Van life | Across Canada Road Trip Pt.1 | Is it really LONELY to TRAVEL SOLO?

Happy fall everyone from Thunder Bay, Ontario. This is Vivi. Marco is not joining me today because he's kind of getting cozy and lazy up on bed. It's pretty cold outside so and we just came back from a walk so I don't blame him. He likes to get lazy on bed and get cozy up and so it's but it's really beautiful out here. It's the fall foliage like so many colors you can even see the sleeping giant island in the background there so that means my trip is about to end because I cannot really drive in the winter time and I'm pretty close to the east coast right now so I figure I'm gonna put together um my all my clips and share with you the story the beautiful magical summer that I have got to create it and I really hope that you really understand the story and my way of traveling and so hopefully that it will inspire you to travel and to explore and to learn about all the cultures all the people and most importantly learning about yourself and to get connected to who you are from the inside as well so that's pretty much the main message and without further to do let's go into the story but before that don't forget to subscribe to my channel there's the red button on the right side of the video the right corner there if you find any tips or any insights that are inspiring to you and helpful to you please please don't forget to subscribe and I would really really appreciate that all right guys I will see you by the end of this video so so after leaving Vancouver I spent about two weeks being on my own and just completely be in nature it's kind of like my version of being in quarantine and I did quite a bit of hiking and this one is one of my favorite the Bridal Veil Falls just right outside of Chilliwack and then I went to the Manning Provincial Park which has to be really top on my list of places that I love and at that time everything just started to reopen after the quarantine so it's really quiet and really peaceful because there's there's no crowd there's not a lot of people around it just I just feel so blessed to be able to have like all this beautiful view and enjoyed it all for myself but the hiking was actually a little bit scary because not a lot of people gonna hike I was on the hike by myself and at that time it was still quite cold up in the mountains you can see there's still some snow there but I really persisted to see this gorgeous view of the wildflowers and the snow up on top of the mountains but then when I came back on the way down it was raining so I literally had to run I hit my record of running like six kilometers per hour and by the time I get back there was really nobody there and the rain was already finished at that time so back then I did a lot of journaling and meditation and contemplation and just really release on the negative emotion getting myself ready for the next stage and more adventures in my life so after about two weeks of not socializing not meeting any people I decided I'm just gonna go meet some people when I get to Kelowna so I posted on Couchsurfing that I wanted to meet local people in the city and this woman named Mary Lou responded to me and she invited me to come stay at her place and through her I was able to meet some people like Antonio here and that is Mary Lou and that Jeju that I got to meet through Mary Lou and they invited me to this beautiful potluck event at an organic farm it was just so nice to be able to socialize with people after being and at the event they also have like a crystal style bath performance that's really neat and interesting let me turn on the volume so you can hear you cannot just pass through a white country without having any white tasting so I was able to get together with some people in the city to visit this beautiful winery estate which is quite well known in Kelowna and better yet even Marco was allowed to do some wine tasting as well and by the way that's the new member Tina she looks a little bit grumpy maybe because we didn't have any wine yet but she was so chatty and happy after having some wine and we were lucky because there was a wedding going on at the time so it makes the place even more festive and interesting so after the wine tasting sorry I was not able to record that inside because we were so busy to drink wine of course but my friend showed me this place called Kukuli and it looks like a very interesting earth house and it's located just right behind the winery so inside it's just like the firing and it's just like an open top for the ceremony it's kind of like a little just right behind the winery from the winery we headed back to Mary Lou's place and I offered to cook Vietnamese food for everyone because that was my last day in Kelowna so I just want to offer something to Mary Lou's hospitality for the past week having me and so I was cooking Mien Gia which is the Vietnamese chicken noodle soup but my friend here Antonio he's like I'm a vegetarian so can you make something vegetarian without meat but it was really funny because he doesn't like vegetables even though he's committed to be vegetarian so the only thing I could come up with is the Vietnamese spring roll which is Goi Cuoc and I didn't include any meat in there and I taught him how to roll the spring roll so it was kind of fun and he was like I have never eaten anything like this so he was skeptical but he tried it in the end so yeah that was my last day in Kelowna so from Kelowna I headed down to Christina Lake to visit a friend of mine and she invited me to come stay with her for several days at her summer house and she has a cabin like literally right by the lake like this and every day I felt so blessed to be able to wake up with this gorgeous view and just feel so grateful and so blessed then we also did a lot of canoeing and I was really proud of my little baby Marco for being so calm in the canoe even though he's really afraid of water then she taught me how to do stand-up paddling she's the pro in like doing all kind of water activities and I'm like I'm not really good at balancing and it's a little bit windy at that time so I was skeptical standing up and I was squatting the whole time and it was really funny because her neighbor was watching me and they was like we couldn't believe you could squat that long and I was like yep I'm the squat champion and I can even like squat pick up things with my mouth and it really took me for a while several attempts to actually get it eventually but yeah I was just I was just like oh this is a little bit scary and I didn't want to fall into the water but the water was actually not so bad it wasn't that cold it was a really hot day so but I finally got it in the end and this is actually this footage is actually the second time that I was able to stand up on the on the paddle and I was yay I was so proud of myself for being able to stand up in the end and while I was challenging myself with my balancing Marco was like no way he would get into the water because he's really afraid of water and I guess he was a little bit anxious that I was in the water and that's why he was just like hanging right by the shore there okay welcome back I hope that you enjoy my story so far exploring from Vancouver to Christina Lake that is literally just half of BC and I was in BC for like about two months so there's a lot more to share especially the parts of going through the national parks that's it just insanely beautiful and it's just really magical there so keep watching out for my next videos where I'm going to share with you how it's like to travel through national parks especially during COVID what I want to really share with you is my way of traveling it's not just about like constantly going from places and meeting people and being on the rush all the time but this lifestyle is like being on the slow lane for me and really slow down and really get more connected to nature and to myself especially from the inside because I get to understand my emotion and release all the emotions and it's not always like being a solo traveler it's not always you don't have to always be alone right and that's that's what I want to show to you here that you can always get to meet people along the way and share stories and share cultures so Couchsurfing is my favorite page to go to for that if you don't know Couchsurfing is actually a traveling community website where you can actually reach out to local people wherever you go and you can actually ask them if they can host you or you can actually host travelers as well at your home base or you can actually just meet the local people in the city and that's exactly what I did that's how I met some of the amazing people in Kelowna I've have been a member of Couchsurfing since 2012 and I've been traveling solo for so long not just in North America but in other countries as well like in Asia and also in Europe so I am a big big fan of Couchsurfing and yeah that's that's my way of getting to know the local people and and whenever I feel like okay I have enough of downtime now then okay I'm ready to meet other people because I cannot like go socialize all the time because then I would have to sacrifice all the routines that I do to take care of myself and on the work and on the plane what I really want to create so on those things when I go hang out and meet other people of course I would have to compromise some of my time for that right and so I would have to like oh I need some time alone and I need some time to meet other people so it has to be a fine balance for me so it's like it is really a myth to say that you won't be able to have a strong connection or deep conversation with strangers or with people that you just meet and that is absolutely wrong sometimes I feel like some of these people that I just meet I can have like a really long deep conversation with them so much more than friends that I know for years so and it just and those moments are just really beautiful and that's that's the message that I hope that you would understand and not be afraid of traveling by yourself is and that's the process that's what inspired me to come up with this channel personal growth through van life just to show you that um yeah traveling is not just about uh it's not like a vacation it's not like going to luxurious places it's more about a discovering process discovering the world from the outside the beauty of mother earth the beauty in people and also getting to know who I am to know myself the beauty from the inside so that's the journey and I hope that you get to understand that and get to experience that at least once in your life because um this is how it gets me to grow as a person this is it's a lifestyle it's not really a vacation um and and yeah that's that's the main thing that I want to say pretty much in this uh channel that's how that's pretty much what this channel is all about if I can just put it shortly this way um and I hope that you will be able to inspire other people out there especially young people to get to travel and not just travel to see not just travel to um to see beautiful places and but really get to understand the world and the people and most importantly to understand who you are from the inside um let me know how you actually uh solo travel do you actually solo travel at all are you afraid to travel by yourself or you always have to go with your friends and your family and what do you do when you actually solo travel uh leave me the comments and share with me your experiences and your thoughts about this I share a lot of other clips photos short videos on instagram there's a lot of things that I don't share on youtube pretty much everything go into instagram so if you want to see more of places I travel beautiful landscape and more stories make sure that you follow me in instagram and my instagram page is at smiley vivi05 and if you want to see more of Marco make sure that you follow him as well at Marco the traveling dog all right I hope you have a beautiful magical day and yes go out there and make your life the best life ever okay bye everyone Marco are you ready are you ready baby you ready to go are you ready to go outside yeah so ready