Never Touch The Stray Animals… Unless You Want To.

The first time I left the USA to live abroad was in 2017 on the road to teaching English in Thailand. As a travel newbie, I read as many guide books as I could about solo traveling, backpacking, budget traveling, and surviving your first trip to Southeast Asia. Every resource I could find always told me the same thing - never touch the stray animals on the streets. I’m writing my own guidebook advice here: ignore everything and feed/pet every single cat and dog that you find. When I look back at my photo gallery from years of traveling, it’s amazing to me how many of the memories I decided to capture in those travel moments involved the friendly animals I met along the way. I have never been bitten, never contracted any sickness or had any issues at all (of course, use common sense and don’t touch an animal that doesn’t want you to touch it!). In Thailand, most people go to the thousands of temples to make merit (“tam boon”), but I find myself always carrying cat treats for my own form of making merit - feeding all of the temple cats that laze around and live quiet lives with the monks. It’s not just Thailand. Some countries have more stray dogs and cats than others - it seems to me like Vietnam doesn’t have many, whereas other countries have a lot. Istanbul is famous for having thousands of street cats all over the city who are usually friendly and waiting for some nice pedestrian to drop off some food for them. In my travels, western countries do not tend to have many stray animals on the streets and that has made it even more fascinating to spend time in Asia, where you are constantly meeting friendly furry animals while exploring new cities. The bottom line for this travel story is this: “don’t touch the stray animals” has proven to be the most wrong advice I ever received about traveling. Pet them all and love every moment of it.