I have a world map above my desk at home. It has exactly 66 little star stickers on it, colour-coded red and green to denote places I have been (15) and places I want to go (51).

The stars generally fall into a few “big trips”. North Africa, Europe and Scandinavia would constitute a giant 3-month trip. Japan and South Korea would be a month away. Canada would have to be on its own, while Central and South America could be done together or stitched onto a Texas/New Mexico/New Orleans holiday. Hawaii will probably be on its own. New Caledonia on its own. Nepal and Tibet could perhaps be done at the same time as Vietnam and Cambodia.

The problem with Perth is that it’s the second most isolated city in the world (don’t quote me on that, it’s a random fact I’ve heard time and time again so there must be some basis in truth for it). When you live in such an isolated city, it is expensive as fuck to go literally anywhere that isn’t Bali or Thailand. Us and our kiwi mates are so shit out of luck when it comes to travel. There are some airlines doing fairly discounted flights from Melbourne to places like Japan, but then you have to factor in the cost of even getting from Perth to Melbourne, and when you start having multiple legs in your flights with multiple discount airlines, you start getting all sorts of trouble, namely cancelled flights for no good reason (cough JETSTAR). So you don’t want to take time off work and make bookings and shit like that, all to be at the mercy of discount airlines who will happily cancel flights if they are less than packed full.

Travel is one of the biggest things I want to do in life. I endlessly scroll Instagram because my feed is packed full of accounts like “earthfocus” and “wanderlust” and Nat Geo and all sorts of worldy/travel-inspired stuff. It’s self-inflicted torture. I’m only 25, I’m a uni student, I haven’t even started my career yet and I’m already panicking about whether I’m going to be able to fit in all the travel I want to do. Logistically speaking, my future is already becoming expensive!

Saving a little a week as a student is pretty much the only thing I can do at this point, and I’m trying to decide on what kind of travel I can afford to do in the next year or two, to try and work towards. At this point, it’s looking like Nepal/Tibet, New Caledonia, Hawaii, or Japan/Korea. All of which are super exciting, so it’s going to be a lucky dip!

Wish me luck peeps!

Love, Akika xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxox