5 Tips to keeping a travel journal.

5 Tips to keeping a travel journal

Tip One

Book or Blog?

Decide before your trip weather you want to write your travels in a book or on a blog. If you decided to join us in the 21st century then make sure you have enough time to create a blog. I know that there is something romantic about a pen and paper and if that's the way you want to go then run out and get yourself a heavy duty notebook. I am a book person. (Even though your reading this blog post haha) There is something wrong with my brain where i will not for the life of me remember anything unless its written down on paper with a pen. I don't know what it is, its a burden but its also a blessing. I have a good stack of notebooks filled with stories and photos which i love to look through. Though if you do choose to go online make sure you remember passwords and usernames and don't loose your laptop. Remember that a blog is also public so if you want to keep your stories a little bit private make sure you set it up that way. (I'm sure there is a button or setting which will help with that.) Its so easy these days to find an internet cafe and sit down and blog so hats off to you if you can do all that in a foreign country. I know i wouldn't be able to.

Tip Two

Don't pressure yourself. 

Keeping a travel journal can be a challenge at times and for me when i tell myself to write every single day it becomes a chore and its no longer fun like it should be. Remember that traveling can be spontaneous and crazy and may often land us with limited time or space to sit down and focus on a journal entry every single day. Expecting this from yourself might just became disappointing and annoying to think about so remember don't pressure yourself, you don't have to write in it every day.

Tip Three

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Unless you plan on writing a novel about our day and describe everything you did in tiny detail like : Today i woke up and walked down the street and got coffee and then went out to the city blah blah blah... Yawn! Summarize what you want to say by recapping your day. Perhaps choose the best part of the day or record down every time you laughed or whenever something exiting happened. Also if you're like me and sometimes get writers block, no matter how hard you try to form a sentence or try and explain in words your day, don't stress if your pages end up blank. Words don't always have to tell a story. Save your bus tickets, movie stamps, photos, napkins anything and stick them to the page for those days when the words wont come out let the photos do the work. After all a picture speaks thousand words. 

Tip Four

Use travel time to write. 

In south america particularity we were always on the move. always someone to meet, something to see or somewhere to be. If we weren't physically moving we were either eating or sleeping. So i cant stress enough the difficulty of finding time to sit down and write in a journal or blog. Half the time whenever we got 5 mins we would rest our brains and our feet and often left the journaling to a couple days later if not giving up all together (like me). Throughout our trip we had 4 plane rides and about a gazillion bus trips through the country side which probably totaled a traveling time of  50 hours. That's 50 hours of writing or gluing or doodling or whatever it is you do in your travel journal. 

Tip Five

GET LOST!

The most important part about any traveling experience is getting lost. I got lost countless times in the busy city of Rio and let me tell you they make the best stories. But most importantly get lost in your writing. Get lost in the world your in right then in that very moment and be present. if you rush through things your going to regret it and it will one day all out of your head so quick, get it down on paper. 

Hope this helped you out at all. Don't forget to share it with your friends on Pintrest and Google Plus :)

Kelsey Marcella

4 Steps to surviving the traffic of Bali, Indonesia

4 Tips to surviving the roads of Bali

Usually the go in Bail is that you have a driver, they are reasonably priced and are about every 5 meters so you wont ever find yourself stranded. If you ask your hotel for one they will just go down to the street corner and hail one into the hotel for you. The drivers are pretty willing to take you anywhere as our driver (bless him) once took us from Kuta to Lovina, which is basically from the south of the island to the north shore. It only took us 6 hours but can you imagine asking a taxi driver to drive from Brisbane to Rockhampton. Yeah, i don't think so. (These steps don't really apply to those of you who plan to biking or riding on a scooter)

Step 1

Fasten your seat belt its going to be a bumpy ride. 

The roads of Bali are basically a dirt path that someone one day came and poured bitumen on it from a rusty old bucket they had lying around. Its patchy and bumpy and though it may have possibly once resembled a smooth road it no longer holds the reputation as the 1.76 million cars and scooters have driven a path into the road that now consist of pot holes and wasted paint. I'm pretty sure there whole road system wasn't really thought through clearly enough as its basically just a big mass of chaos and defys every law of physics. Somehow it all just works.

Step 2: 

Blast the music. 

Weather its an iPod or just the radio make sure that shit is loud. Bali is a natural loud place with people yelling, cars honking there horns every 5 seconds and just the general festivities that involve loud music, singing and occasionally dancing on the sides of the roads. (Don't be alarmed if your driving along and then suddenly there is a parade dancing through the streets.) Like a frightened puppy you want to shelter yourselves from the strange noises until you are used to the chaos.

Step 3: 

Close your eyes. 

(Unless your are the driver then please , God, don't close your eyes.)

You know that saying 'ignorance is bliss'? This differently apply to any driving done in Bali. Trust me when i say its better not to know who or what is running across the road in front of the car, it will just freak out out by seeing the car skim people and the heart sinking feeling of running something over and no matter how many times my sister yells 'Little dog' the driver wont slow even a bit. Cows walk on the side of the road close enough to pat - if you were willing to risk your arm out the window - and i guess we will never know why the chicken crossed the road because the dense traffic either keeps them to one side of the road or takes them down the highway to hell, or perhaps the stairway to heaven. Either way they never fully cross.

Step 4: 

Go to your happy place.

 Whilst your eyes are closed and you are basking in the loudest music just imagine yourself in your happy place. Something that worked for me was imagining me in my destination. For example if we were driving from the hotel to the beach i would just imagine myself laying on the beach under the sun, or if we were on our way from the beach to the hotel i would just imagine all the things i would do when i got back to the hotel room. Like maybe take an hour long bath to distress after the psycho drive from the beach to the hotel room.

Top Tip: 

Just enjoy it.

The craziness is apart of the culture and its scary but that's the best type of fear. The kind that has you on edge with excitement. Its an awesome experience and if you can laugh your way through the fear you will be fine.

Kelsey Marcella

Click here to watch the Bali vlog: Day One

(If your interested in having a driver for the entirety of the trip i highly recommend our friend and driver Abong. Comment for details)