Dear Claire...with love from Claire

Dear 40 year-old Claire,

You have been a lot of places.  You have seen a lot of beautiful sights.  You have met a lot of great people and you have learned a lot of things about yourself. 

Remember when you were a child how you thought you would lead a typical life? You planned on being married at 27 and to have your first child at 30.  As you grew a bit older, you realized that life does not always work out as planned.  You veered off course, but had some great experiences you wouldn’t otherwise have had. 

You got to see the most beautiful sights you’ve ever seen while traveling in Australia.  Your solo road trip from Sydney to Melbourne, then via the Great Ocean Road back to Sydney was unbelievably gorgeous and your trip to see Uluru in the Australian outback left you with beautiful images that will never be erased from your mind.


The Twelve Apostles - along the Great Ocean Road

You got to push yourself physically while climbing Franz Joseph Glacier in New Zealand.  That climb left you breathless, and not in a good way ;)  After gaining 20 pounds from drinking cheap wine and eating curry, your body almost gave out on you like the old Ford Pinto your parents left sitting in the garage during your childhood.  The over night cruise in Milford Sound wasn't bad either!


 
Beautiful Milford Sound, New Zealand - South Island

You got to see what I’m sure is the strangest place in the world, while in Cambodia.  A floating village and a crocodile farm in the middle of the Mekong River has to top the list of “what am I doing here?” experiences.  Having little children in metal tubs with snakes around their necks offering a photo opportunity for a dollar was unreal.

"One dollar, one dollar!"

You got to eat delicious food and see cultural shows in Thailand.  The best pad thai you ever ate was in Bangkok.  This was also the scene of one the most authentic cultural song and dance shows you ever got to witness.  The choice between this experience and watching the native Maori in New Zealand perform the Haka, a traditional native war dance, is a difficult one.



The night markets in Bangkok - you can watch cultural shows and eat insects for dinner...

You got stung by a jellyfish in the face in Sydney, had a fish pedicure in Chiang Mai, Thailand and visited beautiful museums in Paris.  The list goes on…



Me - hating every second of the fish pedicure....

How lucky were you?  Very lucky.  I don’t think traveling the world is something that every person gets to experience.  Yes, it left you broke but you always knew you would never have traded these experiences for the world.

As a 40 year old, my hopes for you are that you never lose your sense of wonder, yes just like Lea Ann Womack sang, “when you get the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.”  I hope that as a professional public relations specialist, you are able to continue your life-long passion for travel and new experiences.  I hope that even as a wife and mother, you are able to experience with your family what you got to experience individually as a young, eager 20-something.  I hope that you have continued to learn, take the photography course you always meant to take, that you finally got around to learning to play the guitar, and got back into ballet, your childhood “dream career.”  Hopefully now, these things are your hobbies and these along with your career and family will leave you just as fulfilled as your days spent exploring.  Hopefully, you have found many more places to visit and check off your list.  Hopefully you have many more places about which you can say -

…Claire was here

The most annoying yet appropriate term - The Bucket List.

Spring is in the air and the warmer weather has me dreaming of another nice vacation. Another break would really put the winter blues behind me and this urge to jump on a plane has me feeling a bit nostalgic.  I've just looked through my Facebook albums that are full of beaches and beautiful landscapes and this has me reliving my stress free days as a back-packer. I can feel the sand under my feet and the sun hitting my pale skin. I can breathe in the salt water from the Australian coast, hear the sounds of the bustling streets in Asia and taste the authentic pad thai.



                    Sunset over the Mekong River




So, I have decided to write an entry about my ever growing "bucket list." Unfortunately, I don’t ever see myself checking all of the items off the list, because every time I watch a travel show or flip through the pages of a travel book, I continue to add things on to it.  I have been lucky enough to check off quite a few, though.  I won’t lie and tell you that snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, or watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat temple weren’t amazing experiences.  But since arriving back in Canada and dreaming about “the next trip,” I have some new adventures that I am dying to set off on, as well as some ones that I’ve been curious about since my childhood, before I’d even set foot in an airport.



Sunrise over Angkor Wat temple....worth the 4 a.m. wake up call....



Australia's famous Whitsunday Islands, home of the Great Barrier Reef


Here are a few items off of my list that I will allow you to borrow or steal to add to your list of must-do’s ;)


1. A cruise down the Nile and a visit to the Great Pyramids of Giza.


Since the fifth grade, I've been intrigued by the idea of Egypt.  Learning about the history and the pyramids grabbed my attention and I have been wanting to visit for about 20 years now.  Any my time is running short because I've heard that the pyramids will soon be closed to tourists.  So, hopefully I can gather up enough cash and find a travel buddy and get there soon!


2. A visit to Africa to go on safari.


There are many tours that take you on long voyages, for example, all the way from Zambia to Johannesburg in three weeks, which are not overly expensive. Of course, the prices are cheaper because these tours do not have you staying in swanky hotels or even hostels. You are camping. You are staying in a tent under the stars and listening to the sounds of nature. After discussing this idea with the "parentals" and having my mother gag at the idea of sleeping in a tent, I feel that this is a trip that I should embark on while I’m still young.


3. A tour through Morocco.


This is a new item on my list. I recently met a girl while abroad who lived in Marrakesh for a year and she was describing the culture, the sights and the smells. And it sounds so exotic. I would love to stroll through the markets, try some delicious cuisine, visit the ruins and mosaics at Volubilis and maybe trek through mountains if I’m feeling adventurous. But I would probably spend the majority of my time eating, which I feel is a huge element of travel. I may call it "experiencing the local cuisine" but really it's just me, doing one of my favourite things. Over-indulging and being a pig :)

 
4. A trip to Switzerland.


Now, you may have noticed a theme in this list.  The above locations are all HOT.  I feel like I’m not truly Canadian because I hate the cold weather, but a trip to the Swiss Alps has been on my list for ages.  This item has sentimental motivation, which is why I will accept the cold weather.  I would love to visit the little town of Grindelwald, where my parents lived and got married, 30 odd years ago.  I would love to relive their adventures from their hippy-days and sled down the same hills where they sled and climb the same mountains they climbed so long ago.


5. A voyage to Goa, India’s smallest state.


I have read that Goa is the new Koh Phangan – the home of the best parties in Thailand.  Goa is the home of the "Full Moon Party version 2.0.  I am hoping to experience this party of epic proportion and get a taste of Indian culture.  I would love to experience the beautiful scenery and delicious curries, samosas and tandoori chicken.  In addition to the warm climate, I sense a new them appearing.  Eating!  Maybe something to think about for my next posting!  Not only will I follow my sense of adventure, but I will follow my stomach to unusual and exotic places.


 A night out with friends in Bangkok.



... Claire was here.

A new career in blogging...

I am very close to completing my diploma course in Corporate Communications and Public Relations from Centennial College in Toronto, Ontario.  My internship is already underway (I've already said goodbye to Tuesdays with no classes) and I am excited for my career to take off.  I'm ready to escape student life, earn some money and move out of the bedroom in which I've spent the majority of both my childhood and adulthood.  I'm very happy with this new career path that I'm about to embark on, but of course I am always thinking about that next trip abroad.  Wanderlust - "a very strong or irresistible impulse to travel" is probably the adjective that would suit me at the moment.  So, it got me thinking about how I could combine my love of world exploration with the necessity to make money.  I think travel bloggers have got it figured out.  So in case you've ever thought about turning your wanderlust into a fruitful career, I've compiled some tips that can help you take your love of travel to the next level and maybe even get some money back into that dwindling bank account.  In no way am I claiming to be an expert, but am simply providing you with the very basics of a world that I would love to explore...getting paid to travel - who wouldn't love that?


In theory, the idea of making money from any type of blog is simple.  First, you create your site, begin writing some insightful entries, gain a following, and then apply to some online advertising companies and watch the cash start to roll in.  But in reality, a blogging career is just how it sounds; it's a career.  It takes time and dedication.  I've read that it takes about one year to gain an online following.  And this is with interesting and constantly updated content. So once you've got your ideas and the wonderful ideas are flowing out from your fingertips, the next step is to gather traffic to your site.  So what you need is a descriptive URL to increase your search engine ranking.  Once people are there, make use of social media buttons! On your home page, you need to have buttons so that people can click and do the following: go to your Twitter profile, “like” your Facebook fan page (and yes, you should have one), go to your StumbleUpon profile, subscribe to your RSS feed, and subscribe to your posts by email.




Use links to promote your posts. At the end of your posts, you should have some plug-in that allows those of us that use social media sites, like StumbleUpon or Facebook to click their way to promoting your post in that forum.  You must have a retweet button so readers can post your entry via Twitter.



Once the technical stuff is out of the way, you need to think about your relationships.  First with your audience what material do they want, how will you sell them your brand? Try to create a relationship with other bloggers, with professionals in the travel and public relations industries. Another idea is to connect with the locals. You can sell your expertise and put together holiday packages and earn commission from local travel providers.


So now you've got an audience and a following, take advantage of this and sell ad space. You can sell banner ads or text links, or sell products.



I'm sure this list hasn't provided anyone with a detailed map of how to get rich quick by travel blogging, but hopefully these basics have steered you in the right direction in starting a travel blog as a hopeful career or even just as a hobby.



If I were to start a blog at this very moment, my first post would be about "the cutest tourist attractions in the Southern Hemisphere."  I am feeling a little "cutesy" at the moment and am recalling my time at The Phillip Island Penguin Parade, where every night at sunset, tiny penguins about 30 centimetres tall, come ashore in groups to burrow.  It could possibly be the cutest sight I've ever witnessed.  If you ever get to Australia and take a trip to this small island off the coast of Melbourne, you must make time to see this adorable attraction.



 
Scenery at Phillip Island


...Claire was here

Be budget savvy....

Having spent a good amount of time abroad, I have seen a lot of beautiful sights.  I have been able to tell some great stories and have I been able to meet a lot of people like myself; adventurous, curious and BROKE. 


While saving for my first trip overseas, I was working two jobs.  The first was a full-time job as a legal assistant at a law firm in Toronto.  The second was a part-time job at a Milestone's Grill and Bar in Mississauga.  I was exhausted about 80 per cent of the time but I had a goal, and I was going to make this trip happen.  I am lucky enough to have some pretty cool parents who are very much behind the idea of travel as an essential life experience.  They were avid travelers back in their youth.  A couple of young hippies back-packing around Europe, finding love and returning to Canada to start a family.  Maybe travel is in the genes?  With parents backing my travel plans and allowing me to live at home (rent-free)while saving up, in a year, I was able to save a good chunk of money.  Friends of mine thought I was crazy to spend it all on a trip and I often heard "Claire, you can put that on a house!", but I didn't care.  I wanted to travel worry-free and be able to experience the world.  I thought to myself, "I can always save more when I get back."  HA HA HA.  It turns out that no matter how much you save, if you aren't wise with your money, it's never enough!  A few big purchases on the Mastercard in combination with a return to school in order to start a new career has left me broke and at this point in my life, it is very scary and depressing to think that I could be living with my parents forever!




Now, the last thing I want to do is to scare any potential travelers away from pursuing a dream or even a slight curiosity.  So, in order to ease some of your worries, I have put together a list of tips to help keep you on budget, while still being able to explore the world that's out there waiting for you. 




1. Hostels are fantastic!
Stay away from hotels, please.  Hostels are a cheap alternative, ranging in price from approximately $35 per night and upwards.  They provide many accommodation options.  There are single, double and share room options.   Female only, male only or mixed rooms.  You are able to meet people your own age and make new travel companions and friends!  I was lucky enough to make some great friends that I am still in touch with today!


    Some of "the gang" from the Sydney Beachhouse in Collaroy,
                         a suburb of Sydney.




2. Planes are not the only way!
If you find a group and are planning on travelling in the same direction, rent a car or a camper van.  It is so much cheaper than flying.  You can split the cost of the rental, the gas and the camp sites and it is a way to get to see a lot of a country that you wouldn't otherwise see if you were to fly.  A van trip up the east coast of Australia allowed me and my group to stop at some cool spots and see some tiny little towns and beautiful scenery, all the while being mindful of our budget.

 Our camper van and home for two and a half weeks while travelling up to northern Queensland, Australia.  Pretty swanky! :)

A beautiful beach that we found along our journey.  A prime example of the hidden treasures you can find when you don't fly.




3. Get to know the subway, bus and train systems.
A foreign subway system may look intimidating, but trust me they're not.  Still skeptical?  I am THE WORST person to talk to about directions.  I get lost in my own city, WITH my GPS in the car, yet I was able to navigate London's tube system and get all over the city!  And once you know the system, you realize how far you can go for a small amount of money.  All major cities have transit discount cards, for example the Oyster Card in London.  Discount fares and daily passes become your best friends.


4. Do your research.
Buy a guide book and actually read it.  They offer great budget-friendly suggestions for attractions, tours, transit and meals.  And pick up pamphlets and tourist guides along the way.  They offer some great coupons and discounts!  I was able to discover some great packages deals on museum passes in France, where entry costs can be quite expensive for all of the different sights Paris has to offer.




5. Plan, plan and plan some more!
No matter how excited I was to go away on a trip, I hated the planning part of it.  But I have learned that planning is essential to a budget-friendly trip.  A major consideration is the time of year that you are choosing to escape to your ideal destination.  You get the best deals on flights either months in advance or days before you want to leave.  Subscribe to a price tracking service, for example www.yapta.com and you will be informed via email as to when there is a price drop in air fares.  Also, think about peak travel seasons and try to avoid them. A good idea is to plan your day-to-day activities.  Plan out a general route for your day in order to avoid trekking all over a foreign city, wasting time and travel costs.




Some of these suggestions are those that I was smart enough to follow, and others I wish I had thought about before-hand.  Once I dig myself out of my financial hole, I will be smarter with my next set of travel plans.  See?  I plan on doing it again, because no matter how much money I've spent on travel, I really believe that it is one of the best things that you can spend (or waste) your money on.  :)


...Claire was here.

I'm made up of music...

So, I've recently been asked the question "what makes you unique?"  And to be honest, I really had a hard time coming up with an answer.  I think I'm your pretty typical late 20's kinda girl. Looks: 5'6", blond hair, green-ish eyes.  Likes: hanging out with friends, working out, traveling (obviously).  Dislikes: traffic, cooking, mundane responsibilities.  I really struggled until I got to thinking about the one constant in my life, whether playing from my Ipod or just playing in my head; MUSIC.  For some reason, I know A LOT of songs.  I love music and appreciate all types of it.  My father long ago branded me with the name "The Human Jukebox".  I've been told more than once that I should go on the show "Don't forget the lyrics", my fellow servers at work frequently ask me "what's the song of the day?" and will always laugh when a song immediately escapes my lips.  I've actually discovered that at work, I need a song playing in my head at all times to prevent me from losing my sanity.
You may be thinking that a love for music is not very unique, but after traveling, I've been lucky enough to bring back some fantastic music from other parts of the world.  So I guess I can say that this makes me pretty unique.  Not everyone has the chance to explore our world, let alone be exposed to great new music and leave countries with a new entry on your playlist.




While in Australia, a close friend of mine with whom I'm still in touch, opened my eyes to some great New Zealand reggae.  He grew up in NZ and is very proud of his Maori heritage.  A fellow music lover, he loved the smooth, easy soul of NZ reggae bands like Salmonella Dub, Fat Freddy's Drop, The Black Seeds and Katchafire.  As soon as I heard these songs, I was in love, too.  



I still find it funny how certain music never makes it across the world.  I had never heard of these bands and have never heard anyone speak of them since being home.  It also made me laugh while in Chiang Mai, Thailand to hear a Thai band do a cover of Britney Spears' "1, 2, 3" at a club.  The words one, two, three can pretty much sum up what I understood during that particular performance, but it really made me think about certain aspects of pop culture and how some can transcend borders and how some never leave its homeland.  I did get to hear some authentic Asian music as well, but it was not very popular at the clubs we were frequenting.



I'm one of those people whom you'll regularly hear say "this song reminds me of ___________" (fill in the blank).  There's always someone or some time of my life that I can bring back by playing a song.  I am lucky to have been able to discover music authentic to different cultures and am even luckier to get to bring back all of these great experiences any time I turn the dial on my Ipod. 
So, I guess you can say that this adds some sort of "unique-ness" to my somewhat typical life.  I've got some more variety to the music constantly playing in my head.  If you want to hear some of these tunes that are the background to my day-to-day life just click here to listen to Katchafire or here for Salmonella Dub or here for the Black Seeds.






...Claire was here

What the travel companies don't want you to know...

Probably the most common way to plan a trip is to head over to a travel agent like Flight Centre, or to look up tours and travel reviews online.  What I have learned is that this is a great way to get a list all of the highlights of a country and to check those well-known tourist attractions off of that ever-growing "Bucket List".  This is what I did.  But then upon my return, I got talking to friends and fellow travellers and they asked me "Did you go to so and so?" or "Did you see this and that?".  It was then that I realized the power of my peers and their experiences and realized that there are things that the travel companies don't tell you about.



I found that social media sites like Trip Advisor are a very helpful resource for planning a trip.  You get the "real" reviews of a country, the what to do's and what no to do's, what you should spend your money on and what you should skip.  Facebook is great because while "creeping" through your friends' pictures (or even those people you come across without a blocked profile where you can spend time looking at the smiling faces of strangers), you can find out the great hotels, and places to visit and party that often times are off the beaten path, or simply the areas that aren't advertised in a tour magazine.  I found a couple of pretty crazy places while looking through others' pictures and decided I HAD to visit.  For example, on the East Coast of Australia, there is a tiny littlw town called Nimbin.  Famous for it's hippy residents who are generally stoned 24/7, this is never a place you would be informed of at a travel agent!  But what a weird place!  And a place that I'm glad I got to experience!



The main street of Nimbin.  Please take note of the man in a tutu.



I've also discovered YouTube can be another great resource.  During one of my sleepless nights when I was planning an adventure and stressing about my budget, I decided that I would start YouTube-ing "cute cats", "funny animals" and then became very nostalgic and decided to look at some of the places I had visited on my last adventure.  Vang Vieng, a town in Laos, a small country in South East Asia was one of these places and I found quite a few videos of the famous river-tubing where I did go, but Contiki wasn't eager to promote to its customers because of its dangerous reputation.  These videos were taken around the time I was there, and really show the craziness of this attraction, that I'll tell you is not a family-friendly activity.  It is wild and full of twenty-somethings who love to party.  Ahhh, the memories ;)  My experience in Vang Vieng was not so wild since, unfortunately I had some "stomach trouble" due to something I ate (a typical complaint when visiting S.E. Asia), so I had a fairly leisurely float down the river, not quite like the videos you'll find on YouTube.


But looking through the party videos, I found another very sad video and true story of a Canadian tourist who was seriously injured, (he almost died to be honest) when his fun time went awry.  It highlighted the importance of travel insurance and being safe while still having a great time. So not only are people quick to post party videos and amazing less popular hot-spots, but while looking through these resources, you'll also get the reality of how travelling can be dangerous and how caution should be taken.



                                                    Beautiful Laotian landscape


                   Typical village in the mountains of Laos



So the moral of the story here is that to get your very popular tourist attractions, travel guides are a great resource.  But backpackers wanting to get a different taste of the culture and find those little known pieces of paradise, (Leonardo DiCaprio and The Beach come to mind here) use social media tools to learn a lot more then you would by talking to someone at a desk.  Our peers are the best resource and of course, we are always willing to show off what a great time we had to our friends and families through pictures and videos. 


...Claire was here.

Facebook - my connection to home while abroad

"I sent you a postcard.  You'll get it in six months." 






Before I left for my trip, I gathered all of my friends' addresses and was prepared to send out a huge stack of postcards from Down Under.  After a couple of weeks had passed and I had gathered enough stories to send back home, I bought about 20 postcards, sat in my room in my hostel and wrote them all out.  20-something dollars worth of postage later, they had all been mailed.  I did not get that satisfied feeling I thought I would get.  Instead, my hand was sore and my wallet had shrunk.  I decided that this was the first and the last time that I would be sending postcards home.



What would I have done without Facebook while I was away?  Social media, specifically Facebook - this was 2009 when Facebook was still a novelty - really changed the way I kept in touch with family, old friends and new friends that I was meeting along the way.






While traveling, you realize how important it is to have access to computers.  When you're living at home, you don't even think twice about sending an email, checking messages or tweeting and Facebook-ing from your computer or your phone.  But you realize that quick communication can be seen as a luxury when you're traveling through the Outback of Australia, or at a shady internet cafe in Bangkok.  Of course, many hostels have computers, but internet cards can get expensive and sometimes the computers are occupied when you need one.   I met some people who brought their computers with them. I did not - and those people quickly became very important to me ;)

Cape Tribulation - North Queensland Australia -

an area so remote that there was no cell phone reception in the whole town!

But even worse than expensive internet, phone calls were more of a challenge.  Be prepared that when you say you'll call home, that sometimes that is not always possible.  I spent lots of time looking for pay phones in Sydney, in the scorching heat to call my parents that I was supposed to have called the day before....poor parents were probably waiting by the phone, but got no ring from me :( sorry parents....  So an easy way to keep in touch is via Facebook.  You can always leave a message on someone's wall letting them know that you haven't fallen off the face of the planet.  I countries where English is not the first language, I didn't even bother looking for a phone.  I stuck to the internet for my connection to home.


Advice for travellers....get yourself a cheap phone for about 20$ so that you can call your new friends LOCALLY.  If you're going to call home, get a long distance card.  And when you're making plans to go fly somewhere remote, don't give times when you'll call family or friends.  They will get worried if they don't hear from you.  But use the internet! It's the easiest way!


        

Even with the challenges that I sometimes faced with internet access, Facebook was a great tool for me and I spent more time keeping in touch that way than I did with a phone.  I could see what was going on back home and got excited when I could chat with someone.  Social media has definitely changed the way we communicate and for me, it changed the way I travelled.  My parents laughed when I told them that people now backpack with computers in their suitcases....a definite change from the days when they were hippies trekking through Europe. 


And now that I think of it, I don't even know if all of those post cards even made it home.  Snail mail is so 1999.





My home for 5 months....Sydney Beach House. I recommend to anyone traveling to Sydney :)




... Claire was here.