5 Insane Sacrifices We Made To Explore The World

blushblushtomato
Sep 9, 2018 · 6 min read

This is not another typical article of quitting your job and sell your house to travel full time. This is about our personal choices to live the way we want it. It is never easy, and we know it will never be, working late into the night and be ready again the next morning. In spite of that, it did not stop us from taking our every single trip seriously.

Read more here.


1. Sleep

The most difficult sacrifice among all is to trade in our sleep. We always wake up at 3–4am during our trip because we are so always frustrated with the crowd. Aside from people photobombing everywhere and also queueing up to take photos, we could not enjoy the real side of the place. Hence for now, even when we are out to explore Singapore during weekends, we would usually wake up at 5am and leave our house at 6am to catch the first bus (We don’t even wake up so early for our work!).

Our golden rule: Go early, leave early. I know it sounds silly to wake up so early on a vacation/weekend just to take photos, but taking into considerations about the traveling time to destinations and the human swarms, we think that it is a wise choice to sacrifice our sleep in exchange with having the entire attractions to ourselves. I mean, you can always sleep after that, right?

Perks of getting there early in the morning

  • Enjoy the aunthenticity of the place ( if lucky, catch the sunrise!)
  • Shoot beautiful cheesy couple photos with nobody judging you
  • Sunlight is at its prime
  • You get the best travel photos!

Arashimaya Bamboo Forest, Kyoto at 6:30 in the morning.

https://www.blushblushtomato.com/blog/the-best-of-kansai-kyoto-nara


2. Family And Friends

This can be really tough to take. Working abroad from home, it is really hard to sacrifice milestones and meaningful celebrations with your loved ones. We were glad we do not suffer from homesickness anymroe as we had get used to that many years ago when we left our hometown to work in Singapore.

With limited holidays every year, we face tough decisions of whether to go home or travel. I have missed celebrating Chinese New Year for the past 4 years due to the sky-high ticket price, we did rather save up for our upcoming trips. We still visit our families every now and then, and we were glad that we have understanding and open-minded family that always support our decisions.

Another hardest thing to let go is to leave our furkid to home boarding each time when we travel. We are constantly worried if he is eating and sleeping well because he is a timid boy. Worrying never ends when we go abroad!

Not everyone is obliged to accept and agree on your way of living. Unlike other bloggers, we dont get to enjoy the perks of working freelancing because we are still tied to our job commitments. We have swayed further from some of our friends as most of our weekends we would be out for explore and sometimes we would skip gatherings to save up from all the expensive restaurants and shoppings outside.


3. Money

I remembered those days while I still had to pay for school fees, I impulsively bought an airticket flying to Europe despite knowing that I would be left with only a few hundred dollar in account. It was one of the craziest decision I had ever made but to me, it definitely worth so much more than a savings account filled with millions dollars.

Many people find it expensive to travel. We feel it too. From flight tickets, hotels, transport to outfits, we have came a long way to find ways to save up. Every month when our salaries come in we would first set aside an amount of money as emergency funds, and the rest goes to travel funds and daily livings. Afterall we still want to be responsible adults and comply to our family duties. We are glad we are able to balance both.

Despite it is important to adhere your duty as an adult, always keep in mind that you only live once. Being clear of how valuable travelling can be to you and the amount of happiness you can attain from it can help you to decide whether is the money spent on travelling worth it.

Sunrise at Upper Seletar Reservoir @ Singapore

https://www.blushblushtomato.com/blog/city-dog-sunrise-adventures


4. Efforts & Comfort

It requires an enormous effort and persistence to spend almost every weekends getting up early and hopping on a long bus journey. All for the sake of getting a few good shots and an interesting content to write for the week. Most of the time we started to plan during mid-week on the location and all the little things needed to produce for the blogpost. Although it is tiring to be constantly brainstorming on ideas, we are always thrilled to do that because it is like our little motivation to get through the week.

And a little bit more efforts for girls: Outfit planning. As girls we would always want to look good in photos, especially when we travel to far places, so extra efforts go to outfit planning. An appropriate outfit can really enhance the vibes of the photos. I usually start planning my outfits right after I booked my flight tickets as sometimes overseas shipping can take up to months! It is extra work and all girls who do this should be clapped for!

Besides, we have learnt so much in getting out of our comfort zones and handling challenges.Missing our bus in Paris, sleeping in horrible airbnb, being scammed in Rome. All these have taught us that there are so much more exists outside our comfort zone, and comfort does not come easy.

Our perspectives changed so much after we started this whole travel thing. We started paying attention to a lot of things which we did not think of as important last time. We notice our surroundings everywhere we go, we pay attention others’ culture, appreciating strangers’ kind gestures…. It is as if our whole new sense being opened up and ready to discover whatever things that come to us.

62 Koon Seng Rd @ Singapore


5. Time

Talking about time, we have nothing to lose at all because way before we started on creating, we spent our time mostly on social media/dramas/games. For now, we are constanltly being very aware of how we use our tim because every single seconds make a difference. We spend most of our days hustling through our day job and at night we are either working on blog posts or planning our next trip. Most of our days are very fulfilling.

I recalled when we were building this blog space from scratch without using any readily available website builders, we spent the entire month working after every single details, with so little sleep and time for ourselves. Photo editing and writing a blog post can just easily take up the whole day.

Nothing glamorous comes easy, but we believe that the rewards always outweight the sacrifices!

Lake Lucerne @ Switzerland

https://www.blushblushtomato.com/blog/the-heart-of-switzerland-lucernee

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