Thursday December 26th 2024, Koh Tao, Thailand

Having been fortunate enough to travel to many places I have finally created an understanding of my favorite type of travel. I will outline it now. The number one thing is to stay away from places that are too touristy. I value integrating into the local culture and having an authentic experience, so it is important to go to places which do not have too many people or tourists. Next, sight seeing is cool, but it can get old. Instead of going to see temples or various historical architecture sites I would rather find an experience to integrate into the culture or activity. That being said some cities you can really integrate into the culture. A city that comes to mind is Madrid, Spain or Kyoto, Japan. Both of these cities are site seeing cities but are culturally rich enough to make you feel like you are a part of the culture. Now combining these two tenants, 1. Not too touristy or too many people and 2. Integrate into the culture through experiences instead of site seeing too much you really narrow down your options. To zoom in more, I really enjoy places which are walkable or have really good public transit to get to other spots easily. This should be a relatively small city. I also enjoy places where you can curate a community, a place where there are only a handful of restaurants or bars. Then you begin to know the locals and other people there more intimately. Again, I prefer places with beautiful nature, beaches or mountains, which offer unique or challenging experiences. Now that I have painted a pretty zoomed in picture of my prefer locations and type of travel I will highlight some places you may want to check out. They are lowkey so do not share it too much. One of my favorite trips was to Dominical, Costa Rica. Everyone knows Costa Rica is a nice destination, but everyone goes to the same places. Dominical is a tiny local town on the southeast coast of CR where you can walk everywhere shirtless and shoeless and surf all day. You can enjoy local cuisine, find waterfalls in the jungle and enjoy beautiful sunsets. This location has the culture integration, small authentic community feel, and challenging unique experiences. Next I want to highlight Lagos, Portugal. In the south of Portugal you can find beautiful authentic tiny beach towns. Lagos is a tiny touristy but still has the local feel. This is really just a vibe spot to go on the beach and eat insane seafood. As you can see beaches and beach activities are a great way to spend time in a healthy and fun way for me. I think the same experience can be achieved in a mountain town. I really enjoy snowboarding so any snowboarding town could work. I have not found one which checks all these boxes because I have not snowboarded outside the USA. I think Zermatt Switzerland would work for this. On the note of mountains I guess I will highlight Seydisfjordur, Iceland. This is a picturesque walkable mountain town in the north eastern part of Iceland. Not much to do but just take in the beauty and culture. All this is to say that Koh Tao is beautiful, has cool activities like snorkeling, but is way too touristy and has pretty much no Thai culture. The places I am looking for must have the authentic feel. Going forward for the next leg of this trip I think I can find some really lowkey gems I look forward to sharing.