Five Things We'll Miss About Our Year Of Travel

Our year of traveling together as a family is rapidly coming to an end and although in many ways we are looking forward to going home, we can’t help but be a bit wistful about leaving behind certain aspects of the past year.

 

What will we miss?

BEING TOGETHER AS A FAMILY, ALL THE TIME

Few families are fortunate enough to spend 24/7 together.  Work, school, friends, hobbies, and other aspects of day-to-day life compete for our time and attention. ‘Free Time’ is often an unaffordable luxury and the family unit is often the casualty.

But away from all the distractions (including work) you become ‘in-sync’ with each other.  For us as parents, it also means that we now work even better as a team.  And the girls also seem to have a very special bond between them too.

Spending so much time together, you also appreciate one another better.  Jim and I have realised this early on as a result of our previous trips.  And now we’ve also been able to better appreciate our kids as the unique individuals that they are.  It’s also been a lot of fun to see their personalities and characters develop and change too as a result of this trip.  But most of all it’s been very rewarding to have the time to help our kids with their personal achievements.

FUN AND AFFORDABLE FAMILY ACTIVITIES

We totally didn’t expect the high number of family and kid-friendly activities that were on offer to us in SEA and in particular, India.  And they were all so ridiculously cheap.  We rarely had to pay more than $30 USD for an entire day’s outing at a good quality amusement or water park—and that included all the rides too.  Zoos could be visited for as little as $1.50 USD for our entire family! Vietnam and Cambodia had lots of amusement/carnival rides aimed at the pre-school set too, for about $0.25 cents USD per ride. 

FOUR ON A SCOOTER

We often hired 100cc motorcycles for $3-5 USD/day to get us around the local area.  We’d all jump on the back as Jim expertly navigated us around.  We got to see much more of the ‘real’ area vs being limited to just the touristy parts, and with the kids, we were also able to cover more ground.  Although traffic rules tended to be quite arbitrary at times, the fact that most vehicles travel at relatively slow speeds (especially compared to North America or Australia) made it a lot less risky.  Jim’s many years of experience as a rider also helped keep us out of strife on the poorly maintained roads.

Ok--this isn't us, but you get the idea!

NOT COOKING 

We haven’t had to cook a single meal in the entire time that we’ve been away –unless you include our self-catered breakfasts of cereal, bananas and milk while we were in India and Thailand!

On average we spend about $15-$20 USD/AUD per day for all our food/meals, with lots of fresh fruit, meat and vegetables, ice cream and sometimes even seafood.  Surprisingly India also had lots of fresh pasteurised milk that was also very inexpensive.  We definitely spent more than that a week on groceries at home, not to mention the time to prepare and cook it!  And you’d barely be able to get 1 meal in a restaurant in Australia for that amount, let alone feed a family of four, 2-3 times a day.

Fresh BBQ Whole Snapper for $4.00 USD, Pina Colada for $1.75--all served right on the beach!

MUNDANE CHORES

Without the responsibility of your own place, ‘chores’ like cleaning, yard work or dusting are non-existent.  Occationally we’ve had to hand-wash our own laundry, but usually we can get it done, washed and folded, for $1 USD/AUD per kilo on average in most countries that we’ve been.  You would spend more on electricity and water usage at home, not to mention your time!

We’ve Just Been So Spoilt This Past Year!

And we know it.  


While it’s ironic that we were able to have such a good standard of living while backpacking on a budget in SEA and India, we were still the ‘privileged foreigners’ and as such had the disposable income that a good portion of the local people did not. 

But although we have lots to look forward to, we can’t overlook the distinct possibility that our standard of living will be reduced once we return home.  We simply won’t be able to eat out nearly as often, nor ‘do’ as much of fun stuff like the zoos and amusement parks because the cost of living, including  family travel, in Australia is so high. But at least we’ll have a year-full of memories and lots of travel photos which will hopefully sustain us for a long time—or at least until the next trip!