Wednesday 17 October 2007

OK, OK, but how do you *feel*?

Monica mailed us the other day wanting to know more about the realities of life on the road, apart from all the larks and adventures we've been blogging about so far. Good point, girlfriendo. It's all too easy to let this become a "What I did in the summer holidays" type thing, so here's some hard hitting emotional reality for you all.

This trip isn't anything like we expected, although we're both hard-pressed to say what exactly we were expecting. We seem to flick between totally chilled, sitting around for days just enjoying a place, and quick-fire hauling ass through 5 spots in as many days.

It's not all fun and frolics. We get tired. We get hungry and can't find anything to eat. We both get little schemes going in our own heads, then get angry with each other when our private plans don't coincide with the other's. It can be pretty hard work at times - although we were both really looking forward to the prospect of spending much more time together, sometimes 24h a day stuck in a little camper van together is just too much. Fortunately, we love each other very much, so we haven't murdered each other yet.

Another thing that we're being careful about is staying on top of our budget. We were super organized about setting this up before we left (yes, we have a spreadsheet) and are keeping tabs on our spending every cent of the way. The time/money continuum we talked about before we set off means that we spend less money but more time to do stuff, and occasionally make false economies (cheap cheese - don't do it).

We are totally glad we're doing what we're doing. It's brilliant! Debs is so much more relaxed than before we left, and we've met loads of nice people and done things we've always wanted to do, like surfing etc. Ben, on the other hand, is uncharacteristically short-tempered sometimes.

And it may sound bad, but we're not missing home at all (it's a bit different for us because we already lived away from family, communicating mainly via email and only seeing family at xmas and weddings anyway). The blog has probably been the biggest help in that respect, because we feel like we're talking to our friends every time we write a blog post, and they email us comments (hint to people unfamiliar with how blogs work: there's a little link at the bottom right of each post which says "1 comment" or similar - click that and add a comment of your own! It's the latest thing in internut communications).

Ben

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That old 24/7 thing, good to get through that one and still love each other at the end of it - strong ties :)

Very much looking forward to seeing you next week in Wellytown - we'll give you some comfy beds and down home food and some space to chill out!

Andreas said...

oh, and so you guys now, I'll be in Bali from the 4th of February until the 29th. Are you still planing to be there around that time?

Ben and Debs said...

Aha, good timing. We leave Brisbane at the end of Jan, destination Lombok, next stop Bali. Let us know where you're staying closer to the time, or now if you know. See you there :)

Ben and Debs said...

@Brenda: Looking forward to experiencing the Wellingtron with y'all - and we want to do some delicious cooking for you! Comfy beds sound *very* good.

Sandy said...

Brenda will be responsible for the delicious cooking and Jesse for the comfy beds. I'll try to be pretty or something ;-)

Very much looking forward to seeing you next week!

Ben and Debs said...

@Sandy: Yeah, we read all about your cooking... no exploding pyrex please. See you in a few days!