Hey there!
Thanks for coming and welcome to You Gotta Wander!
I am Lan, and hail from Melbourne, Australia (although, I was born in Perth – but that is a story for a different day!).
So why did I start You Gotta Wander? Having recently finished my law degree and currently working in policy and legislation for government, I found myself wanting to ensure that the bulk of my life and productive energy was not purely channeled into desk work.
What better way to do that than tapping into my passion for travelling, and sharing my experiences, feelings, mistakes and moments I have amassed through my travels with others seeking to embark on a similar journey?
You Gotta Wander started off as a retrospective diary of most of my remarkable travels in the last two decades as I wanted to have an outlet to dedicate my memories and photos to. But having travelled to 20 countries, I also wanted to start sharing candid moments with other prospective travellers.
You Gotta Wander also gives me the ability to travel with more purpose. In a world where there is an abundance of information online but also not enough, I feel a responsibility to ensure prospective travellers are deeply informed about their destinations before they get there. You Gotta Wander capitalises on this sense of responsibility, and gives more even more of a reason to dive deeper into the politics, history, culture, traditions of the destinations I go to.
Working in a job that emphasises ensuring solutions to real life problems are evidence-based, I understand that everything I say must be backed by real experience and facts. I take this mentality to developing You Gotta Wander.
Coming from an ethnic Vietnamese-Chinese family whilst being born in Australia has provided a different perspective to my travels that I think is worth sharing with other fellow travellers. I grew up travelling very frequently to Vietnam, and spent my summer school holidays on a rice paddy every year – I wager most bloggers out there do not have that kind of experience. This experience not only requires me to constantly immerse myself in a different culture, it also requires me to respect different cultures.
Regardless of your background, travelling to a different place in the world comes with a set of duties and obligations – and this is becoming more apparent in this day and age. I find many travellers like to claim they immersed themselves in the culture, but from my travels, I seldom see them show any real respect to the culture and its custodians. In a world beholden to climate change and never-ending climate politics, tourists have a responsibility to contribute to sustainable travel and being aware of how most of our daily lives back home are likely the major contributors to climate change, societal imbalances and environmental pollution. Think about the times you’ve never finished the food given to you, or forget to appreciate the scarcity of resources in a certain place, or forget to be cognisant of the social and economic conditions around you to ensure you were aware of the impact of your decisions and travelling footprint. I want You Gotta Wander to make you wonder what the your role is as a traveller, and what questions need to be asked.
If your idea of travelling is more than just drinking cocktails at bars, and more than just sitting by the swimming pool at the Shangri-La reading a New York Times’ bestseller, then you have come to the right place. I will do my best to help with your travel research.
