World Traveled: Shoestring, Part 3

For many, leaving everyone and everything you know behind to travel the world is nothing more than a dream. For others, jet-setting across the world with your significant other is at the top of their bucket lists. For the Shoestring Trekkers, they’ve combined both of these dreams to leave everything behind and travel the world as a couple. Anthony Forlizzi and Breada Potts, two recent college grads, packed their bags and booked one-way tickets to Bangkok, Thailand to follow their dreams. To document their journey, they’ve created a blog, theshoestringtrekkers.com, to share with friends and family back home.

 

As recent college grads, Anthony and Breada have decided to do something more meaningful with their lives before plunging directly into jobs in the fields. They’ve packed up their belongings and embarked on a journey (hopefully) around the world, with their significant other by their side. For the past month, they’ve been exploring Thailand and have blogged about their endeavors along the way. In the third segment of their interview, we talked about their blog and continue to find out about how they’ve made it this far and who they’ve met along the way.

 

 

 

Anthony: It’s harder than I had anticipated. After being out all day, the last thing I want to do is write up a post or two. Before I left, I said I wanted to write about 3-4 posts a week and so far I’m lucky if I get 2. I need to get better about it. Overall though I think there’s just a learning curve with managing our time better. Hopefully within the next few weeks we plan our time a little better and can be better about managing the blog.

 

Breada: I really love to write so I’ve been very excited about starting a blog.  Unfortunately, we’ve kind of been in vacation mode for the last few weeks so the blog hasn’t always been a priority.  I wouldn’t say it’s difficult in terms of technology (there is literally WiFi everywhere), but it is difficult to actual force ourselves to sit down and do it.  I’m hoping as we make it more of a habit it won’t be quite so hard, especially since we really want this blog to reach a wide audience.  It’s a great way to keep our friends in family informed, but it would be amazing if we could inspire people we don’t know with our travels.  That’s my ultimate goal for the blog…to gain like minded followers who share our passion for travel, and who want to travel cheaply themselves.  

 

 

Anthony: I have two goals for the blog. First, for my friends and family to keep up with what we’re doing while were away. It’s a nice place for them to jump on at their own leisure and see what we have been doing, and maybe learn a little about the places we’ve been along the way. The second is to teach people how they can travel cheaply themselves. So many people think you need a lot of money to travel and you don’t. It’s the biggest misconception I hear when I tell people how long we’re going for. Hopefully I can change even just one person’s opinion on the subject and convince them to go away on a nice long trip. I can guarantee if they do, they won’t regret it.

 

Breada: Oops I kind of already answered this one!  :-)

 

 

Anthony: Do it! For whatever reason, it’s not built into the American culture and it’s sad. Too many people are worried about other things and put travel on the back burner and say they’ll do it when they’re older or when they have more money. Unfortunately, like I said earlier, shit happens. I believe you need three things to travel: time, energy and money (a little at least). When you’re older you may have the time and the money, but you won’t have the energy, not to travel long-term across the world at least. When you’re young, you can make the time, you have the energy, and as long as you have enough for the plane ticket to wherever you’re going you can figure it out from there. There are plenty of ways to get odd jobs while you’re away that will pay for your accommodation, food, drinks, etc. You can always go home and just start your career a little later than you planned, it’s not the end of the world. 

 

Breada: Just go.  Do your research, save your money, quit your job, and go.  The world isn’t going anywhere, but time flies by and if you keep putting it off one day you’ll wake up and the opportunity will have passed.  It can be scary, but it’s really just like ripping off a band aid.  The experiences you will have and the knowledge you will gain will be worth all of the sacrifices you make to get there.  If travel is important to you then make it happen.  It can be done cheaply and easily.  The world is massive, but also so very small, and people are truly amazing.  You won’t regret taking the leap and never looking back.  

 

 

 

Anthony: So far, not as many as we would have liked to be honest. Part of the downside about staying in Airbnbs and guesthouses is you don’t meet as many people because they don’t have the common areas like hostels have. We met a couple interesting girls in Krabi we got lunch with, but they moved on to their next destination and that was it. That’s a common thing in hostels: you’re friends for a day or two before going to wherever it is you’re going. We did however meet two wonderful girls from England who were staying in the same Airbnb complex as us. They were on a three-month trip of their own and recently got engaged! They were both very nice and we went out with them a few times and still keep in touch. Hopefully when we make it closer to Europe we can make our way to England and they can give us a tour of their own stomping grounds! 

 

Breada: So far on this trip we’ve really only made two friends. While we were staying on Koh Lanta the first week there was a British couple staying in another room in the same bungalow complex.  They were really easy going girls and we ended up hanging out with them a few times as well as meeting up for dinner when we were all on the other side of the island the next week.  It was great getting to know them and I hope we keep in touch because they were definitely people we would normally be friends with even back home. I love to make friends and so does Anthony, but as I mentioned we’ve been staying almost exclusively in privates so meeting people can get hard.  We also aren’t doing the typical backpacker thing of partying all night every night so that cuts down our social circle a decent bit.  I’m sure we’ll meet plenty of interesting people though.  We have plenty of time.