New Zealand by Van and Benefits of Slow Travel with Flip Flop Wanderers

About This Episode

In this episode, we are joined by Bram and Manon of Flip Flop Wanderers. They are a travel couple from the Netherlands that shared their love of travel with one another and now travel the world full time. They talk with us about their travels together including driving a van through New Zealand, the benefits of traveling slowly to catch up on work, and working to build their online presence.

Introduction:

The story started nine years ago in the Netherlands when Bram and Manon met at a festival near their hometown. They both had a love of travel when they met each other. Manon had an internship overseas shortly after they met and Bram went out to meet her there near the end and they set out on more travels together from there. When they returned back to the Netherlands, they knew they had to get back out on the road and have been traveling full time ever since.

Part One: Travel

Why travel? For them, it is the experience and the adventure. It is something different than what other people will do. They were in Thailand before coming back to the Netherlands during a surprise visit and will be going to Estonia shortly after this interview.

Their most rewarding experience came in Myanmar when they were welcomed with open arms by the locals in the country in a place where tourism continues to grow after only recently being nonexistent. Their funniest travel experience came in New Zealand when Bram was sliding down a rock slide on a body board, but could not get back up the rock face because the rocks were too slippery. Their worst travel experiences have come when they are in dirtier cities or cities where they have not felt completely safe, but they have been fairly lucky in their travels to not have had any horrible moments.

Part Two: Relationships

After only being together for six months, they were already traveling together and living in a small room. This was a real test to their relationship and they have only known spending a lot of time together. It is this time that they have spent together that has allowed them to learn so much about one another.

Their travel planning has really developed into being more of slow travelers and not spending a lot of time beforehand to plan their trip. Now they decide when they arrive somewhere what they will do and if they do not like it they have the flexibility to move on, whereas if they do enjoy the destination they will spend more time there.

New Zealand is high on their list of places to return to. Especially traveling around by van in the country to go on your own time and see what you want. While they were in New Zealand for a year working they decided to buy their own van and create a home inside of it in order to travel around the country.

For couples who want to get out and travel the world more, Bram and Manon suggest that you get out and enjoy it as much as possible. You will need space from each other from time to time, and it can be hard to do that especially when living in a van.

Part Three: Making Travel a Lifestyle

The name Flip Flop Wanderers came from their love of traveling to warm destinations where they can wear their flip flops all the time. They began with the blog and Instagram to keep in touch with family, writing in Dutch to keep in touch with people back home. This was on their first road trip, but after good response to this they eventually began to take it more serious on their next time on the road.

When it comes to working on their online presence including their website and their social media accounts, they like to travel slowly and spend time at each place in order to keep on top of their work. They even took two weeks to do a house sit in Vietnam in order to use the time to catch up on work.

When it comes to creating the content, Manon takes care of the photography, editing, and location scouting while Bram takes care of the engagement and commenting online for the most part. The tool that has really helped them expand their reach is Instagram. With expanding the reach of the blog, they really enjoy using Pinterest to help drive traffic.

Their advice for someone out there wanting to begin creating content online would be to understand what your interests are. If you are interested in photography, then you should start on Instagram. If you are a writer, you should start a blog. If you are interested in creating videos, then YouTube. The idea is to start and to not give up.

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