Why doing less on trips can pay off

doing less – A traveler’s Bangkok day flips the usual “maximize every minute” mindset: after sleeping in and choosing one slow, sensory route through temples and food, the day still feels richer than cramming more sights. The same philosophy shows up in city breaks across

The day doesn’t start with a checklist.

In Bangkok, she slept in and didn’t reach the famed Wat Pho until 3 p.m. By then, the detour had already done its job: she took a leisurely post-lunch walk to find mango sticky rice. When she finally arrived at Wat Pho. she didn’t rush—she arrived just in time to admire the Temple of the Reclining Buddha’s namesake sculpture in the glowing afternoon light.

Then she found herself doing something slower than sightseeing: she discovered 108 bronze bowls lining the temple wall and joined others in a meditative exercise of dropping a coin into each one. After that. she sat outside listening to evening chants from the monks. letting the hum of their voices fill the square.

By the end of the day, she hadn’t “technically done much.” But it had been a brilliant travel day anyway—so good, in fact, that she didn’t feel the pull to turn it into more temples, more photos, more ticking boxes. She says she didn’t want to just take a photo of a place and move on.

That feeling—freedom over optimization—threads through how she plans every trip. She likes “plenty of time to sit and take all the sights in. ” she digsress if something else looks interesting. and she avoids traveling so fast that she barely remembers what she’s seen. On vacation, she argues, many things take longer than you think.

Her idea of “good use” of vacation time doesn’t match the stereotype of squeezing in extra highlights. She points out that there were other grand temples close by in the Thai capital. and she could’ve fitted in at least one more that day. Instead, she kept her pace because that’s not her style. “Optimizing trips to the max just isn’t my style,” she says.

The principle gets clearer when she looks back at earlier travel lessons. She started going on city breaks as a teenager with her family. In Paris. she learned the hard way that things are farther apart than they seem when it’s sweltering hot and your paper map shows only the main roads. Digital maps fixed that particular problem. but the general lesson stuck: if you’re going to the Louvre. that can be your whole day. She says it doesn’t matter if Notre-Dame is only 20 minutes’ walk away—you can save the cathedral for tomorrow and take your time at the museum.

Speed-running destinations, she says, can become overwhelming. It often takes longer than expected to figure out walking directions, navigate lines, and buy tickets—especially in a foreign language. Trying to absorb so many new places at once, she suggests, can crowd out the actual experience.

In other cities, her choices also stay stubbornly personal—even when they mean skipping other opportunities. In Copenhagen. she focused her entire trip around going swimming every day. pointing to the Danish capital’s natural harbor baths. In San Francisco. she says she will have Burmese food every other day. even if that means missing out on new experiences. because she loves the city’s Burmese cuisine and wants to indulge while she can. In Berlin. she still thinks about a scoop of black-sesame ice cream she had—so good she kept going back for it. even after dinner. even when it added half an hour to the walk back to her accommodations.

Those trips, she concludes, worked because she spent her days doing what she wanted without too many strict plans. She keeps her itinerary light because she’s traveling to feel free.

That’s why, she says, the best vacations are the ones that feel like discovery. She wakes up and asks herself. “What do I want to do today?” She likes to have one thing in mind when she leaves her hotel. but otherwise she lets the day unfold. She frames day-to-day life as structured—and she wants a break from that.

The opposite of her ideal vacation isn’t just rushing. It’s needing an alarm every day. “The last thing I want is a holiday itinerary that requires me to set an alarm every day,” she says. For her, maybe the real vacation is getting to feel free.

Her last full day in Bangkok makes the point again. She had planned a day trip to Ayutthaya, but when she woke up she didn’t want to deal with figuring out train times and tickets. Part of her felt like she should push through, but she says she knows better by now: travel is supposed to be fun.

So she walked down to the river, ate what she calls the best pad thai of her life—past, present, and future—and then took the ferry up to Wat Arun temple. There, she watched the fiery red sun set behind the central spire.

It was a gorgeous evening. She had done hardly anything at all that day. And she says she wouldn’t change a thing.

travel planning Bangkok Wat Pho Wat Arun mango sticky rice pad thai Ayutthaya city breaks itinerary vacation mindset cultural immersion