Today marks the 3rd anniversary of As We Travel – yes we started this blog way back on the 1st of Feb, 2010!

It feels like these past 3 years have gone by so quickly and yet we’ve experienced and learned so much since we started blogging – when we began this journey 3 years ago we never realised how much it would end up changing our lives and the decisions we made.

Who knew a blog could be life changing in such a way?

Today we want to take a moment to look back at our year and the things we’ve learned about ourselves, blogging and business, and what we’re most grateful for …

1) Learning Skills For Any Industry.

Sometimes there is just no short-cut, and you have to do things the hard way by learning from your mistakes – this year, we’ve done that more than ever before with the 3 new non-travel related websites and 2 iPhone apps we are working on.

But while we learned so many new things, we also realised just how much the knowledge and skills you get from travel blogging can be used in other industries online.

Next to the good old “make-money-blogging-bloggers” – travel bloggers are among the most internet-tech-savvy of bloggers, and it’s a great industry to learn new things which you can implement in other projects.

Techniques we take for granted or are over-used in travel blogging can be used to really push and promote your company websites to another level elsewhere.

2) Our YouTube Fans Are Awesome!

Among the things we’re most grateful for this year with AsWeTravel are our YouTube followers - if you are not following us on there yet, make sure you join us: www.youtube.com/AsWeTravel

After we released 50 travel videos in 2011 and 2012, it was a big anti-climax when nobody seemed interested in them on our blog – not many comments, not much appreciation – nothing … we thought the hard work of making these videos had been a massive waste of time.

But it turns out that good things sometimes take time.

Today we have over half a million views on YouTube, and 50,000 monthly viewers watching our videos – we love the crazy comments and wild discussions that our videos provoke, from laws about filming publicly to how you’re really supposed to drink Turkish coffee.

We have had TV channels from America, Canada, China, and Czech Republic reaching out to us wanting to use our video content on their official TV channels, and it’s really fun to see that people appreciate the effort we have put into them.

3) Every Path In Life Has Sacrifices. 

No matter what you do in life, there will always be sacrifices – there will be as many sacrifices if you choose to quit your 9 to 5 job as there will be if you choose to stay.

This isn’t something many people care to talk about – we live with this illusion that getting away from everything will cure every problem we have, when in fact leaving will often bring up even more problems than if you were to stay at home if you don’t understand the real cause.

During the last 3 years we have been tested over and over again if this life choice to travel and work the way we do really was the right decision to make – the amount of times we nearly decided to give it all up for a “morally-correct” job can’t be counted on our fingers.

The realisation that you will have to sacrifice things with any choice you make in life really helped us stay on track and continue to build what we have done.

It all comes down to what means more to you, and what you’re willing to let go of.

We chose an uncertain life over a safe path, and we have to deal with the consequences of that, but in the end it has all been worth it.

So we just wanted to say a BIG THANK YOU for following our blog and videos the last 3 years, and we look forward to sharing yet another few years with you all!

The post 3 Years of Travel Blogging – It’s About Learning & Growing appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

So, remember a few articles ago when we said we had moved to Norway to settle down for 6 months? Well, that turned out to be a bit of a mistake …

We shouldn’t really blame Norway itself because there was nothing wrong with the country, except it really wasn’t the best place for us at the moment.

Realising It Was A Bad Idea

Everything about Trysil was great – our apartment was lovely, the people we met were friendly, the skiing was fun and the landscape incredible.

It all seemed great, yet we couldn’t shake the feeling of having made the wrong decision …

Cold Feet?

Can you really tell the difference between a gut feeling and something your mind makes up? Even if you can, are gut feelings really trustworthy?

Were we just being silly and scared of settling down for a longer time? 

Did we make ourselves feel like this wasn’t the right place, or were these feelings actually justified?

These were questions we asked ourselves at first, until we finally realized that it had to be more than that.

It wasn’t normal for us to be doubting ourselves that much, and when we started breaking things down we realized that while Trysil was great, it wasn’t the right place for us.

Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

We always jump head first into things without really thinking much about it, and deal with the consequences later – hoping to learn a lesson.

This time we learned a very important lesson: don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Signing a contract for an apartment for six months in a place you’ve never been to before is not a good idea – had we been to Trysil before we would have known what it was like and if it was a good place for us.

From now on, we will never make long term commitments until we have been there for at least 1 month to see what it’s like.

So, now we’re in Berlin, and are finally taking things as they come, month by month – we will be staying here for another month, and then see what happens after that.

We still don’t know where the right place for us would be, only that Norway wasn’t i t…

If you have any good tips of places in Europe you think we should check out for a month, feel free to tell us in the comments below!

The post We Are On The Move Again?! appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

It has been 4 years since I asked Nathan to join me on a round-the-world trip, and so much has changed since we left with our massive backpacks and butterflies in our stomachs.

Although we really weren’t ready, we loved every bit of our first trip and didn’t want it to end, so already 2 months in we were planning to start a business that would allow us to travel while making money.

We  had an idea of starting a juice business from a van and drive around Europe, but didn’t have enough money to even begin.

While the juice van business never happened, we had planted a seed to find a way of being able to travel full-time.

And you know what happens when you really want something? Your dreams come true.

Sofia back in 2008 …

The Illusion of a Dream

Fast forward 2 years, and we had a blog that allowed us to make that dream a reality.

When we started traveling funded only by our blog back in 2010, I wanted to pull the middle finger to everyone who had ridiculed me, laughed at my face and told me it couldn’t be done.

Anything can be done, if you want it bad enough.

However, dreams aren’t always what they seem …

Running a business is possible when you travel full-time, but you never get that extra space to expand your business.

We found ourselves always “catching up” on things and only had time for the most necessary, which will never take you any further than where you are, and certainly not get us any closer to becoming millionaires.

Traveling the world has been the most amazing thing we have ever done and we are so grateful for all our experiences, but we’re exhausted from the way we have been doing it – we just can’t handle it anymore.

It is time for us to take a deep breath and slow down …

Nobody Does It

When attending TBU in Porto earlier this year, we were surprised to find just how few bloggers actually do travel full-time.

Everyone kept asking us where our ‘base’ was, and I found myself starting to ask people the same thing.

We had always thought that travel bloggers always traveled, but out of all of those we met, 95% of them had a base they went home to and lived between their trips, either with their parents or in a home of their own … making us feel like we were the odd ones out!

A New Way Of Life In Norway

We just signed a 6 month contract for an apartment in Norway, the longest commitment in years, which feels very uncertain.

It’s funny how when you have been traveling for a while, everything you used to think was uncertain – like traveling, is the most natural thing in the world for us.

Meanwhile, things like having a place to live, or staying somewhere for longer than a month, feels so uncertain.

There is a luxury of being able to live every day as it comes, to go wherever you want  - to live a life without commitment.

That freedom is addictive, and makes you fear anything too strict – just like we weren’t ready for our 1st round the world trip, we’re not sure if we’re ready to settle down and only travel every few months instead.

But then again, are you ever ready for anything new in life?

The post Full-Time Travel – Can’t We Handle It Anymore? appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

After spending 1 month in Innsbruck we realized the city didn’t want us hanging around anymore - it was kicking us out!

Having to take care of thousands of new students desperate for a place to stay, Innsbruck simply didn’t have time to deal with us as well.

So after two full weeks of apartment searching, we decided that while we really liked the city, it just wasn’t meant to be.

1. Apartments were taken within hours of being put online.
2. The students were desperate for ANYTHING!
3. We were not …

We didn’t want to share a room in someone’s home, or pay €1500 extra just to get hold of an apartment – so we have decided to move on, or more precisely, we’re moving north into the wild..!

Ok, perhaps that was a “little” exaggerated, but the place we’ve decided to move to is one of those places you would like to find yourself in when the rest of the world falls apart – so what better place to spend the end of 2012 than in Norway? ;P

Norway is a country we both have been longing to see more of, and we’re looking forward to see if it really is what everyone always claims; the most beautiful country in the world…

Having found a great 2 room apartment in Trysil (Norway’s biggest ski resort) located only 3 mins from the slopes, we decided to just go for it and spend the next 6 months in Norway.

That’s the blessing and the curse with being able to be wherever you want - a blessing because you can do whatever the hell you want, but a curse for the very same reason.

The students in Innsbruck HAD to make it work, we didn’t – so we moved on …

Sometimes, having too many options makes it more difficult than if there was only one way to go …

The post Innsbruck Kicked Us Out … Where To Next? appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

Most of you probably noticed that AsWeTravel has been offline a lot during the past 4-5 days, and we really apologize for that!

It might look as though it happened all of the sudden, but the truth is that the site has been dying a very slow and painful death during the past six months, something we’ve kind of been ignoring – until this week when sh*t finally hit the fan.

It started a while ago with the site going from very slow (throttling – they called it) to crashing entirely for a few minutes every now and then until it saved itself and got back online.

We did a few things to correct it, changed the host, changed the theme, changed, changed and tried to optimize the website – and throughout the entire time every expert we contacted simply told us that there was no reason why that should be happening and seemed just as confused as we were … no matter what we did, nothing seemed to help.

We simply got used to having a site crashing every week, but since it was only for a couple of minutes each time, and with us traveling all the time – we never put enough effort into trying to fix the problem.

And then, this week – AsWeTravel finally just gave in and died – it crashed over and over again & refused to breathe!

here we are trying to pretend nothing is wrong with AWT – feeling better with a fruit smoothie in CM … :p

As we post this article today the site has been online for just over 48hrs without ANY problems – so fingers crossed it stays this way!

We had to install our site from the ground up and doing that with 2.5 years of content isn’t an easy task :p

We’ve done some major changes now, are taking every step from here very carefully, and hopefully we’ve managed to make sure that these problems don’t happen again - however we will continue to monitor the site for these issues to make sure it stays online.

Not the perfect way to spend our final week in beautiful Thailand, but hey … :p

The post aswetravel.com – To Hell & Back! appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

Traveling to South East Asia this time around was a very spontaneous thing – we simply made the decision one day while in Germany, bought the tickets, and a week or so later we were off.

It has been a fun trip, although quite different from how we used to travel.

This time, our purpose was not to explore every corner of every country, but to travel slowly and stay in one place for longer periods of time to be able to get some work done.

We stayed next door to the Petronas Towers in KL, indulged in Indian food in Penang, passed by iPoh to try their reputation as the food city of Malaysia (and were deeply disappointed), and spent a whole month down in relaxed Melaka, which we quickly decided was our favorite city in South East Asia.

We visited Singapore with its exciting diversity, traveled on the luxurious Eastern and Oriental Express up to Bangkok, and settled down in Chiang Mai to relax and catch up on our new project.

In a few weeks we’re traveling back to Europe, and these are our plans until the end of September…

Netherlands

After landing in Amsterdam, we’ll spend 5 days in the city soaking up the relaxed atmosphere and enjoy the best of Amsterdam with its canals, boutique shopping and long list of oddities.

Las time we were in Amsterdam during the Europe Train Challenge it was very rushed, so we are looking forward to taking a step back and enjoying the city differently.

We’ll explore the alleyways and bridges, sit on street side cafes sipping coffee, take strolls in the parks and check out the Grachtenfestival.

We don’t want to have any specific plans for this city, as the best way to get the most out of Amsterdam is to take things as they come.

Belgium

From Amsterdam we’ll take the train to Brussels, where together with Tourism Flanders we will be traveling around the Flanders region in Belgium to explore their amazing festival scene and the incredible cities this region offers.

We’ll start the journey with visiting Oudenaarde and its awesome festival “Feest in het park” when one of our favorite Kiwi bands, Fat Freddy’s Drop, is playing!

After the festival we will continue to beautiful Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges and of course Brussels - waffles and chocolate here we come!

Portugal

Remember how we said we were planning to return to Porto later this year?

Well, by the end of August we’ll finally be there to see more of what we missed last time, and to travel around the northern part of the country.

We’ll spend a week with several local tour companies exploring Portugal’s medieval towns, lush nature and beautiful coastline before heading back down to Porto again to attend the TBU travel blog conference - its our first conference like this, so it should be fun to finally meet up with some of the other travel bloggers out there.

Austria

Then by the end of September, we’ll finally arrive in Innsbruck, Austria – where we’ll start looking for an apartment to base ourselves and spend the up-coming winter.

We really like this city, and while we admit that we have problems committing ourselves to stay in one place for a longer time, we have a really good feeling about Innsbruck - so we will be based there for at least 12 months while we launch our new project and start a new chapter in our lives …

(photo credit: 1 - 2)

The post We’re Going Back To Europe! appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

Well, what can I say other than that this year’s travel plans didn’t really turn out at all as planned.

Just a month ago I was expecting a whole different turn to the year, but as everything in life, things always change – so I guess we will see how close to these plans we actually end up.

However, one thing is definitely confirmed – this week we’re going to Sri Lanka!

With our 4 month trip coming to an end here in Germany, we were clueless of what to do and where to go next – after the idea of visiting Sri Lanka came up and we did some research, we decided that it was definitely the place where we would be heading next.

We’ll be preparing to fly to Sri Lanka as you read this post, and I can’t tell you how excited we are! We would love to hear some tips and advice from you of how you think we should spend our 21 days exploring Sri Lanka.

After that, we’ll be heading to Malaysia and good old Kuala Lumpur again, from there we will travel down the coast, pass by the quirky city Melaka and maybe check out Johor in the south.

We’ll then finally make a stop over in Singapore, a place which has kept eluding us during each and every of our Asia trips.

From what I understand one of the best things to do there is to eat & go shopping – which suits me perfectly!

After this our plans are still a bit fuzzy, but we will make our way up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand where we will rest our feet and spend a couple of months working on some secret (!) projects we have going on.

We were considering doing exactly this last autumn, but decided to spend the winter skiing in Europe instead.

Now after spending 12 months traveling in Europe we’re longing back to Asia and knowing that Thailand accommodation is such great value for money – we hope that we can spend more money and focus on building our business than we would have been able to do in Europe.

We will of course not be able to stay away from traveling, and we have some really exciting travel plans in the coming months – so stay tuned! (hint: maybe another train trip like we did in Europe last year) …

I also promised Nathan long ago that we would spend his 30^th birthday in India, so I’ll really try to keep that promise and after Thailand travel up to Myanmar, Nepal & India by September.

After all, what better way to celebrate the end of your 20′s than in India, a perfect representation of how your 20′s were – up-side-down, crazy, and inside-out..!

We would love to get some tips for things to do and foods to try in these places, so if you have any – share them below!

The post Our Travel Plans For The Next 6 Months appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

It almost feels like a lifetime has passed since we started AsWeTravel.com exactly two years ago today – so much has happened in our lives since then.

Last year we posted a blog about some of the things we learned from our first year of blogging, in the hopes that you might learn something from our experiences as well.

This second year has been different in so many ways and we have learnt as much about travel blogging as we have about ourselves and the kind of life we want to lead.

Here are some of the main things we’ve learnt from our second year of travel blogging…

1) Limit Your Daily Time Online

During our first year of blogging we became obsessed with having internet access everywhere and being connected online all day every day.

During our second year we realized that the blog doesn’t ALWAYS need ”round the clock care”, it can take care of itself for most of the day – and, more importantly – many things you think you need to do can wait.

We realized that we were spending many more hours online than we actually needed – the work we had to do could have taken only a few hours, but we were messing around, working ineffectively which would result in us spending 6-8 hours instead.

By giving ourselves a deadline, or a time limit, we worked much more effectively, and gave ourselves more free time to explore the places we visited.

Decide how many hours you really need to spend online every day, and then only spend that time working.

2) Learn How To Separate Travel & Travel Blogging

When you travel full-time like we have for the last 2 years, it is very important to learn how to separate work and travel, then draw a clear line between the two.

Rather than sitting in a café or bar tweeting on your iPhone (for your blog) – sit back, relax and look around you – learn to enjoy the moments just as a traveler, not always as a travel blogger.

By always being connected with your iPhone, updating Twitter telling everyone where you are etc – you risk not actually enjoying the places you visit.

As a travel blogger, it is easy to lose yourself in work, and by always “looking for the story” you might actually miss it.

We noticed that when we disconnected and simply went out as travelers – the right story for the right city came to us by itself.

3) Ask & You Shall Receive

This year we’ve realized that if you want something – sponsored trips, free hotel stays, travel products to test etc – all you really need to do is ask.

After getting sponsored stays in over 30 hotels and hostels in the last year, and getting plenty of other sponsored attractions, passes and activities with tourism boards – we’ve realized that the worst that could happen is to simply get a ‘no’, and that shouldn’t put you off but instead push you to grow your site & connections even more.

The same goes for other things as well – if you tell yourself that you will reach a certain goal (monthly traffic, twitter followers, earnings etc) eventually you will find a way to achieve it – if you just trust and are passionate enough to work hard for it.

We’ve really learnt how to appreciate the power of positive goal setting and mental focus on what we want, rather than giving any focus to negative events which may show up.

4) Pace Yourself & Don’t Try To Do Everything

In the last year, we completely overwhelmed ourselves and tried to do too many things rather than taking one thing at a time - one example was the Europe Train Challenge.

During the train challenge we traveled to 33 countries in 75 days, spent 2 days in each place, filmed a video episode from each city & wrote 2 articles about each city – phew!

That really was an amazing experience, and it forced us to really focus and work hard, but looking back we have learnt that it is better to focus on fewer things and do them as well as you can, than trying to do too many things at once.

By trying to film, take photos, stand in front of the camera, write articles and at the same time capture and experience every place we visited – traveling became pretty stressful, especially with a time-limit.

We learned to focus on one thing at a time and pace ourselves so that we wouldn’t get overwhelmed - remember that you can always go back next year again.

5) What Others Think Of Your Blog Is None Of Your Business

You will meet a lot of people who don’t understand why or what you’re doing when travel blogging (my parents still don’t understand what we really do), and some will even disapprove, but just because people don’t agree with what you do, that doesn’t mean they’re right.

Never do anything you don’t want to do, and never give up on something you believe in just because others don’t.

When I heard Wayne Dyer say “what you think of me is none of my business”, I could really relate this to travel blogging.

Learn to meet jealousy, doubt, ignorance and confusion with a smile.

Our second year of blogging has been full of many great successes and a few big mistakes, but that’s what life is for – to live, to learn, and to see every mistake as a learning curve which helps you grow as a person.

We still have a lot left to learn, and I’m really looking forward to see what lessons this year (2012) will bring.

What have you learnt from travel blogging in the last year?

The post 2 Years of Travel Blogging – 5 Things We've Learnt. appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

A few weeks ago we talked about settling down somewhere for a while, but we couldn’t quite decide where.

Well, it is now official: We will be moving to the winter wonderland of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany – tomorrow!

As much as we love Asia, sun and warm weather – this just feels so right, and we figured that following our gut would be the best thing to do.

We initially settled for Zell Am See in Austria but missed our chance on the apartment we wanted, so Garmisch-Partenkirchen it is.

While Asia would have been cheaper if you stayed in the same place, we knew that we wouldn’t have been able to stay away from traveling all the time while we were there.

Which sort of takes away the point from what we wanted – staying in one place, focusing on our new business projects and taking them to the next level, while at the same time having fun skiing.

We made a few rough calculations on predicted costs to live in Europe vs South East Asia and found some interesting data.

After comparing flights, food costs, accommodation and extras, it would cost about the same traveling around and living in South East Asia on a budget as it would staying in a ski resort in Europe including all ski gear and ski passes for 3 months.

This would make some people think ”Wow, you can travel to all of these places in Asia for the same price?”, but for some reason we didn’t feel all that excited about that.

And in the end, the calculations and positive vs negative-lists are really just guidelines, it all comes down to what you want to do.

So after a month traveling around different parts of Germany, we are now ready to move in and spend some time in this little Bavarian resort right on the border of Austria…

Have you been to Bavaria? What did you think?

The post This Will Be Our New Home! appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.

Simply put, we feel that it’s time for a change.

Our lives, As We Travel.com, and our way of traveling – will be taking a new turn during the next 6 months.

back in 2009 – our first time in Budapest.

We’ve been traveling pretty much full-time for the last 2 years, to over 45 countries, and are starting to long for a place to ”call home”.

Not having anywhere to go back to, a base or a home is not what we ultimately want for ourselves, living like a nomad is fun for a while, but it also has limited us in so many ways.

The things we enjoy doing like skiing, surfing and mountain biking can’t really be done the same way when you’re always traveling – believe us, we tried.

So our plan is to base ourselves somewhere and rent an apartment for at least 6 months, and go on shorter (2 week) trips every second month.

The question is… where should we be based?

Where would we be willing to make a commitment to live for a longer period of time?

We have long been dreaming about the ”perfect place to live” –  a place where we could settle down but still travel when ever we wanted.

Everywhere we travel we always ask ourselves: “could we imagine settling down in this city?” – sadly most of the time, the answer has been no.

There are so many amazing cities out there around the world, which offer so much, but it is one thing to love visiting a country and travel there, another to make a commitment to actually live there…

We’ve been looking around websites for places to live on a long term basis, and have found many great options, but still haven’t decided yet which place is the best.

We only really have two criteria for a long term place:

• Options for either skiing, surfing or mountain biking (or all three!)

• Fairly close to an airport (i.e within 1-2 hours reach)

Here are 3 places that are at the top of our list at the moment:

• Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

• Zell Am See, Austria

• Chiang Mai, Thailand

Oh it is hard to decide! :p

What do you think? Where would be your ultimate place to live be?

The post Searching For Home – Where Is It? appeared first on Travel Videos & Travel Blog - As We Travel Blog.