{"id":1045,"date":"2016-01-11T10:22:26","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T10:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noplacetobe.com\/featured\/?p=1045"},"modified":"2016-01-11T10:34:36","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T10:34:36","slug":"organised-travel-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noplacetobe.com\/featured\/organised-travel-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Freestyle Backpacking? It Doesn&#8217;t Always Work&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Back in the early days, I\u2019m talking 2009 so not that long ago at all really, we dreamed of being travel extraordinaire&#8217;s. Loading small backpacks with only the most essential of items and disappearing into the middle of nowhere with guide books in hand.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While that have might not have turned out to be completely the case when we finally hit the road a year later, there have been periods where we\u2019ve had no plans and just gone with the flow. Often it\u2019s resulted in some incredible experiences but on more than one occasion it\u2019s cost us <strong>a lot<\/strong> of time and money.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #7ad39d;\">China<\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Beijing was the very first stop on our original backpacking trip. We took a train from the airport into the centre of the city and emerged from the underground to a whole different world. As is still a trait of ours, we\u2019d rushed to scribble down the directions to the hostel and they barely made any sense at all. It took us nearly an hour to find our beds and set the tone for a difficult (and equally amazing) six weeks in China.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P9120133.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1047\" src=\"http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P9120133.jpg\" alt=\"Squatting in China\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P9120133.jpg 720w, http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P9120133-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #999999;\"><em>Blending in (China Style)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Our next big mistake involved transport, we hoped to be able to simply jump on a train out of Beijing to our next stop, Xian and Terracotta Army, whenever we felt like it. Wrong. We arrived enthusiastically at the train station to be told the next seats available where over a week away. We couldn\u2019t wait that long, it would put our whole trip in China behind and mean we\u2019d miss even more in the long run, years later and we still haven\u2019t seen the Terracotta Army, one of the main attractions in China we were looking forward to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We eventually left Beijing on route to Hangzhou, a place we enjoyed a lot, unfortunately due to our lack of forward planning we had to purchase some of the most expensive seats on the train to get there. While the journey was great and included one of the best nights sleep of our trip, it put a huge dent in our budget for the next few weeks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Thankfully, as our time in China went on we became much more efficient at forward planning and got the hang of planning our journeys in advance to make the most of our time and money<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, one thing that didn\u2019t improve was our experience with food. Before arriving in China we were excited to experiment with the food however, after a couple of weeks, we&#8217;d had enough. Of course, we were finding the odd street food gem or perfect hot pot but on the whole, we were not enjoying the food as we\u2019d expected. Most meals were a struggle and finding food became more of a chore than enjoyable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P8270168.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1046\" src=\"http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P8270168.jpg\" alt=\"First Meal In China\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P8270168.jpg 720w, http:\/\/noplacetobe.com\/featured\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/P8270168-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span style=\"color: #999999;\">First meal in China.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While it\u2019s easy to look back on these hiccups now and write them off as not a big deal, there is still a part of us that doesn\u2019t feel like we made the most of our time in China. Six weeks is a long time and we definitely could have done more with the right guidance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Since our visit, we\u2019ve had friends visit China and they chose to do it very differently, as part of a tour group. Their story is vastly different to ours, they had all the transport arranged for them, the best and most interesting food laid out for them to try and the choice of various activities that best suited them. A particular highlight being camping on the great wall of China.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While it wouldn\u2019t usually be our thing, some destinations do warrant a bit more help than you might usually accept. Tanzania is another where despite having the most amazing time we still feel like with a little help we would have been able to achieve much more with our time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Travel companies like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wexas.com\/holidays\" target=\"&quot;\">Wexas<\/a> offer organised trips to both China and Tanzania and it\u2019s something we wished we looked into more in the past. Now we\u2019re living and working in Bucharest we don\u2019t imagine ourselves jumping on trains with Backpacks anytime soon but that doesn\u2019t change our desire to see the world. With more limited time I\u2019d happily consider letting someone else do the hard work for me, particularly to a dream destination where I wouldn\u2019t want to miss anything.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I quite fancy Mozambique next\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in the early days, I\u2019m talking 2009 so not that long ago at all really, we dreamed of being travel extraordinaire&#8217;s. Loading small backpacks with only the most essential of items and disappearing into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Freestyle Backpacking? It Doesn&#039;t Always Work...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Back in the early days, I\u2019m talking 2009 so not that long ago at all really, we dreamed of being travel extraordinaire&#039;s. 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