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 …
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 …
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 us more about it!
We initially bought this book because we were both interested in learning more about genetics. But specifically we wanted to understand which DNA test (ie. AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA, 23andMe) was best for Will to take. We were hoping to learn more about about tracing …
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 so many opportunities, yet if you aren’t working to gain cash you are limited to your options. But options are exciting! We are really starting to understand that there’s a flip side to the saying “Money can’t bring you happiness.” Although it’s true, money alone cannot bring you happiness, we’ve found it sure does bring smiles, great food and freedom to experience new things. These are some of the luxuries of what we left behind to experiment on this trip.
We agreed that our budget for the entire trip would be a $100 per day for two people for one year which turns out to be $36,500 CAD in total. That seemed like a lot of money starting out but when you include flights across the ocean, currency exchange rates and fulfilling our daily basic needs, it quickly disappears.
Let’s give you an example in beautiful Amsterdam.
We were arriving from Berlin to meet our friends in Amsterdam on a
Saturday night. They were working at a great Workaway in a kitchen 
where they marry the idea of social activist and fair food kitchen; so they had their accommodations already set. Us on the other hand, came to realize that the cheapest hostel available on a Saturday night in Amsterdam was about $130 CAD for the two of us – and that was in a standard, six-bed, mixed dorm. There goes our budget for the day, I guess we won’t be eating.
Luckily we were recommended to check out Camping Vliegenbos which was $30 CAD for the two of us since we had all our own camping gear. YAY, we could eat bread and butter tonight! But everything comes at a 
price, since we saved on accommodations we obviously had to compensate and were away from the heart of Amsterdam, so we needed to rent bicycles to get to and from where the action was – another $35 CAD per day.
So you can see how just our basic needs of accommodation, transportation and food are barely met by what we thought was a really healthy budget of $100 per day in countries like the Netherlands. That definitely leaves no fun tickets for museums, adventure tours, dinner and drinks or cruises down the river.
However for a brief history in time, long ago when we started this great adventure in Asia, we were ballers! Some days we would spend more and others we would spend near to nothing – at least we thought – sharing $1 CAD dinners between the two of us. But, nope that wasn’t the case! It was difficult throughout Asia to find a kitchen in our hostels so eating out was our main option and it was fun! It gets you excited when you have so many unique foods to try, so we would always do tasting tours everywhere we went. We fell into the trap of how cheap Asia was and we ended up eating a lot because it was cheap, partying a lot because it was cheap, and traveling everywhere because it was cheap.
WARNING! When you are having a lot of fun, check the bank account. You may notice why you are having so much fun.
We’ll end it here and fill you in on our next post on the 5 BIGGEST Money Mistakes We’ve Made So Far in our journey. We’re 250 days into our trip and this is the first time we are feeling the crunch of having no money coming in. That’s okay, bread and butter is starting to become our favorite date night dinner anyways.
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.” …
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 more comfortable making videos.
As a kid we had something in our lives that made it easier to venture out or even come back to for refueling. Something like a blanket, a parent or that shirt that was worn way too much. As we’ve gotten older, it comes out …
Writing out loud is what we do with our mouths but words are invisible and lost in the wind. Your words are like clothing to your thoughts … What shall I wear today? But I better choose quickly because I’m on the spot! It’s almost as …
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
