It was one of the most viral posts I’ve ever written, because people from all over Guatemala shared it.
Another experience from Central America that’s fantastic, is there’s a multi-day diving trip you can do from Panama to an area called Isla de Coiba. It has an amazing history. It was once a prison colony and then later everyone there was pardoned, and it was then made into a national park. There are sharks everywhere, which was what made it such an effective prison colony, no-one wanted to try and escape.
Now, it’s just an absolute haven for divers. There’s only a couple little dive shops, no ATM, no internet. We spent four days diving, and sleeping in the national park. We saw whale sharks, and so many blacktip and whitetip reef sharks that you almost get sick of signaling them. So it immediately has this very cool history and you get to sleep on these deserted islands that are totally untouched by development. It’s just amazing.
What are the challenges of traveling so much? Have you ever had a trip that was just disastrous that it made you question being a travel writer?
I’m pretty lucky. I haven’t had any complete and total disasters, but I’ve definitely had challenges. I went to Brazil last year for six weeks and I found that to be, surprisingly, one of the most difficult countries I’ve traveled to. Mostly because I really struggled to communicate. I speak passable Spanish, and so I had this idea that I would be able to get by with Portuguese, and that proved completely false. I was frustrated on that trip a lot.
Do you try to find something positive about every city you go to?
No! I’ve definitely learnt that there are some destinations that are just not for me, and the nice thing about traveling this long is I don’t try to force it anymore
Where have you been recently? What have you been doing this year?
Well, I just spent the last six months based in Thailand, which was amazing. I went to some great festivals in Thailand. I went to Bali to take a coding course. I went to Penang to do a Visa run, pretty much. Now I’m in the US for the summer, and I’m going to be doing some great projects here. I’m leaving tomorrow for a big couple weeks in Florida working with Visit Florida and Universal Orlando, and a couple great companies there.
My summers are always a great mix of work campaigns, and family and friends.
Do you feel yourself slowing down after all these years, or do you feel like you’re just getting started?
I’m slowing down in the sense that I have a home base now. I’m trying to spend more time there, but I have so much more to see and I can’t seem to ever stop myself for too long. But that said, I definitely need more down time, because I’m running a more serious business. I have a little less flexibility, and need time to write, edit photos, and plan campaigns.
I also enjoy the downtime more. I want to savor my trips, and if I just do them back to back to back to back, I don’t really the time to catch up and appreciate them.
Do you have a philosophy when you travel?
I’m very passionate about sustainable travel. I’m always trying to be conscious of what I’m doing, how it affects the environment, and how I can consume less and have less of a footprint.
What are some ways that you do that?
I never purchase bottled water anywhere I go. That’s a big passion project of mine, trying to show travelers what alternatives there are. There are UV filters. There are self-filtering water bottles. There are so many options out there for people who don’t want to just buy bottled water every day when they’re somewhere where you can’t drink the tap water. I am always trying to share those on my blog.
I also am switching to less and less plastic products. I think when we’re in the US, we are spoiled with the ability to recycle things all the time. That makes us feel better about consuming those products. But when you’re traveling in the developing world there’s not going to be a recycling bin most places you go. That makes you think a lot more carefully about what you’re using in the first place.
What do you hope people come away with when they read your blog?
I hope they come away realizing that I’ve had these amazing, extraordinary adventures and I am so grateful for all of them. I feel like I have this very rich, full life, but I want people to feel like that’s accessible to them. I’m just a girl next door from the suburbs, I didn’t grow up traveling the world with my parents. I was never exposed to these ideas of gap years and things like that, I’ve just kind of cobbled it all together and learned as I go. The more I travel, the more I meet people all the time who are on the road and doing really cool, inspiring things. That’s what keeps me going.
I just hope people will realize that they can do it too.
