Dad and I have learned to love to travel over the years. As we’ve grown older and wiser, we have found that rather than accumulate things, we would rather have experiences these days and this is now our motto

Dad and I hail from Malaysia and we got used to flying from an early age as we came to boarding school in 1981. In those days, planes had to refuel at least once on their flight over from the Far East and these delays in exotic-sounding places in the Middle East and Europe were a sleep-sapping inconvenience. Little did we know that we would fall in love with travel later in life

Paying for dad and his sister’s education meant that money was tight and coupled with dad’s dad’s 7 day a week job as a GP in Malaysia meant that they didn’t go away on holiday as a family. So, dad was used to spending holidays at home though that was still enjoyable

At school, there were a few forays to places like the Lake District and Paris with his aunt, who lived in Yorkshire and was his nominated guardian when he was in boarding school. Being a typical teenager, he enjoyed these trips but didn’t fully appreciate going to new places as opposed to staying home and watching TV/playing on the computer/etc

Dad got into travel through a slightly unusual route. On a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, he discovered that he really loved roller coasters and he and I started spending his holidays travelling to theme parks in the UK. It will come as no great surprise that our first big holiday abroad was a 2 week trip to the theme parks in Orlando and Tampa

After a few more roller coaster trips, we discovered cities. After initially exploring cities like tourists by hitting the well-known tourist attractions, over time, we started to learn to appreciate cities at a deeper level. Dad and I like to use the phrase ‘to live as a local’. We’re indebted to local friends for showing us life, districts, restaurants and hidden gems in the cities that we were lucky enough to visit

However, we are now in love with nature. We had enjoyed travel before but dad and I clearly remembered the exact moment that we totally fell in love with travel and we will soon be sharing that with you in an upcoming post. Save to say that that view of nature blew our mind and remains our favourite to this day. We always fit in a visit to an area of outstanding natural beauty when we travel

So, tomorrow, we will be kicking off our overseas travel reviews by sharing the start of the trip that dad, ‘future mom’ and I made to the USA last summer