Category: Around the World

The last couple of months have flown by so quickly, so quickly in fact that for the last 2 weeks leading up to our first flight I was so anxious and stressed. Mark finished work just over 10 days before I did so he had spent that time before Christmas looking into things we need, updating our finance spread sheet, catching up with people and doing some things he loved to do. I felt like I didn’t had that luxury, I worked up until my work Christmas party on the 22nd and then spent the next 2 days trying to make sure we had everything sorted for Christmas and our trip. I normally love Christmas but this year it was a bit of a blur but I’m glad we were home to spend it with our families. We fly out tomorrow morning for the first leg of our trip.

This first leg of our trip is over in less than 2 months and then we fly back to Melbourne for a Mark’s Brother’s wedding. It will be good to use that time to see people and re-pack properly before the second leg. To us, this first leg is just like a long holiday, although I think that will make it difficult because we still need to act like we are backpacking and are on a tight budget. I don’t think the budget part will be very difficult as we are spending the whole time in Asia. We’ve got our bags packed and clothes laid out ready for tomorrow morning. Let’s hope we don’t sleep through our alarms on the first day of our trip.

B xx

I bought my World Map years ago when we were planning our Trans-Siberian Trip and to be honest I never really used it, I just hung it up on the wall. Now, a couple of years later it is becoming useful.

There are so many places in the world that I want to visit and at the beginning I was really stubborn. Mark was willing to negotiate on The Places We would go but I was struggling with that idea. Eventually though I had to start culling. Once I started it wasn’t too difficult but that was because I had a list of non-negotiable places.

Mark has done a lot of the work on this trip, he travels so much for work he is now so good at taking into account so many different things for a trip. I don’t think I would have been able to do it without him. We’ve planned up until June so far. There are weeks throughout that time that we have an idea on what we want to do but we haven’t booked anything and other things have been booked and paid for. The only reason we have booked so far in advance for some places is because of the visa requirements of some countries.

We are pretty happy with what we have planned so far and can’t wait to share all of The Places We visit along the way. At the moment though we are stuck in Australia while our passports visit several embassies and consulates for our visas.

Stay tuned… B

 

I think it’s hard in today’s society to drop everything and go. It’s not an issue of whether you want to or not it’s more an issue of if you think you can. We had to stop and think about it all. We had worked really hard to save up for a house; could we just leave and spend all of our hard earned savings? Friends of ours were getting married and moving into their own places; did we want to postpone all of that? Some were having babies; how old would we be when we got back? Would it be too late?

We had to stop ourselves and actually think about it. No, we didn’t actually care if we spent all of our money on a trip of a lifetime, actually we wanted to. Yes, we did want to postpone moving into our own place and starting our lives together, a 30 year long mortgage scared us. And finally no, we wouldn’t be too old when we got back, in fact we would still be super young. We had the rest of our lives to pay bills and worry about money, but we only had now to decide if we were going to do what would make us happy.

And so that is how we decided to go away… We looked at everyone around us and said “Is that what we want?” “Yes it’s what we want” “Do we want it right now?” “No”.

We live in a materialistic world these days and we are hoping that this trip will remind us of what is important in life and what is important to us.

But now on to an even more important question… Where should we go?

I can remember when I was younger making promises with so many people that we would travel the world together. I was desperate to go away so I thought that the more people I made promises with the better chance I would have of one of the promises following through. I never thought about going by myself. I’ve read that people say you grow so much from travelling on your own but it never appealed to me – I always wanted to have someone I could share the whole experience with.

My cousin was one of the people I made that promise with and when he went away with his girlfriend in 2012 I was so jealous. He had found someone who was going to leave everything behind and travel with him for as long as they could. Mark and I had spoken about doing what they were doing but we both had good jobs and it wasn’t like we were sitting at home not seeing anything. We were going away as often as possible but there was always just this itching feeling that I needed to go away.

At the end of 2014 we decided we would go away, I should say we were telling our families we were going to go but I don’t know if even we thought we would – I mean we were at this stage saving and looking for a house to buy! God – we sound so indecisive…

It’s now October and we have both given notice at work and are taking all the money we saved for a house and are going to travel the world. Finally! Decision and action from us. It’s all a bit daunting but much more exciting! we are both so excited and I can’t wait to share our trip with you.

Cheers, B