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Recently I shared with someone the stresses resulting from my reduced income. Our household finances took a direct hit when I was retrenched in December 2008. Two years and three months later, they have not yet recovered. Because we live in a relatively small rural community, I have only been able to get work that pays less, both in hourly rate and total hours. The person I shared this with was quite surprised. That surprised me.
They knew we had taken on a sizeable mortgage when we bought and built on an acreage. They knew I had been retrenched and had not gained an equivalent role. They knew the costs of living were higher here than in the city. How could they not grasp the fact of our financial realities?
Apparently my online posts, stories and photos, led them to believe we were better off than we actually are. Funny isn't it. How appearances can be deceiving. Seeing someone else's life through a few snapshots in time, a photo, a comment, a snippet of a story, tends to skew reality.
I do try to be upbeat and positive here, despite all the crappy stuff that's happened to me in the past few years. Not sure why really. Guess I still try and believe that in many ways we create our own reality, and if I can focus on the positive, then that is what my reality will become.
Anyhow, this post is suddenly becoming all deep and meaningful, while all I really meant to share was a couple of travel tips! There's a couple of reasons we were able to spend a month travelling in Nth America and Canada,
even though my income levels have been drastically reduced.
When travelling, the two largest expenses are usually airfares and accommodation. When you live in Australia, to get anywhere in the world is expensive, simply because of the distance. So for us, the first big help, and the only reason we were able to make the trip, was that our airfares were covered by someone else. So that's my first travel tip: try and get someone else to pay the airfare ;-)
My second travel tip is all about accommodation. For the first part of our trip, when we travelled with another couple, we used
Hotwire to book accommodation. Obviously, we used the US/Canada site, but the UK has Hotwire too. Anyhow, we averaged about $80 per night for 4 adults. That's $20pp per night! These were not backpacker lodges. They were nice hotels, some quite luxurious, like the
Silversmith Boutique Hotel in Chicago, where we got upgraded to a suite. Most of them
included buffet breakfasts, which were hearty enough to keep us fueled for half the day. Another bonus for the budget traveller!
The second part of the trip, which was just the two of us, our accommodation was free. I used
this site (set up by an Aussie - of course!) to connect with people willing to host others in their home as a gesture of international goodwill and friendship. It was a great way to get an insiders view of a place, living with a local. But it is a different way to travel. If you like to rush around and tick ten-thousand-things-to-see off your list in one day, that might not happen when staying with hospitality hosts. But you actually get to connect with local people. You're not learning about a country through a guidebook or well-beaten tourist traps, but by living with a local, eating with them, hearing their stories, learning about their country's history, politics, sport, food. We found our hosts to be very friendly and helpful (one even picked us up at the airport!)
Circumstances varied in each home, with what they were willing to offer in time, space, etc. But we offered tokens of our appreciation in various ways. At one home we went shopping at a local market and prepared an evening meal for them. In another we took them out to a restaurant for dinner. I had also come prepared, bringing hostess gifts such as my handcrafted prayer/breathing beads above. (yeah, I know you were wondering what the heck those beads had to do with anything)
So there you have it. A few travel tips. In summary: Treat the world as a global village and re-learn the art of bartering with beads :-)
