Week 6: What I learnt about Travel blogging

Newsflash: If you think travel blogging is an easy task, think again. One week in Japan was all we needed to keep us busy for the following 3 weeks. Indeed, we had a blast in Japan, but the fun does not come without the price tag of hard work. Blogging on the go is a lot more than just writing stories about our travels.

Difference between travelling and travel blogging

If travelling on a vacation is like travelling with no strings attached, then travel blogging is travelling with tons of strings attached.

Travelling on holidays, I seldom had to think about responsibilities and roles to play as a traveller. I simply travel and enjoy the process of travelling. Don’t we all? We go anywhere we want, visit any attraction that appeals to us and change our plans as we please. There are no consequences.

Travelling allows us to experience a different part of the world than the one we live in, and this applies to any form of travelling. Even travel blogging. But here’s the thing. When you’re travelling for work, there’s a lot more to take into consideration. Besides the experiential aspect of travelling, we were also assigned with different roles and responsibilities. This inevitably changes our travel experience from a leisure one to one with expectations to meet and tasks to carry out.

Holding Different Roles

Since we were visiting Osaka, Kyoto and Nara, each of us were in charge of keeping track of a particular city. Of course, I played to my heart’s content on this rare chance to be able to travel on an all expenses paid trip. I never expected my first trip to Japan to be like this! With out roles sorted out, I could thoroughly enjoy myself when the activity wasn’t under my coverage.

Read also: Osaka budget guide, Kyoto budget guide and Nara budget guide.

Besides the individual city articles, we were also tasked with writing about various activities or attractions that we visited, hence the birth of the Animal Cafes in Osaka article, alongside Osaka Central Fish Market etc.

With our roles and responsibilities set forth, we were off to explore Japan! It wasn’t easy. From doing the extra research, noting down every detail possible to being more aware of the time and money spent, it required a lot more discipline and awareness on our part.

Sometimes, we get fixated about information collection and forget we’re also here to enjoy. Other times, we have too much fun and forget about our responsibilities. Finding that balance was something we constantly battled with. But I guess this is how we learn to love our job, isn’t it?

Thankfully, with the right mix of people in the team, we were able to help one another in areas where the other fell short.

Dings was great at taking our random shenanigans for snapchat, I was in charge of updating our Instagram account on the go. Hendric was in charge of taking videos and was literally born with an internal compass, while Cherie took note of the content details we needed from start to the end! See how it all worked out in the end?

Sometimes, travel blogging requires us to take part in activities that we HAVE to, not because we WANT to. There were days when we had to survive on 3-4 hours of sleep, starting our day at 6am just so we had sufficient time to cover the day’s itinerary. It was painful waking up every morning (especially for me), but it was something we had to do.

Although it was painful surviving on little sleep, I guess it paid off eventually. The sense of satisfaction when we produce well-written AND well-received articles make everything worth while. So I guess that’s the price we have to pay to travel “for free”. Really, nothing in this world is free.

Eventually, we all figure out what’s worth sacrificing our time, effort and sleep for.

The most important lesson

I guess the most important lesson that I got out of my first travel blogging trip is to always be sufficiently prepared, but also adaptable. Being considerably knowledgeable about the place you’re going or the rules and regulation of the country can save you unnecessary hiccups. This is rather crucial for us because of time constraints, which requires us to be as efficient as we can. But hey, there are lots of things that aren’t within our control when we travel. So yes, learn to be flexible and stay adaptable to the situation around you too! That’s how we strive to get the best out of our travel blogging experience 🙂

What would you sacrifice for travelling? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!