THE FUN PART!
Planning a trip for you to enjoy is very subjective, its like viewing art, some people love it, some hate it… and there is no right way about it… Travel is like that, not everything suits everyone…
For me, I like a mix of everything at different times depending on the location. After trying out a lot of different ways of traveling, Ive noticed what makes me happy is creating a bit of an adventure and getting off the beaten track, being in charge of the itinerary as much as possible (so as not to miss out on interesting sights) and also trying to stay away from 5 star hotels (I end up just wanting to stay in the hotel the whole time when I can just do that back at home lol)
The way to make up your mind on how youre going to travel is to think back and see what makes you happy and what you can handle for an extended amount of time living out of a suitcase / backpack
WHERE TO START… hmmm
- Would you like to stay in 1 country / city for your whole trip? or do you like to travel around and see as much as you can?
- Do you want to be planned? or be as spontaneous as possible?
- Do you want to explore restaurants? or explore castles & historic sights?
- Do you want an active adventure holiday? or sunbaking on the beach sipping cocktails does it for you?
- Do you want to do a group tour and make new friends (or take the chance they could annoy you?) or do you want to travel on your own / with your partner / family only?
- Do you know how you are going to get from one place to the next? Are you going to pre-plan and pre-book that or leave it to chance?
- Do you want to save money and catch public transport? or are you happy to pay triple the amount and catch ubers everywhere?
- Do you want to pre-book accommodation so its cheaper? or are you happy to pay extra and book last minute?
- Which season do you want to travel in, this makes a HUGE difference to your holiday
- Do you have kids with you? Can they handle long hours in the car / train / plane?
- Do you want to be disconnected from technology? or are you happy to carry around your laptop, 78.3 phones, 4.5 cameras, a tripod and a drone?
- Do you want to take a lot of baggage with you? or would you prefer to travel light?
- If you are traveling with a friend, how well do you really know them and what they are like traveling with? The REAL side of people can come out on trips and you may have to have a contingency plan in case you both piss each other off (Ive heard such bad stories in my time, luckily its never happened to me!)
- Do you know the culture you are heading into? Do you have to be aware of anything? i.e. dress codes / tourist scams etc
- Are you taking your information physically with you? or will you have this on your phone? Do you have a backup of your important travel documents in the cloud or tucked into the bottom of your suitcase just in case?
- Do you have an extra set of credit / savings cards just in case you lose it / gets stolen or is sucked up by an ATM machine?
… Its all really exciting, as the world is our oyster! 🙂
WHERE MY TRAVEL PREFERENCE COMES FROM
A bit of history here… Thanks to my parents, we have grown up camping our whole lives. And we LOVE & appreciate it!
We have been camping along the East coast of Australia since I was 4 years, we would try different caravan parks for 2 weeks minimum at a time around the Christmas School holidays.
My parents bought a camper trailer in 1984 with double beds that pop out from either side, we had a side annex and a little 3m aluminium boat that we tied to the top of the van which we towed with our car not forgetting all our bikes tied to the back!
I remember being so excited when we knew we were going away for our camping trip… Mum would keep the cardboard boxes from Franklins and start filling them with package food 3-4 weeks ahead (she is very organised 🙂 Dad would start to arrange the campervan and slowly start loading the blankets and camping chairs into it, they both worked so well as a team!
We did end up finding a favourite place that we all loved, it was called Lake Conjola near Nowra 3 hours down south from Sydney. At the time it was a small little caravan park along the crystal clear lake perfect for swimming and exploring nearby creeks and was a 10min walk away from Conjola Beach where we would often see Dolphins and Sharks and we could walk across the rocks at low tide to Green Island and explore and make sure we went back to shore before high tide or we would get stuck!
The Caravan park was managed by a live in family in a little wooden house at the front of the park where the boom gates were leading down to the 4 gravel roads where the caravans parked
I remember the corner store just down the road where we would ride our bikes to and buy ice creams and walk along the water and ride back when we knew dinner was going to be ready, life was easy… life was good… no mobile phones, no instant gratification for everything, no emails, just pure relaxation with the sound of the water at nights and brightly lit stars in the sky… we would lie down on the hill of the caravan park with our friends who we would meet there every year and stare up at the stars and chat and laugh and then play knock and run on the caravans when we got bored! Those were the days…
Camping has brought our family closer together (tight squeeze in our campervan doncha know it!) we took our books and coloured pencils, board games (our favourite being “rummy-king”) and spent quality time together in a small cramped space with shared bathrooms with everyone else in the park, we had to pay 20c for 5 minutes of hot water… geez, this whole experience taught us a lot of life lessons, for e.g. I am able to sleep ANYWHERE and im not fussed… came in handy later on when I started my hosteling life around the world … and after our time was up… we were always happy and grateful to come home to our comfy beds and sleep with smiles on our faces…
I always, to this day, thank our parents for the effort and the time they put into organising and towing kids around to caravan parks, its not easy, but they did it
The Wandering Passport 