The best part of a trip isn’t always what everyone is looking for. It’s the one that, for some reason, felt like yours.
Almost every trip begins with the same search: best restaurants, best beaches, best hotels.
The word “best” seems reassuring. It promises that if you trust a tried-and-tested list (best of), you won’t miss anything important. And often, that’s true. A good list saves you from a bad choice; a hotel with consistently good reviews saves you hours of searching. That’s not the problem.
The problem begins when we believe that the best is the same for everyone.
I once stayed in a small hotel just outside the center of Luang Prabang. It wasn’t on any “best” list. It didn’t have the best view, nor the most impressive photos.
It was still dark when I was woken by the deep sounds of gongs and bells. A little later, chants followed, and then came silence, a silence filled only by the soft sound of bare feet on the dirt, as monks in orange robes passed by me for the morning alms collection ceremony. I remember standing on the balcony feeling like I was watching something not meant for me, yet I was allowed to see it.
I hadn’t planned or sought it out, yet it’s the image I remember most vividly of all.
Since then, I often think that lists help us find the most well-known places, but they cannot predict which place will mean something to us. It’s the same list syndrome that makes us see only what we already expected. This depends not only on the place, but also on the moment, our mood, the reason we are traveling at that exact time.
The same cafe that for one person is just a stop, for another can become the most vivid memory of the entire trip.
The most interesting question isn’t what is the best. It is: what is right for me, now? Because places don’t reveal themselves in the same way to everyone.
The most valuable part of a trip isn’t doing what everyone before you did. It’s discovering that, sometimes, what you were looking for was never the “best.” It was simply yours.
