Like marmite, backpacking is either something you love or hate. Sometimes you can both love and hate it. Here is a Lazyshark list of those times:-The open road v A lack of forward planning
With backpacking you have the freedom to go anywhere, stay as long as you like and visit whatever you fancy. However with this carefree attitude you can occassionally run into trouble...Like the time I got stuck in Tierra del Fuego for an additional week because there was no space on the bi-weekly bus!
Budget travel v Budget travel
Travel on a shoestring gets you close to the local culture. The often financial necessity to use the local transport means you are far removed from the tourist bubble many package holidays operate within. Having a chicken/pig on your lap for 12 hours on a bus though is the price you might have to pay. (Guatemala springs to mind!)
Local Cuisine
It's fantastic to be adventurous with food whilst travelling. However sometimes you don't really know what you are ordering especially in cheaper local restaurants with no English menu. (Like the times I have unknowingly ordered boiled sheep stomach and deep fried bull testicles...!)
Clothes
Morning decisions about what to wear are simplified by living out of a backpack. No-one expects you to look glamorous or even co-ordinate! However you get to know the true meaning of the expression "I don't have a thing to wear" when you are having to turn your pants inside out to last another day!
Hostels
They can be fantastic places to meet people especially if you are travelling alone. However having to listen to someone else in a dorm of 12 snore/have sex/ignore their alarm going off at 3am can start to test the patience of even the most hardened backpacker...!
Hope these tales haven't put you off backpacking! It really is the only way to see the world.
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