Happy Travelversary! One Year of Full-time Travel

Happy Travelversary to us!

On July 10 2019, Glenn and I got on a plane to Bangkok and started our one year of full-time travel around the world. In this blog post, I feel like sharing a few things about why, where and what I’ve learned so far.

I will talk about why we chose to go full-time traveling, which countries we went to, what I’ve learned on the way and share with you the best travelversary present any youtubers could get! So let’s begin.

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Why did we go travel?

Why did we want to go travel full-time in the first place? It’s actually pretty simple. Because we love all the things that comes with traveling! Exploring new places, meeting new people, eating delicious dishes, learning about the unknown and broadening our minds. We wanted to travel without an end date.

If it’s your first time here on the blog, then you don’t know that we actually met while traveling.

We’re an international couple who endured a 3 years long-distance relationship. During these 3 years we started dreaming about a life on the road together, and thus worked hard towards saving money to achieve a lifestyle of full-time traveling.

We wanted to live at least one year of our lives on the go, just see how it feels to live life by the day. It was a really big challenge to make it happen. But it did happen!

On July 10 2019, we finally began our one year around-the-world-trip by boarding a plane to Bangkok. Now, one year later we have just finished our first year of full-time traveling.

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Where did we travel?

I’ve wondered how to explain this, I mean where do you even start when you’ve been on the road for a year?

So here is a list of the countries we went to and small explanation on how long we stayed in each continent. Maybe I’ll see to if I can make a more in-depth guide on all the countries we’ve traveled to later.

Thailand – Malaysia – Japan – Vietnam – Cambodia – Singapore – Indonesia – New Zealand – Chile – Bolivia – Portugal

(Click on destinations to find posts about a specific country)

We started our one year of full-time traveling in Thailand, and spent around 5 months exploring different countries within Asia.

We left Asia in December when we flew to New Zealand to spend Christmas and New Years with my sister and her family.

After exploring New Zealand for about 1,5 months, we flew to South America. This was the first time for both of us on this continent. We explored South America for almost 2 months before the global covid-19 lockdown happened.

Luckily, we just made it out of Bolivia just in time and flew to Portugal. We then lived in Lisbon for 3 months during the Covid-19 outbreak in Europe, and the city is now our second home.

In the middle of June, we had to split up due to border closings, and went our separate ways for some weeks before moving to Belgium together.

But even though our trip ended abruptly, we still had the best time of our lives! If you want to read some of our best and funniest and most unfortunate stories from our trip, then read this blog post: Top 10 funny travel short stories.

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Where are we today?

I’m still in Denmark and Glenn is still in Belgium. We haven’t seen each other for a month now, and I’m missing him so much! (Writing this in July 2020)

Even though we would love to keep on traveling, we realize that travel isn’t possible right now. So we have decided to set up camp for a while, which means we’re moving in together. Big step!

On next Friday, I will officially move to Belgium. Glenn and I are going to live in Gent for the next 12 months of our lives. I wish I could give you more details, but my life is honestly such a big mess right now that I can’t give you more information than that. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Related blog post: Living in Belgium

One thing is for sure, if we could, we would continue traveling. But with covid-19 still ruining peoples lives and two empty wallets from our world trip, it’s not a bad idea to get a base for a while. Luckily, we still have so many stories that I have yet to share on this blog.

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What I’ve learned for my next trip

I learned many things from our one year of full-time travel, and I’m not just talking about the good things. There are so many reasons why the full-time travel lifestyle sucks – Like missing your family and friends, getting food poisoning on a regular basis, and the stress of constantly being on the road.

However, I don’t have any regrets about this year. But I have learned a lot about how I can travel better in the future.

1. It doesn’t have to be one full year of travel

I’ve learned that being away from my family and friends for a full year is too long. Honestly, I need to go home and say hi once in a while before I can continue traveling again. I just get a really bad case of homesickness and it’s destroying my wanderlust.

Next time, I’d rather travel 3 months at a time, and then take a break to be with the people I love. To only see them once a year, doesn’t feel right to me.

2. Manage my anxiety better

I have to relax more. I’m the planner in our relationship which means I know where we are going to sleep, which bus to take, and how much money we’ve spent. I am constantly on guard for anything that can go wrong, and it sadly brought a lot of anxiety into my travels.

For next trip, I will have to manage my anxiety better and learn to enjoy life more.

3. Put the camera away

We need to work less! Glenn and I are travel vloggers and we film our journey around the world. This is amazing because we get the greatest souvenirs of all time – videos! However, the constant work load was a lot to take in, and it was hard on our relationship. If we weren’t filming, we were editing videos, and it was rare that we weren’t behind the camera on our trip.

Next time, we have to be better to put the camera away and just be in the now.

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1000 Subscribers on YouTube – The perfect Travelversary present!

On July 10 2019, we boarded a plane to Bangkok and started filming our journey around the world. On July 10 2020, we reached 1000 subscribers on YouTube. Is this just the best gift of all time or what?!

Knowing how much work we put into making travel vlogs, it means the world to us that we are starting to get an audience. 1000 subscribers is the first official milestone on YouTube and it’s a great acknowledgement to get to this point.

So a BIG thank you to everyone who follows our YouTube channel Worldwide Walkers. Your likes, comments and subscribes means so much to us!

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Have you ever taken a year off to go travel full-time? Or do you have any questions? Please leave a comment. Thanks for reading and happy travels!