Have you ever woken up and thought ‘what the hell am I doing with my life? Is this really it?’ I don’t know about you, but it’s bloody scary thinking about sitting behind a desk and working 9am-5pm, 5 days a week for the rest of my life.
I always had university drilled into my head ever since I was a kid. Ultimately it was my choice, I’m so glad that I chose to do it and I thank my parents for their guidance.
Dylan chose to take on not only an electrical apprenticeship but also an electrical engineering diploma, just so he could work overseas.
Both of us learned so much, we’re glad that we now have an education under our belt. We used our local coffee shop and Float Tank Central Coast as an outlet to relax, unwind and de-stress during this hectic time in our lives.
“Now university is over and everyone is asking/questioning what you’re doing with your life”
But now university is over and everyone’s asking/questioning what you’re doing with your life….”Oh so you just finished uni, have you got full-time work yet? … You’re getting married, umm how old are you both?…. You and Dylan have both finished your studies, I bet you guys will own your own house pretty soon… You’re getting married, it’s probably not long till you two have a little one of your own”.
“THIS FREAKS US OUT”
This FREAKS US OUT, yes we’re 22 and 23 years old (at the time), have an education and are already married. But I didn’t work my ass off at uni to turn around and be a stay at home mum and Dyl feels the same. We dream of having a house and kids one day, but not any time soon. We get that people may question why we got married so young, but after spending 24/7, 365 days together travelling Central America, America and Canada before ending back up in Australia, I think we’d realize by now if we weren’t right for each other.
It tests your relationship, puts you in extremely stressful and unpredictable circumstances and if you can come out the other end still more in love than ever, why wait? Yes, we want to have careers. But also want to experience life and see the world while we’re young. There’s nothing tying us down or holding us back, so why not do it now? We want a life that embraces impermanence and allows a life of travel!
“We have nothing tying us down or holding us back”
To be honest it was a very hard decision to make. I was offered literally my dream job at an awesome company, with beautiful people straight out of uni (which is really rare not to mention an amazing opportunity). Dylan was offered a promotion to expand the electrical company he was working for and have a share in the business.
It was hard to walk away from this, but we knew that if we didn’t do it now, we may never be able to do it again. Some people would say we are crazy, others would understand our perspective. It depends on what you want in life, everyone has different dreams and aspirations, ours is to travel the world. We’re not normal and I’m glad we’re not.
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for- In order to get to the job that you need, to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can go to work and try to make the money for the house your hardly in.
We don’t get it. This may be enough for some, but it isn’t for us. As Mark Twain said:
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.”
That’s exactly what we’re doing…
We’ve always dreamed of just taking off overseas and not returning until we’ve spent every cent, maxed out our credit cards and exhausted every avenue possible. Having an abroad destination wedding was always our dream! But having a lavish, expensive two-week honeymoon simply is not us. As I said, we’re not normal… that’s why we decided to give away everything that didn’t fit into our backpacks, quit our jobs and see the world with no plans, no time limit and next to no money.
After sitting on the beach at home, reading our travel journal from our last trip. We regretted not blogging and sharing our experiences with others. This sparked the vision that started the honeymoon backpackers and inspired us to start a travel blog. People always asked us how we were able to travel for a whole year…”How much money did you spend?” Most people couldn’t fathom that we only spent $10,000 AUD each in 1 year.
We could recognize that there is a BIG difference between a holiday and backpacking. Whilst travelling there are so many ways you can further your money and do it for cheap, but you just need to know how. We had the realization that we did kinda know how, so why not share our knowledge with others.
“Why not share our travel knowledge with others”
No mommy and daddy are not paying for this trip, we worked hard, made plenty of sacrifices and bloody saved our butts off. I studied full time and had to travel 5 hours a day to get to and from university 3 days a week. All this whilst working casually and doing an unpaid internship. Dylan worked full time and studied 2 nights a week after his 12 hour work day, we also lived in our own (rented) house… We worked hard to save for our travels, our wedding and day to day living expenses.
That’s why we started this blog, to show aspiring travellers and honeymooners like yourself that you can see the world without it costing an arm and a leg. If you have the passion, desire and drive to do something, then anything’s possible. It depends on the choices you make and how much you really want it.
We made it on our honeymoon, an endless honeymoon and we want to take you with us on our journey to all 7 continents over the world. We are giving back on our travels wherever possible, spreading and growing the FTW revolution creating awareness for mental health and suicide prevention. Read our honeymoon chronicles and follow our honeymoon travel guides, while we gallivant around the world on our endless honeymoon
“You don’t need a bunch of money to see the world, you just need to know how!”
It’s Mon and Dyl aka the Honeymoon Backpackers! We’ve witnessed the northern lights in Canada, surfed with dolphins in Australia, swam with whale sharks in the Philippines, bathed with elephants in Thailand, sand boarded down a volcano in Nicaragua, bungee jumped 147m in Costa Rica, conquered the world’s highest tandem skydive in America, scuba-dived with turtles in The Caribbean, snowboarded Canada’s Rocky Mountains, frolicked among the bio-luminescent plankton in Cambodia, swam in Mexican Cenotes and found the Moken Sea Gypsies in Myanmar!
