André and Sara were the first Portuguese I met during my trip already 1 month later from its beginning. I met them in Inle Lake, Myanmar, where they also shared a bit of their traveler experience.
But it was a long time ago and I wanted to know how things are going. It’s also inspiring to see a couple traveling for so long. André and Sara have their own travel blog: Go Meet Share, where they also tell more about their adventures and give travel advice while sharing awesome photos.
Today I’m sharing with you their traveler experience while traveling Asia for such a long time. Here’s how things changed for them and somehow marked their lives forever.
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How did this idea of leaving everything to travel come to life? What was the motivation?
It was already a dream, an old dream that existed even before we met each other, but that we are fulfilling together. To know the world or part of it in a deeper and intense way motivated us to do it. We wanted to know the cultures and the people more than visiting the spots. More than tourists, we wanted to be travelers.
We believe that traveling might give us the chance of learning different attributes that a year of work can’t bring. The truth is that the concept of success in the Western world it’s based on your career and not on personal development and achievements. We wanted to dedicate to the personal side of this theory.
However, we knew that to do it we would need time, availability and most of all courage. After 3 years of working experience, we achieved the financial conditions and the necessary craziness to put a career on hold. We both quit our jobs and departed on this adventure of knowing the unknown. We didn’t know much about Asia but it was enough to fascinate us and sharpen our curiosity to discover more. That’s why we focused on this continent to do our trip.
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What destination left the biggest mark on you?
Undoubtedly India. Most of all because of the difference between our reality and India’s reality, but also because of the chaos you feel in the country and its dimension.
What was your favorite country?
This is a hard one. Every country has its own particularities and they were also lived in different moments, so we can’t choose a favorite one. India is the most different one, in Myanmar, we found the most genuine and nice people, in Vietnam, we experienced the best caves and the most incredible greenest landscapes, and Indonesia was the country where we were the happiest people.
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What culture or local habit most impressed you?
It’s hard to tell because the habits are so different from country to country. Anyway, one thing that is transversal to all Asians is their resting position. They can stand squatting for hours without any support on their butt. Western people can’t do that. That’s why we found it so interesting.
What has already changed with this experience?
The truth is that it is still hard to say, at least big differences are hard to tell. Traveling changes perspectives builds opinions and expands horizons, but that doesn’t change you in a radical way. At least it didn’t work that way to us. We don’t feel that we are so different, but we can tell that we earn new interests and most of all we changed our preferences and way to see life. Among those new interests, we developed a passion for photography and visual things. Photography promotes a lot our will to travel more and continue in the search for the difference.
Nowadays we can say that our biggest interest is to meet different people, explore new places we have never thought about and register our experiences through photography, video or words. Sharing was a concept that changed for us during this last 11 months as before we weren’t very connected to social media and sharing our life’s. This trip, the construction of a blog and the consequently discover of the digital world and its potential led us to think that traveling is also sharing. It also helped to unblock some prejudices and fears. Indians have a really bad reputation in Portugal, but while exploring the country we found an incredible civilization with amazing people that today we can call friends.
We had fear, but everything was ok. The uncertain was clarified and our certain was modified. The career is extremely important and rated for the Portuguese and we weren’t so different from this reality motivated by our education, studies, and professional life. Today we believe that careers that lead you to quit your personal life aren’t our priority any longer. Our way to see Portugal also changed. We don’t explore much our own country besides being the place where we spend more time, and we certainly neglect our own Portugal. That’s something about to change. We want to visit every place in Portugal when we come back.
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Would you do the same again and advise others to do it?
300% Yes. Obviously, we would have done something differently but this was indubitably the most gratifying experience of our lives.
You can continuously follow their journey on their Instagram profile!
