Life begins at the end of your comfort zone
We’re pretty adventurous eaters and over the past year we’ve tried everything from beef tongue hot pot in Japan and cow brain soup in Turkey to – yes, INSECTS in Thailand. And honestly we walked away from each of those three meals with a smile on …
Building a new family, going camping on weekends, flying across the country for weddings, and apprenticing for a new position as a guard – that’s what our dog’s been doing while we’ve been away. I don’t know if we were lacking love from each other, competing …
At our Workaway in Turkey we had made some amazing ties to the community. Will played soccer every Tuesday with a group of guys, we visited the neighbors for tea and watermelon even though none of us could understand each other, we met the mayor, had our own doctor, cooked for friends who baked for us, and met many of the local business owners. Up until now, out of all the places we had traveled, we really finally felt at home and part of a community in Göcek!
It was bittersweet when our time ended but awesome that our Workaway hosts had hooked us up with four days of sailing with a friend of theirs! Göcek was a town that mainly serviced the marinas and a lot of the international yachters that came through. We had already been inquiring about getting sailing lessons after all the money we had saved volunteering at Cloud 9. It was even better news when we heard we would be able to get a mini sailing lesson for FREE! Nothing comes for free these days.
So we bought some groceries and boarded the 49 foot Jeanneau Sun Odyssey with our new friends Aran and Aziz. Aran was our Workaway hosts nephew and Aziz was their lifelong friend who part-owned Budget Sailing with his brother. Aziz was delivering the boat for a customer to another marina near Bodrum and could take some companions for the ride. Sweet deal!
The first day on the boat was a little rough for Will and Aran but Aziz, being a smart and simple man, basically said to us that
sea sickness is all in the head. Although its related to balance and equilibrium, a mismatch between what your body and brain is feeling, you can override the feeling of sickness by just opening your eyes and focusing out on the horizon.
By the next day the boys were much better.
We spent our days waking up to beautiful sunsets, eating simply, starring out into the vast seas, docking at secluded beaches or quiet bays, swimming in turquoise blue waters, exploring Roman-style ruins, and celebrating our luck each evening. It was the most peaceful four days we could ask for, where every breathe of fresh air felt like it truly cleaned out the toxins that had been lingering in us for years. Now we know why people seek and love this lifestyle on the water, why they dream of retiring on a sailboat, touring the world by water.
Although our 49 foot boat slept eight people, the four of us were still in fairly close quarters and with that we got to know each other a lot
better. One thing that really stuck in our minds was our chat with Aziz about what him and his brother would do with the Budget Sailing business when they were ready to retire. He smiled to himself, took a pause as the rays of sunshine licked his skin, the fresh crisp wind whipped through his hair and the waves crashed around the ship he captained, then responded,
“Why would I ever want to retire?”
That really hit home and completely shifted our perception of everything we were bred into believing back home. Go to school, start a career, work your whole life and retire on a beautiful beach somewhere far away.
But what’s there to retire from if you’re already living the good life? Why retire when you can continue making money doing what you love? Why not work for yourself forever? For the people you serve, your beliefs, your passions, or whatever? Why wait until you retire to do what you’ve always dreamt of doing?
Why work your youth away at a job that’s less than desirable, saving anywhere and everywhere you can, just to sit on a beach in Mexico or Cuba like a beached whale when you’re 60? Who even wants to be a beached whale?! When people see beached whales they organize groups to get those whales put back in the ocean, back to where they’re from and what they’re meant to do!
It’s something we’ve learned through reading books and listening to people from different cultures, that you have to know yourself and what makes you an optimal human being. I guess it’s to have a purpose that aligns with what makes you feel best, to be in a place where you can’t tell if your working or if this is just your normal life. Our time away has given us an ambitious outlook as to what we really want to achieve when we get back – to design a life that makes everyday optimal for us.
Our supportive relationship being the backbone, we are now wiping the slate clean when we get back to go after a life that we 
know exists. We are very fortunate after this trip to be on the same page because it was a huge gamble to see if we would even work out, but with big gambles in life you also can receive huge rewards. Our reward was finding a partner in crime! A good relationship is essential in our opinion – if your going to build skyscrapers, you NEED to have a solid foundation! Close relationships have to be sound, loving and supportive in order for you to go and venture into the “good life”. So with the epiphany we received on this boat ride it was a good moment for us and we are happy to share the little lessons along our roller coaster with you.
So the next few days we admired Aziz for his wisdom and for the shift he propagated in our thinking. We slept on the deck of the boat, underneath the stars thinking about how we’ll set ourselves up to live the good life now. The type of life that we don’t need to take a vacation from, or eventually retire from.
We won’t be starting our own sailing business since we don’t necessarily love living for extended periods on a boat. But we’ll be brainstorming to create a life we don’t have to retire from because the traditional retirement isn’t the right fit for us, and it might not be for you either. We don’t want to take up leisure full time and want some challenges to keep life interesting!
So by sharing we hope the doors of your mind are cracked open a bit for you to be aware of the many ideals one can live by. The rabbit hole of possibilities are endless for you, never think you are limited in your life in any way. All things are possible, all you need to do is get out of your own way to live a life on purpose.
Cheers, you good looking birds.
Walking the streets of Cusco, Peru, about one hour away from our flight back to Toronto got Will thinking about if he’s ready to go home. Share if you know someone who is thinking about a gap year off and may want to talk to …
Well, Father Time waits for no one. As we glance at our rear view mirror, we have some treasures from Peru we have to share. We are very inspired to share tales of our adventurous experiences in these mystic lands. We can honestly say that when …
Getting lost is very much a frustration and a thrill for us as we explore new cities, towns and villages. Sometimes we’re physically lost and other times we’re emotionally or spiritually lost. Sometimes one person is super stressed out and wants answers and the other is oblivious to knowing anything is even wrong. It’s a game of seeking answers. Sometimes we give up seeking and just wander around; we let ourselves to just be.
As we tread this earth we take note of our similarities but we also notice our differences between people from country to country. Differences like walking the streets of Istanbul at 2 o’clock in the morning versus Amsterdam. In one city you see people singing, drinking tea and smoking hookahs and the other you are overwhelmed by the scent of weed, hip alternative styles, and acceptance of unique people. Both similar in the happy, healthy and buzzing communities, but yet very different.
And just like everything else, we as a couple have our similarities and differences too. After one of our moments of frustration in Istanbul with one another, we decided that we would take a day apart to go explore by ourselves and meet up at the end of the day. So we went off to spend our selective days apart. Paulina met a couple travelers from the hostel and with her friendly heart she set out to check out Old Town and see the sites with her new entourage. While Will found a pick-up soccer game in the park.
But Will was lost … He ended up walking along the seaside heading to the
park where the game was supposed to be. But no one showed. What now? 
Well, not being much of a planner he walked aimlessly looking at buildings and following trails. This was Will’s first day officially travelling alone because the previous five months he had been side-by-side, day and night with Paulina, except during our 10-day silent retreat.
So there was no soccer for Will, and there was no Paulina for him either, sooooo he turned to the next best thing, his love for animals. Turns out Turkey has this program to take care of stray dogs and cats. They vaccinate these little guys with meds and then they tag them to keep track of their existence. The parks have these dispensary units where people put garbage in the trash bin and dried kibble bits dispense into a dish for the dogs and cat. AMAZING!
Will thought why not make an animal buddy while exploring. The city was old cobble stone roads, steep hills and people lounging in the streets. People 
watching in Istanbul was a way to explore without moving. The world is always moving. Take a chance to stay still to watch, listen and feel what’s happening around you. Well Will, with his furry dog friend, decided to stay still in a park to watch the world for a moment together. Feeling lost at times in his life and contemplating what the hell he is really doing with his time on this gap year, it was nice to admire his animal friends, creatures in a moment of time enjoying each other’s company.
Meanwhile on Paulina’s side she was taking in the vibrations of her new 
found tribe members and enjoying her independence. Pictures were taken, good food was eaten. Your soul gets filled different ways for different people, so for this day of us being apart, we were each getting the medicine we needed to reunite happily again.
You start to learn a lot about a person being with them everyday. You know what their habits are, when they’re getting grumpy, how to excite the other person and when to go for a recharge to take space. These are important 
factors for finding a partner you can share your life with. So in doing this trip we’ve matured our bond with one another.
Everything takes work, it’s just how much work do you want to put in to get the kind of result you want out of it. Listen to your soul and find the nearest gas station to refuel every now and again. Even if this means that you have to take time away from your partner. No feelings should be hurt. A relationship is two individual people joining to share a life together, never lose who you are because it doesn’t benefit the relationship.
Check out this great TED talk we’ve watched multiple times by Esther Perel about how to maintain desire in a long term relationship.
“So I want to draw that little image for you, because this need to reconcile these two sets of needs, we are born with that. Our need for connection, our need for separateness, or our need for security and adventure, or our need for togetherness and for autonomy, and if you think about the little kid who sits on your lap and who is cozily nested here and very secure and comfortable, and at some point all of us need to go out into the world to discover and to explore. That’s the beginning of desire, that exploratory need, curiosity, discovery. And then at some point they turn around and they look at you. And if you tell them,“Hey kiddo, the world’s a great place. Go for it. There’s so much fun out there,” then they can turn away and they can experience connection and separateness at the same time. They can go off in their imagination, off in their body, off in their playfulness, all the while knowing that there’s somebody when they come back.”
In closing, you’ll be happy to know we’re still together and we’ve taken a couple other healthy days apart to let ourselves “feed our soul” independently. We’ve realized its important to spend some time apart because when you’re doing everything together you can easily lose yourself in what the other person wants to do. You don’t need to compromise always, being a little selfish every once in a while is a good thing.
Stay tuned to hear about Our 3 Around-the-World Quarrels.
It’s very common for many people to go into something and not think of all the things that could go wrong. But that’s okay because if you had to know all the consequences then you may not ever do a majority of the things you …
We want to let you know that if you don’t have money coming in while you are traveling and you are running off savings, you will soon notice the pace of money disappearing. So let’s talk about it … disappearing money. The world is abundant, with …
Passion grows in the pants, whoops, we mean plants …
Imagine being up in the clouds, away from civilization with no form of communication, following a nutty little man, smiling ear to ear snipping away here and there at this plant and that one, yelling “Aaaiiiiiight.” That’s what we did for a good portion of our time in Turkey. We were volunteering on a permaculture site called Cloud 9 with an assortment of animals and even larger variety of plants. It was another Workaway opportunity. Our hosts, and now lifelong friends, Tayip and Deborah welcomed us warmly as they drove us 9km up a rough mountain road and brought us to our new home for the next month. We had anticipated that we would be taking care of a few animals, learning about bees, doing some labor work on the land, a lot of watering and other small projects. We didn’t realize we’d learn so much about permaculture and gardening.
As kids we were fascinated by the idea of something sprouting from a little seed and watching it grow over time. During our stay on Cloud 9 we were Tayip’s children and we were fascinated by his passion for the plants he grew, the fruits they sowed and the land he cultivated. We reveled in every moment we spent following Tayip around, learning about gardening and growing as we applied those concepts to day-to-day life. Because life is like a garden, if it’s not thriving and growing, it’s dying.
Now some may find learning about gardening uninteresting and dull but trust us it’s fun!! However, what’s most interesting to us is we found an authentic, spirited character who had found his niche. A person that does what he loves and feeds his soul. Have you found that? We sure haven’t and we know not everyone finds it easily.
In Indonesia we met a guy from Portugal who’s passion and work are now integrated because he draws bird illustrations for encyclopedia’s and other references but as a hobby enjoys bird watching. How did he find his niche? Shooting down high flyers with his dad! When they had to identify the birds they looked at them closely, listened to their song and eventually went in for the kill. But the closer he looked and the harder he listened, the more he fell in love with his prey. So here he is today, a full-time, passionate birdwatcher and illustrator.
In Poland we met a woman who is also full-time working in something she enjoys and is passionate about. She moved to Poland, married a man, had two beautiful boys, worked a high corporate position at a company, and then got fired. Well, you can respect the shock she must have felt and the fear of the unknown. She didn’t know what she wanted to do next but a friend suggested in the meantime to write an eBook and enter a contest, just for fun. Now she is the successful author of about 20 books, with 2.4 Million eBook pages read per month and is loving it. She’s on a wet, romantic carpet ride and there’s more and more people grabbing towels to clean up the mess in her page turners.
But back to the passion’s of our nature-loving Turkish friend, Tayip. Since six years old Tayip could be found with a pair of shears in his back pocket. He is the youngest gardener we’ve ever known of and he was learning everything he knew through experiencing it. You could describe him as a mad scientist, experimenting with his plants on Cloud 9 but Tayip was also able to turn his fig passion, borderline obsession, into supplemental income by selling the cuttings from his trees. Day-to-day all he has to do is give his trees some trimming and water, and later can see the fruits of his labor when he turns one branch into multiple saleable cuttings. Now that’s an integrated life!
So here is some of the techniques we learned on Cloud 9 specifically about the fruit trees:
Grafting – taking the tissue of a bud or branch from one tree (has to be from the same family ie. apples and pears) and touching the tissue of another root tree.
Ground layering – when a low hanging branch or a damaged branch is encouraged to create new roots in the soil while its still attached to the original tree. This can be done by weighting the branch with some heavy rocks so that it is now under the soil. Once the roots have grown, the branch can be cut from the parent tree and replanted!
This was Paulina’s favorite method and she can’t wait to experiment at home.
Air layering – similar to ground layering, the plant is encouraged to create new roots while its still attached to the original tree. The difference is that it is done above the ground, in the air, in a bag that creates a moist growing environment for the roots. Once the roots have grown, the branch can be cut from the parent tree and replanted!
Although Tayip does so much with his wife at Cloud 9, they enjoy the company of helping hands … and paws .. and chickens, turkeys, peacocks, quail, and hedgies!
But after a long day of gardening and growing, we all need to take a rest to regenerate so we can grow some more tomorrow.
Will was the one who introduced the phrase “If you’re not growing, you’re dying” and since we’ve let it be a guiding light in our lives. Growing doesn’t necessarily mean physically growing but it means growing your brain. So as long as you’re on your continuous path for learning you are growing, this could be learning new recipes, taking a language course, training a dog, reading books, learning a new skill, etc. Just like when we were children and we were rapidly growing, developing and learning, continue to be curious like a child in your adult life and learn something new.
We want to see if we can write blogs in random places. Now it’s no problem to find random places seeing that we are often in random houses, cities, parks, camping in the middle of nowhere, and finding little gems of a spot while exploring. …
Paulina hates being video taped. PERIOD! Here is a little compilation Will put together of her trying to avoid the camera in the streets of Bangkok. Let’s say she’s starting from the bottom and hopefully by the end of the trip she’ll be a little …
Day 5: Doi Inthanon – Siriphum & Sirithan Waterfall- Chom Thong – Mae Ya Waterfall
There was nowhere to cook breakfast and it was our last day so we left bright and early to make the most of it. We checked out Siriphum waterfall and the garden near town then headed on Hwy 1009 to find more waterfalls to swim in and a place to cook breakfast. Both Siriphum and Sirithan waterfalls were big and beautiful but you couldn’t swim in them so we didn’t spend much time at each. Leaving Sirithan waterfall is where we realized our rear tire was completely flat and the integrity was gone!
With no cellphone on us to call the scooter rental place we headed about 5-6km back uphill to Doi Inthanon park. Luckily a local Thai man from Chom Thong village picked us up in his truck and loaded the scooter. He dropped us off at a place to fix the tire which ended up being overpriced at 970 THB and took about 2 hours. We gave the kind Thai man 220 THB; he was so grateful and insisted on only taking 100 THB but we wouldn’t let him.
From there we went to Mae Ya Waterfall which was a short hike and very beautiful. We swam and enjoyed our time there before heading back to Chiang Mai. When we showed the damaged tire and receipts to the scooter rental company she did not want to refund us any portion because our contract said that popped tires were the responsibility of the customer. After a little debate she returned 400 THB to us which we were satisfied with considering what we had put that poor scooter through. Although most of our kilometres were spent on highways, the majority of our time was spent dirt biking on back roads with this scooter. We definitely learned from this short adventure that we’ll need a different bike for our next scooter adventure!
Expenses: 960 THB = $35 CAD
Distance: 96 km (does not include the kilometres we were towed)
TOTAL EXPENSES for the trip: 5310 THB = $197 CAD
TOTAL DISTANCE for the trip: 825 km
Day 4: Pang Ung – Mae Hong Son – Maeaukoluang Waterfall – Doi Inthanon This was our kilometre day, we had a lot of ground to cover. We were headed to Surin waterfall but along the way stopped in Mae Hong Song off Hwy 108 to …
Day 3: Pai Viewpoint – Pai Canyon – Susu Waterfall – Pha Suea Waterfall – Pang Ung We both agreed that going to sleep with the sun and waking with it felt amazing. But we also realized that our minimalistic camping was almost too minimalistic. …
Day 2: Pong Dueat – Tha Pai Hot Spring – Pai – Pembok Waterfall – Pai Viewpoint
We woke up as the sun was rising because we were anxious all night, waking up many times to the sound of engines or people … and rightfully so, since a man in camouflage was peering in the window as we were packing up. As it turns out he was a guard, so we let him know we were leaving right away. We were told that the national parks in Thailand are all manned by the military because they are King’s land.
On our way to Pai we stopped at a scenic pullout, made a campfire for breakfast and had red rice with Campbell’s cream of mushroom and chicken. Today was our first experience building a fire in such high moisture and humidity. It was very difficult and took a lot of patience since we didn’t have any fire starter or dry kindling but eventually we did it! Although the road to Pai is windy and beautiful, oddly this scenic pullout wasn’t very scenic at all and unfortunately had a lot of garbage everywhere. We are firm believers that you should leave a campsite cleaner then when you got there, so we tidied up the place before continuing on.
Next we were onto Tha Pai (aka Pong Ron) hot spring which charged 300 THB/person and was a let down because it was under maintenance and we couldn’t go in the hot spring. Luckily the park attendant returned our money since we decided we weren’t going to stay there and camp after all. So we headed to Pai to find a coffee shop, charge the phone and walk around. Pai is a unique and enjoyable little town with many boutique shops and tourists. It would have been fun to spend a few days there but we decided we were going to keep moving on and find more nature. 
Pembok waterfall was our next chase. We were excited to feel refreshed and swim again and even more excited when we could do some small cliff jumps about 10-12ft. From Pembok there was a sign that said 7km to Pai Viewpoint so we thought why the heck not. Turned out this was a crazy road made for off-road scooters or dirt bikes versus the one we rented and when we finished the 7km we came to a sign that said another 3km. These 10km took us well over an hour to do and some of the inclinations were so high that Paulina got off the scooter and walked, and eventually we both got off the scooter and just hiked the last kilometre to the top.
We were ecstatic to finally be at the top and immediately decide we would camp there because the scenery was beautiful and facilities were great! Pai is at an elevation of approximately 480 MSL while the viewpoint is 1624 MSL, so we climbed over 1100 meters on a little 125cc scooter … The villagers seemed impressed with our tenacity. We camped there for free and were blessed to have help from locals to start the fire since yet again there was no dry kindling or wood. The villagers used pieces of wood that seemed to be naturally saturated with a lot of sap. We later found it for sale in the markets at 6 THB per bundle. We cuddled up by the fire, got mesmerized by the flames and soon after sunset headed to sleep.
Expenses: 160 THB = $6 CAD
Distance: 85.8 km
