When I arrived in Jamaica in 1969, I was a twenty-three-year-old researcher from Birmingham with a one-way ticket and very little idea of what I was doing. Within weeks, I was moving in with a young Jamaican pilot, flying small planes over the Blue Mountains and spending weekends on the beaches of Westmoreland. I was blessed to be immersed in Jamaican society and culture early on – not as a tourist passing through, but as someone who lives within it.
This baptism set the pattern for the next five decades. Through my career in construction throughout the Caribbean and my travels with my wife Vivian to over 120 countries, I have made sure that the most valuable education I have received has not come from the classroom or the classroom. It came from being in unfamiliar places with an open mind and interest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that life is a series of lessons that must be lived to be understood. My wife bought me a leather travel journal early in our marriage and I religiously filled it with every destination. That journal became the basis for much of my book. Re-reading it as I wrote it was not only a pleasure, but profound, for what I found in those pages was not a record of sights, but a record of speculation.
One example sticks with me. In 2024, Vivian and I were traveling from Tbilisi to Baku with Azerbaijan Airlines. Vivian reluctantly agreed to fly with what she assumed was a third-world carrier for an hour. What we encountered was an efficient business class check-in, an excellent first class lounge, a brand new Airbus with matching first class seats, a selection of champagne and wine and a beautifully prepared meal. So much for preconceptions. We later flew Lufthansa in the return leg and found it to be the “world’s favorite airline”. The lesson was simple and humble: the quality of experience rarely matches the assumptions you bring to it.
I learned a variation of the same lesson long ago, on my first trip to England after three years in the Caribbean. I started telling friends about the places I’d been—Ecuador, Haiti, St. Kitts—and it quickly turned into what I can only describe as a tennis game. “I was in Ecuador.” “Well, we were in Benidorm.” Back and forth. I quickly learned that it’s best to be honest about what you’ve done, or the audience’s eyes will glaze over. That early experience taught me something that has served me well in all cultures ever since: being humble about your own story is the price of acceptance for someone else’s.
Some of the most memorable lessons come from unexpected settings. In Bangkok, Vivian and I took a cooking class that required a series of water taxis to travel deep into the city’s waters until we arrived at what appeared to be a garage. It was actually a boat, and behind it stood a beautiful two-story Thai-colored house that belonged to our landlady, Pip. My first task was to sit on a low stool and grate coconut meat in a bowl with a metal scraper. You don’t learn that from a manual. You learn it by sitting in the chair.
In Azerbaijan, our driver, Khalid, was driving a Russian Lada car on mountain roads with no top on the back seat – only carpets on top of it. He started the engine and our guide turned the ignition while he hit the starter motor with a piece of rebar. When the brake pads overheated on a steep descent, he turned off the engine and freed himself from the mountain. That evening, after an extraordinary hike to a frozen waterfall inside a cave and lamb soup prepared by a local family, I told Khalid that the day’s entertainment was far more expensive than any five-star resort. I meant it.
TS Eliot wrote that the end of all our exploration is to arrive where we started and to know for the first time that we know that place. I found this to be absolutely true. Every country I’ve visited has sent me home to understand my life and my work a little differently – and usually with at least one assumption quietly dismissed.
For anyone who wants to travel on purpose, here are some principles I follow:
- Turn around, don’t follow. The difference between traveling and studying is participation. Ride with the locals if you can. Take a cooking class. Sit on the chair. The version of the country you experience from inside someone’s home is completely different from the one you see from your hotel balcony.
- Check your preconceived notions at the gate. The airline you fired from may have confidence in your company. A country you ignore can teach you more. Travel with curiosity, not assumptions, and let each experience make its own judgment.
- Keep a journal and be honest about it. Write down not only where you went, but what surprised you, what you did wrong, and what changed your mind. Decades from now, these records will be more valuable than any photograph because they depict not only where you stand, but who you have become.
- Practice humility about your story. No one wants to sit across from someone who narrates their adventures like a high-roller. Listen more than you speak. The fastest way to connect with someone from another culture – or your own – is to really take an interest in their culture.
written By Martin Bould, author of More Than a Climber: Life’s Lessons Well Learned (Unicorn Publishing, 2025)
Martin Bould is a successful businessman based in the Cayman Islands. He is a founding member of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation and the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. He was honored in 2012 by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the preservation and development of Caymanian culture and by the Cayman Islands Government at the 2025 Hero’s Day Awards as a Heritage Builder for laying the foundations for future economic development since 1970. his memory, More than climbing – Life lessons well learned(Unicorn, November 24, 2025), weaves his personal journey alongside the transformation of the Cayman Islands. Learn more Here.
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