An exciting life update...

I'm heading off on an adventure for the next 3 months: here's the lowdown on where I'm going, and how I've planned my trip

You’re receiving this newsletter a little later than usual this week (sorry!), because I’m currently in Tokyo, where I’m a tad jet lagged, and have spent the last few days exploring and experiencing as much as I can of this electric city.

If you already follow me on Instagram, you may have spotted me teasing a little life update on there. The news? I’ve recently left London to spend the next 3 months on the road, exploring various parts of Asia and Australia.

This isn’t an on-the-road forever situation. My flight home in February has already been booked, I have a strict travel budget to keep to, and my friends and family are all back home in London; but 3 months is the longest period that I’ve ever travelled continuously, and I am incredibly excited about this adventure.

I won’t be going alone: I’ll be travelling with my husband, Oliver, and my sister, Emma. In case you’d like to know more about how we planned our trip and the route that we’ll be taking, I’m sharing more details about our plans below.

What’s the plan?

We’ve left London for exactly three months of travel around Asia and Australia. Our itinerary is as follows:

• November: 3 weeks in Japan + 1 week in South Korea

• December: 3 weeks in Thailand + 1 week in Malaysia (where we’ll be spending Christmas with family, and putting a brief pause on travelling)

• January: 4 weeks in Australia

My plan is to share travel guides of each destination on my Substack, but if you’d like to see more (and real-time!) updates, you can follow me over on Instagram, where I’ll be documenting every step of our journey.

I’ll also be writing a fair amount of content for other publications. I’ll be sure to share various articles that I’ve written in my Monthly Digest newsletter, as and when they are published.

Why now?

You may be wondering what the impetus for such a trip was. I already travel a lot as part of my work, so why jet off on such a long trip?

The answer is simply, ‘why not?’ Truthfully, I’ve been wanting to leave London for an extended period of travel for years - ever since I started my first job, in fact. I quickly realised that there’s only so much you can see of the world with 25 days of annual leave a year…

The longest period that I’ve ever travelled continuously was back in 2017, when I embarked on a post-graduation road trip around the USA with two of my best friends. It’s still one of my favourite trips that I’ve ever taken: mostly because we had 2.5 months of total freedom (something which is not easy to come by once you start your career), and shared so many incredible experiences together.

After years of telling myself that I wanted to head off again for a similar length of time, this year finally seemed like the right time to go. I’m now freelance, so I have the freedom to travel whenever I like, and work from anywhere in the world. My sister and Oliver have recently quit their jobs and are both taking career sabbaticals, so timing-wise, it has worked out perfectly for us to travel together. As we began to toy with the idea and hatch our plans, we kept on asking ourselves ‘if not now, when?’

How did you start planning?

You may be wondering how we’ve planned our trip and settled on our chosen destinations and itinerary. Destination-wise, I was tossing up between visiting South + Central America, or Asia + Australia. In the end, I decided on the latter: although I’ve seen a fair amount of Asia already, it’s one of the most diverse continents in the world, and there’s still so much more of it that I’d like to discover. I’ve never been to Australia either, and it has been at the top of my bucket list for a while.

When we started planning this trip at the beginning of the year, we had a string of destinations on our hit list, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and The Philippines. After more in-depth research, we realised that it simply wouldn’t be realistic to visit all of these countries in just 3 months - and that we’d rather explore a smaller number of destinations in greater depth. From there, we started to plot specific locations within each country that we were keen to explore.

For Oliver, all of the countries that we are visiting are ones that he’s never been to before; my sister and I have actually travelled to Japan, South Korea, and Thailand previously, but not that extensively. Australia will be a new experience for us all.

After narrowing down our destination shortlist, we started planning for a November departure date: winter is my least favourite time of year in London, and coincidentally, the months that we’ll be away are ideal for the destinations that we’ve chosen. November falls within the autumn season in Japan and South Korea, December is prime time to visit Thailand and Malaysia, and January in Australia is also one of the best times of year to visit.

Lastly, you may also be wondering how we’re funding this trip. I recognise that it’s an extraordinary privilege to travel for such an extended period of time, and we have been saving for a trip like this for a while. Although Oliver and Emma are both taking career sabbaticals, I won’t be switching off from work during our travels, and will be reviewing various hotels and writing about destinations as we go along.

I hope that you will join me for the ride and enjoy seeing what we get up to - on here, and over on Instagram.