Why friends are bad influence, travelling sucks, and Russia is but a train ride away.

Finally, we have our blog up and running. And by up and running we mean we've actually only registered for fifteenfings.blogspot.com. So while Carol challenges her age by trying to work out the customization process of our new blog, I shall sneakily bang out a few words...

Late last year we both were feeling a little jaded about life and things in general; Carol and her husband's full time photography was taking off which meant massive commitment to their studio. I found myself tied hands and feet to a new job with an exciting boutique events/concert promoter agency. It wasn't that we were complaining about how things were going - on the business side, Carol had a lot of creative freedom with her shoots and I was working on pulling off the biggest music festival in South East Asia. Even we acknowledged that we were fortunate to be doing for a living what most others only dream of doing...but one of us made the mistake of asking the other: is this it?

You see, Carol and I both have a terrible terrible infliction. We like travelling extensively over long periods of time, and at a leisurely pace. Separately, we've travelled across India, South East Asia, Europe, South America and as people with itchy feet will know, the travelling never stops. And how could it? How can you read an article about the 7 different Machu Picchu treks without wishing to be on one of them? Who never had the longing to work for a travel magazine even to just review hotel rooms? How many times do you watch TLC thinking that you too, can make a good travel host? (Actually that last bit is true; you probably can make a good travel host compared to the kind of dubious people who appear on TV nowadays.)

But hang on. Stop here for a second. Before you go on reading, we would like to make it clear that we will not be held responsible for sudden impulses to quit your job/relationship/kids/life to drive from the tip of Argentina to the ends of North America. Neither will we take the blame for you deciding to spend your life savings on a 3 month trip exploring the Amazonian jungles of South America. In fact, we would like to take back everything we just said about travelling. Don't do it. Travelling sucks. It's shit. Only meant for no life losers. 

Even worse, do not even attempt to think about doing what Carol and I are planning to do on April 21st. And that is to ride various trains from Kuala Lumpur, across Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Western China, Kazakhstan, right up to Moscow, Russia. It will take more or less 5 weeks, we will cover more or less 15,000 km, and we will shoot/record more or less 1 tera of footage.

Friends ask, WHY?! We say, we like trains. We say, Russia is a cool destination. We say, we want you to be jealous. But actually, we dunno. We no can give good answer. You see now? No one should adopt the appetite of travelling. It's ridiculous, wastes time & money, and is ridiculous. Not to mention a possible factor in the breakdown of jobs/relationships/kids/life.

But all the same, if you want to wish us good luck, we'll take it anyway. We have exactly 4 weeks left to go before we take the first train out of Malaysia and man, are we excited! And hopefully when we come back a month later, we will be able to put our rail adventures into a coffee table book. All for the love of travelling of course, because we're no life losers like that.