The picture behind the holiday photos

When I went to Vietnam earlier this year we took a ‘non touristy’ bike ride in the Mekong Delta. I am a very good bike rider where there are long stretches of flat surface, no turns, no cars, no people and no other cyclists. Also no onlookers. Or changes in wind direction. This is not the case in the Mekong Delta and I fell off my bike after misjudging a turn and going over a step into a concrete surface in a wet market.

I broke the fall with my face, smashing my nose, my chin, my mouth. I was a wreck. I still had to ride another 10km to get back to… well anywhere and I was in so much pain and shock (and I am such a bad cyclist) that I fell off my bike twice more (only grazing and bruising my leg). Five months later and I still have swelling and redness on my face. My husband was more traumatised than I was and will not let me on a bike again. At least not without full leathers, a helmet and crash gear.

I studiously avoided being in any photographs except the ones I sent home to my family for sympathy. The photos I shared on social media looked amazing. Mainly because it was an amazing trip and I never posted an image of my face after the fall. Also my son and his girlfriend were with us and they look beautiful in every photo.

That’s the beauty of photo curation. You get to decide what you want to show. But it’s also the drawback of social media. We only share the good bits or the heavily curated bad bits when we strip ourselves bare and reveal our darkest parts -a trend I spend a lot of time keeping myself away from. We hardly ever share the in-between bits and that’s okay because nobody wants to watch you doing the shopping or the laundry or arguing with your partner over whether you should take just a ‘quick’ cycle around the block.

When I came back from Vietnam laden with concealer so no one could see my scabby face, people told me how amazing my trip was. They had seen it all on Instagram and they didn’t even have to ask — they just knew how awesome it had been. It was an awesome trip and they were right but I felt like I had played a trick on them. I spent a lot of that holiday in pain, I couldn’t open my mouth properly and my anxiety was high. My photos never showed that.

I have just come back from another brilliant, magical, breathtaking beautiful holiday (one day I will try and unpack the guilt I feel around my extremely extravagant lifestyle.) Again I shared the highlights on my Instagram feed — scenes of great wonder and beauty, my husband and I smiling radiantly and happily. My Instagram showed all the great stuff and there was a lot of great stuff but there were also parts I never photographed

• My husband chipped his tooth and had to go to the dentist in huge amounts of pain
• I saw a cat in its dying moments on the street and I’ll never unsee it. It literally scarred my brain
• My husband was sick for almost 4 weeks, 2 courses of antibiotics, more Panadol than you can imagine and more nose blowing than I could cope with
• I cried the whole day of my birthday (unresolved childhood stuff)
• I left my laptop in a hotel room in Donegal
• There is so much homelessness and drug addiction in the streets of any big (or small) city and it kept me awake at night. Don’t even get me started on equality and privilege because that kept me awake at night AND crying during the day
• I’m home in Sydney but my luggage is still in London and shows no sign of making its way home

It’s a good reminder that life is not what you see on social media, it’s not even the stuff we withhold from our friends and followers. It’s not something you can capture in a photo, dance to in a TikTok or write in an update.

But it’s good to have happy memories in your Instagram feed, and for those to remind you about the things that touched you, the things you never captured on camera. Not necessarily the toothache or the 30 day cold or the crying — but the culture and the humanity, the beauty of the world, and the privilege of travel.