2025-06-03
My girlfriend and I quit our jobs in December 2024 in order to travel throughout Asia. The plan was to be gone for at least six months. This was going to be my longest trip. We documented our travels at: our travel journal | Bruno and Sofia's Blog.
Here are a collection of personal thoughts about that trip and travelling in general (these are mostly for myself, to help plan future endeavors!):
Sofia and I love travelling and do at least one international trip every year for 2-4 weeks. While employed, those 2-4 weeks vacations are of such value that we tried to cram as many activities as possible; we wanted to extract the most value off of the trip. This meant that every day was packed with tourist attractions, a lot of moving between cities, domestic flights, etc… The result was that we often came back from our vacation more exhausted than when we left.
Having the luxury of leaving on a long trip lets us change the way we travel and move at a much slower pace. This translates to staying a bit longer in each city, doing only one or two activities per day, going to cafes to just chill, etc. And it makes a world of a difference. It is so nice and I encourage others to see if/how they can slow down their travels.
In the weeks leading up to resigning, I was fantasizing about my months of travelling job free. Specifically, I was thinking of various health routines I could follow while travelling: starting yoga, stretching everyday, doing some running, eating healthy foods (mindfully). However, the reality of travelling is that all of this is hard (not impossible, but hard). Sleeping in small hotel rooms without enough space for yoga, without a kitchen to cook healthy meals, being in countries without sidewalks to run onto, etc. In our four months of travels, I had only 1 home cooked meal (thanks Paolo). I honestly felt a bit gross. The perfect fitness routine is easier achieved in an environment that feels like home.
Surprisingly (perhaps), one of the things I missed the most while travelling was the routine I had back in Seattle. Having a routine is comfortable and recomforting, going to your gym, biking your commute, eating your food, sleeping in your bed, etc. I’m thankful to have missed my routine. To me, it means that my life in Seattle was pretty good.
Travelling can be isolating. Thankfully I did this trip with Sofia. But even with a partner it can get somewhat stale. Since Sofia and I spent almost all of our time together, there wasn’t much to discuss or to chat about. There is no: “Honey how was your day at work?”. This is why some of the best moments of our trips were when we met up with friends or family. Thank you to everyone who could join us!
Before leaving for our trip, Sofia and I wanted to minimize planning ahead and instead go with the flow. Meaning that we would decide how long we stayed in every city only once we got there. Enjoying it? stay longer. Already bored? Move on to the next… We left New York with a one-way ticket to Manila, and a three nights stay at our first hotel… With no idea of where we’ll go next (both within the Philippines and other countries). We both quickly realized that having this minimal of a plan was actually hindering our trip. We spent a lot of our travel time planning the next legs of the trip, we stressed about whether our hotel would have a place for us to extend (turns out, it did not…), etc. We ended up with a formula that worked for us: planning about one month out. This meant that we knew where we would sleep and travel for the next 30 days, but not exactly what we would do each day.
Slow traveling is awesome and I hope to be able to partake in this kind of travels for many years to come. I love travelling, and I love being home; both of these statements can be true.