I Got CULTURE SHOCK on my First Day of Traveling Abroad

I Got CULTURE SHOCK on my First Day of Traveling Abroad

[Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Hey there how’s it going good afternoon this is the little town of Yukaya in mesino County Northern California the area where I was raised in the uh smaller town of Willet just a like 20 minute drive north of here the California coast is an hour away the towns of mesino Fort

Brag and then a couple hours North is Eureka and Arcada I graduated from Humble State University in the uh redwoods right near Arcada back in 2002 so I’m going to give a very quick uh recap of my life up until uh I was 18 when I left on my first International

Solo traveling trip back in 1990 and uh this video is going to be about the story of my very first day of traveling when I landed in London England but I wanted to give just a you know very very uh quick recap just to give a little bit

Of context here so my parents were raised in Southern California the Los Angeles area my father worked in the hospital hospital and he had this job offer in uh Vancouver because of a um guy who was Canadian who worked at the hospital there and my parents wanted to get out

Of Los Angeles and so they took this offer moved to Vancouver Canada lived there for 2 years I was born there and then for various reasons they decided to move back to the United States back to Southern California they moved back I was a year and a half old at that time

And then after only like year or so they did the escape from La thing again and headed north first to Glenn Ellen a small little town in uh Sonoma County which is south of here and then my uh parents bought land outside of Willets a raw piece of land no

Structures on it at all and uh proceeded to start building a house and various other uh things a uh shed a little cabin dug out a pond I could go on for hours talking about my uh childhood there and would love to do that at some point but

Uh my uh childhood was uh quite adventurous we went on backpacking trips in the marble mountains which I have shown as I have gone back there and done backpacking trips of my own as an adult including the last time four years ago in 2020 we went on road trips to eity

National Park and Lassen and various other places as I’ve talked about my aunt my mom’s sister took me on a 2 we road trip around the West when I was 8 years old in the summer of 1980 but I never went outside of the

Country until I was 18 so I had the uh you know interest in travel when I was a teenager and finally decided to do it I uh graduated from high school when I was 17 years old in 1989 I graduated a year early because I skipped 8th grade my

Friend Abram who many of you know had skipped seventh grade and I wanted to be in the same uh grade as him so my parents arranged to get me to up 8ighth grade and then we were nth graders together I’m glad that they did that because uh my whole life

Would be totally different if you you know added that extra year I graduated from high school in 1990 who knows what I would have done very likely I would have you know wanted to travel anyways but uh so after graduating from high school I went to one semester of community

College right here in Yukaya my mom was living here then my parents had gotten divorced when I was 15 I moved with my dad down to the Bay Area and went to my last two years of high school there Oakland and Berkeley my mom then moved to Yukaya here and so after graduating

From high school then I moved back up here and I lived at my mom’s house for the uh fall of 1989 went to Menino Community College right here in Yukaya but I was just really ready to you know get out there and see the world so I got the money together

Um through various means I won’t get into that uh now but it wasn’t a lot of money but the trip wasn’t paid for by my parents my dad gave me 300 bucks right before I left well my birthday was right before uh I was leaving so I got like a

300 Buck birthday present from my dad which was crucial because I ended that trip with like $50 to my name but uh anyways I bought the uh roundtrip flight San Francisco direct to London and then coming back 3 and 1/2 months later in August and then I had around

$1,300 to spend in Europe for almost 4 months that works out to like $10.50 a day I think so we got a little uh little bit of Wildlife now this was 34 years ago things were a lot cheaper hostiles were a few dollars but even then this was a Bare

Bones budget I didn’t you know really understand exactly what I was getting into but you know I made it to work in the end so let’s get to the story finally after the flight to London I land around late morning I was expecting rain because of

Course that’s just you know what it does a lot in the UK and so I landed and uh I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and I think another shirt over that or something and I step off the plane you know get into the airport and

Then get out of there and uh go to the train and it’s like super hot and sunny it’s like a brilliantly sunny warm day and I think maybe like my t-shirts were packed away and hard to get to or something but to the best of my recollection then I was kind of stuck

Wearing this long sleeve shirt through the day kind of thinking okay well I’ll you know pull my stuff apart and get a t-shirt out you know once I get to where I’m trying to go and so I just kind of tolerated this hot day in a long sleeve

Shirt so where I was trying to get to go was a campground I wanted to stay in a campground for the first two nights in order to be able to to like spread my stuff out and just like get ready for the adventure ahead rather than going to a hostel I knew about

Hostels but uh I just didn’t want kind of the cramped experience and lots of people around I just wanted to be able to like have my own space and uh literally take everything out of my backpack and kind of reorganize it and have a little bit more peaceful

Experience instead of hostile in the middle of London so I didn’t plan to explore London and in fact I never explored London on that trip I never saw the TS River even when I came back to catch my flight later so this was before the internet of course

Before smartphones Google Maps all that kind of stuff and so I had a paper map of London and it had symbols for campgrounds and various other things but I think that I had one in particular in mind so I had a guide book which was especially essential back then it was

The let’s go let’s go Europe and so I probably found out about the uh Campground through the guide book so I had the name of the campground but didn’t quite know where it was and so I think that it was in the airport that I got this map of London and then it

Listed campgrounds and so I saw where this Campground was and so I was shooting for that place so I take the London Underground from I think it was he thr airport get into the city center somewhere things get a bit vague here of course this was a long time ago but

Uh you know I got off at some London Underground stop that I guess that I thought was near this Campground or maybe I knew that I was going to have to change or something but keep in mind that I had landed somewhere around like 11: or 12 in the

Morning and so I you know get into the city of London and then I think that I thought that I was close enough to this campground to walk to it I’m in full-on City area and so I walk out of the London Underground and am kind of overwhelmed by you know the

Full-on city experience I’m basically a country boy i’ been here in this little town right before that actually no I had moved to my dad’s after going to school here back to Oakland where I’d lived for the uh last two years of high school and

So I was actually uh there for the last few months before I caught the flight out to Europe but you know it was a uh the new city it’s all different and London is intense and so I’m walking around trying to follow this map and get to this Campground and just

Having a really hard time reading the you know map and then comparing that to the street signs and dealing with you know wrong side of the road or I should say left side of the road of course they drive on the left there and just all of the factors of

Having that warm surface on on a hot summer’s day and being exhausted from the overnight flight barely sleeping on the plane and so I’m just all discombobulated and then trying to navigate this uh unfamiliar City my first time out of the country just 18 years old so I end up just like walking

All over the place trying to figure this out and then finally I just like take a seat and have like a little sort of mini breakdown of just feeling totally over overwhelmed nobody to turn to I can’t you know call my parents I don’t have a

You know there’s no cell phones and so I just take a seat and uh just like okay stop everything let’s stop wandering around and kind of think about this and try to figure out what’s the best way to go and so while I’m sitting there trying

To uh you know collect my senses and figure out how to solve this conundrum of finding where I want to go then I pull out the map and am looking at it more closely and I realize that I have confused two symbols that look alike there’s a triangle and then there’s like

A triangle with a line on top and so what I’ve been trying to find this whole time turns out to be like a tourist office or something like that and not the campground which wouldn’t make sense anyways if you think about it that a campground would be like right in the

Middle of London somewhere and and so finally I realize I have been totally going to the wrong place this whole time and realize oh man it is like way on the edge of the city somewhere in London is spread out and so I’ve just wasted hours and hours I’m exhausted I’m hungry I’m

Hot and uh I think I even like had to pee really bad and was just procrastinating on going to a restroom like finding a public restroom in London I was just in this mode of like let’s just get there and then we’ll you know find a restroom

And and put on a more appropriate shirt you know I was just kind of on this like Bulldog like just go go go and get there and and uh and then I can really relax there and take a seat and a break or whatever but in the meantime it was just taking

Forever to get there so finally I uh realized that I am totally headed in the wrong direction I’m on a Fool’s Mission trying to find this uh Campground that is totally somewhere else and so I think at that point then I decide to take the London Underground out to that

Area I forget it gets all hazy here but uh it takes more time I end up you know walking around more I think I you know stop and ask some people for a little help or whatever but finally I come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with this is just

To catch a taxi it is like late in the afternoon at this point maybe four or five or maybe even later there was more that happened there that I can’t remember remember cuz that was just too long ago but uh after hours and hours of wandering around

London then finally I just kind of give up and find a taxi and give him the name of this uh Campground and so we start heading that way and I just remember that taxi ride took forever it really felt like he was you know going around in circles to

Drive up the uh the price of the taxi maybe not I mean we’re dealing with you know surface Streets of London probably not but I just remember feeling like man we’re just like going all over the place taking you know turns left and right and it took I don’t know

How long but an hour or two or something finally we get there it cost somewhere around €30 which would be a ridiculously cheap price now for that length of a taxi ride but at the time that was a good chunk of money and I was you know kicking myself for spending

That much money just on Transportation my first day when I have such a limited budget but that was just what needed to happen and he did in fact get me there by the time I arrived it was around 7 or 8:00 p.m. basically it had taken like eight

Hours to get from the airport to the campground if I had any idea you know then I would have just gotten a taxi from the airport and save myself a whole lot of hassle but you know traveling is necessarily an unfamiliar experience that is the point when it’s all new you

Don’t have a stepbystep instruction even if you have a guide book that explains every last detail of how to do it especially when it is your first time this golf basket and so that is just how you have to do it if you want to travel the world is

Jump and learn how to swim you can read about it you can watch videos you can have a good comprehensive guide book and certainly research and preparedness is important and you can minimize a lot of Hassle and you know dealing with scammers and getting overcharged and all that stuff by being

More prepared preparation is obviously important crucial here is where you shoot the uh disc to the basket same rules as golf essentially another one down there so you want to you know prepare as much as you can but you can’t prepare for everything and it is just going to be a confusing

Experience your first time traveling your first time to a particular country your first time to a city in a country maybe you’ve been to before but you know it’s all unknown and uh you’re not going to have advanced instructions on how exactly to buy a ticket for the

Metro and the various other things that are going to come up you just can’t uh you know know it all so uh that is just part of the traveling experience the thrill the frustration the challenge it goes along with exploring a large world but uh in the end then I was glad

That I’d made it to a campground I had a tent and a sleeping bag sleeping mattress so I was prepared to camp on that trip that is one of the ways that I saved a lot of money I didn’t Camp the whole time but mostly camping hostels and a few hotel

Rooms on that uh 3 and 1/2 month uh trip but uh I stayed at the campground for two nights and so I had the whole next day to just kind of get ready not that there was a whole lot really to be done like with my stuff or whatever but just to

Mentally prepare for the adventure ahead which was going to be a hitchhiking Adventure I had a UR Rail Pass so this is the uh 18th basket you shoot from up there and then the basket is where is it oh it’s a little bit further than usual it’s over

There so I had a Ural pass for this 3 and 1/2 month trip but it was only for 2 months the urale pass and so there was going to be a month and a half in which I didn’t have the uel train path So the plan was to hitchhike around the British

Isles the United Kingdom and Ireland and then start the train pass after about a month which is what I ended up doing so I stay for two nights at the campground there and then uh the next morning get up pack up the backpack the tent and I think that I caught a

Taxi from the campground one way or another then I got to a freeway on-ramp somewhere I have no idea how I figured out where to start this hitchhiking out of London but somehow I found it and and I just step onto the on-ramp with my backpack and stick out my thumb going

This way cuz they drive on the left feeling at the time like man is this the stupidest craziest thing I could have planned to do or is this you know going to work or what and sure enough within 10 15 minutes a Lori driver lores are the

British trucks not not a big semi but like a you know a big truck with a storage thing in the back for hauling whatever it stops pulls over and boom I am in he takes me a long ways out into England heading towards Cornwall and my adventure had begun I hitchhiked all

Over the United Kingdom and Ireland for the next month it was an absolutely epic amazing journey which uh I hope to uh get around to telling more about in another video at some point so uh that is all for now more coming from California most likely tell some more stories whatever give some

Travel tips something like that depending on the weather we locked out today got a good day for uh hiking around in the park all right take it easy happy trails

The story of my first day of traveling solo outside the US, when I landed in London, England to begin a summer of backpacking across Europe.
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Gabriel is a world traveler and travel writer who has been adventuring around the world since his first trip to Europe in the summer of 1990 when he was 18 years old. He is author of “Gabe’s Guide to Budget Travel”, “Following My Thumb” and several other books available on Amazon.com and elsewhere.

Thanks a lot for watching and safe journeys!