What I actually had in mind to write about is how things changed for us and how we changed our travel plans and travel pace and travel life after being on the road for approximately 2 months.
Before we started the trip, we were often talking about how this trip would change us, what we would discover about ourselves, how would we keep ourselves busy during such a long time, what the travel pace would be, how our backpack would change over time (we had the backpack and all clothes and stuff sorted out in theory long before, but now putting it into practice and seeing if things work was another thing we were curious about), and so on, and so on.
So, after around two months, and while we were still busy travelling around Sri Lanka (absolutely amazing country, I don't actually know how often I said 'how scenic', 'how beautiful' and 'wie kitschig'), there were mainly two things happening to us that made us realise we need to change something around our travels:
a) Both of us, husband and I, were getting very edgy and thin-skinned, overly sensitive to each others' moods and getting impatient and sometimes angry about random things that did not really matter.
b) There was a moment when I literally said out loud 'I need a holiday from holiday' and another moment, when I asked husband if he could still remember how much he was looking forward to this year and how excited he was to get started and the only reaction I got was him turning around and mumbling frustratedly.
The first thing we changed was our planned route. The idea has always been to travel somewhere around Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam after leaving Sri Lanka; all countries we have not seen yet and were curious to visit. Originally, we wanted to travel all of them; a bit later, we already downsized to one of these three countries. In the end, we skipped all of them for Taiwan, which has not really been on our travel itinerary before. There were mainly two reasons for this change:
1) The electronic device's bug hit us quite bitter during the first months of travelling. Husband's Kindle (e-book reader) broke in the middle of our hiking trip in Nepal. His convertible tablet offered at least a temporary solution to this, but the tablet felt a bit too heavy and the battery did also not last that long. A few weeks later, the screen of this tablet spontaneously broke, something that just happened and which made the tablet basically unusable as a tablet, but it still worked in netbook mode; however, reading a book on a netbook is not really convenient. So, we shared my tablet for the interim, which worked but did not really made both of us happy.
Finding replacements in Nepal, Bangkok or in Sri Lanka turned out to be a mission, so we just postponed the replacements at that stage.
In addition, I only travelled with a small tablet and figured out quickly that I miss a proper keyboard, particularly for writing longer emails or blogging. So, all in all we knew that eventually, we needed to stop by at a bigger city and do some serious shopping. And well, although I did not know much about Taiwan, but what I knew for sure was that it is a manufacturing powerhouse for many high-tech products. So dream heaven for us at that stage (and still at this stage!)
And just to complete the list of things that broke, in the following weeks an universal adapter plug melted, batteries of my head lamp leaked and left a mess, similar story for a blue pen, USB charging cables developed loose connections, a netbook I bought at a later stage was constantly giving issues (particularly not charging the battery any more, which took me hours to investigate without success only to function again one day and I still don't have a clue why...). Doh!
2) After being constantly on the move as well as changing places and accommodation quickly and regularly for over two months, we both missed something that we could call a home. And I don't mean an actual home or flat or house, but rather something that smells like me, like us, and frankly speaking where we would be living in our own dirt and mess.
Husband missed a place to cook, I missed his cooking and a place where I can do a proper laundry (I absolutely love doing laundry, no joke). And we also figured that both of us just needed a place where we would not have to interact with people every day; and I don't mean no interactions with other people at all, that's the main reason for travelling, right? - but I am sure everyone knows how great a pyjama weekend is where you are just with yourself and/or your family!
So, the idea was to spent some time at the same place for maybe 2 weeks. And where better to do this than in a big city where you can do so many things without getting bored?
Our solution to that was AirB&B in Taipei, where you basically rent a fully furnished flat for just a few days or weeks instead of living in a B&B, hostel or hotel.
3) Internet. We are in honest need of a reliable, fast internet connection. And funnily enough, although we already knew this, we only fully realised that we need to change something as we were travelling along. Basically every place where we stayed so far offered free Wi-Fi, which is awesome but not always offering reliable connection and speed. The way we choose to travel, we do need to research stuff on an ongoing basis, to look information up, to book flights or accommodation, etcetera. And if the access to such information is not reliable, it adds to the stress level we were experiencing. Examples are researching flights for hours due to slow connections only to figure out that the connection breaks or freezes when you actually want to book it and soon thereafter, prices and availability of flights had changed and we had to start all over again. It was just not fun and maybe, we were just badly prepared for this.
So, after Sri Lanka and from now onwards, we were and are always going to organise local SIM cards including data packages. Furthermore, we are going to invest in a mobile hotspot, so that we are connected to the internet with all our devices wherever we go. This helps a lot, particularly using navigation apps or looking up booking emails and other stuff when being on the road.
4) Travel speed: Besides slowing our travel speed down by staying longer in one place like we planned for Taipei, we also decided to do less 'sight-seeing' during the day. The first days in Taipei, we only did one thing every day, like going to a museum, or doing a city tour, or visiting a night market. Later, when we were driving around Taiwan (more to come in separate posts), a 3hour drive and checking out a new restaurant felt more than sufficient for a new day activity. The rest of the day is quite often assigned to research time or reading or emails or general admin or blogging or other things. And even finding a nice restaurant for dinner is in itself a new experience that we basically have every day.
I believe that the impact of doing and experiencing new things more than once a day, every day, was our biggest underestimation when starting this trip. Don't get me wrong, seeing all these beautiful places and meeting all these different people and cultures and eating so much amazing food, is a lot of fun and I don't want to stop visiting more places, meeting more people and eating more amazing food, and so on. But the constant stream of new things to be digested and processed affected us more than we would have thought and simply requires some extra time. Sometimes, I was missing the 'normal life'. So what we thought would help us a lot is to not only to look at the bigger picture, like big sights or highlights to be seen, but also the smaller things like getting to know our local neighbourhood and just having a run around the corner along some lovely, but not in itself outstanding, pavements along a river or having a coffee from the same coffee shop every morning and getting to know the person who actually sells the coffee to us every morning.
So, what I have changed for myself is not only thinking about all the things I want to do, but actually really doing them, implementing a plan of how to archive them and consequently following up on them. So now, husband and I put some things into action, and this includes the following:
- Photography: I always wanted to shoot better pics and improve my technical knowledge. So I assigned myself tiny little projects, that help me to really get out there and just take more pictures and learn from them. In addition, I am actively reading more blogs about photography.
- Spanish: Both, husband and I were loosely studying Spanish for quite some time now, but without regular exercises and studying, nothing is really happening. So we are putting in the time now every day for about 0.5 to 1 hour memorising vocabulary, looking up Spanish phrases and trying to implement them in a fun way in our daily life. We know that we would need more exposure to actual Spanish speaking people, but at least for now it prepares us a little bit for our planned travels in South America where maybe we are going to do a proper Spanish course or the like. Will see.
- Bee-keeping: I would so love to be a bee-keeper (husband also loves the idea, as the bee-keeping outcome can be used in various ways in the kitchen). I already did a bee-keeping course in Johannesburg but then decided against having a beehive in our garden for various reasons. I did not really do much since then around bee-keeping and thought, that now is the perfect time to up my knowledge considerably. I would then be much better prepared to actually start this hobby with the help of an experienced bee-keeper once we know where we are going to stay after our travels. So, this project mainly involves reading relevant blogs on a daily basis, signing up on some online courses but also preparing a list of necessary things such a hobby requires, like tools, clothes, insurance, etc.
There are various other projects, things and ideas, we are currently following up on. Time's keeping on being excited!
So, with all of this in mind and on our last day in Sri Lanka, we were sitting down on a beach close to Colombo, with a bottle of red wine, a big chunk of cheese and a baguette (so classic, and oh so needed!) and were really looking forward to Taipei, Taiwan and the big city life!! (- And it so has not disappointed us, we are literally in love with Taiwan.)
