Traveling….When Hobby Turns into Passion

Changing paradigm

Workaholic has become an inseparable character from my personality all this time. In the beginning, “home-office-home” was activity formula which I always did every day. The formula was very effective to bring me into confort zone with ownership of house, car and some investment assets.

Increasingly inevitable, finally boredom struck. For several years, I felt that something was lacking in my achievement. Certainly not about money, but I was never able to ignite my eternal fire in passion bottom.

Then a new thing arrived …

Singapore became the first igniter of passion fire in my life. Starting from a trip was towards there with 18 colleagues six years ago, I finally brought home an impression. It wasn’t an impression about modernity of Singapore, but an impression about feshness of mind and changes in perspective about income allocation. It is actually that investment is not always about goods, but an experience investment must get an equally important in portion.

Regular Trip

The paradigm shift made me have a new behavior amid busy activities in capital city. I began to allocate travel budget as a type of investment. Every 10-15% of income, I use to travel both domestically and abroad.

At every beginning of year, I always set a traveling agenda in one calendar year. The density of work makes me have to be smart in managing leave, using national holidays, and deciding a right time to travel.

In conclusion, traveling experiences which I have done for six years makes me have three traveling categories with a very tight schedule, namely:

1. Long traveling in 14-16 days duration on year-end holidays.
2. Short traveling in 3-4 days duration on long weekend holidays.
3. Fast traveling in 1-2 days duration on extend vacation.
4. Bonus traveling. This is a bonus if my job reaches a certain achievement.

The tight traveling schedule also has a big role in changing my basic character to be more extrovert and easy going. I am aware that whether there are or aren’t travelmate in journeys, I must continue to carry out my every travel plan. Therefore, I need two characters above to always be consistent in carrying out each of my plans.

Managing Trip

What will you do as an employee when your work time is as tight as your travel plans?

In early phase of my journey with a mediocre income, for budget saving, I took an initiative to arrange all my own travel plans. Limited time requires me to be proficient in digital mastery.

How do I do it?

Like this, guys….

If buses, trains and ferries are transportation types with ticket fares which tend to be stable, then planes are transportation types with abundant promo tickets. No doubt, I am a cyber surfer who is persistent in hunting for cheap tickets. And of course, I memorized all Low Cost Carrier (LCC) airlines throughout Asia. To ensure the best ticket prices, I always prepare tickets on a year before departure date. Visiting many LCC airline website and monitoring every promo on several domestic and foreign Online Travel Agents (OTA) became my habit on every weekends. It only needs a tool so I can quickly execute every available cheap ticket opportunity. The tool is a credit card. No need to worry about having a credit card as long as you are obedient in managing your income. Through this ticket search process, I finally had tasted 24 airlines throughout my travels.

Then what about lodging?

Now I have reached a certain level in membership of the world’s largest travel e-commerce. At this level, I always get the best deals when looking for lodging by online. Besides being cheap, I also always pay attention about flexibility in order canceling process on a few days before D-day, this is important to open opportunities to get the best hotel until D-day of arrival. For information that 80% of my choice are dormitories. Besides in cheap price, dormitory gave me opportunities to expand my networking among fellow tourists from various regions in Indonesia and even the world.

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It’s time for me to talks about itinerary. Beside in purchasing ticket and hotel, budget saving can be did by making itinerary independently. If you are a fresh graduate and entering early days of work, persistence in making an itinerary can save your budget when you are a travel addict. I independently always set agenda which I will do when traveling, costing in each agenda and how to reach destination where the agenda will be run. To be able to compile a good itinerary, of course I often browse about destination where I want to go. I will usually read other tourist’s travel stories or look for info in the official travel destination website or in related tourism institutions (both government or private).

But along with tourism development, there are several tourist destinations where would be even more cheaper if it is visited through “open trip” tourism type. This tourism type is essentially visiting tourist attractions together in a group so it can reduce cost rather than it’s did alone. I was experienced many times in using “open trip” services to visit several destinations where I targeted.

Adventure Atmosphere

Preparation period and waiting period for each of travel agendas which I made will continuously create an adventure atmosphere in my life. And it was really fun and has a positive effect. I became a figure who is diligent in saving money for my travel needs. I am also a person who is always eager to work to guarantee my income.

Of course a lot of scorn when I started travel program. Many people consider that my trips wasted money because they think that refreshing doesn’t need to travel far and spend a lot of money.

Indeed for them who don’t understand how to arrange a trip, traveling is something expensive. But not with me, a consistency of running a traveling program during past 6 years has led me to set foot in 20 countries in Asia and 10 provinces in Indonesia.

After hearing my story, are you interested in traveling?

Hobby Turns into Passion

Success in visiting tourist destinations and impression which I gained during journey made me always excited in making trips on the following year. This routine seems to be addictive to me. There is a thing which feels lack when I didn’t travel within three months.

Then this traveling addiction has another impact. This impact became a very serious thing for me, because later on, I became a someone who was “ambitious” in traveling. Yeah right, I’m already in level which I’m habitual to setting total target of tourist destinations where I will visit it in a certain period of time.

Success in achieving numbers of personal target which I set each year finally creates passion. And finally I have decided traveling as a passion in my life.

Passion Creates Caring

There was a time when I was deadlocked at a tourist spot. This deadlock happened because of lacking informations which I got through browsing in internet. The example of a deadlock which I meant was like when I didn’t have enough information about what transportation which I should use towards Ipoh downtown from Amanjaya terminal in Malaysia.

Then moment like that which made me inisiatively creates travel stories to be shared with other fellow tourists. Finally I decided to make a blog which contains my travel experiences. I hope through this blog, I can complement some missing information in traveling world so other tourists will be helped about pre-travel information when traveling to a destination where I’ve ever visited.

Blogging will be my next routine activity to documenting travel experiences and sharing interesting stories for other young people who have same passion as me.

Finally, be a young person who is rich in experience and brave to explore!

Come on traveling, friends!