a: Flight prices between seemingly comparable locations can vary wildly. If you live in New York and want to visit Tokyo this fall, you can book today for <1k.
b: On widebodies with 3-4-3 or 3-3-3 seating, if traveling with a partner, the aisle and center of the plane are the best. You get an aisle, and no stranger needs to wake you up to use the bathroom over the Aleutian islands.
c: Almost all of the most beautiful places in the US are located <30 minutes from free National Forest/BLM camping.
I'd favor window/middle if traveling with a partner, but I do agree that having two seats in the center of the plane is second best If traveling alone and I can't get a window, I do think there's a decent case to be made that "middle of the middle" is the second best option!
Wondering what you see as the strong advantage of the window seat versus ease of not climbing over huge person asleep with tray down to go to the bathroom.
I'm actually pretty happy to climb over other people. (I walk on the armrests. Granted, this isn't for everyone...) But in my experience people almost always get up without issue even when I assure them they don't have to.
this is where assumed alignment between other people's external vs internal dialog could be badly misleading. and this alignment also varies quite a lot across cultures.
Contra point 37, I found that taking 0.3-0.5g melatonin about 1 hour before bedtime in the destination timezone essentially "cures" jetlag. The couple friends I've used the technique with say it also works for them, so I haven't even observed so much variability.
I'll of course still be tired from the travel though.
Can confirm, even with 8 or 9h timezone difference I can reliably get at least 6h sleep even on the first nights when a) taking melatonin before sleep, b) spending as much time as possible outside in bright light in the morning *after* my desired wake-up time.
Going outside or exposing to bright light too early (eg if waking up at 4am accidentally) will make things worse. Make sure your room is as dark as possible and go back to sleep.
It's great that this works for you, but scientific studies show its entirely placebo effect. (Same thing with the claim that melatonin produces better sleep in general.)
Luckily for you, knowing that it's a placebo effect does not make it any less effective.
In particular, look for the part that begins "However, activation of this brain area is decreased concomitantly with the endogenous rise of melatonin, so that administration of exogenous melatonin at night does not have a further notable effect (Figure 1B,C). Because melatonin does not increase the amount of SWS..."
Interesting! I do not have time to look at the link you sent yet, but the passage you quoted talks about exogenous melatonin at night. However, we are talking about jet lag, and so it is not at night! Will take a look at this nlm summary if I have the time later though, thanks!
FWIW, melatonin doesn't *seem* to help much for me. I've experimented with doses ranging from 50 μg to 500 μg on dozens of trips—it seems like it might help me get to sleep faster but then I wake 4-5 hours later. But this might be completely invalid as I haven't tested this in a blinded experiment (yet)!
Try inositol. It's friendlier on an empty stomach, makes you have wildly vivid, potentially lucid dreams, has a stronger sedative effect (although still super-dee-duper mild) and doesn't shrink mice testes. I'd be interested in hearing about your experience if you give it a shot.
A sugar alcohol—how odd! I'll look into it more if I have trouble adjusting in the future. (Currently I've found that really boring podcasts seem more effective for me than any drugs...)
When you wake up and can’t go back to sleep in 20 minutes then the fun begins. Light a candle, do some journaling, stare at the moon, write a love poem, then, when your eyes start drooping again, go back to bed.
"Time seems to speed up as you get older. And you wonder—is it biological, or is it because life had more novelty when you were a child? Travel partly answers this question—with more novelty, time slows way down again."
Have you got any more detail on this? I don't really see the appeal of traveling but I do worry a bit about time speeding up. How much traveling do you need to get the effect, is a trip or two a year enough? Are there cheaper/easier ways to get novelty?
Unfortunately, my experience is that time only really slows down *while* traveling! My guess is that basically any novel experiences have the same effect, it's just that in everyday life you're rarely in a situation with so much novelty outside of travel.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that a week in a silent meditation retreat would feel even longer than a week traveling in a new country. So that proves that (a) it's probably not just novelty and (b) there definitely are easier/cheaper ways to get the effect.
> Obviously, planes and airports aren’t fun. But just being in a foreign place is often kinda alienating. So don’t expect constant fun. Most people incorrectly prefer aisle seats to window seats. They’re sure to discover their error sooner or later, but in the meantime, use it to your advantage.
Couldn't disagree more on both, but maybe that's why. I love people watching and pacing in airports, and I appreciate the sensation that I'm on a very firm time line with a place I have to be at a specific time (boarding) and absolutely zero rush or responsibility until then.
Possibly less obvious travel advice, have duplicate spare dedicated "travel" versions of necessities. Travel toothbrush, travel razor, travel meds, TRAVEL WALL WARTS AND CABLES, if possible all living in your dedicated travel bag. There is no worse feeling than having to throw together toiletries after waking up before an early flight, besides maybe having to unpack toiletries after getting home from your trip late at night. Travel items stay packed stay together and never need to be used at home
"32. (...) I’m pretty sure I end up behind on net."
What do you mean here? That you'd have to deprive yourself for 1 week to be able to "fully appreciate" modern amenities for <1 week?
I kind of empathize with this, but it seems very worth it even in this scenario (for the novelty of deprivation, and consequently the novelty of appreciation)
That's approximately what I mean, yes! Basically, if I suffer 10 "units" of deprivation for not having amenities while hiking for a week, then I might get one "unit" of extra appreciation on my first day back, but then it's slightly less each day and the total "benefit" is less than 10 units.
Strongly agree that brutal hiking/camping trips are nonetheless absolutely worth it! (Just not for this specific reason, perhaps...)
If you, or anybody else reading this comment, are actually struggling with day-to-day appreciation, I strongly recommend Guide to the Good Life, a book on modern day Stoicism.
Thanks for the recommendation. My impression is that almost everyone struggles with appreciation at least in the sense that hedonic adaptation is (somewhat) real. If you lived decades without hot showers, I imagine your first hot shower seems like an insane luxury. But then we (mostly? but not entirely?) start to just see hot showers as a basic need/expectation. If there's a philosophy that keeps you at that initial level of appreciation, that's something we definitely want to know about!
Two pieces of broad travel advice I have found useful:
-Figure out what absolutely requires advance reservations and make those in advance. For everything else, come up with some general ideas and just sort of wing it.
-Have multiple credit cards from different issuing banks, because they all have different unpredictable policies about what foreign transactions they'll reject. For example, Chase blocks lots of mundane stuff (like web transactions for museum and train tickets) that BofA happily allows.
6-7: The website I most wish existed for travel is a side-by-side guide to basic etiquette across countries. This is easy enough to find for Japan and "Europe" (in ways that are often wrong for individual countries, like "don't tip in Europe"), but I just want a no-nonsense table telling me where I should seat myself vs wait to be seated, how much (if anything) to tip, get to the point vs make extended small talk, use a tissue discreetly vs blow snot rockets in public, etc.
32: Whenever I get the urge to go backpacking or camping, I abandon personal hygiene, eat cold food out of cans, and sleep on the garage floor until the feeling goes away. It usually takes no more than 40 minutes.
Ha! When you really step back, the truth is that backpacking/camping is a somewhat strange bundle of different things—exercise, a social experience, communing with nature, disconnecting from regular life, etc. (I have treasured memories from some of these trips, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit they involved a fair amount of misery at the time...)
...all of which are wonderful things, I agree! I'm think I'm more of an "RV with hookups" kind of hiker than a "tent pitched on free federal land" type of hiker.
Wrap salmon, mango onions and spices in tin foil then throw it on the coals. Tell stories while you wait for it to cook and then eat in joyous silence.
Here's another one that applies mostly to me but could be useful for similar attention challenged individuals:
For most museums, a 1-hour visit is more than enough visit. Your capacity for appreciating old trains decreases exponentially with every extra half hour you insist on spending in the old trains museum.
Just give yourself permission not to look at everything and walk away while you still feel excited about what you've just learned.
On dubbing - I think Anglosphere people take it for granted that the mouth matches the words exactly, and are irritated when they don't. I was graded down on a film paper once because I pointed out that one character's mouth was clearly speaking English while his voice was speaking German (in Lili Marleen, Rainer Maria Fassbinder) and my prof (German dude) didn't believe that it added to the theme of Schein v Sein. He claimed nobody could possibly notice the mouth not matching because it was totally normal to do that in international film production. I'm still mad 30 years later. My German husband never noticed the non-matching growing up, but it irritates him now too. Once you do notice it, if you're good enough in the original language, then you might spend way too much attention on figuring out what the original text was...
Agreed, and I would add that the often the original actors are much better than the dubbing/voice over actors hired for the localization. For a great example, or an example of a bad dub making a great movie awkward, see the early 2000's dub of Princess Mononoke. Some are good (Billy Cruddup and Minnie Driver) and some are bad (Claire Danes) or awful (Billy Bob Thorton.) It was pretty good overall, but man, when the bad voices hit, they knock you right out of the film.
Sometimes dubbing is fine, but often it just doesn't reach the quality of the original.
The secret to travel bliss is packing everything in your bags in little freezer bags or (for your clothes) zip-up bags. Bags in bags in bags. Modularity makes packing and unpacking so much easier.
This includes all the stuff (computers, batteries, cables) you will need to dig out of your backpack and put in a fifthy tray to be manhandled by TSA or equivalent authorities. It's so much easier to gab bags of stuff than the stuff itself.
Added benefit: they are protected from water or leaks. And it includes your toiletries, which will be among the things that leak.
We're clearly very different people! Many of my happiest memories are extended camping/backpacking/hiking trips.
Also totally disagree on the sleep thing; I just go hard day one and reset at local time.
But in particular, I'm reasonably confident from this that you don't have children (and it's not just the aisle thing).
My desire to travel to distant locales is lower now that I have children, and not just because travelling with children is more stressful and less fun. Young children are *always* travelling, which is to say, they're always in that wide eyed space of wonder and discovery, and allow you to rediscover the mundane through new eyes. My acceleration of time has completely reset after having kids; they change so quickly, and you as a parent get to go along for the ride.
Well, many of my most cherished memories are also extended camping/backpacking/hiking trips! It's just that I wouldn't do them *because* of the deprivation. :)
Thanks very much for your thoughts regarding kids. The connection to "time" is something I'll certainly remember.
Fun list, and as with all such lists, I have quibbles.
"Obviously, planes and airports aren’t fun."
Some of us quite enjoy the bustling airport atmosphere. And even planes can be enjoyable if flying long-haul premium economy or, even better, business class. Long-haul economy is, however, miserable, especially for overnight flights.
"28. The human, after drinking liquids, must pee."
"40. Most people incorrectly prefer aisle seats to window seats."
Because of the truth of #28, the "incorrectly" in #40 should read "correctly" for any flight of 2 hours or longer, at least for those of us who try to stay hydrated on airplanes and prefer not to be a chronic pest to our seatmates as we keep getting up to visit the loo.
42: people never believe me when I tell them my favourite thing about my trip to Vienna was a quiet and sunny Sunday afternoon spent reading on the grass in Prater Park. But it really is.
Proposed pts:
a: Flight prices between seemingly comparable locations can vary wildly. If you live in New York and want to visit Tokyo this fall, you can book today for <1k.
b: On widebodies with 3-4-3 or 3-3-3 seating, if traveling with a partner, the aisle and center of the plane are the best. You get an aisle, and no stranger needs to wake you up to use the bathroom over the Aleutian islands.
c: Almost all of the most beautiful places in the US are located <30 minutes from free National Forest/BLM camping.
I'd favor window/middle if traveling with a partner, but I do agree that having two seats in the center of the plane is second best If traveling alone and I can't get a window, I do think there's a decent case to be made that "middle of the middle" is the second best option!
Wondering what you see as the strong advantage of the window seat versus ease of not climbing over huge person asleep with tray down to go to the bathroom.
I'm actually pretty happy to climb over other people. (I walk on the armrests. Granted, this isn't for everyone...) But in my experience people almost always get up without issue even when I assure them they don't have to.
this is where assumed alignment between other people's external vs internal dialog could be badly misleading. and this alignment also varies quite a lot across cultures.
Contra point 37, I found that taking 0.3-0.5g melatonin about 1 hour before bedtime in the destination timezone essentially "cures" jetlag. The couple friends I've used the technique with say it also works for them, so I haven't even observed so much variability.
I'll of course still be tired from the travel though.
Can confirm, even with 8 or 9h timezone difference I can reliably get at least 6h sleep even on the first nights when a) taking melatonin before sleep, b) spending as much time as possible outside in bright light in the morning *after* my desired wake-up time.
Going outside or exposing to bright light too early (eg if waking up at 4am accidentally) will make things worse. Make sure your room is as dark as possible and go back to sleep.
It's great that this works for you, but scientific studies show its entirely placebo effect. (Same thing with the claim that melatonin produces better sleep in general.)
Luckily for you, knowing that it's a placebo effect does not make it any less effective.
Which studies? Most of my knowledge on the subject is from https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/, and he cites UpToDate, Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins.
This one at the National Library of Medicine (part of NIH) is a good summary of all the things melatonin is and is not effective for: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6057895/
In particular, look for the part that begins "However, activation of this brain area is decreased concomitantly with the endogenous rise of melatonin, so that administration of exogenous melatonin at night does not have a further notable effect (Figure 1B,C). Because melatonin does not increase the amount of SWS..."
On the other hand, this meta-analysis sees a modest effect in bringing on sleep ("latency"): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3656905/, although the evidence for sustaining sleep is not strong.
Interesting! I do not have time to look at the link you sent yet, but the passage you quoted talks about exogenous melatonin at night. However, we are talking about jet lag, and so it is not at night! Will take a look at this nlm summary if I have the time later though, thanks!
I just realized I said 0.3g instead of 0.3mg !! See here for more information https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
FWIW, melatonin doesn't *seem* to help much for me. I've experimented with doses ranging from 50 μg to 500 μg on dozens of trips—it seems like it might help me get to sleep faster but then I wake 4-5 hours later. But this might be completely invalid as I haven't tested this in a blinded experiment (yet)!
Try inositol. It's friendlier on an empty stomach, makes you have wildly vivid, potentially lucid dreams, has a stronger sedative effect (although still super-dee-duper mild) and doesn't shrink mice testes. I'd be interested in hearing about your experience if you give it a shot.
A sugar alcohol—how odd! I'll look into it more if I have trouble adjusting in the future. (Currently I've found that really boring podcasts seem more effective for me than any drugs...)
As it happens, I first heard about inositol through the Andrew Huberman podcast on sleep.
When you wake up and can’t go back to sleep in 20 minutes then the fun begins. Light a candle, do some journaling, stare at the moon, write a love poem, then, when your eyes start drooping again, go back to bed.
"Time seems to speed up as you get older. And you wonder—is it biological, or is it because life had more novelty when you were a child? Travel partly answers this question—with more novelty, time slows way down again."
Have you got any more detail on this? I don't really see the appeal of traveling but I do worry a bit about time speeding up. How much traveling do you need to get the effect, is a trip or two a year enough? Are there cheaper/easier ways to get novelty?
Unfortunately, my experience is that time only really slows down *while* traveling! My guess is that basically any novel experiences have the same effect, it's just that in everyday life you're rarely in a situation with so much novelty outside of travel.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that a week in a silent meditation retreat would feel even longer than a week traveling in a new country. So that proves that (a) it's probably not just novelty and (b) there definitely are easier/cheaper ways to get the effect.
> Obviously, planes and airports aren’t fun. But just being in a foreign place is often kinda alienating. So don’t expect constant fun. Most people incorrectly prefer aisle seats to window seats. They’re sure to discover their error sooner or later, but in the meantime, use it to your advantage.
Couldn't disagree more on both, but maybe that's why. I love people watching and pacing in airports, and I appreciate the sensation that I'm on a very firm time line with a place I have to be at a specific time (boarding) and absolutely zero rush or responsibility until then.
Aisles are great if you hydrate properly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg
Romano Tours - If you're sad now, you might still feel sad there. You're still gonna be you, on vacation.
This is great. (I do love looking at some slightly different squirrels...)
Possibly less obvious travel advice, have duplicate spare dedicated "travel" versions of necessities. Travel toothbrush, travel razor, travel meds, TRAVEL WALL WARTS AND CABLES, if possible all living in your dedicated travel bag. There is no worse feeling than having to throw together toiletries after waking up before an early flight, besides maybe having to unpack toiletries after getting home from your trip late at night. Travel items stay packed stay together and never need to be used at home
Bonus: when you arrive home and your bags didn't make it, you still have all the toiletries you need until your bags catch up.
"32. (...) I’m pretty sure I end up behind on net."
What do you mean here? That you'd have to deprive yourself for 1 week to be able to "fully appreciate" modern amenities for <1 week?
I kind of empathize with this, but it seems very worth it even in this scenario (for the novelty of deprivation, and consequently the novelty of appreciation)
That's approximately what I mean, yes! Basically, if I suffer 10 "units" of deprivation for not having amenities while hiking for a week, then I might get one "unit" of extra appreciation on my first day back, but then it's slightly less each day and the total "benefit" is less than 10 units.
Strongly agree that brutal hiking/camping trips are nonetheless absolutely worth it! (Just not for this specific reason, perhaps...)
If you, or anybody else reading this comment, are actually struggling with day-to-day appreciation, I strongly recommend Guide to the Good Life, a book on modern day Stoicism.
Thanks for the recommendation. My impression is that almost everyone struggles with appreciation at least in the sense that hedonic adaptation is (somewhat) real. If you lived decades without hot showers, I imagine your first hot shower seems like an insane luxury. But then we (mostly? but not entirely?) start to just see hot showers as a basic need/expectation. If there's a philosophy that keeps you at that initial level of appreciation, that's something we definitely want to know about!
Stoicism is actually more-or-less about managing hedonic adaptation. It strikes me as near enough to a functional heuristic anyway.
I hope you do read it. I bet you'll get at least something of value out of it.
Two pieces of broad travel advice I have found useful:
-Figure out what absolutely requires advance reservations and make those in advance. For everything else, come up with some general ideas and just sort of wing it.
-Have multiple credit cards from different issuing banks, because they all have different unpredictable policies about what foreign transactions they'll reject. For example, Chase blocks lots of mundane stuff (like web transactions for museum and train tickets) that BofA happily allows.
6-7: The website I most wish existed for travel is a side-by-side guide to basic etiquette across countries. This is easy enough to find for Japan and "Europe" (in ways that are often wrong for individual countries, like "don't tip in Europe"), but I just want a no-nonsense table telling me where I should seat myself vs wait to be seated, how much (if anything) to tip, get to the point vs make extended small talk, use a tissue discreetly vs blow snot rockets in public, etc.
32: Whenever I get the urge to go backpacking or camping, I abandon personal hygiene, eat cold food out of cans, and sleep on the garage floor until the feeling goes away. It usually takes no more than 40 minutes.
Ha! When you really step back, the truth is that backpacking/camping is a somewhat strange bundle of different things—exercise, a social experience, communing with nature, disconnecting from regular life, etc. (I have treasured memories from some of these trips, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit they involved a fair amount of misery at the time...)
...all of which are wonderful things, I agree! I'm think I'm more of an "RV with hookups" kind of hiker than a "tent pitched on free federal land" type of hiker.
Wrap salmon, mango onions and spices in tin foil then throw it on the coals. Tell stories while you wait for it to cook and then eat in joyous silence.
Then go do it in the woods.
This is an insightful and quite useful list!
Here's another one that applies mostly to me but could be useful for similar attention challenged individuals:
For most museums, a 1-hour visit is more than enough visit. Your capacity for appreciating old trains decreases exponentially with every extra half hour you insist on spending in the old trains museum.
Just give yourself permission not to look at everything and walk away while you still feel excited about what you've just learned.
On dubbing - I think Anglosphere people take it for granted that the mouth matches the words exactly, and are irritated when they don't. I was graded down on a film paper once because I pointed out that one character's mouth was clearly speaking English while his voice was speaking German (in Lili Marleen, Rainer Maria Fassbinder) and my prof (German dude) didn't believe that it added to the theme of Schein v Sein. He claimed nobody could possibly notice the mouth not matching because it was totally normal to do that in international film production. I'm still mad 30 years later. My German husband never noticed the non-matching growing up, but it irritates him now too. Once you do notice it, if you're good enough in the original language, then you might spend way too much attention on figuring out what the original text was...
Agreed, and I would add that the often the original actors are much better than the dubbing/voice over actors hired for the localization. For a great example, or an example of a bad dub making a great movie awkward, see the early 2000's dub of Princess Mononoke. Some are good (Billy Cruddup and Minnie Driver) and some are bad (Claire Danes) or awful (Billy Bob Thorton.) It was pretty good overall, but man, when the bad voices hit, they knock you right out of the film.
Sometimes dubbing is fine, but often it just doesn't reach the quality of the original.
Sounds plausible enough, but this map is pretty weird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubbing#/media/File:Dubbing_films_in_Europe.png Why are Scandinavia and the Balkans also anti-dubbing?
The secret to travel bliss is packing everything in your bags in little freezer bags or (for your clothes) zip-up bags. Bags in bags in bags. Modularity makes packing and unpacking so much easier.
This includes all the stuff (computers, batteries, cables) you will need to dig out of your backpack and put in a fifthy tray to be manhandled by TSA or equivalent authorities. It's so much easier to gab bags of stuff than the stuff itself.
Added benefit: they are protected from water or leaks. And it includes your toiletries, which will be among the things that leak.
We're clearly very different people! Many of my happiest memories are extended camping/backpacking/hiking trips.
Also totally disagree on the sleep thing; I just go hard day one and reset at local time.
But in particular, I'm reasonably confident from this that you don't have children (and it's not just the aisle thing).
My desire to travel to distant locales is lower now that I have children, and not just because travelling with children is more stressful and less fun. Young children are *always* travelling, which is to say, they're always in that wide eyed space of wonder and discovery, and allow you to rediscover the mundane through new eyes. My acceleration of time has completely reset after having kids; they change so quickly, and you as a parent get to go along for the ride.
Well, many of my most cherished memories are also extended camping/backpacking/hiking trips! It's just that I wouldn't do them *because* of the deprivation. :)
Thanks very much for your thoughts regarding kids. The connection to "time" is something I'll certainly remember.
Fun list, and as with all such lists, I have quibbles.
"Obviously, planes and airports aren’t fun."
Some of us quite enjoy the bustling airport atmosphere. And even planes can be enjoyable if flying long-haul premium economy or, even better, business class. Long-haul economy is, however, miserable, especially for overnight flights.
"28. The human, after drinking liquids, must pee."
"40. Most people incorrectly prefer aisle seats to window seats."
Because of the truth of #28, the "incorrectly" in #40 should read "correctly" for any flight of 2 hours or longer, at least for those of us who try to stay hydrated on airplanes and prefer not to be a chronic pest to our seatmates as we keep getting up to visit the loo.
These are great. I would add just one thing. Buy an AirTag for your luggage.
42: people never believe me when I tell them my favourite thing about my trip to Vienna was a quiet and sunny Sunday afternoon spent reading on the grass in Prater Park. But it really is.