General Travel Musings
could we travel full-time?
This post comes because one wisemonkey has just celebrated a birthday and we’ve celebrated Father’s Day with our dads on Sunday. The days around the events were spent with both our families (at different times) and it has given us perspective on our lives; about what makes us happy and what we want out of our lives… for now at least.
Recently joining the travel blogosphere and connecting with so many people all across the globe who love travel as much as we do, we have experienced a massive wave of emotions. Thinking that we have found our true calling to be full-time travellers and then feeling even more confused about what we want to do! We’ve gone from wanting to sell up everything to travel permanently and then within moments think: could we really give up everything? There is no denying that there are moments in our lives where we wish we could just escape: that we resent being stuck in a rut and that we are our own destinies. Yes, that is all true! It is so very true that financial security isn’t everything and that we should all live how we want to live and we have!
We fantasise that the world should be our home, that we have the freedom to see the world and cultures, that we are no longer in the daily grind of work, that we wake up every day doing what we want. We have NO doubt that we could make it happen if we wanted to. There is so much PROOF out there that shows it can happen.
But the reality is that Sydney is our home. This is where our families are. Could we be happy travelling the world knowing that we would miss birthdays of all the people we love? Could we be happy knowing that our parents are getting older and every moment spent with them is worth so much more than any holiday because we just don’t know when their time will be up? Could we travel happy knowing that our nieces and nephews only know us through Skype and photos and we miss all their milestones in life? Could we be happy travelling knowing that one day we might want to settle down and actually have nowhere we could really truly call home?
We have had a mortgage for the last 4 years but that hasn’t stopped us, if anything we have travelled more. We have proved that no one has to be bound by a mortgage. Life goes on with or without mortgage but the comfort in knowing we have a home to come back to suits us for now. We have done small trips, we have done big trips, we have worked and saved in between. We have made our dreams happen. What we are doing now is the balance that makes us happy. We need to be honest with ourselves… travelling is OUR passion but that doesn’t mean that we should give up everything else we love too.
We don’t know if we have the answers now! But we do know what we want to do in the short-term. Home is home and the world remains our playground. And now its time to declutter, save and plan our big trip for next year which already includes the World Cup in Brazil! Who knows what will happen or what we will feel in the future? We might revisit this question next month or next year and will have a different answer. But what we know for now is that we have our cake (or macaron) and eat it too 🙂
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acknowledging awesome blogs: an award or a chain letter?
This is all relatively foreign to us as we are still learning the ropes about the blogging community and twitter. So it’s very exciting to be nominated for “The Versatile Blogger Award”. A big thank you to our extremely friendly nominator: Turquoise Compass.
We confess that we did trawl through a few websites on Google to understand what this was all about and discovered that this is a “chain letter” type award. However, in the spirit of “winning” this award, we shall make sure we stick to the rules. We have also read that we need to display this image:
We can completely understand if the blogs that we nominate choose to not keep this going… but this is our way of saying that we think you have an awesome travel blog!
The Versatile Blogger Award
RULES:
- Thank the blogger that nominated you for this great award.
- Tell 7 things about yourself.
- Name the 15 blogs you think are the most versatile.
- Comment on their blogs to let them know they have been nominated.
7 THINGS TO SHARE ABOUT US
- We each have two siblings that are older than us, making us the “babies” of our families.
- He is a Virgo and She is a Scorpio.
- We are very interested in astronomy.
- We love mangoes, chips (hot chips, crisps etc) and kurtosh (Hungarian pastry/sweet bread).
- We prefer to be on land than in water.
- On countless occasions, we have mentally re-arranged our apartment so we can fit a table tennis inside our living room.
- We currently have over 100 books on our bookshelves that we have not read yet.
15 AWESOME blogs:
- Helen in Wonderlust
- Along for the Ride
- Travel? Yes Please!
- A Crafty Traveler
- Mapping Megan
- Alive on the Road
- Peanuts or Pretzels
- A Boundless Voyage
- Our World Heritage
- The Carpe Diem Couple
- Travel with Bender
- Travel Motivation
- Jacomijn’s Travel Blog
- Chronicles of Wanderlust
- Travel for Wildlife
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tippy toes on tipping
Coming from a country where tipping isn’t really a way of life, we always struggle when we travel. From tipping the cab driver, hotel staff, wait staff, tour guides and so on and so on. What is the etiquette?
We’ve seen how they do it on tv but somehow when we are in the moment, it doesn’t quite feel as smooth (or look as smooth no doubt). The first opportunity to tip is usually after the cab driver unloads our luggage from the boot of his cab and we pay him the cab fare plus a bit more via the “secret” handshake. And before we can turn around, the hotel’s bellboy has snatched up our bag and is welcoming us to the hotel as we secretly hope that we have some small notes to tip him (because can you really ask for change? That would be awkward, right?) At the front desk, the staff are super friendly, and extra helpful to secure us the room with a view and a king size bed. So does that person get a tip? And how do we do it tactfully? Slide the bill across the counter? It’s all too confusing! And we’ve only been in the country for less than a day!
It’s time for food, so when do you tip? At what level of service? We have begun noticing that maybe overseas restaurants are catering for us Aussies who don’t quite know how much to tip, so a service charge seems to be appearing more often on the bill these days. This is absolutely fine by us because it helps us but somehow it seems odd when there is no service.
The next dilemma we then face with tipping is house-keeping! Is it better to tip daily or at the end of our stay? We choose to tip daily as its only fair for the housekeeper who does clean the room to receive the tip. But then where do you leave the money? We entertain putting it by the bedside but what if the housekeeper thinks its our money so doesn’t take it or thinks we are testing their honesty or takes a larger note on another day because we have accidentally left it lying around? Our solution has been to write a thank you note with a smiley face 🙂 and place it with the money (on the pillow – too tacky?) and that seems to have worked so far.
Tipping is such a delicate yet critical part of travelling. It’s about getting the act right as to not offend or belittle anyone. It’s about balancing the amount to show gratitude but to also make sure you have the right combination of denominations in your wallet to tip suitably. It is an art and maybe one day we won’t be tippy toeing about how to tip gracefully!
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travel philosophy
Kenya, Tanzania and Dubai are officially creeping up on us! And we know what that means…. that we need to lock in the holiday after that.
We have a travel philosophy, that we NEED to have our following holiday booked before we go on the next one. Why? Purely because then it gives us something to look forward to when we get back. People return from a holiday and get withdrawals and dread the fact that they are back to the “daily grind” (maybe not everyone but we know we did). So to fill the void of the holiday euphoria, we overcame that by living by our travel philosophy. And sure enough, we land in Sydney with the excitement of knowing our next destination is in sight. And it works!
So back to the fact that Africa is creeping up on us, we need to start getting our act together and book something. There is Tasmania in January (where we’ve been – but this time with the extended family). Then there is talk of Hong Kong in April. And then dreams of possibly something bigger in July to escape the winter – Europe is beckoning us once more!
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