7 reasons it's more fun to travel with another person

1. You don't have to call anyone to share what you've seen. I think anyone who has taken a solo trip somewhere understands this. My last solo trip was diving in Hawaii, and I seem to remember reaching for my phone to call home and tell mom how awesome the dives were that day to find that my phone had broken in half when my bag fell out of the overhead on the dive boat. In those days I was quite the loudmouthed expert on why it's better to travel alone, I even had reasons! I think the reasons were something like "when you don't have someone with you, you get more caught up in the moment and appreciate where you are more." Well, that was a load of horse-shit. I didn't have a cell phone the first time I traveled alone, and borrowed my dad's. That was back in the days of domestic roaming, and, well, he never told me what the bill was that month but I'm sure it wasn't cheap! I think that what I didn't realize, at the wise old age of 22, was that cell phones were about to change everything.
Now we're always connected and never have to even wait until we get home to share what we've seen and stuff. The reason this technology took off probably has something to do with the fact that people just like to share things they think are cool, and share them right away. This is one of the biggest reasons it's better to have someone with you. You can "share" something cool without even reaching into your pocket!

Nasi goreng tastes better if you have someone to talk with!

2. You have someone to eat meals with. There was a time when I thought this wasn't a big deal too. I didn't have any good or even halfway thought-out reasons. Of course, before the age of 27 or so I didn't really enjoy the act of eating as much as I enjoy it now (and oddly enough I'm about 40lbs lighter now, go figure.) If I went somewhere to eat that wasn't drive thru or pick-up (because that's easy to take back to your hotel room and get on the internet, where you're never alone. I'd sit at a table for one, smugly think that the host or hostess had judged me when I said I wanted a table for one, and try not to stare too hard as I tried to listen to other people's conversations. Meals can be a really lonely time when you're on your own, especially if you're not good at engaging people you've never met before in conversation. A friend of mine just backpacked all over southeast Asia, India, China, Mongolia, and Russia on her way back to the U.K. I'm certain she had zero problems finding someone to talk to at meals if she wanted conversation, but she's got that inherent skill of talking to people that I was born without!

3. You have someone to say good night to. My younger, more knowledgeable (I knew everything then) self would have derided me for this as a reason to be weak and travel with another person. It's easier to go to sleep when you have someone to say goodnight to, whether they're right next to you, or in a bunk bed right above you. If for some reason you were to go missing in the night, sleepwalk to the edge of town, be mauled by lions in the middle of the night, someone would know about it. Those seven to nine hours of sleep you need after a day of sightseeing, scuba diving, sunbathing, or photo taking can conceptually be pretty scary. It's nice to know that there's someone you can check out with before you close your eyes who expects you to check back in when the sun comes up, am I right?

4. You don't feel like you're very far from home, even if you're on the other side of the world. This is particularly true if your travel partner is your significant other. When we left for South Korea, I was a complete ball of nerves. Sometimes I still feel like I couldn't be any farther away from my comfort zone than I am here, but it's okay because home is just a concept that to me means, where Carolyn is. I'm looking forward to moving "home" to Thailand for a couple weeks in the near future. I'm also looking forward to moving "home" to New York for a longer term stay. I think sometimes your significant other can keep a reserve of your sanity to hose you down with and keep you from totally losing it. If they don't have enough of your sanity in reserve to do that they can at the very least call home for you and get help (say, if your bank freezes your account while you're in another country).

See? Everyone is in groups!

5. Romantic things like sunsets aren't awkward if you're not single. Oh if I could only go back in time and tell the 21-26 year old primate that sunsets on the beach were in fact romantic and that he is only lying to himself. In a sea of couples, a single person is going to feel out of place. That's all there is to it. It's probably a good thing I didn't take the trip to Tahiti I was planning in the summer of 2005, it would have been a relentlessly romantic experience where I stumbled around alone and couples made conversation with me out of pity. The fact of the matter is that some places were meant for pairs. Now there's no reason that a few dudes can't hang out together on the beach for a great sunset. Yeah, it's a couples thing in a sense, but a bunch of guys and a bunch of beers somehow are an exception to the rule. So are multiple generations of a single family when seated together. Or just two friends who have something to talk about while they enjoy the scenery. Romantic things are awkward for none of those groups, but singles are definitely the misfits in these situations.

Can I try your zombie? You can try my Singapore Sling!

6. You get to try twice as many foods and drinks. This is completely and totally simple and straightforward. You're in a new country. You want to try as much of the local cuisine as possible. If you go out to dinner 14 times, you can order 14 different dishes without being a total glutton, right? Maybe a few sides or something in addition, but you can't take down a whole lot more than that. If you have a wife, fiancee, girlfriend, friend, or any other type of travel buddy (except for maybe a dog or a parrot), you can double the number of foods you get to eat. All you have to do is make sure to not order the same thing at dinner, and trade bites. Simple. Delicious.

7. Chances are they have a few different interests, so you get to see something you wouldn't have bothered with otherwise. My fiancee likes art, a lot. I've always been one to look at art, say "that's nice" and move along. When we spent a week in New York a couple of years ago, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it was fantastic. If I went to New York alone I would have probably only wandered the streets of Chinatown buying bootleg DVDs and knockoff purses for a week (not really). I certainly wouldn't have wandered into the Met or MoMA and spent the amount of time that I did looking at all of the paintings I remembered from art history class. I got really lucky in that sense! In a few weeks when we head to Thailand, we're going to take a cooking class. That's much more my interest than hers, but I'm sure she's going to have a great time learning to cook Thai foods as well. Sometimes your partner's interests are different, but usually they're complimentary.

Traveling with another person isn't always sexy, romantic, bro-mantic, or any other adjective you might use when you think of long walks on the beach or a day trying to figure out how a damn sea kayak works (I'm anticipating a little bit there with the kayak), but it's definitely a different experience than traveling alone, and your hand reaches for your phone a lot less than it would if you were looking at something awesome and had no one to tell about it. Basically, I think traveling with a partner (any partner) is going to deepen and round out your travel experience by putting a completely new frame of reference into the experience. Plus there's someone to call your family if you get eaten by rabid mongeese in the night.