I’m going on my first overseas trip with my girlfriend since we started dating. I worked hard all last year to earn and save money for this trip. It will be our first international trip ever, and I want to make it perfect, memorable, and the best trip of our lives.
I’ve read countless articles online to ensure everything is perfect. It felt overwhelming to the point that my head started to hurt. Fortunately, I found an article that provided a detailed guideline, and it seemed like the perfect guide. My girlfriend and I have been following it, and it has been very helpful so far.
However, I decided to come to this community to seek additional guidance, advice, and tips from you all, just in case the article missed something important. My girlfriend and I would greatly appreciate any travel tips, advice, and guidance you have, as this is our first trip abroad together.
We always just pick some key places, get transport (usually a hire van) and just go explore. Best thing is to go into small local places and ask them about cool stuff around. People are always friendly and love hearing about where you’re from and what you’re into, and the local suggestions are always stellar. Lots of times we’ve had people tell us a popular place is pretty shit and another lesser known place is way better. Most of the trip is unplanned apart from the key locations and expected travel route. But we’ll skip stuff if we find something cooler or get advised to check out another place a day out of the way. We’ve diverted from plans lots of times, and because that’s loosely the plan, it’s super fun and rewarding.
It’s also important to go do your own things and get out of each other’s faces. Im into a lot of stuff she isn’t and vice versa. So some days we go check out our own stuff and do our own things, then at the end of the day we share our adventures and anything cool we found we think we should check out later. I also tend to make friends easy, so it’s not unusual for her to meet me and some fellow travellers at a bar and we exchange how our trips are going, what’s cool, what’s not, and suggestions on where to go next. Locals and other travellers are always friendly like that and it’s obviously super interesting learning more and sharing about yourself and home country, where they should go if they ever visited it.
Lastly, don’t stay in one place too long unless there’s a reason like you’re snowboarding for a few days, or something like that. Things can get real boring when you’ve seen enough but are still stuck there for a couple more days. That’s why we usually opt for a 5 person van over hotels, little hotel room on wheels and costs about the same. It’s also frustrating getting to a new place and it’s awesome, but you’re meant to fly out soon and you wish you didn’t waste that extra day or two at the place you weren’t having much fun.
It’s important to remember, everything is just another town or city like where you came from. It’s the culture and experiences you’re chasing there which you can’t get back at home. “Can I do this at home? Yeah.” move on.
