I can’t remember the exact moment we realized we were getting tired. It’s like it slowly crept up on us. We stopped being amazed by the beautiful temples surrounding us. New foods were no longer appealing and that cooking class we’d wanted to take, well, we just weren’t interested anymore. Instead, we craved some tastes from home, and spent our time watching one too many episodes of Castle on our laptop. Travel fatigue got us good.

Before we left for this trip, so many people asked us the same questions:

“Don’t you think you’ll get tired of living from a backpack?”

“Aren’t you going to miss your own bed?”

“Won’t you get sick of each other?”

We would always respond with a very confident “NO”. We were ready for this journey, longing for this journey actually. We wanted to live out the year with just the clothes on our backs, literally. The idea of waking up in new beds and new cities excited us to no end. Steven and I spent most of our time together before this trip, so we weren’t worried about getting tired of each other’s company.

Travelling to new cities and countries as quickly as we have has been like a boot camp for our senses. Every week, a new city, new language, new foods, new smells and new beds. When we finally spent that month in Chiang Mai, it caught up with us. We had the time to rest our feet for a bit and instead of easing into the whole “taking it easy” thing, we just went full out. But it didn’t end when we left Chiang Mai. We still felt it during our three weeks in Vietnam and then again during our week in Kuala Lumpur. When we made it to Hanoi in Northern Vietnam, we weren’t even overly excited to do our Halong Bay cruise. It was like everything was losing its appeal. Don’t get us wrong, we still had an amazing time in Vietnam and to see Halong Bay was something special that we won’t soon forget. Our stay at the JW Marriott Hanoi Hotel was like a dream come true. We were just becoming more interested in hanging around our accommodations, and less interested in seeing and doing things.

When we moved on to Kuala Lumpur, we found an awesome Airbnb just outside the city centre with a gym and infinity pool. Instead of exploring the city, we spent most of our time hanging around the condo. We spent our last two nights in KL at the JW Marriott Kuala Lumpur, which was located right next to all the hotspots and gave us the chance to explore everything that we wanted to see (stay tuned for a post on our stay there).

Up until this week, we’d been feeling guilty about this overall lack of excitement and motivation. It felt like we were taking so many things for granted. We’ve since realized that we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves and after seven months of non-stop travel, it is perfectly ok to want some downtime. More importantly though, we’ve finally identified and learned to accept OUR travel style.

Our biggest lesson here is that we all have different ways of travelling. While some people need a break after one week, others can go for months without stopping. Steven and I fall somewhere in between those two!

Oh, and if you’re wondering, our answers to the questions above are still no!

The Good News

As soon as we stepped foot off the plane in Bali, we felt rejuvenated again. I’m not sure what it was, maybe a couple of days of western comforts in Singapore helped get us back on track, but we’re back. This week in Ubud was very much needed and we’ve spent our time sleeping in, going to the gym, doing yoga, eating delicious food and really feeling relaxed and excited for what’s ahead. It probably helps that we’ve had two 90 minute massages since we been here too. 🙂

Next week, we’re island hopping and head to Lombok and Gili Air and are looking forward to more of what we’ve been up to here in Ubud, just with a beach and pool added in. We’re also planning to catch up on the rest of our Vietnam, KL and Singapore posts while we are there! Next month, we head back to our favourite place in the world, Australia. We’re pretty sure if we’ve got any travel fatigue lingering, Australia will be the cure!

Have you ever dealt with travel fatigue? What do you do to get your travel mojo back?

jess + trickett