Living and Working Abroad: The yTravel Blog Style of Traveling

Caz & Craig Makepeace with their daughter, Kalyra

Caz Makepeace first started traveling in 1997. She married Craig in 2002 and they have been travelling and living around the world ever since. Their 3-year-old daughter, Kalyra, now joins them on their adventures around the world. They love to share their stories and tips at ytravel blog and you can join their community at their interactive fanpage.

1. How would you define your travel `style'?

Our travel style has always been to work in other countries and use that as a base to explore the surrounding areas. We love slow travel and are not about racing through places just to rack up our bragging list of countries visited. We want to experience life in each country and get to know the people who live there. We can’t think of any better way to do this then to work in other countries. We absolutely love living as foreigners.

At Victoria Falls

When we are traveling we are backpacking on a budget, but not so strict that we can’t have any memorable experiences. We believe life is all about the memories and we travel in order to create many stories to tell. Sometimes this might mean spending the equivalent of twenty budget days in Africa to spend an hour with the gorillas in the jungle.

We travel like the locals, we eat at their restaurants, take public transport, stay in hostels or camp.

2. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be and why?

We have just returned home to Australia after several years away. After a few months of difficult adjustment period, I am now really enjoying exploring more of my beautiful country. We have spent so many years exploring the world; it’s time I started discovering and appreciating my own.

So, if I could be anywhere, I would be in a camper van, camping around Australia exploring its diversity, enjoying the laid-back beach lifestyle, and showing my daughter the incredible country that she was fortunate enough to be born in.

3. What was your best travel experience?

A very tough question. I think our four month backpacking experience in Africa would probably be the biggest highlight of my travels. Africa is a continent that really gets under your skin. It is so diverse, multi-faceted and beautiful. We had experiences in rain forests, deserts, savannahs, mountains, islands, waterfalls, gorges, and gorgeous beaches. How could you ever forget spending time with the wild animals as they roam freely amongst the plains?

Sick from a tick bite in Cape Town

4. What was your worst travel experience?

We’ve been really lucky on our travels we haven’t had a lot of bad experiences. I think probably when I came down with tick bite fever in Cape Town. I woke up one morning with an extremely bad headache, any slight turn of my head felt as if a vice was tightening around it. My joints completely swelled up and I could barely walk. I had to use Craig for support when walking and he practically had to carry me up the stairs. The doctors at the hospital diagnosed me with encephalitis, which completely freaked me out as I had a friend who once cared for a patient who went crazy after contracting this viral disease.
When my symptoms kept getting worse, the doctors realized it wasn’t that and the only other thing it could be was tick bite fever. They gave me some medicine and after a few days I got better. I was incredibly sick and really worried.

5. What is your best travel advice for the TravelPost community?

My best travel advice is to live and work in another country. Make this a part of your travel experience. It is a cheaper way to travel and you will really get to know other cultures and form solid friendships with people from around the world.

When you live in another country, every day is an exciting adventure, even the mundane tasks like banking and grocery shopping. You don’t have to save as much before you leave, as you will be earning the local currency. You may even land on a work program that will pay for your flights and accommodation in your chosen country.

6. What have been your greatest challenges and rewards of travel writing?

My travel writing allows me to share all I have learned in the past 13 years of traveling. There is no point experiencing all I have to only keep it within myself. I finally came to realize that my traveling life was not just about me; it was a process of learning so that I could eventually use it to help others.

The greatest reward then is inspiring others to go out and live their dream lives and show them just how easy it is to do. We have met so many amazing people because of the travel blogging, and for that I am so grateful.

The greatest challenge was letting go of all my inhibitions, to expose my personal thoughts. This is a difficult thing to do, but I knew if I wanted to do this I had to fully play it out. I’ve pretty much broken through that barrier. The greatest challenge now is the technical side of writing, especially grammar and punctuation, which I am pretty bad at.

Posing with some Thai students

Bonus Question: Most memorable travel mishap?

Oh Gosh, we’ve had quite a lot of these. When we were in Vietnam, we were out drinking at the Nha Trang Sailing Club. It was only meant to be a quiet evening but after meeting a fellow Aussie there, things kind of went a bit crazy with vodka buckets.

We left sometime after 1am and were seen walking down the road to our guesthouse. It was only a block away from where we were staying. For some strange reason we decided to jump into a cyclo home. We must have thought it was going to be a fun ride, except we both passed out when we jumped in.
We woke up hours later to find ourselves in the middle of a small village market. It was just before dawn and the locals were busy getting the market set up for morning. Neither of us could think straight as our minds were hazed out on vodka. We had no idea where we were or where we needed to go. I burst into tears, as I knew there was nothing I could do, my brain just wouldn’t work.

After walking around in circles, and rifling through our things to find any kind of clue as to where we were staying, we eventually figured out that we had to hop on a motorbike to try and get back. A motorbike appeared, with a driver who spoke no English but could understand the only words we could remember “Nha Trang Sailing Club” By the time we got back, thirty minutes later, the sun was rising and we managed to find our guesthouse. I haven’t drunk vodka since.

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