Know How You Travel

REFLECTION

I have wanted to travel through Southeast Asia since I was in university. 

At one point, I even bought a copy of Southeast Asia on a Shoestring and imagined doing the trip during a gap in my studies. It never happened. The timing was wrong, money was limited and co-op placements made it difficult to disappear for long. 

But the idea never really went away. 

Years later, my husband and I started talking about taking a sabbatical sometime in the middle of our careers. At first, the destination was not even the point. The appeal was simply having enough time to travel differently: not squeezing a faraway part of the world into two weeks, not spending half the trip adjusting to jet lag, and not feeling that every day had to justify the cost of getting there. 

Then life got busy. We had children, careers progressed, and the trip started drifting toward something we might do in retirement. 

Eventually, we realized we were treating retirement as though it were guaranteed. 

We are healthy now. Our kids are at an age when taking them out of school for a period feels manageable. Our careers are established enough to accommodate a pause. There will always be reasons to wait, and there is no way to know what life will look like twenty years from now. 

So about a year and a half ago, we started saving seriously for a winter 2027 departure. 

Missing a Canadian winter did not hurt either.

Why several months instead of a shorter trip

Part of the appeal is simply having time. 

Southeast Asia is a long way from Canada, and I never wanted to experience it only in a series of rushed two-week vacations. Four and a half months still will not let us see everything, but it gives us enough time to move more slowly while still experiencing a wide range of places. 

It also gives us room for ordinary days. 

We are not planning four and a half months of constant sightseeing. Some days will be spent homeschooling. Some will involve swimming in a pool, wandering around a neighbourhood, doing laundry or sitting in a café. 

We have downtime at home, so it would make little sense to design a trip where downtime suddenly disappeared. 

That slower rhythm matters even more travelling as a family. One substantial activity in a day is often enough. Arrival and departure days do not need to double as sightseeing marathons. Longer stays give us space to recover after moves and simply live somewhere for a few days rather than constantly passing through. 

I also like the idea of having such a long stretch of time together. I once heard the reminder that you only get about eighteen summers with your children. However you count it, the underlying point stuck with me: this stage of family life is temporary too.

Why Southeast Asia, and why Japan

Southeast Asia was always the heart of the idea. 

I was drawn to the culture, food and landscapes, but also to the variety. Within one broader region, we can move between major cities, beaches, mountains, temples, islands, forests and very different cultures and languages. 

It is also relatively affordable for a long trip. Transportation between countries can be inexpensive, accommodation offers a wide range of options, and the region makes it possible to travel comfortably for several months without requiring an unlimited budget. 

This is no longer the backpacker budget I imagined in university, and I am thankful for that. We are willing to spend more when convenience meaningfully improves the trip, but we still have a budget and make choices within it. 

Japan was added later. Some family members had travelled there recently and came back raving about it, and ending the trip there also moves us ever so slightly closer to home. More importantly, it adds another very different culture and travel experience to the same journey.

We know we will not see everything

Even with four and a half months, there is no version of this trip where we see everything. 

We will visit several countries, but not all of them. Myanmar, Indonesia and the Philippines are not part of this itinerary. Some countries will get much more time than others, while places such as Laos and Cambodia will only be relatively short stops. 

That is not a failure of planning. It is simply the reality of travel. 

Trying to see everything would probably make the trip worse. 

We are deliberately balancing cities with nature, faster sections with slower ones, and major sightseeing days with days where almost nothing is scheduled. We are planning to book accommodation and important transportation in advance because that suits how I travel, while leaving much of the day-to-day experience open. Those choices are a good example of why I think it helps to understand how you travel before you start building an itinerary.

I am also not trying to optimize every dollar or hour. 

Sometimes a flight is worth more than a very long overland journey. Sometimes a slightly more expensive hotel makes a difficult transition easier. Sometimes the best use of an afternoon will be doing absolutely nothing productive. 

Those are all part of the trip too. Our Thailand itinerary is one example of how that thinking looks in practice: even with 26 nights, we deliberately left places out rather than turning the month into a race across the country.

What I hope the kids get from it

Travelling with children changes the trip, but one reason we are doing this now is because of what I hope they will absorb from it. 

I want them to see that people live differently around the world. I want them exposed to different languages, cultures, food, religions, history and ways of organizing everyday life. 

I hope they become more adaptable and patient. 

I hope geography becomes something more tangible than a map and history becomes something they have walked through rather than only read about. 

There are things a classroom does extremely well, but there are also things it cannot replicate. Standing in an ancient temple, navigating transportation in another language, seeing how another family lives or simply noticing how everyday routines change from country to country creates a different kind of learning. 

And yes, I am also hoping they fall in love with the food.

What I hope to get from it

I have plenty of wanderlust to feed, but I also want a break from routine. 

Work is busy. Life at home is busy. The world itself can sometimes feel complicated and heavy. 

Travel does not make any of that disappear, but it can change the scale of things for a while. I am looking forward to having time for curiosity, introspection and experiences that are not organized around the normal calendar. 

I also genuinely enjoy the planning. Researching routes, comparing trade-offs and figuring out how the pieces fit together has been part of the pleasure rather than simply a chore before departure. 

In fact, that planning process eventually helped inspire Beyond the Photo Op. The trip came first. The idea to document some of what I was learning came later.

The parts that make me nervous

A long trip is not automatically easier because we have more time. 

Homeschooling will be new. Being together almost constantly will be new. Moving frequently may turn out to be more tiring than it looks in a spreadsheet. 

I sometimes wonder whether I have planned the pace correctly. 

I wonder whether we will get homesick, miss our routines or simply miss having access to all our stuff. That last one may be a useful experiment in itself: four months of carrying relatively little is a good way to find out how much you actually need. 

And strangely, I worry that four and a half months might feel too short at exactly the same time that I wonder whether we will be ready to come home. 

There is also the slightly dangerous possibility that I discover I would rather keep travelling forever. 

That particular mid-life crisis can wait.

What would make the trip a success

The success of this trip will not depend on whether we see every place on the itinerary. 

I hope we come home feeling stronger as a family, with good memories of the time we spent together and a better understanding of how each of us travels. 

I hope we learn something about ourselves individually and as a group. 

And most of all, I hope our children come home with their world feeling a little larger than it did before we left — and with enough curiosity that they want to keep exploring it.

Planning a trip that fits you

• What Kind of Traveller Are You?
• How We Planned 26 Nights in Thailand Without Trying to See Everything

Plan your own trip

REFLECTION

Before you copy someone else’s itinerary, it helps to understand what actually makes a trip work for you. 

That sounds obvious, but a surprising amount of travel advice skips this step entirely. Search for the “perfect” itinerary for almost any destination and you will usually find versions of the same route repeated again and again: the same cities, the same attractions, the same number of nights and the same assumptions about how quickly you should move. 

Social media reinforces it. Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook keep surfacing the same photogenic places and must-do experiences until it starts to feel as though everyone is being funnelled toward the same trip. 

Then someone posts an itinerary in a travel forum and asks whether it looks good. The opinions arrive immediately: too many nights here, not enough there, too much travel time, too many hotel changes, skip this city, add that island, you absolutely need to see this, you definitely do not need to see that. 

But maybe that traveller likes moving every couple of days. Maybe a long train ride sounds relaxing rather than exhausting. Maybe the place everyone says to cut is the one they care about most. 

It is almost impossible to assess someone else’s itinerary without knowing what matters to the person taking the trip. And often the traveller has not really asked themselves that question either.

There is no perfect itinerary without a perfect traveller

This became especially obvious while planning a long trip through Southeast Asia and Japan. 

I spent a lot of time looking at suggested routes through countries like Thailand and Vietnam. Many were remarkably similar and often moved quickly from one major destination to another, packing in the places everyone was apparently supposed to see. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with travelling that way. For a flexible solo backpacker who enjoys changing locations frequently and wants to see as much as possible, it could be exactly right. But the same itinerary might be exhausting for a family managing several people’s energy levels, frustrating for someone who wants time to hike, or unnecessarily uncomfortable for someone who would happily spend more to avoid a 12-hour bus ride. 

Even the alternatives can become overly prescriptive. Some family-travel advice seems to assume that travelling with children automatically means moving very slowly, avoiding difficult experiences and building the trip almost entirely around convenience. That can be just as limiting. 

The useful question is not whether an itinerary is good. 

It is whether it fits the people actually taking it.

PACE · STRUCTURE · POPULARITY · ENVIRONMENT · COMFORT · INDEPENDENCE · SPENDING

Travel styles are patterns, not rules

It can be useful to think in terms of travellers such as the Planner, Improviser, Collector, Slow Traveller, Explorer or Comfort-Seeker, but these are shorthand rather than identities. Most of us are several things at once, and the mix changes depending on the trip. 

I lean strongly toward planning since I feel better knowing where I am sleeping and how I am moving between places, but I have learned that I enjoy the days themselves more when there is room for them to change. 

I like seeing famous places when they are genuinely worth seeing, but I do not want to visit something simply because everyone else does. Though I enjoy cities, I find I increasingly need nature and quieter spaces to balance them. I appreciate comfort, but some of the experiences I remember most clearly are the ones that required effort. 

None of those things need to fit neatly into a type. What matters is recognizing the patterns before they start making decisions for you.

The questions matter more than the labels

The most useful way to understand your travel style is not to decide which box you belong in. It is to notice where the tensions show up when you actually plan a trip.

Pace: Do you enjoy changing places every couple of days, or do you only start enjoying somewhere once you have settled in? I have gradually moved toward a steady rhythm: longer stays of five or six nights mixed with shorter stops that have a clear purpose. When I was younger, I was much more inclined to collect places because I worried I might never return. Letting go of that feeling has made travel much less vulnerable to FOMO. 

Structure: Which unresolved decisions feel exciting, and which quietly create stress? I like accommodation and major transportation arranged ahead of time, but I do not need every day scheduled. Travelling with children, one major activity is often enough of a framework. After that, we might see five more things — or spend the afternoon in the hotel pool. Both can make for a good day. 

Popularity: Do you want the famous place because it genuinely interests you, or because you have seen it so many times that it now feels mandatory? Some attractions are popular because they are extraordinary. Others end up on an itinerary because repetition has slowly turned someone else’s priority into your own. The useful question is whether the experience itself matters enough to justify the crowds, time, cost or effort. 

Then there are the trade-offs between city and nature, comfort and friction, independence and guided experiences, saving money and paying for convenience. These do not need a separate rule for every trip. They are simply prompts to notice what gives you energy and what drains it. 

I still enjoy major cities, for example, but I experience them differently now. On repeat visits to somewhere like London, I am much more conscious of building in quieter neighbourhoods, parks or slower stretches rather than treating every day as a race between major sights. 

And when money is involved, I no longer automatically assume the cheapest option is the smartest one. A flight can cost more than a 12-hour bus or train, but the real comparison also includes an entire travel day, fatigue and how everyone feels when they arrive. For another traveller, that long overland journey may be part of the adventure. 

The point is not that one choice is better. It is knowing which trade-off you are actually making.

Independent travel does not mean refusing help

I generally prefer self-directed travel because I enjoy exploring an area on my own rather than automatically joining a tour. 

But that preference is not a rule either. A well-done guided experience can reveal a piece of history, architecture or culture that I might otherwise have walked straight past. Some places are difficult to access independently, and sometimes handing the logistics to someone else is part of what makes an experience worthwhile. 

The question I ask is not whether guided or independent travel is better. It is whether the tour is adding something I value.

Your travel style changes with context

One of the biggest problems with traveller “types” is the idea that you should behave the same way on every trip. 

I do not. 

Solo, I can change locations more frequently because I am only managing my own energy and luggage. Travelling with children changes the equation: there are several energy levels, appetites and moods to manage, and everyone rests differently. 

Trip length matters too. On a short break during a demanding period at work, I may want a comfortable hotel, a beach and easy meals. Rest is the point. 

Over several months, the calculation is different. There is room to build rest into the trip itself, so more adventure becomes appealing. A difficult transfer or active stretch matters less when it is balanced by slower days elsewhere. And being away for a long period does not mean the trip has to become another version of work; the travel itself still needs to be the priority. 

Age, budget, destination and life stage can all shift the answer. Your travel style is useful precisely because it is allowed to change.

Your travel partners may answer differently

Understanding your own preferences becomes even more useful when you travel with other people. 

Two people can want the same destination and imagine completely different trips once they arrive. One wants every hotel booked months ahead; another wants flexibility. One thinks paying for a taxi is wasteful. Another thinks it is an excellent trade for avoiding two buses and an hour of travel. One wants to see every major sight; another wants enough free time to discover something accidentally. 

Those differences create tension when nobody has named what is underneath them. 

A real compromise in my own planning is simple: I feel better knowing where we are sleeping, while my husband values spontaneity. That becomes even more important when we are travelling with our kids. Booking accommodation and major transportation ahead of time means we are not trying to find somewhere to sleep on the fly when everyone is tired, hungry or simply done for the day. Leaving much of the daily schedule open still gives us the flexibility he values and lets us adjust to everyone’s energy once we are there. 

That conversation is easier once neither preference is treated as the correct way to travel.

Before you plan, ask yourself

You do not need to identify a perfect traveller type before booking a trip. You do need to notice your tendencies. 

Ask yourself: 

Then ask one more question: 

Why? 

That answer is usually more useful than the label. 

The goal is not to become a different traveller

The point of understanding how you travel is not to correct yourself. It is to notice why some trips leave you energized while others leave you exhausted, why an itinerary that looks exciting on paper can feel miserable in practice, and why someone else’s perfect trip might be completely wrong for you. 

It can also help you change. Understanding my own tendency to collect experiences made it easier to loosen my grip on the idea that I had to see everything. I still like planning and I still want to experience a lot, but I am much more comfortable now leaving something undone. 

Sometimes I will come back. Sometimes I won’t. Either way, the value of the trip is not determined by how many things I managed to fit into it. 

The discovery starts before you leave. The better you understand what you value, what drains you and what makes travel satisfying, the easier it becomes to build a trip that actually feels like yours.