I came to travel blogging by accident. When I went to work in Asia, so many people asked me to email them with updates and photographs that I could see myself spending hours every week keeping everyone up to date with my exploits. This was when the idea of starting a blog seemed very appealing – it would involve much less work for me, I thought.
As I already had a website, I got myself a wordpress account (wordpress.org and not wordpress.com … there is a difference, which I can’t remember now, but at the time it was very important), chose a colour theme, layout etc and off I went, blogging away into the ether. After a while, friends started messaging to tell me how much they were enjoying reading about my experiences. I was in Cambodia at the time, and they loved both my tales of expat life and the stories about my travels around the country. This was all very gratifying, and it motivated me to keep going. So I’ve kept going throughout my years of expat life in Cambodia, Malaysia and Japan and now that I’m back in the UK, I blog about trips abroad, or occasionally in the UK.
As a consequence, I feel extremely well qualified to give you the definitive reasons to be a travel blogger:
- Blogging makes you a more curious traveller. You constantly question what is going on, and why things are happening – and consequently …
- … Blogging gives you a way in to the culture of your destination. If you ask questions and tell people you’re a travel blogger they usually love to enlighten you – and to ask whether they’ll feature in the blog!
- Being a travel blogger sets you apart from the common herd of tourists. If you let your fellow travellers know that you write a travel blog, they watch respectfully whenever you get out your notebook and start scribbling – and they always want to know when the next post will be published.
- Blogging gives you the perfect push to get out of your comfort zone and make the most of your trip. Try asking yourself – am I going to terrify myself by doing the tall trees experience, or am I going to sit by the harbour, have a coffee and watch the boats? You’ll soon come to the conclusion that the tall trees will make a much better blogpost, and so you force yourself to go and be terrified, but then feel very proud of yourself afterwards. This was what happened to me on my last trip, when I was in Vancouver, and I have some great memories of the tall trees – as well as an exciting blogpost.
- Travel blogging lets everyone know where you are and what you’re up to – and it’s way subtler than travel bragging once you get home again.
- Looking back at your blogposts over the years is just like having a wonderful travel diary of your trips. You can enjoy flicking back through the posts and looking at the photos, or you can remind yourself of a particular episode, person or place by scrolling back to the relevant post.
- You get to share some very funny stories with a wide circle of people – such as the time I mistook a smoked almond for a cockroach in Borneo, or the day I walked past a large log at Lake Tahoe which turned out to be a black bear, or the woman I met in Italy who was taking her parrot on holiday in a specially adapted backpack. They are all hugely entertaining tales, and if you’re writing them down, instead of telling them, you have the advantage of being able to add photos.
I knew I was a true blogger when I saw the bear and thought, shall I run for my life, or do I have time to take a photo? Although, I have to admit that the photo is a little blurry and indistinct … I’m obviously not totally willing to risk my life in pursuit of a good story.
- Writing a blog post is an excellent excuse for some really good meals. When you’re travelling, if you want to do the culture justice, you really need to dive in with knife and fork at the ready. On my last trip to Malaysia I went to a wonderful new restaurant serving traditional Peranakan dishes, because a local friend thought I’d be interested in trying it as I’m a blogger. Equally, on a trip to California last Christmas I tried a $300 bottle of wine, which I then did my best to describe in a blog, although I’m far from being a wine expert. It’s not being an expert that matters, I’ve discovered, it’s being open minded and willing to try everything.
In fact, now that I come to think about it, that last sentence pretty much sums it all up. If you’re open-minded, if you give things a go and then write about them in a non-expert way, other people are interested and can relate to you and your stories.
To read any of the blogposts mentioned here, please visit my website:
https://www.channellingmrtoad.co.uk