Frequently Asked Questions

Below is a list of frequently asked questions collected from various people since we started traveling.  This list may continue to grow based on additional questions we receive.  Have a question you’d like answered here? Let us know via our contact page.

1.  You must be independently wealthy/trust fund babies to travel the world for such a long period of time, correct?

Actually, no – we aren’t.  We are both professionals with good paying jobs, but we are long from retiring.  We began saving about 5 years prior to leaving on our trip.  In the beginning, we didn’t know exactly what we’d want to do with the savings. The idea to do a RTW trip came to us much later – in year 4 of our savings extravaganza.  Once we knew what we wanted to do, we buckled down even more and the planning began.

Once the trip is over, we’ll both have to find work and jump back into real life. Well, that or break down and live with the parents.

 

2. Did you know the tag-line of your site is extremely corny? Putting Our Careers on Hold to Answer the Call of Travel.  I mean, c’mon – really?

Believe me, if there is one thing we know in this universe, it is this fact – that our site’s tag-line is utterly corny.  I remember a fellow traveler, after reading the tag-line on our site, said, “Wow – those are God’s words.”.  I still laugh just remembering him make that comment.

However, in reality, if you remove the corniness and get to the essence of what it is saying, it IS exactly what we are doing.  Maybe it is so-o-o-o corny, it is genius!  It’s just so hard to say.

 

3. How did you plan what to bring on such a long trip?

Fortunately for us, we didn’t invent the idea of doing a RTW trip.  There are many that have come before us, therefore there are many other blog sites documenting exactly what they travel around with on a daily basis. Reading various blogs gave us a pretty decent idea of what we’d want to bring, given our specific needs/goals.

You can read about exactly what we packed for the trip here:  What’s In Our Packs?

 

4. How do you manage currency (cash, credit cards, etc.) while traveling?

We decided this question deserved its very own post.

 

5. How do you manage your valuables while you are traveling and doing fun things (like surfing, sand boarding, etc.)?

Sometimes we stay in dorm (shared) rooms and sometimes opt for a private room. If it is a private room, we usually feel comfortable leaving everything in the room, but we’ll sometimes carry a small day pack with valuables if we think they’d be safer on our person. If we stay in a dorm room, sometimes there are lockers provided if you provide your own lock (which we carry specifically for this purpose). In this case, valuables go in the locker or we carry them along with us. If there are no lockers provided, we have to carry them with us. So far, we’ve only had one incident of theft and would consider this rare.

 

6. Do you ever get tired of being on the go? Do you ever just “veg out” for a day?

We have absolutely gotten used to living out of our backpacks to the point it doesn’t phase us in the least. We try and stay for more than just a single night in most places to better experience it and to lessen the chance of traveling burnout. However, at some point, it is nice to try and do “nothing” or “veg out”, as you put it. Our 5 days in Fiji was a vacation from traveling, for example. That may sound silly to some, but trust me – you need it every so often.

 

7. What do you do for food if you wake up in the middle of the night and are super hungry?

First, we think about what amazing food we could make from the food/ingredients we typically have in our packs: pasta with tomato sauce. Oooh! I know – just pasta this time… maybe with a side of water. Then we just go back to sleep.

 

8. What are the top 3 things (besides friends/family) each of you miss from home?

Laura:

1. My pantry.  I miss being able to cook what I want, when I want it.  Sometimes ingredients just aren’t readily available to purchase (or are too expensive).  More often, it just isn’t practical to take the food with us from place to place (border customs, no refrigeration, etc)
2. I miss the variety of clothing options I used to have in my closet.  Though I love my carry-on friendly backpack, it’s hard not to look at a cute pair of shoes or a summer dress walking down the street and not dislike my very functional, quick-dry, travel pants.  
3. Most importantly, I miss going to bed without worrying what might be lurking beneath the sheets.  Since a particularly bad night involving half my face being chewed on by bed bugs, my first night of sleep in every new hostel has been somewhat uneasy.

Kenny:

1. Loss of privacy – When staying in hostels almost every night, you lose a bit of privacy that I took for granted.  At home, I could wake up in the morning, head to the kitchen and eat cereal in my underwear.  This is not really an option for me on the road.
2. The inability to exercise consistently – without a gym membership and short of packing a jump-rope and a few dumbbells in my pack, it is difficult to exercise how I would like.  Even doing push-ups can be challenging sometimes… the hostal floor is dirty, there is not enough free space in the room, the room temperature feels like the inside of a furnace, etc.
3. Not looking like a tourist – Sure, I know… I AM a tourist.  However, it doesn’t mean I enjoy looking like one.  Besides it being obvious I do not look like a local, I’ll be wielding a camera and wearing nylon pants, just to make it extremely obvious.  At some point on our travels, we each bought a pair of jeans to feel a little more “normal”.  Every so often, it is nice to head off for the day without bringing a backpack, camera, etc. (wearing jeans, of course).

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