FAQs

Are these questions really frequently asked?

That would depend on your definition of the word ‘frequent', but no, no they're not. In fact, no one has ever asked us the vast majority of them. But like most content on this site, this frequently asked questions page was done solely for our own amusement.

What the f*ck is a curmudgeon?

Oxford English Dictionary defines curmudgeon as ‘a bad-tempered person, especially an old one,' with the list of synonyms including crank, crosspatch, sourpuss and old trout. Well fuck, if we'd ever bothered to look that up before 30 seconds ago, this site would have been called Travelling Old Trout. Oh well....

Do you not even know how to spell ‘traveling’? How f*cking embarrassing for you!

This is by far the most asked question we get in some form or another, most commonly on comments and replies on Facebook. The short answer is that we generally prefer using the English spelling of English words, rather than the bastardised American versions. Not only because it's philosophically and logically more correct to do so (the language is called English, so all rules should automatically default to the English used by those who live in England), but it's also aesthetically superior. At the end of the day the only people this should affect are those who own stock in the usage of the letters L and U.

How can you afford to travel so much?

First, a bit of context, since the pandemic started in earnest (ie March 2020), we've spent a total of around 4 months at 'home', which means we've technically spent a lot of time on the road. Not bad when you've got a monthly net salary in the high triple digits.* How is this possible? There are two key factors at play here, one philosophical and the other practical. Philosophically, you've got to be totally content living out of a backpack, not having anything nice in terms of possessions, not having any margin for error were some major catastrophe to strike, not having any retirement savings to speak of, not having a spouse or kids and, of course, eventually dying poor and alone. In other words, being a bum. Probably not the most suitable lifestyle for most people. Practically speaking, you're limited to travelling to either incredibly cheap countries or countries where you've got generous friends with spare bedrooms, free couches or hotelier connections, and should generally stay longer (months not days) in each place to minimise the cost of flights, visas, etc.

*That's right, as much as we hate to brag, we're talking close to $1000 (!) a month in net earnings. Don't be jealous though. If you work hard, put in your time and have a little luck along the way, one day you might get there yourself....

Do you seriously use the ‘royal we’ when you're obviously just one guy?

Yes. But we've got at least two good excuses for it, neither of which are being a pretentious cunt. First, since 2009 one of our day jobs has been writing and editing for a large mainstream travel media company (or at least it used to be large and mainstream prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, now it's unfortunately more middling and struggling for survival), where the editorial guidelines strictly required the plural first-person in all writing. So after producing hundreds of thousands of words of beautifully crafted travel writing prose over more than a decade, it felt natural to keep the same style for this project. And second, we never intended this to be a single curmudgeon operation. In fact, if you'd like to join us, feel free to send an email to travellingcurmudgeon@gmail.com.

Got a question for us? You could send it on the email above, but better to just ask on Facebook.