I am always thinking about my next holiday and as such I have started reading a lot of travel blogs but they are all written by people who are either back packers with a “passion for travel” and have found ways to leave their homes to live a life of eternal exploration or they are written by people with money. Either way they are interesting reads but I have learnt that each traveller is different and actually I have yet to find a blog written by someone like me. Someone who has found their true passions somewhere else and travelling is a secondary passion. Someone who wants to do some real exploration around the world but still return to my ‘normal’ routine and save up for the next adventure.

My job is my passion and I wouldn’t change it. After escaping the suffocating bureaucracy of the British education system and relocating to Japan, I have realised that I am one of the few who have truly found my passion in teaching. There are never two work days the same and I laugh everyday. I feel useful, valued and I genuinely feel like I am making a difference, one grade 4 child at a time. I wouldn’t change it and I feel lucky but just because it is my primary passion does not mean it has to be life consuming and that is why my secondary passion is travel. As a nice coincidence, living in Japan is allowing me to do that.

However as much as I like to travel, my profile statement on my instagram page once attested that, “I am a traveller too afraid to really travel.” I am the SAFE traveller; the one desperate to experience other countries and cultures on an intimate level but is so restricted by my fear and distrust that I find myself missing out. I have stuck to travelling countries, I deem to be safe and come to think about it, speak English too (with the obvious exception of Japan). I am the traveller who sticks to well known and in some cases over priced hotels that give you the glistening pristine images of the country you’re in, hiding the real and sometimes less glamorous parts in the shadows. But it is in those shadows that genuine connections are made and the reality of some cultures are seen and it is those experiences that I want to invest in. Up until now I feel like my travelling experiences have been a form of window shopping. I see the parts I want to see through the safety of the glass, telling others of what I have seen but with little to really show for it. My aim for 2018 is to break that trend. I want to shatter the glass or even better enter the shop and connect with the people within. But honestly I am not sure how to do this and I can’t seem to find a blog that helps unless I want to give up my primary passion for a life of backpacking or I win the lottery.

With some key points taken from the odd blog we are going to attempt to break this barrier by organising a mini adventure around Asia for this upcoming summer break. We are venturing into countries that are way out of my comfort zone but have been on my bucket list for years. Covering Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia and Vietnam in a mix of local run hotels and home stays, I will be forced to face my fears but in doing so will push my limits and build my confidence to explore more of the unknown in the future.

That’s the dream anyway!

In the mean time I am enjoying more sightseeing in Japan and I have been trying to improve my photography by following the amazing work of others on instagram. I am quite proud of the improvements I have made so far but I know I have still a way to go. For now I am going to leave this blog with some of my favourites up to now. Look out for my next entry to see whether I survived our Asian adventure with my confidence still intact.

Bye for now!

SP x