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My last post was all about how I afford to travel. Everything I wrote in there is true. But here’s the other, just as honest, truth: I could not be traveling the world right now without my parents and their hard work. This is not to say that my parents fund my travels. Aside from holidays and occasionally treating me to things when I visit home, my parents don’t give me a dime. And that’s as it should be. I’m 26 years old and I’ve lived away from home for nearly ten years. I’m more than capable of providing for myself. If I travel, I damn well shouldn’t be asking them to pay for it. They did, however, give me the greatest gift American parents can give their son or daughter: my college education. Aside from the meager scholarship NYU dangled in front of me to try to make me forget how ridiculously expensive it still was, they were the ones who paid in full for my education. Unlike most Americans, I have no crushing debt to pay off. That alone ...

Ever since I made the decision to quit my job to travel the world indefinitely, I spent the last month of work waking up anxious every day because I was so excited (and maybe a little scared) to leave. I thought that once I hit the road, my anxiety would dissipate. In many ways, it has. In other ways, it’s surfaced and made traveling difficult. But even in these short four weeks, I’ve learned quite a bit about how I personally need to plan my travel experiences in a way that is kinder to myself and my mental health.

While guests at Thailand’s Banyan Tree Phuket lounge by their villas’ private plunge pools, watch the sunset at Bang Tao Beach, and bliss out at the spa, some serious schooling goes down a few hundred feet away at the Banyan Tree Spa Academy. Spa therapists at Banyan Tree’s 42 resorts worldwide must complete 350 hours of Spa Academy training: anatomy, theory, and customer service classes; how-to lessons on making body scrubs and herbal sachets; and hands-on workshops to learn how to masterfully perform every single treatment on the Banyan Tree Spa menu. On a recent trip to Thailand , I traded vacation for vocation for a few hours and spent a morning as a Banyan Tree therapist in training. I shadowed therapists as they prepped the spa’s treatment rooms – 20 pavilions cocooned in lush tropical gardens – for the day’s services. (The spa opens at 10am, but therapists are already at work by eight.) In a small lab room, a few women mashed a green apple body scrub in a mortar, while others ...