Hey Matthew, I'm absolutely stoked to come across your profile here. I could completely relate to each and every thing you said about your feelings and emotions while travelling and how travelling changed you as a person.

Travel long and regularly enough, and you are bound to get burned out from having the same introductory conversations over and over again. I've literally been feeling this way myself for a couple of years now. People who ask you a dime a dozen questions about your job and background only to disappear from your life the next day never to keep in touch ever again. Jeez! It's exhausting. Hostelling is shit! I too asked myself why I was staying in hostels when I was down with a stomach bug once while travelling.

I've also poured my heart out into a couple of articles regarding these aspects of travel.

For all the questions new travellers have about you, and all the probing they do about your job and background, they sure do know how to NOT keep in touch with you after. All the conversations are surface level, and the relationships superficial. It's almost like you made all that effort for nothing. Yes, I know socialization is not a transcational game. It's something we do to take the edge off after work, or like in our case, while travelling. But when the questions and conversations revolve around the same damn 5 topics in each and every interaction, it does get annoying and irritating after a while.