The biggest thing is having to manage your own time, for most people with office jobs someone else is deciding what you do for a lot of your time so outside of working and commuting you don't actually have that much free time. Compare this to suddenly having nothing to do all day for months at a time, it can be daunting.
When I've done long stints backpacking and staying in hostels I never really used to do anything very productive, I'd always be meeting new people, there would be lots of partying going on and it was easy to fill my time without getting bored.
Now that I've been staying in apartments more I find I need a little more routine because if I make local friends a lot of the time they're busy during the week working so I've been taking Spanish classes, hitting the gym etc
When I've done long stints backpacking and staying in hostels I never really used to do anything very productive, I'd always be meeting new people, there would be lots of partying going on and it was easy to fill my time without getting bored.
Now that I've been staying in apartments more I find I need a little more routine because if I make local friends a lot of the time they're busy during the week working so I've been taking Spanish classes, hitting the gym etc