01.
How do you afford to travel or go on multiple trips?
The key is to plan in advance. Therefore, you can pay for various items over a period of time instead of all at once. For instance, ten months prior to a trip, we will purchase the flight. Six months prior to a trip, we pay for the accommodations. Three months before, we will buy miscellaneous items, such as excursions. In addition, we are flexible with our dates and destinations. We are fine with traveling to any country during the off season, if that means that we can get a cheaper flight and/or accommodation rates. Our ultimate goal is to visit every country in the world. With that, we don’t have a specified “time of year or occasion” influencing when we should visit any particular country. If you visit our destination page on thebloggingbesties.com you will find tips on what platforms to reference when searching for cheap fares.
02.
How do you find the places you visit?
This is the main reason we decided to start our blog. We wish to eliminate the typical notion that travel is unattainable or costly. After we slander that stereotype, we wish to inspire and instigate travel. Determining where to visit is 100% research based. If research is not your thing, we have you covered. Browse our website for insight. We are economically savvy travelers, so our selected destination is mainly dependent upon cost. We research and plan everything in advance. On the destination’s tabs, we list commonly used sites to find deals. Check that page out!
03.
What made you want to visit there?
As I mentioned above, our desire is to visit every country on the planet earth. In other words, we are open. Of mixed ethnicity, we are both particularly attracted to countries bearing either our African, Asian, or Spanish roots.
04.
What about the language barrier?
We don’t let that hinder our decision to not visit a country. We understand that communication is fundamental, yet universal. That is the joy of traveling. You have the opportunity to pick up on different languages. You also challenge yourself to communicate in an unfamiliar territory, utilize different techniques and build soft skills. Nowadays, there are apps or services that you can use for translation purposes. To be frank, you will be surprised at how frequently English is spoken outside of the United States. Fortunately, we have not experienced any significant hurdles when outside of the states. Note that we are native English speakers and elementary proficient in Korean and proficient in Spanish.
05.
How can you afford to take so much time off work?
Simple answer without y’all being in all our business, we use our employer Paid Time Off (PTO) LOL. Literally all of the time that we accrue goes towards our vacations. Just a little background, as everyone's job is different. We work in corporate America, not only do we accrue a set number of hours, but we also have holidays that we can use at our leisure. Our roles within our respective companies allow us to flex our remote to onsite availability, as well.
06.
How does traveling and seeing the world inspire you?
Traveling and seeing the world is very fulfilling! Not only do we gain lifetime memories, but motivation to keep life moving in an upwards direction is also reignited. After each vacation we return with that extra “umph” to kick our butts into gear to create the life that we want; We each aim to be in a position in life where we are working for ourselves and traveling at our own leisure opposed to using accrued PTO. Having the ability to travel and engross ourselves with different cultures from all over the world kindles passion and inspiration within us.
07.
Do you consider yourself a traveler or a tourist?
We consider ourselves travelers! Although staying on resorts the entire time work for some people, that is not our cup of tea. We step outside of our comfort zones and absolutely love immersing ourselves with the locals to gain the true feeling of being where we are. For example, in Greece, we dined at plenty of “Ma and Pa” restaurants to really get the taste of authentic. In Jamaica, we met some locals who we befriended and ended up going to a local community soccer game. You can easily find us riding comfortably on somebody’s city bus or train. We really enjoy exploring and feeling like were getting the entire experience of our destination, not just a piece of it.
08.
What is your biggest concern when traveling?
Our biggest concern while traveling is safety. We haven’t been to a place where we have felt particularly in danger. Yet, as foreigners and women of color, we are always on our P’s and Q’s. You can read more about that in our travel tip and tricks, go check it out!
09.
Is there a special tradition that you do when on vacation?
Funny that you ask… On the final day of vacation, we pop open a bottle of local champagne, wine, or spirit. Cheers to that!