Once around the world: Island life and safari: Adventures with Laura and Finn

Summer, sun, beach and sea – most people look forward to their long-awaited vacation all year round. However, planning the perfect summer vacation can often be quite time-consuming. Finding the ideal destination, calculating the budget, booking flights or train tickets and packing suitcases. Others, on the other hand, are not afraid to travel halfway around the world into the unknown and are constantly on the move. We spoke to Laura and Finn, who have already seen a lot of the world and can give both holidaymakers and globetrotters first-hand experience for their next trip.

Up and away: off to Bali!

Laura and Finn have been traveling the world as digital nomads for over 3 years. In 2020, they took the ultimate step of leaving everything behind, packing their backpacks and venturing around the world with just a one-way ticket. They explored Southeast Asia during the pandemic. Since then, they have fallen in love with the beautiful island city of Bali. On social media, they take us along on their exciting adventure and share breathtaking insights through pictures and videos, as well as valuable tips and advice. In this interview, they tell us about the most beautiful beaches and why Japan and safaris in South Africa are very special memories for them.

• Laura and Finn Instagram
• Laura and Finn YouTube

Local cuisine – the courage to taste!

FIV: Hello Laura and Finn, you’ve already been on some fantastic trips and have a lot of experience. Where do you think we should save money on vacation, if possible?

Laura and Finn: Overpriced western food. We love trying out the local cuisine in new countries and can only recommend it to anyone. Sometimes it seems a bit scary and unfamiliar, but for us it’s part of traveling. You should at least give the local cuisine a chance. If you fancy a pizza or pasta from time to time, that’s perfectly fine!

Vacation or adventure trip? That’s a matter of type!

FIV: You dared to emigrate to the big wide world, so do you generally prefer going on an adventure trip to a classic vacation?

Laura and Finn: It totally depends on what the goal is! Both have their pros and cons. If you want to relax and simply enjoy yourself, you should go on vacation. Unfortunately, we often miss out on that because when we’re somewhere beautiful (even if it’s actually meant for relaxing), we somehow have the feeling that we want to share it with our community – so we end up working again.

Going on vacation simply means switching off from everyday life and not having to plan anything else during your vacation. Traveling, on the other hand, means challenges for us personally.

Traveling is about learning and seeing new things.

Discovering new cultures, stepping out of your comfort zone, being open to new things. Traveling is exhausting and has little to do with relaxation. Traveling often involves changing locations, moving around a lot, packing suitcases, lots of sightseeing, etc. You also need to stay spontaneous and “let yourself drift” during the trip. If you like a place, stay longer and if not, spontaneously move on. Traveling is about learning and seeing new things.

I think in the end it’s all about the mix. Sometimes an exciting new trip (preferably into the unknown) and sometimes just going on vacation without the pressure of having to see something and just having a good time.

These islands have fantastic beaches to offer

FIV: You’ve traveled a lot around the world and have certainly been able to see some islands with great beaches, is there a favorite that you could recommend to us?

Laura and Finn: I don’t know if this counts as an island, but we saw some insanely beautiful beaches in Western Australia. After our relatively spontaneous wedding for two in Perth, we took a road trip up to Exmouth. The nature we saw there was unique! Such beautiful white beaches with turquoise water and a really impressive underwater world

Otherwise, the beaches of Koh Lipe in Thailand and the beaches in Boracay, Philippines, also surprised us extremely positively. Both corners of the world were a dream for swimming, but compared to Western Australia, Thailand and the Philippines are of course much more touristy. So there was also a lot more going on there.

In Europe, we liked the beaches on Milos the best!

Insider tips away from mass tourism

FIV: The most annoying thing on vacation is usually when you have to queue up everywhere because of the loud tourist hustle and bustle and lose a lot of time as a result. Do you have an insider tip for us that hasn’t yet been overrun by the mainstream?

Laura and Finn: Siargao Island in the Philippines.

I know it’s a long way from Europe, but it’s worth it. The island is not completely undiscovered, but for us it has the perfect amount of tourist attractions (restaurants, infrastructure and hotels) and is still extremely local, with lots of untouched nature. We have fallen in love with this small island in the Philippines.

Japanlove and memories of South Africa

FIV: Thanks for the recommendations, everyone can choose what they prefer on vacation. Is there a place that you particularly liked and that left a lasting impression?

The people are very reserved but incredibly respectful and polite, the food is a dream (at least for us) and there is something new to see and discover around every corner. A trip to Japan is a must for every travel lover!

FIV: Japan is supposed to be really great. Have you ever ventured to a more unusual destination?

Laura and Finn: Of course, it also depends on how you define extraordinary. As mentioned before, we were extremely impressed and liked Japan – there was so much that was crazy and unusual here. But as we travel a lot in South East Asia and Asia in general, another corner of the world was probably still extremely extraordinary for us – South Africa!

We can only recommend everyone to treat themselves to a safari in Africa once in their life.

We were there for 3 months last year and think the country is so beautiful. First and foremost, of course, the wildlife. We were able to spend 3 days in Kruger National Park and what can I say – WOW WOW WOW! For us personally, it was the best thing to be able to see all these animals in the wild. It does something to you. As a European, you only know all these animals from television or the zoo, but there’s no comparison. We can only recommend everyone to treat themselves to a safari in Africa once in their life. It is beautiful, extraordinary and more than impressive to be able to observe all these wonderful animals.

Whether by train, car or plane – Laura and Finn use everything

Laura and Finn: A good and exciting trip always consists of a mixture of EVERYTHING!

Often you can’t avoid the plane (especially if you live on an island, like we did). When we were backpacking in Thailand for 4 months in a row, we really took every means of transportation. Whether it was day or even night ferries, trains, private drivers (cars), minivans, (night) buses and so on.

In Japan, we only traveled by bus and train, which worked very well. In countries like South Africa or Australia, cars or vans are more suitable for traveling. Here in Indonesia, we do almost everything on a scooter. So it really depends on the destination. Each means of transportation has its own charm.

New York, Italy and the Cook Islands

FIV: Which absolute dream destination is still on your bucket list?

Laura and Finn: The whole world, actually. There are really few countries that we don’t want to visit. Our individual ranking always changes according to our mood. There’s just so much we haven’t seen yet and the world is so beautiful and diverse.

If we had to make a decision right now, the following goals would be at the top of the list:

Cook Islands: This group of islands looks simply beautiful and still truly untouched. South Korea. We’ve heard so many great things about this country. Tanzania. The nature and especially the wildlife here must be incredibly impressive.

New York City: Finn has been there several times, but for me (Laura), the city has been sooo high up on my bucket list for sooo long.

Italy: Sounds relatively unspectacular at first, but we’ve both hardly ever been to Italy, if at all, but we both love Italian food. We would love to do a van road trip through the country.

FIV: Then you still have a lot of exciting things planned, it rarely gets boring with you, we think that’s good. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us, we wish you many more wonderful impressions and a safe journey.

Would you like to discover more about traveling?

We are often drawn to faraway places and forget that we don’t always have to get on a plane to enjoy the beach:

• Baltic Sea or North Sea? Camping, vacation home, vacation! Travel check