Traveling with Tinnitus

[meeruf]

Do you guys have some advice for traveling with tinnitus? I think I start to get ready to go out in the big world again after I damaged my hearing 1.5 year ago. I have very a simmering tinnitus. When I'm home, doing nothing and there is not much sound around my tinnitus pretty much goes away. However, if I go outside. Bars, traffic, malls, airports, whatever, my tinnitus goes through the roof. My strategy until now have just been to avoid places where my tinnitus goes up. But, I can't live like that forever, can I?

Before I got tinnitus I really loved to travel. Especially to those 'weird' places. Two weeks before I got tinnitus I just came back from a five week trip in Thailand, Laos, Burma and Cambodia. I pretty much traveled from village to village. No plans, just living in the moment. I really miss that. I know I could easily travel to Thailand and just stay at some boring resort for 3 weeks. But I don't like that. I like to be 'out there'. Experience the real world. Be stuck, be lost, waking up one mornig and have no idea where I will sleep tonight, all that stuff.

I have been in alot of Thailand'ish countries. Places like India, Bangladesh, Vietnam etc. It's no secret that these places are noisy ass fuck. It's people everywhere, the traffic is insane and there is stuff going on everywhere. Mix that with tinnitus, bad food, lack of english speaking people and occasionally bad diarrhea.

I used to love this style of traveling. I want to do it again, but with my shitty ears I don't know how I would handle it if something goes bad.

Any ideas or experience?

 

[Bambi]

How do you feel about traveling with a friend? Then you won´t have to worry about missing out or misunderstanding anything.

 

[Marcini]

@meeruf I know what you mean. Tinnitus can stop us doing many of the things we once took for granted. Just making an hour long car journey can give me a flareup at times. I think it's important to put it into context and understand that these flareups are only temporary and permanent damage is unlikely. I have reduced doing many things I used to love but there aren't many things that I have stopped doing altogether.

Traveling abroad is a more difficult and unpredictable one. I can't see why it wouldn't be safe to do, especially if you took earplugs for the loud periods. Even with the earplugs you're tinnitus is likely to be flared throughout but if you can accept that it is only temporary then go for it. I've had the same thoughts many times. It's a difficult one.